2011 Rose & Bay Awards Followup Report & Discussion

[ysabetwordsmith]

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.

Special Thanks To...These

Comments

[ellenmillion]

*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-paste in the information from the nomination. alexandraerin's round-up post was very useful, and I'd like to see the poll (singular) laid out something like that.

Repeats - do we have anything in place to keep someone from winning year after year after year? Do we want something?

Could we get a forward-dated entry at the top of the crowdfunding community that links to the various entries? At the least, update the 'landing page' with links to the nomination and poll entries when they are added. It was not a useful landing page for actually getting to those places.

Better streamlining of the information presented in the voting and nomination posts would be very useful. It was a pretty off-putting block of text in each one - I got serious eye-glazing.

I would be willing to donate prizes and hosting for a private site.

I want to see other, more specific categories, including: best webpage, most creative crowdfunding method. Also, possibly best one-time fundraiser (as opposed to on-going projects) or best 'new' project.

Those are my copious thoughts for now. I may have more.

[aldersprig]

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]

>> 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. <<

More categories = more work. We have yet to find enough volunteers to cover the categories we already have; people still had to double up. The place where it makes the most sense to add categories is where one is so large that subdividing it would make the material easier to handle. So for instance, we're trying to figure out if there's a way to do that for Fiction.

Re: Thoughts

[siege]

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]

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]

>> 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. <<

Regarding category subdivision, I prefer to keep the number of categories as small as possible for sake of low workload. Divisions are primarily justified by a current category overflowing to the point where a break would make the material easier to manage.

>> 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.<<

Two reasons off the top of my head:

1) Such a post would be large to the point of unweildy, thus more likely to crash and more likely to scare people away.

2) It would also be a massive amount of work.

>> Please, please when creating the poll(s), have a link to the nominations, preferably individually, or copy-paste in the information from the nomination. <<

I found the concept useful, so if a volunteer is interested in organizing such a post, that would be welcome.

This year's version, alas, drew many complaints about tone (not all of those directed to me; other category managers got them too and told me about them).

>> Repeats - do we have anything in place to keep someone from winning year after year after year? Do we want something? <<

This can be referred to a poll also, as it's come up a few times. At this stage, discussion of possible options would be welcome. Two that leap readily to mind are:

* A project that wins one year may not run the following year in the same category.

* A project that wins two years consecutively may not run the following year in the same category.

I would still prefer to record nominations and let the project have the Nominee badge for that year, to avoid stifling audience expression -- but I'd let the nominator make another nomination since that one couldn't go into the voting.

>> Could we get a forward-dated entry at the top of the crowdfunding community that links to the various entries? <<

I hate those things. They drive me nuts.

>> At the least, update the 'landing page' with links to the nomination and poll entries when they are added. It was not a useful landing page for actually getting to those places. <<

I will try to find time for this. If someone else wants to volunteer to run the landing page next year, that would be spiffy.

>>Better streamlining of the information presented in the voting and nomination posts would be very useful.<<

Someone else would definitely have to draft an alternative there. I've already done my best at it, and while I keep tweaking various award documents, they're getting longer not shorter.

>> I would be willing to donate prizes and hosting for a private site. <<

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

Re: Thoughts

[ellenmillion]

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]

>>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!

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

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]

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.