Thread of the Year 2024: The Vote

Nominees for ZooChat Thread of the Year 2024

  • Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part seven: 2024-2025 by Chlidonias

    Votes: 19 19.2%

  • Snowleopard's Mammals: A Lifetime List of Species by snowleopard

    Votes: 69 69.7%

  • The Great Southern State: WhistlingKite24 does South Australia by WhistlingKite24

    Votes: 3 3.0%

  • Zootierliste Goes Worldwide by Animal

    Votes: 3 3.0%

  • Zootrip report 2024; southern German and Austria by ralph

    Votes: 5 5.1%
  • Total voters
    99
pachyderm pro

pachyderm pro

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
Alright then. Following the two week-long nomination period, five threads have risen above the rest to become finalists for Thread of the Year 2024. All inspired choices and it's nice to see more prominent travel threads being created again after a slight slump in recent years. Cast your vote in the poll above for who you want to win. Here are your finalists:

Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part seven: 2024-2025 by @Chlidonias

Snowleopard's Mammals: A Lifetime List of Species by @snowleopard

The Great Southern State: WhistlingKite24 does South Australia by @WhistlingKite24

Zootierliste Goes Worldwide by @Animal

Zootrip report 2024; southern German and Austria by @ralph

I encourage everyone to take their time and read through each of them if you can spare time. Voting closes on December 31st at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time. Best of luck to all the nominees! :)
 
You know what they say, December is the most wonderful time of the year. That is obviously because it is time to declare our ZooChat thread of the year!
This year was an easy choice for me, I chose Snowleopard's Mammals: A Lifetime List of Species by @snowleopard.
It was an illustrious 100+ page long thread telling us about his life story on zoos, which I consider amazing considering his great time and effort put into this thread and literally the first time I saw it on the day it was posted, a thought crossed my mind which screamed *THREAD OF THE YEAR!*. @Chlidonias, @WhistlingKite24, @Animal, and @ralph, as well as several others with threads mentioned and not mentioned in the nominations put up some absolutely wonderful and insane threads, but no thread from this year comes close to this absolutely glorious thread of @snowleopard's.
 
First off, I would like to congratulate all the nominees! There have been many great threads this past year, here's to hoping the trend continues into the next.

Snowleopard's Mammals: A Lifetime List of Species by @snowleopard is my vote for thread of the year. To me it perfectly encapsulates what Zoochat is for- a detailed discussion and chronicle of all the different species, zoos, trends, enclosures, travels, and the experiences we have along the way, from the perspective of one of ZC's most ambitious and dedicated members. High praise, yes, but deservedly so. I know the thread most likely required a monumental amount of work to create. Well done, snowleopard!
 
Chlidonias said:
The king is currently in the police station in Nabang...
Click to expand...

Looking forward to that story :p. Plenty of kings were outcasts once, so success plotting a return ;)

Easy choice for me too for @Chlidonias , it is always a joy to read a nature travel thread by somebody who actually travels (as opposed to people shown around by guides). And this one already has all the ingredients to be one of the best :)
 
lintworm said:
Plenty of kings were outcasts once
Click to expand...

Hopefully it'll be rather more the "triumphant return and crowning" of Charles II of the UK, and rather less the "found floating in a lake in suspicious circumstances" of Ludwig II of Bavaria!
 
What a great year for some fantastic threads on ZooChat. How fortunate we all are to have such a wealth of material to select from each year. Looking back at past Thread of the Year nominees, I've voted for someone else's work and I've been happy to give up my vote to another topic even when I've been blessed to be nominated. Even when there was the Thread of the Year Champions: 5 Year Face Off I still voted for someone else and I came in second place.

This time around, I'll buck that trend and actually vote for myself. Haha! :p

I began my 'Mammals' thread on January 6th and it's been an epic piece of writing. With more than 100 pages in a single year, over 2,000 posts, approaching 200,000 views...wow. It's been an extraordinary community effort, with seemingly every ZooChatter involved at some point as a silent lurker, a poster or a provider of photographs. I actually feel justified voting for my own thread this time around as it's been a tremendous amount of work and has felt like a culmination of my 17 years of writing on ZooChat. When it's done I'll miss the hour or two of daily writing, but I'll probably also feel a little bit of relief that I've analyzed something like 450 mammal species and had a ton of help along the way. :)
 
@snowleopard says it himself :"more then 100 pages in a single year, over 2,000 posts, approaching 200,000 views...wow" ! So I also had to vote for him.
@Chlidonias makes IMO a good second place but because his thread just started ( and for him not in the very best way ;) ) I think it would be unfair against snowleopard but evenso, a great trip-report which I will follow all the way Chlidonias !
 
Thanks for the nomitations and votes everyone. :)
It is a good motivator do keep doing trip reports in the future (I'll start on the National Zoo of Nicaragua soon)!

My vote goes to @snowleopard . It is the only thread of such magnitute that I have read completely. The stuff by snowleopard is the main attraction, but the additions by other members makes the thread even more interesting and interactive.

Thanks for all the time and effort you put into it, snowleopard!

I personally can't wait for your Asia trip, as I am considering a trip to Singapore and Malaysia for next year (focussed both on zoos and wildlife watching)!
 
Safe to say we can project the winner at this point...

A big congratulations to @snowleopard for his second TOTY win with Snowleopard's Mammals: A Lifetime List of Species. Earning approximately 66% of the vote, this marks the largest margin of victory in the history of this completion. After an entire year of almost daily posts and thousands of contributions from members across the globe, this project held the attention of the entire site and defined ZooChat in 2024. Whether or not it earned your vote, nobody can deny this is a well deserved win.

And a big round of applause for the other finalists for their valuable contributions. Eagerly looking forward to seeing what the next year brings and if somebody will able to stop @snowleopard from back-to-back victories with his forthcoming Asian roadtrip thread. ;)
 
I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who voted in the poll and it's nice for zoo nerds to be recognized for these things as it's always a massive effort putting together a long-form thread. My discussion on mammals struck a chord with a lot of people on this site and I thank everyone for participating. Having a popular thread on ZooChat gives people something to look forward to in life, even if it's a small thing, and that's something we shouldn't take for granted. Sometimes it's the tiny things that make a difference in this world.

It's a pity that ZooChat only started having 'Thread of the Year' competitions 8 years ago, as previous to that there's a lot of wonderful threads in the long history of this site. I think back to some really lengthy travel reports from myself and others pre-2017, as well as a variety of wonderful threads on numerous topics, but too much time has passed to go back and vote now.

Here are the 8 recent winners:

2017: @CGSwans CGSwans Flies North for the Winter

2018: @lintworm Europe's 50 Must-See Zoos

2019: @snowleopard Snowleopard's 2019 Road Trip: Netherlands, Belgium, France & Germany

2020: @lintworm Into the Unknown: Zoos of Western France

2021: @amur leopard A Guide to the Rarities of Europe

2022: @lintworm Europe's 100 Must-See Exhibits

2023: @lintworm Trends in European Zoo Collections in the 21st Century

2024: @snowleopard Snowleopard's Mammals: A Lifetime List of Species

There's now been 40 excellent threads nominated all-time, and here are the folks who have done the hard work.

@lintworm 5 nominations and 4 wins
@snowleopard 4 nominations and 2 wins
@Zoofan15 4 nominations
@Chlidonias 3 nominations
@WhistlingKite24 3 nominations
@CGSwans 2 nominations and 1 win
@Coelacanth18 2 nominations
@FunkyGibbon 2 nominations
@pachyderm pro 2 nominations
@aardvark250 1 nomination
@amur leopard 1 nomination and 1 win
@Animal 1 nomination
@Batto 1 nomination
@Haliaeetus 1 nomination
@Hipporex 1 nomination
@LaughingDove 1 nomination
@Neil chace 1 nomination
@ralph 1 nomination
@TeaLovingDave 1 nomination
@ThomasNotTom/@TNT 1 nomination
@ThylacineAlive 1 nomination
@TinoPup 1 nomination
 
pachyderm pro said:
Eagerly looking forward to seeing what the next year brings and if somebody will able to stop @snowleopard from back-to-back victories with his forthcoming Asian roadtrip thread. ;)
Click to expand...

Not at all sounding like you're breaking notional impartiality by already cheerleading for a thread that doesn't exist yet ;)
 
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