Awards Awards 2014- A Guide - Could use more prizes! :)

Awards 2014​

A Guide​

Welcome to the Guide thread for the 2014 Awards (Well really 2011-2013 awards). This thread should serve as your guide to dates, eligibility, rules, an FAQ and a place to ask any questions. It's likely to be long, so apologies, but we'll try and have the most important info up top! It will be updated as time goes on so make sure to check back.

There will be individual threads for each part (Nominations, Excerpts and Voting) of the awards for with how to proceed with that part, this guide just has an overview of these parts and a place to ask questions as things go along.

Things are going to be a little different and strange this year, so please bear with us as we try to make this as fun and fair as possible while hopefully getting more people to participate. Things may change a bit as we go along (noms needed, maximum wins, etc.) due to how things are progressing. If that is the case we will let you all know as soon as possible.


DATES

The majority voted for winter awards in the survey so here we are! In order for this process to not be ridiculously long, nominations and excerpts for ALL eras are going to be done at the same time, then voting will be done separately.

Before, Saga and Beyond Nominations: January 12-25th

*Before, Saga and Beyond Excerpts: January 30 - February 16

*Voting Before/Saga: Feb 16-23
*Voting Beyond: Feb 23- March 2

*Note - The dates have changed from the original version.

ELIGIBILITY

• Stories that were started or updated since the last awards until the end of 2013. So July 1st 2011 to December 31st, 2013. (If they have been truncated, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED you either fix it or have a link to another site with the story by the time voting starts. Failing to do so means others can not read your entire work and may be less likely to vote for you. If there is a link, the story on that site MUST be compliant with the Jedi Council TOS.)

• Stories that have won previous awards are not eligible.

• Reposts of stories that were posted after the last awards are eligible so long as they have never won an award.

CATEGORIES

The categories have been trimmed down to the most general ideas, as per the majority from the awards survey.


Genre:
Best AU
Best Canon
Best All Around

Style:
Best Cross-over
Best Short Story (including Vignette, Song-Fic and Poem)
Best Epic
Best Series

Character:
Best Canon Interpretation
Best Original Character

Author:
Best Author
Best New Author

Other:
Best Reviewer


NOMINATIONS

• At this point in time, it will require 2 nominations to go to the voting round.

• If a category has less than or equal to 3 fics nominated, then any story nominated for that category will go on to the voting round.

• If you are nominated for more than 3 categories, excluding Author categories, you must choose which 3 categories you want to go to the voting round. You will be sent a PM by the mods to choose if this occurs.

You may start gathering who you want to nominate for awards at any time, but please don't send them to the mods until the Nominations thread goes up. Please remember that you will need links to the stories that you are nominating.


EXCERPTS

After nominations, the authors who qualify to go to the voting round will be PM'd with what stories are eligible to go to the voting round. Those author will then PM the mods an excerpt to be posted in one thread by the mods.

Excerpt Length:Most stories: 300 words
Best Epic, Best Series, Best Author, Best New Author: 600 words

• As not every processor counts word counts the same, we will use THIS online word counter. Anything over the limit will be cut to the limit.

• You may include a short authors note to preface your excerpt that will not count toward your word count, but it should only be a few sentences at most.

Author Categories: any example of your writing posted here on the JCF that has been posted in the eligibility dates.


VOTING

• Anyone is eligible to vote, no need to sign up as in the past.

• You may not vote for yourself

• Anyone caught voting multiple times with a sock will be banned and no longer eligible to participate in the awards in any way.

• The person(s) who votes for the most winners will win colors. (This is not to encourage you to vote for who you think will win, but to encourage voting in general. Please vote for who you think is most deserving of the award.)

AWARDS/PRIZES

• If you win multiple categories, it is possible you may not be given multiple prizes, depending on the number of prizes we have available. This is excluding Best Author categories.

• Prizes will be chosen by the winner based on the following order: Best Author, Best New Author, the person with the most wins (ties will result in names being drawn at random), second most wins and so on until there are those with only 1 win. Then Genre winners will be given random number and based on those numbers they will choose their prize. The rest of the categories winners will be assigned a random number and they will choose in that order.

FAQ:

Why can someone only nominated in 3 categories (not including Author categories)? This means someone could win a max of 4 awards?
This is suposed to be for fun and having someone sweep a good chunk of the awards is only fun for that person. This isn't the Academy Awards and doesn't really have any bearing on life at all, so why don't we have as many winners as possible, while still being fair to that person as well! Yes, the maximum awards someone could receive is 4. (This will be changed if there are too few people nominated, but we hope that is not the case.)

Will there be an exception to the 3 nominated limit?
Possibly, if the nomination numbers are very low. If this is the case, everyone will be made aware.


What do you mean prizes will be chosen based on order?
Due to the nature of the prizes we have to award, there really isn't a fair way to distribute them. There will be a list of all eligible prizes and the winner will choose what they want as their prize.
Best Author will choose first followed by Best New Author. (Which era winner goes first will be drawn at random.)

Then anyone with 3 wins will choose (if there are multiple people with three wins, their names will be drawn out of a hat and they will choose in that order.)

Then anyone with 2 wins will choose (same as above if there are multiple people)

Then the three Genre Categories winners names -if there are any left- will be placed in a hat and pulled out at random, they will then choose their prizes based on that order.

Then all the other winners names will be randomly drawn and they will choose in that order.

To make it fair, prizes will not be given out until all awards are completed. There will be an announcement of winners after each era is completed and then prizes will be done.

What are the prizes?
We have a multitude of things which include: Cover art, drawings, colors, advertisement space.

Can I help with prizes?
YES, please! At this point in time we don't have nearly enough volunteers for this. Please send the mods a PM with any ideas or anything you would like to do to help with prizes! We encourage creativity!

Updates:
1/12/14 - It is no longer required that you fix/link due to truncation, just highly recommend.
1/29/14 - Excerpts length added. Note about dates changing added.

 

How about the NSWFF? Are we not doing awards for that group?

 

We aren't. You will have to bug the NSWFF mods for that.

 

I have a couple of questions:

At the time of the last awards, i had 2 ongoing projects, a vignette series and a non-epic story. They both got nominated but none won anything. If i understood this correctly, the are both eligible?

Trucation: Does this mean i have to restore all the chapters from my eligible stories before i know if they'll be nominated at all?

 

Yes, they are IF they have been updated since the last awards cut-off date, which was June 30th 2011.

No, if you get any noms, we expect you to either restore the chapters or post a link to your story if it's on another (TOS friendly) site in the first post of your story during the excerpt process (January 29th - February 12th).

 

The eligibility rules above and in the nomination thread both say that they must be restored before the nomination period ends, not before the excerpt period ends.

 

Never mind, the question was answered already.

 

Update to the Rules:

After further thought/discussion, it has been decided it is not required that if your story has been truncated that you fix it or link to an off site version of the story. However, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED you do so. If people can not read your story (or at least some of it in the case of longer fics) they are less likely to vote for it and you are solely relying on memory.

 

Changes:

Due to the number of noms Before and Saga are going to be combined and their voting/awards done together. Beyond will have it's own voting/awards.

This of course changes our dates for voting a little bit, they will be avalible soon.



PM's will be going out today letting those who have been nominated know and the thread about the excerpts will also be posted today.

 

Nominations have now all gone out! (Except for those nominated for Best Reviewer, as you will not be submitting excerpts. )

The Excerpts Thread has now been posted. Please read the rules before sending your Excerpts. Starting as soon as tomorrow, the excerpts will be posted for everyone to read before voting.

Please note that the dates for Excerpts and Voting have changed:

Excerpts from January 30 - February 16
Voting Before/Saga Feb 16-23
Voting Beyond Feb 23- March 3

 

We could still use some more prizes for the awards if anyone wants to contribute. It could be art, a short fic, or anything else you can think of. PM mav or Bri if you would like to help out with prizes!



A BIG thanks to those who have already contacted us!

 

When will the Award results be posted?

 

GIve us a bit of time to double check everything. We'll start either later this evening or early tomorrow.