telperion1
in
mefas
ADMIN - 2009 Post-Mortem
Hey guys,
I know that some of you are excited about the 2010 awards, and are probably eager to get started. I'm excited, too. I've spent the last few months talking with MEFA volunteers and awards participants about some of the suggestions that some of you made last January, so we can continue to improve the awards. Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions and thoughts.
Here are some of the biggest changes we've decided on.
==> The schedule for the 2010 awards will be arranged so it doesn’t end at the end of November (because of NaNoWriMo) or at the end of December (because of the holidays). We're still finetuning some details, but will hopefully announce it in the next few days.
==> In the past, authors have emailed their liaisons when they accepted their nominations, and when they completed the nomination form. While authors are still encouraged to do this, if they would find it helpful, keeping up with exactly who has emailed in is a real headache for volunteers, and I imagine is confusing for newer authors as well. Therefore we decided to streamline the process. When authors begin the form, we will assume they want to compete. There will also be a checkbox authors can mark on the form to say they accept the nomination; they are no longer required to email their liaison on completing the form.
==> The nomination form is being reorganized, to make it clearer which questions are primarily to help categorizers and which are mainly for the benefit of the author’s readers.
==> Along similar lines, we’ve added some characters and time periods to fill in holes in our lists, to make it easier for authors to describe their stories. Most significantly, there are now several character groups in the “Characters for Categorization” list. This should help us categorize stories about the relatives of major characters more effectively.
==> Previously subcategories could be any size between five and thirteen stories large. But some people thought thirteen was too large, and others thought five was too small. We’ve adjusted the size range to 6-12.
==> In recent years, honorable mentions were based on the number of points in, across the whole awards. We added up all the points earned by all entries, divided by the total number of pieces competing (to get the average number of points). Any piece scoring above that average got an honorable mention, if it didn't also win an award in its subcategory. However, some categories naturally attract more readers (and so more votes) than others, and so scores in those groups will naturally run high. This is unfair to stories in the less popular categories. So we decided we would go back to awarding a set number of honorable mentions in each subcategory. The exact number of honorable mentions awarded in each category will be determined by the size of its subcategories.
Just to be clear: this won't actually change the number of honorable mentions we hand out. It just insures that they're more fairly distributed.
==> Several members have questioned our use of “Review Junkie,” since for many people being a “junkie” isn’t anything to brag about! While we don’t usually get into policing language, enough people find this offensive that we decided to change our term. We’ll change the FAQs to refer to this part of the awards as the “Review Goal.” Banner makers can still use the phrase “MEFA Junkie” if they like, but we hope that they will create banners with a wide variety of phrases.
********************
There are also several small changes to the website that I think you’ll enjoy. To mention just one, we now let you specify an alternate URL, so we can switch our links in case your archive goes down mid-awards. But really, these changes are too numerous to list them all here. They should be obvious as you use the website for the upcoming awards.
I’ve tried to contact everyone who made a suggestion, to let them know what came of it. However, if I overlooked your suggestion, please email me at mefasupport(at)mefawards(dot)net, and I’ll tell you what was decided. We discussed nearly every suggestion that was made, with a few exceptions that we’ll discuss as the awards progress.
At your service and your family's,
Marta (humble MEFA Admin.)
I know that some of you are excited about the 2010 awards, and are probably eager to get started. I'm excited, too. I've spent the last few months talking with MEFA volunteers and awards participants about some of the suggestions that some of you made last January, so we can continue to improve the awards. Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions and thoughts.
Here are some of the biggest changes we've decided on.
==> The schedule for the 2010 awards will be arranged so it doesn’t end at the end of November (because of NaNoWriMo) or at the end of December (because of the holidays). We're still finetuning some details, but will hopefully announce it in the next few days.
==> In the past, authors have emailed their liaisons when they accepted their nominations, and when they completed the nomination form. While authors are still encouraged to do this, if they would find it helpful, keeping up with exactly who has emailed in is a real headache for volunteers, and I imagine is confusing for newer authors as well. Therefore we decided to streamline the process. When authors begin the form, we will assume they want to compete. There will also be a checkbox authors can mark on the form to say they accept the nomination; they are no longer required to email their liaison on completing the form.
==> The nomination form is being reorganized, to make it clearer which questions are primarily to help categorizers and which are mainly for the benefit of the author’s readers.
==> Along similar lines, we’ve added some characters and time periods to fill in holes in our lists, to make it easier for authors to describe their stories. Most significantly, there are now several character groups in the “Characters for Categorization” list. This should help us categorize stories about the relatives of major characters more effectively.
==> Previously subcategories could be any size between five and thirteen stories large. But some people thought thirteen was too large, and others thought five was too small. We’ve adjusted the size range to 6-12.
==> In recent years, honorable mentions were based on the number of points in, across the whole awards. We added up all the points earned by all entries, divided by the total number of pieces competing (to get the average number of points). Any piece scoring above that average got an honorable mention, if it didn't also win an award in its subcategory. However, some categories naturally attract more readers (and so more votes) than others, and so scores in those groups will naturally run high. This is unfair to stories in the less popular categories. So we decided we would go back to awarding a set number of honorable mentions in each subcategory. The exact number of honorable mentions awarded in each category will be determined by the size of its subcategories.
Just to be clear: this won't actually change the number of honorable mentions we hand out. It just insures that they're more fairly distributed.
==> Several members have questioned our use of “Review Junkie,” since for many people being a “junkie” isn’t anything to brag about! While we don’t usually get into policing language, enough people find this offensive that we decided to change our term. We’ll change the FAQs to refer to this part of the awards as the “Review Goal.” Banner makers can still use the phrase “MEFA Junkie” if they like, but we hope that they will create banners with a wide variety of phrases.
********************
There are also several small changes to the website that I think you’ll enjoy. To mention just one, we now let you specify an alternate URL, so we can switch our links in case your archive goes down mid-awards. But really, these changes are too numerous to list them all here. They should be obvious as you use the website for the upcoming awards.
I’ve tried to contact everyone who made a suggestion, to let them know what came of it. However, if I overlooked your suggestion, please email me at mefasupport(at)mefawards(dot)net, and I’ll tell you what was decided. We discussed nearly every suggestion that was made, with a few exceptions that we’ll discuss as the awards progress.
At your service and your family's,
Marta (humble MEFA Admin.)