Awards 2005 Summer Post-Awards Discussion

I was surprised that the Best Author could never win again. I mean, with Best New Author, obviously the next time, they aren't new, so that doesn't apply, but I was just curious about why BA can't be given a second time. And it's not really expressed in the rules, so I got to the qualifying round before talking to Dana about my qualifieds and mentioning the last time I'd won Best Author and she finally told me I needed to withdraw from the running. I'm fine with having done so, especially with so many awesome authors out there.

 

Excerpts are, for the most part, useless.

I have to respectfully disagree with this statement (I know this wasn't the bulk of the argument, but it's the part that caught my attention). I read every excerpt that went up in Saga & Before. I didn't nominate any fics because I didn't feel like I'd read enough to warrent nominations. But I did want to vote and did so through the excerpts. They were fantastic and I discovered a lot of new authors & stories that have been added to my "to read" list thanks to the excerpts.

I hope these will still be included in the Winter awards, though I do realize it is a lot of work on the part of the organizers & thier volenteers. I'll be happy to help with the coding or anything to make sure these are still included.

That said the awards were so much fun! I've never been a part of anything like this before so it was a real treat!

 

I voted for a couple of fics that I didn't really know that well because once I read the excerpts, I wanted to read more.

 

As a big excerpt lover, I have to disagree here. I think it is really unfair for some authors to win because they have more readers, because that's what it would amount to if you gave people a link and said, read 5 whole 100 page epics before voting. No one would read, and I think that really defeats the purpose. The whole awards become a popularity contest. I know that most people probably don't read the excerpts now, but I don't think that should be a reason to give it up... I think we should encourage as many people as possible to actually read through every excerpt, and read carefully, not just skimming, and choose the one they think is the best action, best canon, best AU, etc, instead of just the one they are most familiar with. And, even with the keeping an author from winning twice in a row deal, it'll just end up with a usual summer winners' list and usual winter winners' lists...

I'm not accusing anyone this time of winning unfairly or whatever, but I do think that if you take out the excerpts, it will become unfair.

And I can understand that prolonging the voting and nomming period might be a pain to anxious people, but I don't think shortening them would make people think harder on the right vote. Rather, it would just make them think how little time they have to analyze the whole pot, and just choose the name they think is most popular.

 

The problem with bobill's{/b] well thought out and well argued position is that it creates a contest for best excerpt. In a world where the excerpts are generally too short, and may be editted without notice to the author or care given to the design of the excerpt, that is hardly the way to go. In short, links give the opportunity for the truly interested to read the full depth or explore the shallows not apparent behind a relatively short excerpt.

As to 'he with the most readers' or 'he with the largest number of dedicated readers' winning critique, that's life. These awards cannot be seen as anything but a popularity contest given the seeming statistical anamolies seen in the past. If we want to try to put them on a more objective basis, then we need to find a way.

What it is, I have no idea.

 

I didn't like doing the excerpts at first (in fact, one of my readers--thanks DarthAJ!! --did it for me). But I was just whining 'cause it meant that I had to pick the right part and condense it down and all that jazz. Once I got over myself, though...I loved the excerpts! Not mine--but everybody else's. I've been on the boards a grand total of 2 months so I don't know who the great writers are so the popularity contest thing flies right over my head. In fact, for a while there, the only people I knew on the boards were the ones who posted to my story. The excerpts helped draw me out. I got to read all those other great pieces and still have a long list of stories to read in full when I get the time (which might be in a few years! ).

I could probably survive without the excerpts now that my feet are wet and can navigate around the site. Links would probably work. But I think I'd read fewer works if the excerpts went away. I suggest we keep them.

Regarding awards participation: The only reason I knew anything about them was because one of my readers (thanks Cobranaconda! ) was involved in nominating my story and told me about it. I had no idea about the politics of the thing or any of that jazz. So...I got stupid and asked my readers to nominate me if they thought I was worthy. The thing that killed me though was that they typically had no idea it was going on! So...what it boils down to is this: There isn't enough advertisement for the awards. I have two suggestions:

1. I suggest tossing a big bold flashing Banner about the Fan Fic Awards for people to check out at the top of the page (like we did with the shirtless Anakin, so I know it's doable)
2. I suggest there be an Awards Forum that's broken up into the various Eras. This would be a one-stop shop for awards. You could have all the threads associated with the awards right there. Old excerpts. Old award winners, etc. You could have awards for challenges that are run by thread owners and the like. I would love to know exactly where to go every time I want to read a particular thing about the awards.

Ok...those are my two cents. Thanks for listening.

 

Yeah, excerpts aren't a replacement to reading the whole fic -- which is why the link should still be offered to those who do want to read the whole fic. And yes, I have come to accept that sometimes, popularity contests are a fact of life. But that doesn't mean we should encourage that. If possible, why not ask a reader to read at least what the author thinks is the best passage? Isn't that a better test of a writer's best abilities, rather than straight popularity? A whole story is the best representative for an author's abilities, but if people are already not reading excerpts, I don't really see how we can ask them to read every single 50+ page fic in each category

And, like Souderwan says, it really does help readers expand their horrizons. I know I always gain at least 5 or more new long fics, and a ton more viggies to have to follow through because I've gotten hooked by an excerpt.

 

In regards to the Awards board that we did have this year, I had helped last year,. and when it came to counting votes, I found it a bit complicated to have to keep on going from PM to PM to check.

For Saga, what we did was have two threads for votes. In one, we posted each ballot, along with the username, and in the other, we kept a running tally of the votes. The system seemed to work pretty well for us and if I remember correctly, I think we had "official" results within a few days.

Oh yeah, and about the Awards board, I know that for Saga, we used our area for hosts and volunteers.

Umm, for next time... yes, please make the excerpts shorter. It would help greatly. Also, we (Saga) came up with the idea of making the socks VIPs so it's a) easier to find their posts in a thread (the whole bright colors thingy) and b) when you're doing excerpts, OPPM does not exist.

Also, please, if you send in your votes, please try and do it correctly, and if a host tells you that your votes can't be counted because you sent them seperately or for some other reason, please, don't argue. The hosts are probably running around like nuts and don't need more drama. Although, I must admit, it does give us stuff to laugh over at the end.

As to the ceremony length, I'm against combining them all into one. Trying to make them shorter, yes, I'd agree with that. Perhaps having only entertainment between either the noms and winners or else between the winners and noms. (I hope that made sense) I know that JJSF, Myri, and I had a ton of fun planning out how the ceremony would go, and actually, that ends up being the fun part of the evening.

Okay, there's my .02 cents. For now.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and instead of having a serpeate Awards Forum here, I suggest that a sticky thread is put up top to keep track of all the necessary links that a reader might need, (ie: noms thread, excerpts thread, voting thread, and maybe the awards and after party too)

 

JadeSolo: The volunteers had a separate board where they had discussions, right? That's a GREAT idea! On the other hand, I couldn't for the life of me find what time the Beyond awards were supposed to be, and that led to some confusion in the Fan Fic Update. It was also a little hard to find the times for the other awards, or just times and dates in general.

Suggestion: Up the thread, but also put the announcement in the title bar and the first post of the thread. Because if the thread title says "Check last post!" that last post could already have a page of replies after it. And putting everything in the first post makes it much easier to find.

Here?s my big suggestion. And it stems from this comment. There needs to be one person in charge of the whole thing. AND one thread where all the questions and rules are posted. It was too confusing going into Saga and seeing one set of instructions, over to ByTS and getting another?

Personally I think a mod or someone appointed by the mods should be in charge of the whole shebang. There really wasn?t any one person running the show, and I think a few things suffered for it. Personally I think that one person should be able to oversee each awards, the co-hosts and the volunteers.

I?d also like to suggest that people put their name in for host and then individuals picked. There are people on these boards who have proven they can run an index or challenge or some such and who would make great hosts. Unproven individuals should never be teamed together to host an award.

Suggestion: One ginormous ceremony for all three eras.

Not really digging that personally. A couple years back we argued to split and for good reason. I understand that the awards would still be split but I just foresee the event getting longer and harder to manage.

My ONE complaint about all the awards was TOO LONG. Personally, I think the Saga Awards were stellar (minus length). The organizers need to aim to keep up a posting pace of every two-three minutes, but that requires preparation before the event. The Saga folks had that, the ByTS hosts were entirely not prepared before hand which was reflected in the ultimate awards production. I think it was really a shame that clusters of winners were announced and out of sequence even. Shame for those who had waited through all the rest for their category. I was a volunteer for Before and I can tell you that behind the scenes the organization was superb. I popped in and out of those awards and thought the result reflected that organization.

bobilll: I might be an oddball here, but I always think the except part is the best part of the whole dealie. I think it's great that we readers can skim through what people think is the best scene of their fic...makes voting easy and reading fun.

I agree with you. I read all the excerpts. I love them.

Please do not get rid of the excerpts.

Alethia:

I?m going to reply to you generally because you said a lot and a lot that I disagree with.

Unfortunately I think that the selection of award hosts put you at a disadvantage. Definitely the hosts in Saga and Before had proven experience either in events of this magnitude or actual awards.

It?s unfortunate about the delay in counting. Cutting things so close left no time for review or double checking for possible errors. I?m not sure how you got down to the wire because it seemed there was plenty of time to get the counting done, or at least recognize that you needed to ask for help. Kudos to Myri and Targeter who did ask for help from JJSF. I think they ended up with a great awards for it.

The awards should have been coded and ready before hand. Lesson learned because the ByTS awards really suffered for it. Perhaps all the hosts can sit down and do a lessons learned to pass on to future hosts.

In a way I feel bad, because they were fun, but we were just so dang tired. But what else could we do?

Personally I think you should have asked for help much earlier. Not

 

Agreed. My first wins, including best author were when I was a complete newbie and simply got out there and shared and shared alike with writing and reading. And souderwan, a relative n00b did very well.

 

If nothing else then excerpts allow the nominated authors free publicity and better circulation without campaigning. I'd say that makes them worth the effort right there. It's a showcase for those who don't actually win.

 

Just to clarify something here:
Kudos to Myri and Targeter who did ask for help from JJSF. I think they ended up with a great awards for it.

Actually, what happened was that JJSF had been doing sooooooo much to help us both out which was helping us stay sane. Myri and I talked about it and we decided that because of all her hard work, that making her co-host with us was the right thing to do.

 

OK, just out of curiosity, how many of you guys in the "Before" Awards thought Who the heck is Darth Sion? when you reached "The Real Darth Sion"?

Seriously, I enjoyed writing that little rap, even IF it was a bit of a pain to make it rhyme.

I guess my only critique is in quantity of noms in certain categories. Some categories easily had 6-8 nominated fics, while others only had one. I guess it's just a hang-up of mine, but that seemed a tad strange to me.

I'd also be interested in helping with the next Awards ceremony, whether as a host or a popcorn vendor! Just ask!

 

When I don't recognize something, I assume it's from yet another video game I can't afford.

 

A few things...

First, I support the idea of excerpts. It's too much to expect everyone to read the whole of every story nominated, and it's simply practical to provide them smaller pieces.

An analogy here would be to the Daytime Emmy awards. It's ludicrous to expect the Emmy voters to have seen every minute of each nominated actor's performance over the past year, so the shows have to send in sample episodes. If they choose poorly, they choose poorly.

I agree with the idea of a single showrunner to oversee the awards, to organize and set a style. Right now, I might even be crazy enough to volunteer, but I might regain my senses in a month or two (which should be about the time to start the real work for the next awards).

As for people volunteering to write individual award presentations, I'd say this is a good idea. I've seen fanfic award ceremonies where this is done, and it's often very entertaining. [They write up to "And the award goes to..." and the person editing the ceremony puts in the winners' names and writes the bridges between awards and all the rest.]

 

It's really a bad idea to heve one ceremony a year. Fics would get forgotten all too soon.

 

I have to agree with pretty much everything TKL said. If we're going to get into what's unfair, the idea of telling an author "Sorry, you won two awards in the Summer one for that story so you're being banned from having it eligible to be nommed in categories it didn't win. Yes it may deserve it but we have to give someone else a shot." The notion that newbies don't stand a chance is ridiculous also. As TKL pointed out, both VL and Souderwan were newbs when they swept the awards. This is also something that happens pretty much every awards. One author gets a lot of recognition. I can't recall a time recently when those wins were undeserved.

As for excerpts. I read the excerpts and they helped a lot. Some of the stories nommed I wasn't familair with so I went and read the excerpts and compared them to the others before voting. In some categories such as poem and song fic I voted based solely on the excerpts. To do away with them would be a bad idea.

On the subject of campaigning. If you see it going on it should be brought to the mods attention. Perhaps that author was new and didn't see what they were doing was campaigning. Maybe we need rules and if those rules are broken, the person is disqualified.

The Before and Saga awards were handled very well. My only complaint was that the winner wasn't announced soon enough, too much time was left in between the announcing of the noms and the reveal. Speeding that up would make things move faster I think. The entertainment for the Saga awards was excellent also.

I felt bad for the Beyond people. I popped in and out but was shocked when categories were skipped over and then just tossed out when it was brought to their attention. Then at the end it was like a mad rush to just get the thing over and done with. One suggestion may be to pick volunteers who aren't on the other side of the world to host at any rate. I wouldn't want to be up at 3am trying to run an awards.

A year or two ago Kettch ran all three awards and I think those were some of the best ones we've had. I think having one main person in charge works and is something that should be revisited.

 

Oh, I've got an idea!

Okay, instead of having the noms and winners in the same post, have it tplit up like this:

Post one: And the nominees for best crossover are...

Post two: And the winner is...

And the nominees for best Action are...

Post three: And the winner is...

And the nominee...

Got it? Would that help to speed things up and keep suspense up?

EDIT:

And if you need a master of ceremonies...

 

Isn't that how it's usually done? except for that delightful part in Beyond awards where they announced the nominees for best canon and announced the winner for Best AU in response to that?

 

No, I meant combine the announcement of the winner for the previous award with the listing of the nominees for the next award. have it in one post.

Post one: The nominees for best so-and-so are...

Post two: And the winner is!

The nominees for best...

Post three[/i]: The winner is...

The nominee for best...

Got it? I'd post it for real, but I don't wanna spam. Although it might be easier to demonstrate it.

 

I would've appreciated a detailed set of instructions on how to vote... then I might've been able to! Or was there one and I'm just obtuse?

 

Mistakes happen. We're all human so a little blip in the awards show isn't a big deal. Since all of the volunteers worked very hard, I would hate for them to think that their efforts were not appreciated. Sure, we can improve on the awards (anything can be improved!) but belittling the efforts of those who put the shows together does not promote anything useful.



EDIT:

As for previous winners being eligible:

New authors come in all the time and "sweep" the awards. They get a following and suddenly they're the "hot new" author. I've won best author, and I've got NO problem with not being able to win that again. But if I, or ANY other writer, am able to come up with a story in the summer that I was proud of and others liked, I don't think it should be inelgible because I wrote a different story in the winter that was also lucky enough to get some attention.

I think it diminishes the awards if we keep weeding out the authors because they've written something that won an award. If you look at my user date, I've been here a little less than a year and a half. That means I've been up against writers who have been doing this a lot longer AND writers who are brand new. Just because an author sweeps one awards doesn't mean they are going to do so in another.

I feel that keeping the current rules of eligibility are fair to all the authors. If a story has won best AU, it should not be eligible for best AU in the next awards. When I had a sequel to my AU nominated (that had won AU) I withdrew it from consideration because I considered them both part of a larger story. Most authors did a great job of letting the volunteers know when a story was not eligible.

Frankly, I would not feel as excited about winning an award in a categy I knew that another winning author had been disqualified from, especially if I felt their current story was more deserving of the nomination/win than mine. It would be a case of "Oh great, I got an award, but they automatically eliminated some great authors!"

Going back to the Oscar comparison, an actor who wins best actor is NOT eliminated for the next year's awards. I am in NO way comparing these awards to the Oscars, but we all know that for the fanfic community these can be a big deal.

Anyway, my two creds' worth!

 

Excerpts:

I really like the excerpts. As others have said, it helped me vote in categories filled with people I didn't know very well. And even if there were nominees I knew, I still read the excerpts - just in case. And even though it took the page a little while to load (though I think now that was an IGN problem?), it's much easier for me to have excerpts all in one place to read, rather than clicking on links, waiting for the page to load, skimming through a lot of pages, etc etc etc. The authors are choosing the snippets that they feel best represent their work, so I go by excerpts when I vote.

Author Ineligibility:

Very much opposed to this. I like the rule as it stands now, with the story being ineligible from then on in that particular category. The point of these awards is not to punish the authors in any way. Someone earlier pointed out that the excerpts and announcing of the nominees during the awards gives those in that category a little bit of fame, and I agree. Plus, many authors work on their stories for several months, so those new stories might very well be ineligible just because of the nom cut-off date.

There are a lot of factors that could affect the outcome of the awards, not just author popularity.

I do think, however, that someone should be ineligible to win Best Author if they've already won.

Voting Instructions:

First post of the excerpt and nom threads would be great! I wouldn't be opposed to a sticky thread, but there's that age-old question of how many people notice the sticky threads. One of us mods could copy and paste all the rules into a thread and up it so it's always somewhere on the first page - that way it would be a little more noticeable. And whenever the hosts have updated rules/info/dates, we could edit those in and bump up the thread.

Excerpt Threads:

I don't know if this has any affect, but I noticed in the Before thread that all the nominees' excerpts from one category were placed into one post. Beyond and Saga, for the larger groups, had them split into posts of 3 or 4 excerpts each. Maybe it would cut down on posting time and OPPM if everything were in one post? Or is reading 11 excerpts in one post too much for people?

Still thinking about the other points...

edit: Oh! And about author awards - say someone is nommed for both Best New Author and Best Author, either with their regular username, or with their regular name and a sock. What do people think about that? Steven Soderbergh ran against himself one year at the Oscars, so it's possible in the real world. But what about here?

 

Since I'm kinda in a hurry, I'm going to make this brief. The events that led to me actually becoming a host wasn't exactly that I was asked for help (although I did respond and help out when I was asked) but that I just kinda took over. Targeter was in Italy for the first half and I know Myri has had family stuff and is getting ready for her first year of college (which I remember as being a fairly daunting prospect) so I just kind of stepped in. I saw the work that needed to get done to make things the most efficient and I did it. I do agree in the prospect of asking your volunteers for help though. That's what we're here for, to help. In Saga, we were even lucky enough to have a volunteer from another era (VadersMistress) agree to help us with excerpts (which we love her dearly for. But that help wouldn't have come unless it was asked for. To the hosts of the next awards- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't be afraid to ask for help. Also, I think that at least one host in all the eras should be familiar with the awards and the way they are run. This will hopefully eliminate the feeling of overwhelmingness (is that even a word?).

As for the excerpts, Myri's probably going to think I'm crazy and have me committed but I actually liked the excerpts. I had kinda a system for getting them coded and it really didn't take me all that long, except for the fact that I kept reading them. In the excerpts, I found some wonderful work and it encouraged me to really try to jump in to reading the Saga. I also read the excerpts for Beyond the Saga before voting. They are a great advertisement for the fic, and can help an author gain more readers, even if that author doesn't win.

Hmm...you already know what I think of combinging the ceremonies, still probably think that this morning but I reserve the right to change my mind later

As for eliminating people who already won two awards, I must respectfully disagree with that. If you review past awards ceremonies, you will see that there are new people that win every time. I liked TKL's LP example. LP is an amazing author, but she didn't win anything this time around and swept the awards a year ago. But new people came in and they won this time. It doesn't mean that LP is any less of an AMAZING author (because she's still got it ) it just means that new people won this time. As an author, if I ever get to the point where I'm winning multiple awards, I don't think I'd like the idea that I would have to sit out an awards, just because I won more than one. Even this year, I was nominated for Best Canon in Beyond. I didn't win. I didn't win because another fic that had already won multiple awards won. Am I upset about this? Absolutely not. I believe that was a deserving win for that fic and I would never begrude someone their success int he awards, even if it means that I didn't win. I will admit that I was disappointed for a minute or so, but I got over it because just knowing that I was nominated was enough for me. From a reader's standpoint (and I still consider myself a reader first) I would be extremely angry if I could not nominate or vote for the fic that I thought was the best just because they had already won in the last awards. I, like many others, probably wouldn't even vote for a category where the fic that I thought was the best wasn't represented. It comes to why do we have to redraw the line? There's already a line. It's a line that says that fics that have won an award in the past can't win that same award again. I like the line where it is. Besides, it makes the rules far to complicated to eliminate an author who won in the last awards from winning in the next. Plus, it's just not fair to them, or to their readers who have supported their efforts.

In the etiquette thread, we talked about how the awards are just as much for the readers as the authors. Heck they're for the author's beta as well. So it doesn't just take away the win from the author, it takes away the win from the reader and the beta as

 

Say someone is nommed for both Best New Author and Best Author, either with their regular username, or with their regular name and a sock. What do people think about that? Steven Soderbergh ran against himself one year at the Oscars, so it's possible in the real world. But what about here?

If a new author's that good, and makes it as best author as well, I say give him/her the medal! Although I like the idea that best authors can't win best author again.

JJSF, your sig has caused me to view the entire OT in a totally new light.