Awards 2018 Post-Awards Survey (AND STATS! ALL THE STATS!)

2018 Post-Awards Survey

Once again we’d like to thank everybody who was involved in or even just participated in the awards this year. We know over the past few years the awards have evolved and changed much more rapidly than they did pre-move, but they have done so to adapt to changing circumstances in the fandom and to suit our evolving community.

We want to recognize that no awards process is going to be perfect, nor is everyone going to be happy with one particular way. We are also dealing with a number of constraints from few mods and volunteers (who all have their own responsibilities from family to work to school to their own sanity and well-being), to a limited number of nominators and voters, to software and time constraints. Organizing the awards is really a balance between trying to recognize as many wonderful fics as possible, while also remaining fair, and keeping in mind the wonderful volunteers who already devote so much time to the awards. For example, yes, it would be nice to have some sort of algorithm to reduce the number of nominations that go into the voting round or to maximize the number of people or stories who win, but we have yet to discover a way to do these things that is both fair and does not take endless hours of work.

The best way to have your voice heard is to nominate, vote, or even volunteer. We recognize not everyone wants to participate and we respect this. But it is frustrating to see people complain about the awards when they are the people not participating. One of the best, and quickest, ways to make your opinion heard (and to hear the opinions of other users, as well as the volunteers and mods) is to participate in our post-awards survey.

We will get into more statistics and exact numbers below, but it is clear that only a small minority participate in the awards - and this is not for lack of awareness. Even though we considerably scaled back the amount of work this year by eliminating parts of the awards such as excerpts and prizes, it still was a lot of time and work. It’s disheartening when we see participation numbers not reflecting the work we put in.

Some Statistics

Mav gathered a number of stats throughout the process, most are behind the spoiler tag if you wish to see them for more context for your answers, but the basics are:

In 2017 128 authors posted at least one story.
88 of those authors had logged in from January 1st, 2018 until a about a week before nominations closed
92 authors (total) had logged in since the awards announcement until about a week before nominations closed

17 people participated in nominations
21 people voted
So not counting for people who only read, post in Resource, or lurk, 19% of participants in fanfic who logged in since Jan 1st nominated and 24% voted.

383 nominations went to the voting round in SW
97 nominations went to the voting round in NSWFF

7 people worked on the awards (Mods, Award Volunteers, and people who helped on the eligibility lists)
All nominated and voted. This means 41% of noms and 33% of votes came from people who worked in some way on the awards.

Spoiler: More detailed statistics

Nominations

2 people nominated in EVERY category
3 people nominated in every Star Wars category (not including the 2 who nommed in every category)
9 people nominated at least one thing in NSWFF


66 Different Star Wars Authors were nominated
33 Different NSWFF Authors were nominated (keep in mind, NSW eligibility was from 2015-2017)


Category that had the most 1st choice noms -as in the category that people were most likely to nominate at least one thing (# of noms)
Star Wars: Best Response to a Challenge and Best Humor (13)
NSWFF: One-Shot (12)

Category that had the most nominations total
SW: Best Humor (22)
NSWFF: Best One-Shot (20)

Most popular Category by Type (1st choice nom not total noms)
Timeframe: Before 32BBY and Between 5 ABY & 33ABY (11)
Storyline: Alternative Universe (11)
Style: Best Response to a Challenge (13)
Genre: Best Humor (13)
Character: Best OC and Best Ensemble Cast (10)
Relationship: Original Relationship (11)

Most Diverse Nominations
Humor- 18 different stories
Established Relationship- 16 different stories
NSWFF One-shot - 18 different stories

If we stuck with (some of the) old rules for nominations (note that these have never/would never apply to "Most Underrated")
At least 3 noms to move on and 4 stories that have 3 noms: There would be no change in the number of stories nominated

If at least 2 noms to move on and 4 stories that have that number: There would have been 50 fewer nominations (keep in mind, many of those stories repeat so they are not 50 different stories)

3 people who would have lost all their noms and not been nominated at all.

4 winners would not have made it to voting (and therefore would not have won) if we used the 2 noms and at least 4 people to the voting round rules.


Voting

3 people voted in all Star Wars categories
7 people voted in EVERY category


Category that got the most votes (#of votes)
SW: Best One-shot and Best Interpretation of a Movie Character (20)
NSWFF: Best Interpretation of a Canon Character, Best Original Character, and Best Author (14)

Ties
No tie was from a story or author having only one vote.
In SW, the lowest tie, each story had 3 votes, the highest tie each story had 6 votes

Questions

Feel free to comment on anything said above, but also use the below questions to help give us some feedback.

Categories

1) Did you like this year’s categories?
2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change?
3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories)
4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category
5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF

Process

1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes
2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category
3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round?
4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round?
5) Should we (try) to re-intoduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get?
6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes)

General

1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across.

2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation.

 

I quite liked this year's methodology.

Apart from, at the outset, the ignoring of reviewers.

 

I felt this year's awards process was streamlined and liked it a lot.

Categories

1) Did you like this year’s categories? Yes; they covered everything I read FF for: "missing moment" scenes, CC character development, OCs POVs
2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change? Nope.
3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories) It was fair, given the complexity of The Mouse era.
4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category
5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF

Process

1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes
2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category
3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round? Nope.
4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round? Not at all; I liked exposure to so many stories.
5) Should we (try) to re-intoduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get? I'm not sure. It's worthy of discussion.
6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes) I'm okay with A, B would be nice to brighten someone's day who has moved on or away from TFN for some RL reason, and C was okay.

General

1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across.

2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation. N/A.

IOIIOIOIOIO

My general sense of the neatly compiled and explained *kudos!* statistics is that we as a community adore funny one-shots. They make a large impression and we are less likely to follow, even lurkingly, a novella length epic. Statistics via hit counter are interesting - stories may get lots of hits and few or no reviews. Naturally, the hit counter doesn't say which hitter clicked, said Yuck and hit the back button, or it could be used to calculate.

Thanks for the update on the awards! They showed lots of devotion and hard work, which we reaped as fun.

 

Categories

1) Did you like this year’s categories?
Comment: They were fine. Having them named after --- BBY or --- ABY takes some getting used to, since I'm used to thinking in terms of Saga versus Beyond.
2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change?
Comment: They're fine as is. Would not mind "Reviewer" added in though.
3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories)
Comment: Liked that a lot. Seemed to make things streamlined.
4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category
Answer: 2 seems fair.
5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF
Answer: LOVED IT!

Process

1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes
Answer: I liked it, particularly when voting.
2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category
Comment: Seems fair -- 3 or more would probably make tight races even harder to select among.
3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round?
Answer: Can never have too many.
4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round?
Answer: Maybe make that a range 3+ nominations.
5) Should we (try) to re-intoduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get?
Answer: No. I feel that if an author gets a large number it just reflects their quantity and quality of writing.
6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes)
Answer: Agree with pronker that B. would be nice to do.
C. is great too, maybe leave that as an option. Winners can say if they want prizes from a pool, colors, ads, fics, cover art.

General

1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across.
Answer: I felt it was excellently paced, and the skits were terrifically entertaining!
2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation.
Answer: I wanted to see how the survey thing went, how easy it would be to tabulate, etc. Not good with numbers.

 

Categories

1) Did you like this year’s categories? Yes.
2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change? Bring back reviewer categories. And I don't understand the popularity of "Best response to challenge" in general - too vague.
3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories)? Perfect.
4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category? For stories, should be capped at 2 per person per category.
5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF? Lovely!

Process

1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes? Love it. I was never into it before, but now I might start using it elsewhere myself. The fact that the cookie is stored for a couple of days helps a lot. Like, I can go back and forth!
2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category? For nominators? Okay.
3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round? No.
4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round? No. This was a great way to see what people like!
5) Should we (try) to re-intoduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get? No, except for nominations in the same category or categories that cancel out one another (e.g. multi-post and epic). I had a story nominated in two of those and I removed it from one.
6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes) Removing B was a super-bad idea. Removing A was a great idea, never cared about excerpts. Neutral on C.

General

1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across? All good. Would love it if us non-mods and non-volunteers could contribute skits again, though.

2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation? This year hit it right of the park. I have horrible memories of the past two award seasons and the 2015 awards just looked like a discouraging, strict thing (apparently, 2014 ones as well), especially with that "guessing most winners" extra award - bad, bad, bad idea, so this was perfect. Like, if you want to be here, you're here and that's it. Regarding improving participation. Hmmm...read and review challenge is good, review competition was kinda good, but teaching people community spirit in any way would go for a long way.

 

Also, I thought we didn't have many male winners, but apparently, there were six of them - if Glor and GreyBard are men, that is. Onderon, Volund, Brodie and Lazy deffo are.

 

Categories

1) Did you like this year’s categories? Yes, there were not too many or too few.

2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change?

I was very happy with what was there! However, I missed the reviewer categories. I think those recognize an important part of fanficcers' contributions. Some reviewers really do so much to provide the warmth and sense of fun around here with what they do. And I think we've all enjoyed seeing them recognized for that in the past. Personally, I'd willingly sacrifice at least one other category (even though I like them all) to make room for a reviewer award.

My only complaint about a category included is not one that gave me a lot of grief. I had a little trouble deciding what constituted a Multi-chapter vs. an Epic and ended up being very conservative in guessing -- only very long things for Epic and relatively short for Multi-chapter. Which still probably left some more vaguely middle length stories out that the Multi-chapter was supposed to cover. Honestly, I don't know what can help with that unless we all agree to keep an up-to-date wordcount posted at the top of each story. (And that sounds like a hassle that few people would bother with!) In general, I think that category is about as good as I would know how to make it. But maybe someone else has ideas?

3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories)

Not a problem to me, though I know that in the past there were some years where one era dominated to an extreme. I don't see that reflected so much in this year's awards, so I think it's alright for now. If things change in the future then this might need to be revisited, but for now I think the results show that the eras are balancing out well.

4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category

Good! I never know if I'm nominating something that will have the popularity to win or not, so it makes me feel better about taking "risks" if I know that I'm giving two stories/authors a chance at the nominations stage.

5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF

I really enjoyed it; it gave me a reason to go read some shorts and sample some longer fics over there. I don't think everyone necessarily wants to do that, but there was no requirement. I think NSWFF writers probably have a better idea about whether it increased the audience for their awards overall (compared to holding it in NSWFF only), but it seemed pretty cool to me.

Process

1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes
Nice, it was very easy to use. Didn't have any trouble with it.

2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category
I think this is the same as #4 above?

3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round?
Thought so at first, but it all seemed to work out fine. I don't think anyone particularly minds having a group of winners in some categories.

4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round?
I'm not strongly for or against this.

5) Should we (try) to re-intoduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get?

In the past I'd have said yes, but really I think that just makes more work for the volunteers while replacing one issue with another. Yes, someone can get nominated for a bunch of things this way and that can "split the vote" when things get to the voting round. But the other way around, people can get eliminated from a category that they might have won otherwise. Sometimes I don't think of a story in nominating, but then change my mind when I see the list of nominees. (I think that several of my votes may have been different from my original nominations, in fact.) So it seems like doing this either way could theoretically hurt someone's chances. If there's not a clear fairness advantage one way or another, simplicity seems like a pretty good goal.

6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes)

A. I like the idea of excerpts. But they are time-consuming for volunteers and authors. And from what I remember, I rarely ended up reading the excerpts. If I wanted to sample something, I'd usually just go to the first chapter instead of hunting around on the excerpts page. So yeah, no objections to the excerpts staying gone.
B. Though it's a nice bonus, I don't think it's necessary to do this. And it is yet another thing that makes more work.
C. Prizes were fun to get and make, but they do require time and energy that not everyone has. If overall participation were higher, I'd say by all means. But I don't think there have to be prizes for it to be a good awards ceremony. (My test for this was, would I currently be willing to sign up to give two prizes? Not really at the current time. So I don't want to put that work on someone else unless there's a gleeful conga line wanting to sign up.)

General

1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across.

I think it was just right, nothing I would change about it. The skits were fun and there were just enough categories each day to feel like everyone got their day to shine without it being too drawn out.

2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation.

The only part that I didn't participate in that I can think of is volunteering. That was because the last couple of years when I volunteered were kind of exhausting. Too much to do and a lot of difficult decisions that didn't seem to have any good options, though Real Life in the form of back pain had a part in that feeling too. Considering how much less complicated this year seems, I might volunteer next year if you need more people. (No idea if another person would be useful or not with the way it works now.)

 

Having woken up at an absolutely ungodly hour, I wrote my answers in great detail, so here's the tl;dr version:

• Very happy about: the diverse categories, the simplicity of the process, the inclusion of NSWFF, the ceremony
• Minor quibbles about: some category definitions/rules and how they were implemented
• Not happy about: the size of the nominations list
• Strongly object to: volunteers knowing who nominated & voted for them
• Suggest: simplify the process further by nominating authors rather than stories in all categories

CATEGORIES

1) Did you like this year’s categories?

In general I was very happy with the categories and I felt that some of the new ones filled a gap that needed to be filled, for instance "best multi-timeframe" was a very welcome addition. While the nominations list was far too long for me to process in the time we had (more on that below), I find that having a wide variety of categories allows for a diverse nominations list and that's something that makes me happy.

One general aspect I have a quibble about is the implementation of category definitions. As was said above by others, there are categories that should be mutually exclusive: just like a one-shot can't be nominated as a multi-chapter, a Legends story shouldn't be nominated as a mashup, a multi-timeframe story shouldn't be nominated as a PT story, etc. I find that necessary if I'm going to be comparing apples and apples when looking at a category's nominees. I understand that there will always be grey areas even in situations where one would expect things to be clear-cut, but there were cases of overlap this year that I don't see an explanation for.

2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change?

Like others I'd like to bring back Best Reviewer. We don't get every day to show our reviewers some love, and they deserve it

Another category I think we could add is Best Author Collaboration, but as an author category rather than a story category and defined pretty widely (for instance people borrowing each other's OCs or plot points for independent fics could qualify, and there's a lot of that going on).

I can see the rationale in the distinction between episodic series and serial series, but I find that there is too much overlap between the definitions (and the nominees) to have two different categories for this.

One point I don't agree with is the exception on eligibility of former winners in the series categories. In practice this means that, if you're a winner of Best Series and add a single drabble to your series the following year, it becomes eligible again, whereas if you're a winner of Best Epic and add 30 new chapters, it's not eligible. That doesn't feel quite right.

3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories) and 5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF

I'm grouping these two questions because I feel the same way about both: GREAT! I remember how a few years ago there was this concern that merging all SW eras would result in Before stories being sidelined, but my impression two years on is that on the contrary, they're more visible and in my case at least it motivated me to look at stories that I might have neglected otherwise. I'd be in favour of giving NSWFF the same treatment (with some adjustments of course) – there are, for instance, NSWFF series that I would nominate and vote for against their SW counterparts any day of the week.

4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category (saving this one for below, "Process" item #2)

PROCESS

1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes

I am so TOTALLY in favour of this, you have no idea. It's so much easier to nominate and vote through it as a user, and having compiled noms and votes by hand and even through the Google spreadsheet last year, I can only imagine how much easier it makes things on the volunteers' end.

The one aspect I strongly object to is that volunteers who are also authors get to see who nominated/voted for them. This is a matter of principle, plus, we've had cases of tensions and frictions on the boards for much smaller things, and I find that this is just asking for trouble. I'd suggest having neutral user codes (e.g. "User1" instead of "Chyn432") and having them issued by someone who isn't participating as an author.

2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category and 3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round? and 4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round? and 5) Should we (try) to re-introduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get?

(Grouping the questions again because the answers are interconnected)

While it was great to see so many different nominees, I found that the size of the nominations list was overwhelming. I made a quick count when the list was published and there were 250+ stories in total, 170 of which I'd never read before at all. This is more than what I normally read in a year (not to mention those I read back in January 2017 and needed a refresher for). Quite frankly, skimming through so many stories just in order to vote simply isn't my idea of fun.

As a result, I voted in only half the categories, with a very superficial knowledge of what the fics were about. This was especially frustrating for NSWFF, where I wasn't familiar with some of the fandoms, and it would have been nice to be able to dedicate some time to a Wikipedia check instead of running a marathon through dozens of stories that I didn't even get to appreciate.

I used to be very much in favour of the two-noms-per-category rule, because there are so many great fics on the boards that it's difficult to choose a single fic to nominate, but if it must entail a nominations list so long that I can't afford to read it without it becoming a chore, I'd just as well do away with it altogether.

At the same time, between the limited time volunteers can afford to spend on running this show, the size of the fanfic community here on the JCF and the actual number of participants in the awards, I think that going through intricate calculations to limit the number of noms a single author can receive or establish an acceptable "filter" for stories going to the voting round is impractical.

There was one option Mr Chyn suggested last year that I'd like to put on the table again: nominate writers instead of stories and let the nominees submit a link to one story that is representative of their work for each category where they're nominated. It's even simpler for nominators than what we have now; the volunteers can skip altogether the verifications at the nominations stage; the authors themselves will confirm if their story is an epic or a PT story or whatnot by submitting it; and while it does entail some extra PM-ing for volunteers to get a final nominations list it's nowhere near the amount of work required to set up an excerpts thread with word counts and arcane criteria and other pain-in-the-backside stuff.

6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes)

Having excerpts would have enabled me to participate more with such a long list of nominees. I'm not too concerned about not notifying authors of their nominations, in that the awards process lasts long enough for everyone but drive-by posters to see that it's going on. Similarly, I'm not too concerned about prizes; I find that bragging rights are more than enough.

GENERAL

1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across.

The awards ceremony was wonderfully entertaining and I truly wish I could have been more present. It came at a bad time for me because DRL etc, but I enjoyed every post.

2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation.

This is where I apologise to people who wasted their nominations on me because I pulled all my fics from the voting round I just thought it would be lame to keep my stories on the voting list if I wasn't going to read and vote for other people's stories. I completely agree with what was said above about these awards being more simple, more streamlined, etc, but the time requirement in this setup is such that it's just not for me.

 

Categories

1) Did you like this year’s categories? Yes, they covered pretty much everything.
2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change? I did miss the reviewer category. I'd like to see that added back in.
3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories)? I liked it. Thought it might end up overloaded with noms/winners from one era with others overlooked, but seemed to be pretty balanced.
4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category? Perfect! No more, no less.
5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF? This, I loved!!

Process

1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes? Definitely a keeper. So much easier than the copying/pasting of story links in the past.
2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category? Same answer as #4 above.
3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round? I didn't think so. I know the list was long, but it was nice to have a wide variety of stories to choose from. I had read many of them, so it was challenging to get through a lot, but still wouldn't reduce the number.
4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round? I'm not in favor of this.
5) Should we (try) to re-intoduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get? Definitely not! It smacks of punishing an author for being good.
6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes) A; I liked the excerpts thread. It was much easier, at least in my opinion, to get a look at nominated stories in a quick manner rather than having to go to the story itself and try to read something, which might have been a pretty long fic. B; Yes, this would be nice, but I understand it just adds more work for the people doing the awards. C; I think we all liked getting prizes, but it was also a lot of work which I don't really think is necessary. The nominations and the wins are "prize" enough. Overall, with the idea to keep the awards as streamlined and easy as possible to coordinate and produce, all three of these could remain removed from the process.


General

1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across. I've never had a set number of days, weeks,ect. in my head for how long it should take, so the length seemed, in my opinion, to be just fine. Post length was fine as well. It was entertaining and enjoyable from start to finish.

2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation? I'm sure some folks are just not ever going to participate at all, or only participate mildly. I don't know that including and/or changing things would really make much of a difference on that front.

 

First off, thanks so much to everyone involved in the awards this year, they were excellent!! And thanks for providing all the stats, I was actually going to ask about those

Categories
1) Did you like this year’s categories? No complaints, but see below for an idea for next time.
2) Are there any categories you would add/delete/change? I think it would be interesting to play around with a fairly dramatic restructuring, discussed below. Short of that, I would love to have a whole group of categories under Most Underrated (e.g., Most Underrated Epic, Most Underrated Short Story, Most Underrated One-Shot), and I would like to see the Best Reviewer category return. I also don't really understand the Series categories - they seem extra complicated, and I don't think they add much.
3) How did you feel about all eras competing together (*in most categories) I like combining everything. As Legends becomes less popular ( ) I would probably be in favor of it having a category or two of its own. Beyond that it's just getting crazy - I mean there are 8 different era tags, and some stories with more than one tag - I just don't think it's feasible to divide by era anymore.
4) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category Loved it!!
5) How did you feel about the inclusion of NSWFF YES!!!

Process
1) How did you feel about using a survey program (SurveyMonkey) to gather both noms and votes I liked it. I think it was easier for voters, and I hope it made things a lot easier on volunteers.
2) How did you feel about allowing 2 noms per category I still loved it!
3) Were there too many noms that went into the voting round? Yes and no. I think it is awesome that lots of stories got nominated. As cliche as it sounds, it is really awesome to be nominated, even if you don't win. So, from a writer's perspective, lots of noms is a pure win - I don't think it is really less special to be nominated if there are lots of noms, so the more the merrier. The issue comes with voting - as a voter I feel an obligation to at least skim through every nomination before voting. But there were so many nominations this year, I was totally overwhelmed and didn't end up voting at all.
4) Should we re-introduce a minimum number of nominations needed to go to the voting round? Umm... I don't know. See above response and below proposal.
5) Should we (try) to re-intoduce a maximum number of nominations an author can get? Maybe? I think seeing the same names over and over can get a little old, and would be even more annoying if there weren't lots of ties and therefore lots of other winners as well. On the one hand, I don't want to penalize an author for being awesome. On the other hand, if they are that awesome they probably already know it and have stacks of comments to prove it, and I wonder if getting eight awards is really that much better than getting two.
6) How did you feel about the removal of some past elements of the awards? (A. Excerpts; B. Notifying Authors of their nominations in the story categories; C. Prizes) A.) Excerpts are nice, and help a little with the issue of being overwhelmed by the number of nominations. But if they are a big pain for the volunteers, I'm not sure they are worth it. B.) I don't think notifying is necessary. It seems like if people care about the awards they will check the thread. In fact, I wouldn't be opposed to an opting-in requirement - after noms are posted, those nominated need to send a quick PM confirming they want to be part of the awards. Then people who have left the site or are not interested in the awards can free up space for those who are interested. C.) I don't think prizes are necessary. Winning is prize enough. Maybe a week of colors for the top winners, but I think even that is unnecessary. I do think it would be nice if there was an official badge (like a small jpg of the Golden Porg) that winners could put into their stories.

General
1) How did you feel about the length of the ceremony, both in terms of post length and the number of days it occurred across. I thought it was just about perfect. The announcement skits are great, but if it is too much of a hassle for the mods I think they could be even shorter.

2) If you didn't participate in the awards in general or a particular part of the awards, why not? What could be included/changed to improve participation. There's just too many categories. The number of SW categories made my head spin. The number of NSWFF categories feels just about right - I think 8-12 categories would be good. Also, overlapping categories are a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Presumably, the "best" story should win at least four awards, one award in each group (i.e., Best [whatever timeframe it fits in]; Best [applicable continuity]; Best Epic (or whatever length it is); and Best All-Around).
There are also so many stories. Maybe we could make it so only completed stories qualify? I'd be interested to see the stats on eligible stories based on the current rules versus completed stories. (I would consider abandoned stories complete, if the author determines they are not going to work on them any more but would still like them to be eligible for awards.)


Here's what I would propose: Approximately 10 categories, with ranked winners (top 3 or top 5). All nominees go to the voting round, voters get to pick their top stories (at least 3) in each category (possibly ranked, if that doesn't make it too difficult to count votes). Also slots for Wild Cards - write-in categories where people can use the old categories (Best Drama, Best Non-Human Character, etc) or make up new ones (Best Fix-It Fic, Best Unexpected Relationship). Each person gets up to 3 or 4 wildcard noms. All wild cards go to voting round, where it is it's own category - voters can pick the three or so they like best, and then wild cards with 3 votes or more become winners.

The final results list might look something like this:

Best One-Shot
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Fourth Place
Fifth Place

Best Multi-Chapter
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Fourth Place
Fifth Place

Best Epic
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Fourth Place
Fifth Place

********************************
Most Underrated One-Shot
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

Most Underrated Multi-Chapter
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

Most Underrated Epic
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

********************************
Best Original Character
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

Best Interpretation of a Canon Character
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

Best Relationship
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

********************************
Best Author
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

Best New Author
First Place
Second Place

Best Reviewer
First Place
Second Place
Third Place

********************************
Wild Cards
Best Drama
Best Non-Human Character
Best Fix-It Fic
Best Unexpected Relationship
Best Underwater Scene
Best Crossover
Best Songfic
Best Concept for an AU

 

You reminded me to add that I thought the "Most Underrated" category was a bit ridiculous - most stories have four comments or less per post and a popular author won, anyway. Nothing against my pal winning etc etc, but that category needs to be defined in a more strict way. We're supposed to pay respect to people who don't get any.

This. So much.

This stuff is fun! 10/10 would go for it.

Other than that, I don't think I like the overall redo idea...