I think there is a tendency in some fandoms and archives to 'interpret' ratings - so if you think more people on a particular archive read FR18 stories than FR15 you might 'upgrade' a little - but then the same story might appear on a different archive as 'teenage' as they don't permit 'adult' and so on. And some archives have only 3 classes where others have 5 or 6.
I think a 1-5 rating is actually more sensible - and whether or not the more explicit end of the scale for violence, or sex, should be part of the MEFAs is a different topic - although, as you will know from my comment back in January when there was a request for feedback, I do think it would be best to allow all stories that readers feel are good enough to nominate, as long as they are clearly marked at whatever rating their writer feels is correct - and perhaps all stories should be subject to random checks by the ratings panel to check the self-rating is correct... Something worthy of consideration...?
I think the problem is that no-one is being asked to explain why they think their story is a 3 or 4 rather than a 1 (after all, stories rated 1 for everything might be seen as 'curtain fic' and skipped over by many reviewers - put a 3 for something and you might get more readers...). And it is going to make filling in the forms more difficult -actually I, personally, took one look at the new bit about 'ages' and things and my eyes glazed and my brain curled up in a corner.
Some of the descriptions in the ratings definitions are very open to interpretation - for example almost anything with hobbits in should, according to my husband who is also a fanfic writer, automatically be a 5 or 6 for bigotry as they are, as a race, institutionally bigoted....
As for TtH - it is a Buffy Cross-over Archive - I doubt many other MEFA nominees post there - but I began in the Buffyverse, and my long series of Tolkien stories began as cross-overs. As a 'supporter' I am able to post a certain percentage of non-Buffy stuff there as well - and it has a very big readership... but I would be happy, if anything I have nominated is not also somewhere better known within this fandom, to link you to their ratings - which are some of the most understandable anywhere.
I think a 1-5 rating is actually more sensible - and whether or not the more explicit end of the scale for violence, or sex, should be part of the MEFAs is a different topic - although, as you will know from my comment back in January when there was a request for feedback, I do think it would be best to allow all stories that readers feel are good enough to nominate, as long as they are clearly marked at whatever rating their writer feels is correct - and perhaps all stories should be subject to random checks by the ratings panel to check the self-rating is correct... Something worthy of consideration...?
I think the problem is that no-one is being asked to explain why they think their story is a 3 or 4 rather than a 1 (after all, stories rated 1 for everything might be seen as 'curtain fic' and skipped over by many reviewers - put a 3 for something and you might get more readers...). And it is going to make filling in the forms more difficult -actually I, personally, took one look at the new bit about 'ages' and things and my eyes glazed and my brain curled up in a corner.
Some of the descriptions in the ratings definitions are very open to interpretation - for example almost anything with hobbits in should, according to my husband who is also a fanfic writer, automatically be a 5 or 6 for bigotry as they are, as a race, institutionally bigoted....
As for TtH - it is a Buffy Cross-over Archive - I doubt many other MEFA nominees post there - but I began in the Buffyverse, and my long series of Tolkien stories began as cross-overs. As a 'supporter' I am able to post a certain percentage of non-Buffy stuff there as well - and it has a very big readership... but I would be happy, if anything I have nominated is not also somewhere better known within this fandom, to link you to their ratings - which are some of the most understandable anywhere.
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