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2011 Rose & Bay Awards Followup Report & Discussion

Mar 21, 2011 14:29

The 2011 Rose and Bay Awards for excellence in cyberfunded creativity have now concluded. Winners have been announced for Art, Fiction, Poetry, Webcomic, Other Project, and Patron. We are currently working on the certificates for winners. You can read more about this project on the 2011 Rose & Bay Awards landing page.

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ellenmillion March 21 2011, 21:07:58 UTC

*applause* A lot of work went into this, and congratulations to all the winners.

I have many thoughts...

I would like to see all non-transparent voting. I find it very awkward to vote publicly when I know so many of the nominees.

I suggest long and short fiction as the breaks in those categories. I further suggest that short fiction should encompass both short stories and poetry - there were only 4 nominations in poetry, which isn't comparable to the other categories. Long fiction can cover serials and novels.

I'd like to see discussion of divination as a category - I know a lot of people who do that.

Organization - it was very awkward having the final polls split up over several posts over several days. I honestly don't see any reason that one person can't post one poll that covers all the categories. I don't see any conflict of interest in a person who is nominated creating a poll that they can't manipulate after posting.

Please, please when creating the poll(s), have a link to the nominations, preferably individually, or copy ( ... )

aldersprig March 21 2011, 22:26:56 UTC

You covered most of my thoughts already.

*Repeats, yes, please, as said by Bovidae below,

*Non-transparent voting, yes, please; I didn't vote in categories where there was transparent voting and I was friends with more than one nominee.

*Off-LJ site, yes, please x100; I heard the most complaint about this of anything

*Less wall-of-text voting polls; the rules were lost in the text.

*More categories, I agree.

Thoughts ysabetwordsmith March 21 2011, 22:52:42 UTC

>> Repeats, yes, please, as said by Bovidae below, <<

I'll try to set a poll for this after the discussion. Meanwhile, what kind of changes would you like to see here? That should be discussed to determine what kind of options should go into the poll.

>> Non-transparent voting <<

Also headed for a poll.

>> Off-LJ site, yes, please x100; I heard the most complaint about this of anything <<

I'd be utterly thrilled by this. We have an offer of hosting space. I have site design notes for features that people want. What we do not have is a site developer who can write the necessary code. That's been the sticking point for years.

>> Less wall-of-text voting polls; the rules were lost in the text. <<

Other folks are welcome to make a try at streamlining the text.

>> More categories, I agree. ... )

Re: Thoughts siege March 22 2011, 01:39:17 UTC

What we do not have is a site developer who can write the necessary code. That's been the sticking point for years.

Perhaps just shop around for quotes, and put it on Kickstarter once we get a firm idea of the cost -- and then hire the developer once we get funded.

Re: Thoughts ysabetwordsmith March 22 2011, 05:42:56 UTC

That's a possibility, although it would require a knowledgeable person to gather the quotes. We do have one person, ellenmillion, potentially willing to code the site on a crowdfunded basis.

It might be preferable to use IndieGoGo, which allows partial fundraising, rather than Kickstarter which only pays off if the goal is met. With IndieGoGo, we could stack goals; frex, $XXX would fund the core of the site, $YYY would add a forum, and so on with other features. We could prioritize from the most vital features to bells & whistles that people had requested, and see how much folks are actually willing to pony up for.

Thoughts ysabetwordsmith March 21 2011, 22:44:53 UTC

>> I would like to see all non-transparent voting. <<

Enough people have asked about this that I'm willing to put it to a poll.

>> I suggest long and short fiction as the breaks in those categories.<<

If I have time, I'll try to check the fiction nominees and see if this would have made an appreciable difference. I suspect they're almost all webserials though (which would count as long). Or if someone else has time to check this, that would be very helpful.

>> I further suggest that short fiction should encompass both short stories and poetry <<

I'm not keen on this, as poetry is very different from fiction. Also there are more poetry projects emerging as more people get inspired -- I've seen a couple new ones this year already. Bear in mind that we have 2 huge categories (Fiction and Webcomics) and then everything else which is much lower traffic.

>> I'd like to see discussion of divination as a category - I know a lot of people who do that. ... )

Re: Thoughts ellenmillion March 22 2011, 02:19:25 UTC

W00T! This will be awesome if we can find people to handle prize management and site coding.

I would actually be willing to do the site coding, but not for free. I would be willing to crowdfund it like I have the Sketch Fest site. It would come after the commission-control site, but I would definitely be able to get to it (if the funds are raised!) before next year's awards. It would solve a lot of the issues I've raised.

I'm not keen on this, as poetry is very different from fiction.

I could argue that we see a wider difference within the art category and definitely within the other category... but I won't. :P

Re: Thoughts ysabetwordsmith March 22 2011, 05:29:50 UTC

>>I would actually be willing to do the site coding, but not for free. I would be willing to crowdfund it like I have the Sketch Fest site. It would come after the commission-control site, but I would definitely be able to get to it (if the funds are raised!) before next year's awards.<<

Yay! I'd be happy to discuss this as an option. I had previously thought about crowdfunding a hub site but, again, a webcoder was the missing ingredient. I'll email you my noted collated from previous discussions; that might help you estimate a crowdfunding target.

>> It would solve a lot of the issues I've raised. <<

A separate crowdfunding hub site would solve issues that many people have raised!

(The comment has been removed)

Re: Thoughts ysabetwordsmith March 22 2011, 05:46:38 UTC

I don't think that moving the poll off of LiveJournal is a good idea unless it's moving to a crowdfunding hub site (which is a popular idea, just challenging to achieve). Our core audience is on LJ. Driving cross-site traffic is HARD.

>>I like the idea of preventing projects from winning twice in a row, as well.<<

This is intended for a poll. Detailed discussion of proposed changes is encouraged meanwhile, to determine what options should be offered in the poll.

Re: Thoughts eseme March 22 2011, 20:35:07 UTC

Wait, our core audience is on LJ?

In the Fiction category alone, our audience is spread out between the following:

Top Web Fiction - a voting site

Web Fiction Guide - a review site

EpiGuide - a forum

ScifiMatter.com - a general science fiction and fantasy link site, with a section for online writing

Muse's Success - a web fiction wiki

Blog Fiction Forums - a forum

Ergofiction - an e-zine for webfiction

Digital Novelists - a site that hosts web fiction by multiple authors

As well as Twitter, Facebook, Dreamwidth, and each author's individual site. Most of the nominated projects in fiction were hosted off of LJ, and of the authors who had LJ accounts, the accounts were typically used rarely.

I would say that LJ is but one part of our audience.

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