Despite the ranty nature of the thread Anthonius actually raised a good point, there are people out there who fully deserve to be awarded and get nothing due to either not being noticed or sheer dumb luck or any mix of factors.
Muizer made a very good point in that thread, which I'll quote here
At the time I proposed modders should be able to submit their work according to a prescribed format throughout the year, creating a nice showcase in the process. I don't recall it ever coming to that, but I think that is the kind of step that is probably most likely to actually do something about the issue you raise. But it will require work on the modder's end. The Curia doesn't have the manpower, staff doesn't have the manpower, combined they don't have the manpower to do what you suggest.
What I'm thinking is that we make a Modding Index thread (someone will come up with a better name) where we keep track of what everyone has been up to. The thread will be placed somewhere public, for example the Q&S or the Prothalamos and will be linked in every modding workshop subforum on the site (ex: in Three Kingdoms Modding Workshop) to achieve maximum visibility
People who want their work to be indexed can send the thread curators* a standard template PM containing the things they have been working on and people can check the index and nominate whoever they feel like has enough to get a specific award.
You don't have to be in the index to get nominated, it's just a tool to help you get nominated.
A working example of the same principle can be seen, by content staff only, in the Articles Sorted By Author sticky in the Librarian Antechamber. We used that thread to keep track of utmost contributors and to hand out the scriptorium medal.
* the thread can be curated by hex or staff or a team of 1-2-3-n volunteers.
EDITG: Just to make it clear, I'm talking about nominations for 501st, Opifex, etc not the yearly Modding Awards.