[thomasahle]

You could also see this as 'citation counting' not being a very precise measure of paper quality/importance.

[raphman]

This is certainly the case. On the other hand, "best papers" are not necessarily really the most important papers. Often politics, e.g., proportional representation of all important sub-fields among the best paper nominees, decide about whether a paper gets named "best" or not.

Anecdotally, I know of awesome papers that were not selected as "best paper" and 'cute idea' papers without substance that got a "best paper" award.

[seanmcdirmid]

Or papers given the most 10 year influential award that aren't influential. It's all relative!