Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
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Which of these awards do you prefer for for third place in the "Late Third Age"
category? Please vote by Tuesday night.

   o The White Council Award
   o The Building of Henneth Annûn Award
   o The Desertion of Ithilien Award
   o The Re-building of Barad-dûr Award
   o The Death of the White Tree of Gondor Award
   o The Destruction of the Corsair Fleet Award
   o The Betrothal of Aragorn and Arwen Award


To vote, please visit the following web page:
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Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
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Thanks!

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
MEFAwards group:

For the "Multi-Age" awards, which theme do you prefer? Please vote by Tuesday
night.

   o Characters that appeared in all four ages (Tom Bombadil - Treebeard -
Celeborn)
   o Swords created in earlier ages that survied into the Third and Fourth Age
(Andúril - Sting - Orcrist and/or Glamdring)


To vote, please visit the following web page:
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Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
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Thanks!

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
MEFAwards group:

Which award name do you prefer for third place for "First Age and Before"? First
place will be "The Lamps of the Valar Award"; second place will be "The Light of
the Two Trees Award". Please vote by Tuesday night.

   o The Creation of the Sun and Moon Award
   o The Silmarilli Award


To vote, please visit the following web page:
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Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
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Thanks!

Hey guys,

This is the last issue that I think it's absolutely critical we discuss
before next year's awards. This post-mortem surely has stretched out! I
think we've covered a lot of good ground, and if I've started a topic
and we never reached a decision, please remind me.

Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to speak
up.

First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and so
feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the points
they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at a lower
level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively means that
those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such spread would
be:

1-50  1 point
51-250 2 point
251-500 3 point
501-1000 4 point
1001+ 5 point

I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm very
interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer ones.
Would this point spread work better?

Issue #2: honourable mentions. This year we awarded honourable mentions
to stories who scored within three points of second place. But it
occurs to me this may not be the best system because the larger
categories were a lot more competitive. Think about it, in a
sub-category with five stories the top 60% of stories received first,
second, or third place, whereas in a sub-category with ten stories only
the top 30% of stories received first, second, or third places. That
means there will be more competition for the third place position in a
larger category, and *that* means that the third place story will
likely have a higher score than in a smaller category - which means
stiffer competition for those honourable mention positions.

I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
honourable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we could
set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points but isn't
awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honourable mention.

Another way to address this is to assign honourable mentions based on
the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we want to
have the top half of stories receive a place award or an honourable
mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of the stories in
a five-story category get an award.) Then we could just give honourable
mentions to the top stories below the places until we reach this point.
So

5-6 entries  0 Honourable Mentions
7-8 entries  1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = >50%
9-10 entries  2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 award = >50%
11-12 entries  3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards =>50%

Etc.

I'd personally be happy with either one.

One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more strongly
dictated by technical concerns. Would it be a good idea to have an easy
way to enter the same author vote for all the categories where the
author has works entered. For instance, this year I had to enter votes
for Dreamflower for every one of the categories she had stories entered
in, but the votes were the same. It would have been much easier to be
able to go to vote for any one category, click a check-box of some sort
and have this vote automatically entered in the other categories.

Anthony, is this at all possible? If not it will be okay - it would be
nice but isn't strictly necessary. (And thanks for all your hard work.)

Barring that, can you guys think of any ways that we could make author
voting run more smoothly?

Cheers,
Marta

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marta Layton" <melayton@...>
To: <MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2006 11:47 PM
Subject: [MEFAwards] points and various voting matters


> Hey guys,
>
> This is the last issue that I think it's absolutely critical we discuss
> before next year's awards. This post-mortem surely has stretched out! I
> think we've covered a lot of good ground, and if I've started a topic
> and we never reached a decision, please remind me.
>
> Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
> several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to speak
> up.
>
> First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and so
> feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the points
> they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at a lower
> level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively means that
> those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such spread would
> be:
>
> 1-50 1 point
> 51-250 2 point
> 251-500 3 point
> 501-1000 4 point
> 1001+ 5 point
>
> I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm very
> interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer ones.
> Would this point spread work better?

It's possible. I know that generally, I wrote my reviews at first with no
regards to how the points fell, but just said what I felt about the story.
Then, for certain stories that I felt had exceptional merit, I went back and
added to the reviews to get higher point counts. I didn't go back to any and
remove words to get less points.  However, I often felt the longer reviews
were "padded" and had less impact than my original shorter and more
heartfelt reviews. With a smaller point spread, this problem could be
avoided.  It would also make it easier to do more reviews in a shorter time
period.

>
> Issue #2: honourable mentions. This year we awarded honourable mentions
> to stories who scored within three points of second place. But it
> occurs to me this may not be the best system because the larger
> categories were a lot more competitive. Think about it, in a
> sub-category with five stories the top 60% of stories received first,
> second, or third place, whereas in a sub-category with ten stories only
> the top 30% of stories received first, second, or third places. That
> means there will be more competition for the third place position in a
> larger category, and *that* means that the third place story will
> likely have a higher score than in a smaller category - which means
> stiffer competition for those honourable mention positions.
>
> I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
> honourable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
> points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we could
> set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points but isn't
> awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honourable mention.
>
> Another way to address this is to assign honourable mentions based on
> the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we want to
> have the top half of stories receive a place award or an honourable
> mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of the stories in
> a five-story category get an award.) Then we could just give honourable
> mentions to the top stories below the places until we reach this point.
> So
>
> 5-6 entries 0 Honourable Mentions
> 7-8 entries 1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = >50%
> 9-10 entries 2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 award = >50%
> 11-12 entries 3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards =>50%

I like this second formula better. It would be more fair than the current
system, yet not so complicated as your first suggestion.  My only thing
would be an upward limit: say from 12 entries upwards, 4+3=7 and not go
beyond four honorable mentions, for I think that would dilute the value of
the award *too* much in the other direction.

Dreamflower
(Barbara)
>
> Etc.
>
> I'd personally be happy with either one.
>
> One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more strongly
> dictated by technical concerns. Would it be a good idea to have an easy
> way to enter the same author vote for all the categories where the
> author has works entered. For instance, this year I had to enter votes
> for Dreamflower for every one of the categories she had stories entered
> in, but the votes were the same. It would have been much easier to be
> able to go to vote for any one category, click a check-box of some sort
> and have this vote automatically entered in the other categories.
>
> Anthony, is this at all possible? If not it will be okay - it would be
> nice but isn't strictly necessary. (And thanks for all your hard work.)
>
> Barring that, can you guys think of any ways that we could make author
> voting run more smoothly?
>
> Cheers,
> Marta
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

>>This is the last issue that I think it's absolutely critical we
discuss
before next year's awards. This post-mortem surely has stretched out!
I
think we've covered a lot of good ground, and if I've started a topic
and we never reached a decision, please remind me.


I can't think of any

>>Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to speak
up.First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and
so
feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the
points
they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at a lower
level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively means that
those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such spread would
be:1-50 1 point
51-250 2 point
251-500 3 point
501-1000 4 point
1001+ 5 point



I support this change.  If I remember, we talked privately and my
suggestion was for an even more dramatic change.  ... a point spread
of 1-3 points, or a 1-5 with a maximum counted character count of 500
instead of a 1000. (? it's been too long and I'm still on my first
coffee this morning)  But I would be happy with the suggestion above.

>>>Issue #2: honorable mentions. This year we awarded honorable
mentions
to stories who scored within three points of second place. But it
occurs to me this may not be the best system because the larger
categories were a lot more competitive. Think about it, in a
sub-category with five stories the top 60% of stories received first,
second, or third place, whereas in a sub-category with ten stories
only
the top 30% of stories received first, second, or third places. That
means there will be more competition for the third place position in
a
larger category, and *that* means that the third place story will
likely have a higher score than in a smaller category - which means
stiffer competition for those honorable mention positions.


I'm ok with the HMs being within a count or percent of the total
points because I feel like it rewards the 'likability' of the story
and correctly conveys the reader's votes.   If there are 5 stories in
a cate or 20 ....  if the point spread is so close, the HMs show what
a close race it was, and I like that.

What about making them be within a three points of first place
instead of second?  or the top ? % of the point spread? or within ? %
points of first place?




>>I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
honorable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we
could
set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points but
isn't
awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honorable mention.


I think this is an overall good idea and would be ok if it were
implemented, but I think it would be a difficult call to set that
number, especially if we change the point system.



>>>Another way to address this is to assign honorable mentions based
on
the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we want to
have the top half of stories receive a place award or an honorable
mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of the stories
in
a five-story category get an award.) Then we could just give
honorable
mentions to the top stories below the places until we reach this
point.


I know that some judged contests do this and I highly support it in
those venues,  and I would support it here, but I don't think  that
it reflects the spirit of the awards as well as the first option,
especially if we reward those who place within a percent of points of
first place.

>>>>>>>>One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more
strongly
dictated by technical concerns. Would it be a good idea to have an
easy way to enter the same author vote for all the categories where
the
author has works entered. For instance, this year I had to enter votes
for Dreamflower for every one of the categories she had stories
entered in, but the votes were the same. It would have been much
easier to be able to go to vote for any one category, click a check-
box of some sort and have this vote automatically entered in the other
categories.


I agree with entering one vote per author and having it automatically
go to them in all the categories in which they have stories entered.

I know there are arguments against this, and I agree with them in
part, - that someone may be stronger in some genre or elements than in
others, but I also know there has been a lot of confusion and
questions and problems with the readers understanding and voting in
the author review section and I  think the simplification of the above
suggestion would outweigh the lack of flexibility.

> First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and so
> feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the points
> they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at a lower
> level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively means that
> those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such spread would
> be:
>
> 1-50  1 point
> 51-250 2 point
> 251-500 3 point
> 501-1000 4 point
> 1001+ 5 point


Someone mentioned that this would help people write reviews more
quickly (a good thing!) instead of having to worry over a review to
make it the points value they thought the story was worth. I think for
me that's probably the strongest argument for making it easier to
reach certain points values, but capping it at five to me is less
appealing. A 1000 characters is significantly more than 501, yet it
gives the same points value.

Also, I'm not sure why the 'step' has to be so short between points
levels one and two, 2 and a half times as much as the first step in
the next two categories, and then jump up by nearly the same amount
between levels four and five as the move from level 1 to level 2 in
the third. One of the nice things about this year's awards was that
there were no such skips in the points structure--nice even,
predictable intervals were, I thought, a good improvement on the first
year's table, which was missing some points levels actually.

Is the idea that the scoring levels are based on the average char
counts people turned in? What's the logic behind this? Because what
this seems to me to do is to make it easier to move out of level one,
but then it becomes harder to move out of any given level at any point
after that.

So, like driving a stick shift (a thing I'v not mastered but bear with
me here and correct the example where necessary), it's easy to get to
first gear (points level 2), but it's hard to get out of it and move
to any other level, and (ok, theoretically, altering reality to fit
with the analogy) harder to move from fourth to fifth gear than it is
even to move from second to third or third to fourth gear.

The result: there will probably be as few five point reviews as ten
point reviews last year, since that's exactly the same char threshold
as the ten point reviews was last year, while there will be a much
larger number of four point reviews and three point reviews, and
probably very few 2 pointers. I doubt there will be more than a
handful of one pointers, just like last year only more so. You can
hardly complete a thought in 50 chars. So you can easily get 2-3
points written, but it's hard to get 5 points written, and moderately
difficult to get 4 points written.

*At a guess* (please keep in mind that math is not my strong point,
here), there will be a lot more ties to break based on absolute
character counts because it'll be harder to vote proportionally--there
just won't be enough differentiation within the higher points
categories to make that possible.



> Another way to address this is to assign honourable mentions based on
> the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we want to
> have the top half of stories receive a place award or an honourable
> mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of the stories in
> a five-story category get an award.) Then we could just give honourable
> mentions to the top stories below the places until we reach this point.


I rather like this more proportional system. Depending on how things
go in fandom, the further we get from movie years, we may have fewer
entries or else more reviewers as word gets around and (ideally) more
people participate as reviewers. So this would avoid us being in a
situation where maybe very few stories make it to the threshold points
level, or else where nearly every story makes it that far. There'd be
no need to try and guess ahead of time or make a controversial
retroactive decision about that points threshold after the voting is
over. It'd be a simple decision, made once and for all, about a
percentage of stories that would get awards, and then a mathematical
formula would determine the actual number of honorable mentions.


> One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more strongly
> dictated by technical concerns. Would it be a good idea to have an easy
> way to enter the same author vote for all the categories where the
> author has works entered. For instance, this year I had to enter votes
> for Dreamflower for every one of the categories she had stories entered
> in, but the votes were the same. It would have been much easier to be
> able to go to vote for any one category, click a check-box of some sort
> and have this vote automatically entered in the other categories.

I'd support anything that makes this an easier task. I ended up having
to find all the author's stories that I had read, and then divide them
into stories I thought could be mentioned together as contributing
towards a coherent review of the author. So I might mention stories in
Horror, Drama, and Action/Adventure to write an author review, then
enter that review in three different categories. I'd then have a
different review written out for the author using her/his stories from
LOTR, Silm, and Humor.

So for me, having a single author review, where I could use all the
stories at once, without having to figure out how to carve them up and
write two reviews without being repetitive, would be a significant
improvement.

> Barring that, can you guys think of any ways that we could make author
> voting run more smoothly?

Being able to see all the author's stories and categories on a single
page whenever one goes to write an author review would also be a huge
help. I got very tired of having to go dig through my review files to
find the person's stories, and determine categories and subcategories.
The filters were very problematic, because they weren't independent of
each other, but one governed the other. So:

Author: Name
Category: Romance

Would give you Romance, plus subcats, iirc, but then *because* it
*was* Romance as the main category, when you tried to select a
different one, you could only get the Romance subcats. And that would
result in an impossible filter combination like:

Author: Name
Category: Action/Adventure
Subcat options: Only romance subcats

You'd get a blank page, have to clear all filters, and then start
again instead of being able to use the filters to help you search out
the author's stories.


Topic we possibly have forgotten:

How do we treat quotes in reviews? What about quotes from sources that
are not from the fanfic under review, but which are either from
Tolkien's own writing or else from a different published author? Did
we decide how to treat these already? I'm afraid I can't recall.

Thanks for all your work, Marta. This has definitely dragged out a
bit, but you've persevered and kept pushing it forward.

Dwim

I wouldn't mess with the point system, unless it were to drop it in favor of
straight character counts.

As far as the author review goes, I thought it was silly repeating author
reviews over and over and over this year and scattering them willy-nilly
strikes me as sillier, because the way they were presented, they were to
award an author for having a particular strength in a particular subject
area.

I'd rather get an option to open up a second reply window after I've done a
story review, with a copy of the same review already entered, but editable,
which might be submitted as an author review.

Of course, if the purpose of author reviews isn't tied to the story
categories, you could approach it very differently.


On 1/2/06, aelfwina@... <aelfwina@...> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Marta Layton" <melayton@...>
> To: <MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2006 11:47 PM
> Subject: [MEFAwards] points and various voting matters
>
>
> > Hey guys,
> >
> > This is the last issue that I think it's absolutely critical we discuss
> > before next year's awards. This post-mortem surely has stretched out! I
> > think we've covered a lot of good ground, and if I've started a topic
> > and we never reached a decision, please remind me.
> >
> > Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
> > several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to speak
> > up.
> >
> > First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and so
> > feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the points
> > they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at a lower
> > level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively means that
> > those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such spread would
> > be:
> >
> > 1-50 1 point
> > 51-250 2 point
> > 251-500 3 point
> > 501-1000 4 point
> > 1001+ 5 point
> >
> > I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm very
> > interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer ones.
> > Would this point spread work better?
>
> It's possible. I know that generally, I wrote my reviews at first with no
> regards to how the points fell, but just said what I felt about the story.
>
> Then, for certain stories that I felt had exceptional merit, I went back
> and
> added to the reviews to get higher point counts. I didn't go back to any
> and
> remove words to get less points.  However, I often felt the longer reviews
>
> were "padded" and had less impact than my original shorter and more
> heartfelt reviews. With a smaller point spread, this problem could be
> avoided.  It would also make it easier to do more reviews in a shorter
> time
> period.
>
> >
> > Issue #2: honourable mentions. This year we awarded honourable mentions
> > to stories who scored within three points of second place. But it
> > occurs to me this may not be the best system because the larger
> > categories were a lot more competitive. Think about it, in a
> > sub-category with five stories the top 60% of stories received first,
> > second, or third place, whereas in a sub-category with ten stories only
> > the top 30% of stories received first, second, or third places. That
> > means there will be more competition for the third place position in a
> > larger category, and *that* means that the third place story will
> > likely have a higher score than in a smaller category - which means
> > stiffer competition for those honourable mention positions.
> >
> > I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
> > honourable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
> > points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we could
> > set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points but isn't
> > awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honourable mention.
> >
> > Another way to address this is to assign honourable mentions based on
> > the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we want to
> > have the top half of stories receive a place award or an honourable
> > mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of the stories in
> > a five-story category get an award.) Then we could just give honourable
> > mentions to the top stories below the places until we reach this point.
> > So
> >
> > 5-6 entries 0 Honourable Mentions
> > 7-8 entries 1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = >50%
> > 9-10 entries 2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 award = >50%
> > 11-12 entries 3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards =>50%
>
> I like this second formula better. It would be more fair than the current
> system, yet not so complicated as your first suggestion.  My only thing
> would be an upward limit: say from 12 entries upwards, 4+3=7 and not go
> beyond four honorable mentions, for I think that would dilute the value of
>
> the award *too* much in the other direction.
>
> Dreamflower
> (Barbara)
> >
> > Etc.
> >
> > I'd personally be happy with either one.
> >
> > One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more strongly
> > dictated by technical concerns. Would it be a good idea to have an easy
> > way to enter the same author vote for all the categories where the
> > author has works entered. For instance, this year I had to enter votes
> > for Dreamflower for every one of the categories she had stories entered
> > in, but the votes were the same. It would have been much easier to be
> > able to go to vote for any one category, click a check-box of some sort
> > and have this vote automatically entered in the other categories.
> >
> > Anthony, is this at all possible? If not it will be okay - it would be
> > nice but isn't strictly necessary. (And thanks for all your hard work.)
> >
> > Barring that, can you guys think of any ways that we could make author
> > voting run more smoothly?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Marta
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> SPONSORED LINKS
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@v...>
wrote:
>
> I wouldn't mess with the point system, unless it were to drop it in
favor of> straight character counts.


I have to say that I wouldn't be in favor of using straight character
counts because one long glowing review could effectively keep the
other stories out of the running.  I like the point system because
while it allows for more or less points, it also somewhat levels the
playing field.  I think that using a straight character would would
have the effect of lessening the motivation of the readers leaving
the shorter reviews because (I'm guessing) they'd feel that it
wouldn't make any difference.


>
> As far as the author review goes, I thought it was silly repeating
author> reviews over and over and over this year and scattering them
willy-nilly> strikes me as sillier, because the way they were
presented, they were to> award an author for having a particular
strength in a particular subject> area.


I'd be fine with having a single set of authors' awards without
having them by category.  Their strengths could be commented on in
the text of the review/vote (great at drabbling, espcially Hobbits,
but also shows great talent in Elves, ...etc..)


>
> I'd rather get an option to open up a second reply window after
I've done a> story review, with a copy of the same review already
entered, but editable,> which might be submitted as an author review.
>
> Of course, if the purpose of author reviews isn't tied to the story
> categories, you could approach it very differently.


Great idea to automatically open an author's review window as a
prompt when the story review is opened.

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "dwimmer_laik" <dwimmer_laik@y...>
wrote:> >> Someone mentioned that this would help people write
reviews more> quickly (a good thing!) instead of having to worry over
a review to> make it the points value they thought the story was
worth. I think for> me that's probably the strongest argument for
making it easier to> reach certain points values, but capping it at
five to me is less> appealing. A 1000 characters is significantly
more than 501, yet it> gives the same points value.


I found it pretty easy to ramble on about my favorite stories and
some of the others I really liked, but I found it tended to be not
quite the 10 points in some cases and wanted to (and did in some
cases) go back and add enough to make the count because I felt like
they deserved the points and I wanted to (basically) publically thank
the author in the biggest way possible, for writing the story. ....
but also, as time passed, I had less time and felt bad that some
(most) of the ones I reviewed later in the process didn't get as much
attention/points.


>
> Also, I'm not sure why the 'step' has to be so short between points
> levels one and two, 2 and a half times as much as the first step in
> the next two categories, and then jump up by nearly the same amount
> between levels four and five as the move from level 1 to level 2 in
> the third. One of the nice things about this year's awards was that
> there were no such skips in the points structure--nice even,
> predictable intervals were, I thought, a good improvement on the
first> year's table, which was missing some points levels actually.


I agree last year was better than the previous year.  I'm not sure
why Marta divided the points the way she did and would like to hear
her reasoning before I decide if I agree or think it should be
changed from the proposal.




>>
>
>
> Topic we possibly have forgotten:
>
> How do we treat quotes in reviews? What about quotes from sources
that
> are not from the fanfic under review, but which are either from
> Tolkien's own writing or else from a different published author? Did
> we decide how to treat these already? I'm afraid I can't recall.


oh -yikes, yes... that's a biggie.



> Thanks for all your work, Marta. This has definitely dragged out a
> bit, but you've persevered and kept pushing it forward.
>
> Dwim


from me too!

Sulriel

On 1/2/06, sulriel <Sulriel@...> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Topic we possibly have forgotten:
> >
> > How do we treat quotes in reviews? What about quotes from sources
> that
> > are not from the fanfic under review, but which are either from
> > Tolkien's own writing or else from a different published author? Did
> > we decide how to treat these already? I'm afraid I can't recall.
>
>
> oh -yikes, yes... that's a biggie.



Yes.  I'd say anything and everything from within the story under
review should be inside <blockquotes> tags, but for stuff from JRRT or other
sources... hmm.  That's tougher.  Might be a judgment call for the admins.
Is the quote filler, or pertinent to the review?  I'd think it would be a
situation which wouldn't often arise, but I don't know.  Did it happen this
year?


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@v...> wrote:
>
> On 1/2/06, sulriel <Sulriel@h...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Topic we possibly have forgotten:
> > >
> > > How do we treat quotes in reviews? What about quotes from sources
> > that
> > > are not from the fanfic under review, but which are either from
> > > Tolkien's own writing or else from a different published author? Did
> > > we decide how to treat these already? I'm afraid I can't recall.
> >
> >
> > oh -yikes, yes... that's a biggie.
>
>
>
> Yes.  I'd say anything and everything from within the story under
> review should be inside <blockquotes> tags, but for stuff from JRRT
or other
> sources... hmm.  That's tougher.  Might be a judgment call for the
admins.
> Is the quote filler, or pertinent to the review?

I'm thinking of quotations that are pertinent to the review.
>  I'd think it would be a
> situation which wouldn't often arise, but I don't know.  Did it
happen this
> year?

Yes. I did it at least twice, causing you to throw rocks in my
general, northerly direction. ;-) I don't recall if other reviewers
did this, but I imagine many people may think associatively and want
to incorporate useful phrases and quotes from other works as they
explain why story X is good reading.

Dwim

Happy New Year, everyone! Marta, great job running the post-mortem.
Here's my two cents on the final topic issues...

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
>
> Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
> several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to
> speak up.
>
> First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and
> so feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the
> points they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at
> a lower level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively
> means that those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such
> spread would be:
>
> 1-50  1 point
> 51-250 2 point
> 251-500 3 point
> 501-1000 4 point
> 1001+ 5 point
>
> I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm
> very interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer
> ones. Would this point spread work better?

Overall, this seems like a good idea, although I too wonder why the
point spread is so unevenly distributed. What about something like
this:

points  characters
1  1-150
2  151-300
3  301-450
4  451-600
5  601+

I just took a look at my 2005 reviews and saw that in most cases I
was able to say what I wanted to say in about 300-500 characters. And
I didn't try to pad or manipulate my votes at all. If I find I want
to say more about a particular story, I have no problem with it
capping off at 5 points.

> Issue #2: honourable mentions. This year we awarded honourable
> mentions to stories who scored within three points of second place.
> But it occurs to me this may not be the best system because the
> larger categories were a lot more competitive.
> <snip>
> I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
> honourable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
> points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we
> could set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points
> but isn't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honourable
> mention.

I have some reservations about this option. For one thing, in lightly
reviewed categories there might be NO stories that met the threshold
number, including 1st place. But as someone pointed out, adjusting
the threshold after the fact would surely be controversial.

> Another way to address this is to assign honourable mentions based
> on the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we
> want to have the top half of stories receive a place award or an
> honourable mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of
> the stories in a five-story category get an award.) Then we could
> just give honourable mentions to the top stories below the places
> until we reach this point.
>
> 5-6 entries 0 Honourable Mentions
> 7-8 entries 1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = 50%
> 9-10 entries 2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 awards = 50%
> 11-12 entries 3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards = 50%

This approach seems good to me, although I agree with Dreamflower
that there should be a cutoff at 3 or 4 honorable mentions.

> One more thing: the author awards.

Truth to tell, I still don't understand these awards even though I've
read the explanations several times over. One problem is that
although in theory they are supposed to be different than story
awards, in practice I have read many author awards that seemed
virtually indistinguishable from story awards. And there are so many
of them! Is there some way to simplify these...like just having one
set of author awards per category rather than for every subcategory?
Or alternatively, having just one author award per subcategory rather
than 1st, 2nd, 3rd and HMs?

Kathy (Inkling)

Well, if it's pertinent, and it's not quoting the story under review, I'd
say count the characters.  But leave the admins the option of
blocking questionable quotations if there's a complaint and general
agreement at the admin level that the complaint is valid.

On 1/2/06, dwimmer_laik <dwimmer_laik@...> wrote:
>
> I'm thinking of quotations that are pertinent to the review.
> >  I'd think it would be a
> > situation which wouldn't often arise, but I don't know.  Did it
> happen this
> > year?
>
> Yes. I did it at least twice, causing you to throw rocks in my
> general, northerly direction. ;-) I don't recall if other reviewers
> did this, but I imagine many people may think associatively and want
> to incorporate useful phrases and quotes from other works as they
> explain why story X is good reading.
>
> Dwim
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>> I wouldn't mess with the point system, unless it were to drop it in
> favor of> straight character counts.
>
> I have to say that I wouldn't be in favor of using straight character
> counts because one long glowing review could effectively keep the

Straight character counts, with a cap of 1000, would be very similar to
what is currently in place, and would be easy to code. The cap would
eliminate the problem with "one long glowing review" dominating the
voting.

Changing the number per point would also be easy to code.

Here are some stats to chew on: I binned the reviews by number of
characters (0 => 0-99, 100 => 100-199, ..., 3400 => 3400-3499)

Number of reviews     |    Number of Characters

| Num | CntBin |
|  795 |    0 |
| 1386 |  100 |
| 1192 |  200 |
|  817 |  300 |
|  539 |  400 |
|  364 |  500 |
|  247 |  600 |
|  157 |  700 |
|  114 |  800 |
|   77 |  900 |
|   67 | 1000 |
|   94 | 1100 |
|   52 | 1200 |
|   29 | 1300 |
|   24 | 1400 |
|   13 | 1500 |
|   12 | 1600 |
|   12 | 1700 |
|   11 | 1800 |
|    4 | 1900 |
|    1 | 2000 |
|    7 | 2100 |
|    2 | 2200 |
|    1 | 2300 |
|    1 | 2700 |
|    1 | 2800 |
|    1 | 2900 |
|    2 | 3100 |
|    1 | 3400 |


More detail for less than 500 characters, 25 character bins (0 => 0 to
24, 25 => 25 to 49, etc.)

Num | CntBin
|  53 |    0 |
| 149 |   25 |
| 272 |   50 |
| 321 |   75 |
| 370 |  100 |
| 372 |  125 |
| 331 |  150 |
| 313 |  175 |
| 364 |  200 |
| 322 |  225 |
| 271 |  250 |
| 235 |  275 |
| 243 |  300 |
| 230 |  325 |
| 190 |  350 |
| 154 |  375 |
| 153 |  400 |
| 149 |  425 |
| 119 |  450 |
| 118 |  475 |


Sort of a cumulative distribution function. This is number of reviews
larger than a certain threshold. Each one includes all the stories
larger than the higher thresholds, as well.

6023  > 0 chars >= 1 pt
5213 > 100 chars >= 2 pts
3823 > 200 chars >= 3 pts
2644 > 300 chars >= 4 pts
1823   > 400 chars >= 5 pts
1291   > 500 chars >= 6 pts
924   > 600 chars
796   > 650 chars >= 7 pts
682   > 700 chars
526   > 800 chars >= 8 pts
410   > 900 chars
371   > 950 chars >= 9 pts
330   > 1000 chars
267   > 1100 chars = 10 pts

Of the 6083 reviews, about 11% were more than 700 characters

Fewer than half were > 300 characters.

I don't know, from the goals, etc., of the awards, what the
benefits/drawbacks of limiting the impact of the longer reviews and
emphasizing the shorter reviews would be.

It does seem that maxing out the points on a review doesn't completely
inhibit people from writing longer ones.

The mode is 125, with a second peak at 200, showing how people would
write >100 to get a 2 point review, and some would write a bit more to
get to 200 characters, to be sure they got a 3 point review, then quit.

Question: If someone is reworking things to get that extra point, and
going from 180 to 200 characters, do you really think the extra 3-4
words is going to add significantly to the quality of the review?

I would suggest a more continuous scale, for that reason. That way,
people don't artificially inflate their reviews to get that next point,
they write what they think is a good review and quit when they're done.

You could come up with some added benefit to those extra long reviews,
like maybe counting 5% of the characters above 1000. That way, the 3468
character review would count 1123 points, rather than 1000.  I do think
that one long glowing review shouldn't dominate the scoring, but I do
think that person should get some added benefit from all that extra
writing. This is especially true if you want to lower the cap to
emphasize the reviews with lower character counts.

It could be something a bit more complicated than that, like they do
with income taxes:

0 to 500 chars, 100% of chars

500 to 750    = 500 + 50% of chars > 500

750 to 1000 = 500  +  50% of chars between 500 and 750  +  25% of chars
  > 750

  > 1000          = 500  +  50% of chars between 500 and 750  +  25% of
chars between 750 and 1000  +  5% of chars > 1000

The current system essentially does this, but uses 2/3 of chars > 500,
with a hard cap at 1100 chars, and has step discontinuities (where it
jumps from 1 point to 2 with a change of just one character), where
this would be a smoother system with no discontinuities.

We could even match the current system, but eliminate the
discontinuities.
0 to 500 = 100% of chars
500 to 1100, 500 + 2/3 of additional chars
  > 1100 (either no additional, like present, or 5% of additional chars)

As long as it is just math to determine the score from the valid
character count, I can do anything you want, and it's easy, so have fun
thinking of ways to count scores that will achieve the goals of the
MEFAs (lots of good reviews for your stories).

>> As far as the author review goes, I thought it was silly repeating
> author> reviews over and over and over this year and scattering them
> willy-nilly> strikes me as sillier, because the way they were
> presented, they were to> award an author for having a particular
> strength in a particular subject> area.
>
>
> I'd be fine with having a single set of authors' awards without
> having them by category.  Their strengths could be commented on in
> the text of the review/vote (great at drabbling, espcially Hobbits,
> but also shows great talent in Elves, ...etc..)

I've also thought the author reviews were strange.

Making a single review by author would be relatively easy. That review
could count for all categories the author is in.

Allowing someone to write one review per author and someone else to do
one per category would be harder. It'll have to be all one way or the
other.

Merging the author reviews into larger categories (Main Categories
only, with no subcategories?) might make sense if you're planning to
use one review for all author voting. It would certainly reduce the
number of 'duplicates', but would reduce the number of awards (and
banners) as well. I don't know how much work that would be, but it
should be possible.

>>
>> I'd rather get an option to open up a second reply window after
> I've done a> story review, with a copy of the same review already
> entered, but editable,> which might be submitted as an author review.
>>
>> Of course, if the purpose of author reviews isn't tied to the story
>> categories, you could approach it very differently.
>
>
> Great idea to automatically open an author's review window as a
> prompt when the story review is opened.

I should be able to do this. After you save, it goes to the author
review page, rather than the main page. If you've already
started/finished an author review, it shows you what it is.


About quoting, I believe I can add a second 'admin-added' quote type,
as well as changing the <blockquote> to whatever we discussed earlier
to offset quotes that would end up prettier, but even if I can't, you
can always use the standard method.

It's your call as to what you count and what you don't, and I think
RabidSamFan has it about right in her last reply.

Later,
Anthony

"Marta Layton" <melayton@...> wrote:
>> First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and
>> so feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the
>> points they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at
>> a lower level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively
>> means that those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such
>> spread would be:
>>
>> 1-50 1 point
>> 51-250 2 point
>> 251-500 3 point
>> 501-1000 4 point
>> 1001+ 5 point
>>
>> I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm
>> very interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer
>> ones.
>> Would this point spread work better?

*chiming in once more as the voice of dissent*

I'm honestly not trying to play devil's advocate. Really, I'm not! And I think
we've had some excellent ideas out of the post-mortem. But I have to weigh in as
_strongly_ opposed to a change in the point levels. At least, a change like the
one proposed.

Granted, I'm probably among the long-winded reviewers, but be that as it may, if
I rambled off a review and hit as many aspects of the story as I could, I only
got up to about 5 points on average. On rare occasions, I could hit 6. But that
was if I rambled, and I caught most of those when I went back through and edited
the reviews. That being said, I know I gave out several 10-point reviews, quite
a few 9-point reviews, and even more 8-pointers and 7-pointers. For all of them,
I went back and put in enough effort to get the story that high because I felt
that strongly about it. I think there should be a difference between a 2-point
story and a 10-point story, and I think the margin between points should reflect
that. Furthermore, if I go to the effort to get a 1001-character review, I want
it to count. I want the author to get those ten points.

Granted again that one of the big appeals of these awards are the reviews rather
than the points garnered by the reviews. But if the point cap is 5 and the
difference between a 250-character review and a 1001-character review is 3
points, there's really not much of an incentive to go the extra mile and give
the story you're reviewing those extra 3. Competition-wise, it doesn't make that
much of a difference. But as far as the quality of the reviews is concerned, I
think there is a difference. happen to think that the 1000+ reviews are good ego
boosters. I like receiving them, and I like giving them. And I think there's
more incentive to give them if it actually makes a difference in the
competition.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to what our priorities are. In my opinion, a
higher point cap (eg: the current 10 points) encourages longer reviews and
rewards stories that deserve said reviews. A lower point cap (eg: the proposed 5
points) might encourage more reviews, but on average, they would be shorter as
the competitive advantage gained by long reviews would be lost. I think someone
once mentioned reviews that were quick blips. With a lower cap, I think we'd see
a lot more of those. So do we want our focus on quality or on quantity? I vote
for quality. I think it does more for writing. Personally, I would much rather
have one in-depth 6- or 7-point review than five quick blips of "Thanks, that
was great." I'm grateful for both, don't get me wrong. But I learn more from the
former than I do for the latter.


>> 5-6 entries 0 Honourable Mentions
>> 7-8 entries 1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = >50%
>> 9-10 entries 2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 award = >50%
>> 11-12 entries 3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards =>50%

For what it's worth, I like this formula for Honorable Mentions.

>> One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more strongly
>> dictated by technical concerns. Would it be a good idea to have an
>> easy way to enter the same author vote for all the categories where
>> the author has works entered. For instance, this year I had to
>> enter votes for Dreamflower for every one of the categories she had
>> stories entered in, but the votes were the same. It would have been
>> much easier to be able to go to vote for any one category, click a
>> check-box of some sort and have this vote automatically entered in
>> the other categories.

If this is possible, I'd be okay with it. But I have to point out a few
questions/concerns:

Poetry vs Prose - There are fanfic authors out there who write primarily prose
and some who write primarily poetry. There are even a few who do ONLY one or the
other. And there are far more readers of prose than there are of poetry. Would
we give the poets a disadvantage? Or is there still some way of dividing out the
poets from the prose writers? Same thing with the drabbles. Can we filter them
out? Or is that too complicated?

Categories - Would this effectively eliminate author awards within categories?
Essentially, would we have one giant award for authors where every author
entered competes? Because I see a problem with that, too. Let's say Author A
writes great Nazgul stories and has one amazing story in the villains' category.
But not a lot of people read the villains category, so Author A only gets one
author vote. Now let's say that very prolific Author B has stories entered in
drama, hobbits, elves, men, humor, adventure, Lord of the Rings, etc. Lots of
people read those and they like this author, so Author B gets many author votes.
Now, Author B also has a story entered in villains, but it's not as good as the
one that Author A entered. So Author A's story wins villains, but Author A gets
no author award because very few reviewers will ever read Author A's story.

Is this making any sense? Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that prolific
authors who write in popular categories would have an unfair advantage in the
author awards over less well-known authors who write in more obscure categories.

I think *something* has to change with the author awards, but I really don't
know what or how. That's why I can't say no to this solution. It's the best one
I've seen yet, and I have no alternatives to offer. But I think there are still
things we need to work out. Either that or do away with author awards entirely.
I wouldn't be happy with that, but I can't say that I'm completely happy with
the system as it currently stands.

*crawling back under her rock*
Thundera

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laura" <thunderalaura@...>
To: <MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 12:00 AM
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] points and various voting matters

(snip)

v> I'm honestly not trying to play devil's advocate. Really, I'm not! And I
think we've had some excellent ideas out of the post-mortem. But I have to
weigh in as _strongly_ opposed to a change in the point levels. At least, a
change like the one proposed.
>
> Granted, I'm probably among the long-winded reviewers, but be that as it
> may, if I rambled off a review and hit as many aspects of the story as I
> could, I only got up to about 5 points on average. On rare occasions, I
> could hit 6. But that was if I rambled, and I caught most of those when I
> went back through and edited the reviews. That being said, I know I gave
> out several 10-point reviews, quite a few 9-point reviews, and even more
> 8-pointers and 7-pointers. For all of them, I went back and put in enough
> effort to get the story that high because I felt that strongly about it. I
> think there should be a difference between a 2-point story and a 10-point
> story, and I think the margin between points should reflect that.
> Furthermore, if I go to the effort to get a 1001-character review, I want
> it to count. I want the author to get those ten points.
>
> Granted again that one of the big appeals of these awards are the reviews
> rather than the points garnered by the reviews. But if the point cap is 5
> and the difference between a 250-character review and a 1001-character
> review is 3 points, there's really not much of an incentive to go the
> extra mile and give the story you're reviewing those extra 3.
> Competition-wise, it doesn't make that much of a difference. But as far as
> the quality of the reviews is concerned, I think there is a difference.
> happen to think that the 1000+ reviews are good ego boosters. I like
> receiving them, and I like giving them. And I think there's more incentive
> to give them if it actually makes a difference in the competition.
>
> In the end, I suppose it comes down to what our priorities are. In my
> opinion, a higher point cap (eg: the current 10 points) encourages longer
> reviews and rewards stories that deserve said reviews. A lower point cap
> (eg: the proposed 5 points) might encourage more reviews, but on average,
> they would be shorter as the competitive advantage gained by long reviews
> would be lost. I think someone once mentioned reviews that were quick
> blips. With a lower cap, I think we'd see a lot more of those. So do we
> want our focus on quality or on quantity? I vote for quality. I think it
> does more for writing. Personally, I would much rather have one in-depth
> 6- or 7-point review than five quick blips of "Thanks, that was great."
> I'm grateful for both, don't get me wrong. But I learn more from the
> former than I do for the latter.


Well, as I said previously, my reviews were pretty much what I would have
said anyway. But I don't think longer necessarily means more quality.  When
I did put in the extra effort to bring the point count up for some stories,
I felt that the reviews actually lost some impact. Unlike stories, which
benefit from polishing, I think reviews are more meaningful when they come
directly from the reader's first heartfelt impression.

And near the end of the competition, I did not have the time to do that, so
there were a few exceptional stories that did not get the benefit of
"padding".

Still, I find myself rethinking my original support of the idea, for I
wonder if the end result might not be a great many stories all getting the
same number of points. I noticed that at the beginning of the competition,
my reviews tended to average about 8 points, in the middle, that went down
to about 3, and then  near the end, that dropped to about 2. I *still* might
have to add to some reviews.

But on the other hand, with a lower character count, I might only need to
add one or two words, as opposed to several repetitive sentences...

I don't know...
>
>
>>> 5-6 entries 0 Honourable Mentions
>>> 7-8 entries 1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = >50%
>>> 9-10 entries 2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 award = >50%
>>> 11-12 entries 3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards =>50%
>
> For what it's worth, I like this formula for Honorable Mentions.
>
>>> One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more strongly
>>> dictated by technical concerns. Would it be a good idea to have an
>>> easy way to enter the same author vote for all the categories where
>>> the author has works entered. For instance, this year I had to
>>> enter votes for Dreamflower for every one of the categories she had
>>> stories entered in, but the votes were the same. It would have been
>>> much easier to be able to go to vote for any one category, click a
>>> check-box of some sort and have this vote automatically entered in
>>> the other categories.
>
> If this is possible, I'd be okay with it. But I have to point out a few
> questions/concerns:
>
> Poetry vs Prose - There are fanfic authors out there who write primarily
> prose and some who write primarily poetry. There are even a few who do
> ONLY one or the other. And there are far more readers of prose than there
> are of poetry. Would we give the poets a disadvantage? Or is there still
> some way of dividing out the poets from the prose writers? Same thing with
> the drabbles. Can we filter them out? Or is that too complicated?
>
> Categories - Would this effectively eliminate author awards within
> categories? Essentially, would we have one giant award for authors where
> every author entered competes? Because I see a problem with that, too.
> Let's say Author A writes great Nazgul stories and has one amazing story
> in the villains' category. But not a lot of people read the villains
> category, so Author A only gets one author vote. Now let's say that very
> prolific Author B has stories entered in drama, hobbits, elves, men,
> humor, adventure, Lord of the Rings, etc. Lots of people read those and
> they like this author, so Author B gets many author votes. Now, Author B
> also has a story entered in villains, but it's not as good as the one that
> Author A entered. So Author A's story wins villains, but Author A gets no
> author award because very few reviewers will ever read Author A's story.
>
> Is this making any sense? Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that
> prolific authors who write in popular categories would have an unfair
> advantage in the author awards over less well-known authors who write in
> more obscure categories.
>
> I think *something* has to change with the author awards, but I really
> don't know what or how. That's why I can't say no to this solution. It's
> the best one I've seen yet, and I have no alternatives to offer. But I
> think there are still things we need to work out. Either that or do away
> with author awards entirely. I wouldn't be happy with that, but I can't
> say that I'm completely happy with the system as it currently stands.
>

I never even got to enter any author reviews.  Part of it, of course was a
lack of time.  But also there was the factor of not really understanding how
they worked.

Dreamflower

> *crawling back under her rock*
> Thundera
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Laura" <thunderalaura@j...> wrote:
> <snip>
> In the end, I suppose it comes down to what our priorities are. In
my opinion, a higher point cap (eg: the current 10 points) encourages
longer reviews and rewards stories that deserve said reviews. A lower
point cap (eg: the proposed 5 points) might encourage more reviews,
but on average, they would be shorter as the competitive advantage
gained by long reviews would be lost. I think someone once mentioned
reviews that were quick blips. With a lower cap, I think we'd see a
lot more of those. So do we want our focus on quality or on quantity?
I vote for quality. I think it does more for writing. Personally, I
would much rather have one in-depth 6- or 7-point review than five
quick blips of "Thanks, that was great." I'm grateful for both, don't
get me wrong. But I learn more from the former than I do for the
latter.
>

Hi Thundera,

I heartily agree that review quality is more important than quantity.
But are short reviews necessarily of lesser quality than
long ones?  While I'll admit that my reviews got progressively
shorter as the voting deadline approached, I tried to say
something substantive in each of them, and don't believe that my 3-
and 4-pointers were inferior to my longer ones.

Were there many "Thanks, that was great" reviews in the MEFAs? I
don't recall seeing any.  In fact, the thing that impressed me the
most about the MEFAs was the quality of the reviews, whether long or
short. I received some short reviews that I was very happy
with...it's actually rather impressive to see how much can be
conveyed in 300-400 characters!

Kathy (Inkling)

-- "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@...> wrote:
>> I heartily agree that review quality is more important than
>> quantity. But are short reviews necessarily of lesser quality than
>> long ones?  While I'll admit that my reviews got progressively
>> shorter as the voting deadline approached, I tried to say
>> something substantive in each of them, and don't believe that my 3-
>> and 4-pointers were inferior to my longer ones.

Dreamflower made the same point, and I agree with you. You can fit a lot into 3-
and 4 point reviews. Quality does not necessarily imply length.

However...

You can fit MORE into a 10-point review. More to the point, you can fit in
specifics. I think part of this might be coming from how people went about
making reviews bigger. For what I felt was a good story, I would comment on
overall feel, some characterization points, and things like that. For what I
felt was a GREAT story, I went through and found specifics. I'd comment on the
overall feel and then point to why the feel was there, how it was achieved, and
why it was such an effective use of style, tone, characterization, or whatever
it was the author did so well. It's the specifics that I find most valuable when
getting reviews. I have no idea what other people think of them, but I can point
to several reviews I received where the reviewer listed out specifics they
liked, specifics they didn't like, what worked, what didn't work, etc. And to
me, that was the most valuable kind of review.

Anyway, the need to get a story up to 10 points was often what drove me to find
those specifics. Otherwise, pressed for time, I would leave it at an overall
impression, maybe point out a few instances, and then move on. But for stories
that I thought really deserved a closer look, I tried to get them up to 7, 8, 9,
or 10 points by picking out the why. I'm NOT saying my reviews are examples of
quality. I'm known for being long-winded and I do tend to ramble. What I'm
saying, though, is that the stories that inspired me to go back through and
figure out just why they impacted me the way they did deserve more recognition
than what a 3-point margin can give.

At least, that's my opinion.

So were some of the 10-point reviews inflated? Artificially padded? Sure. Some
of them probably were. But if the reviewer felt strongly enough to go through
and pad the review, I think that story needs to receive a bit more recognition
than the proposed five points.

Again, just my opinion.

>> Were there many "Thanks, that was great" reviews in the MEFAs? I
>> don't recall seeing any.  In fact, the thing that impressed me the
>> most about the MEFAs was the quality of the reviews, whether long
>> or short. I received some short reviews that I was very happy
>> with...it's actually rather impressive to see how much can be
>> conveyed in 300-400 characters!

Not a lot, but I was aware of some. And I'm grateful that people took the time
to do even that much. Those are not bad reviews. They show interest, they offer
feedback, and they can keep an author going. But I still think we need to reward
stories that manage to inspire more from their reviewers, and my own feeling is
that we need to do it with a larger point margin.

*disappearing back under the rock*
Thundera

-----------------------------------------------------------
- No, don't move, mister. You stand where I can see you and
   no harm will come to you.
- Yes, but if I stand where you can't see me, I don't see
   how any harm could come to me there, either.
      William and "Deep Bone"--Discworld: The Truth
-----------------------------------------------------------

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@s...> wrote:
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Laura" <thunderalaura@j...> wrote:
> > <snip>
> > In the end, I suppose it comes down to what our priorities are. In
> my opinion, a higher point cap (eg: the current 10 points) encourages
> longer reviews and rewards stories that deserve said reviews. A lower
> point cap (eg: the proposed 5 points) might encourage more reviews,
> but on average, they would be shorter as the competitive advantage
> gained by long reviews would be lost.
> latter.

> I heartily agree that review quality is more important than quantity.
> But are short reviews necessarily of lesser quality than
> long ones?

Two things seem to be going on here:

Firstly:

On the one hand, against Thundera's position, the question is raised:
on what basis do we think that longer reviews are qualitatively
superior to shorter ones, such that they merit being recognized by a
wider points spread? Valid question, but I'd point out that just
raising that as a question does not entitle us to conclude that in
fact, shorter reviews are either superior to longer ones *or* that
they are equal in value, and so it's a good idea to alter the points
scale to give them more weight.

On the other hand, against the position that we should change the
points scale to privilege shorter reviews, the underlying assumption
that seems to be at work is that a long review is likely to be padded
and so 'fake' in some sense, based on the fact that the questioner
felt like s/he was padding his/her reviews when s/he tried to do
longer ones. That may be very true sometimes and the rules in fact
encourage this, or at least I recall that when questions came up about
not having anything more to say but wanting to give more points to a
story, the advice was: Stretch it out. Find a way to say more, even if
it is fluffifying the review.

However, that isn't true of every long review, and personal experience
doesn't seem terribly helpful here. Personally, I found that taking
the time to analyze a piece and saying to myself, "I think this is a
ten-pointer and need to write about that much," made me see things
about the story I wouldn't have been able to articulate on a first
reaction. I've also found that in general, a more thought-out response
is nicer than one that seems to be an immediate outpouring of raw
reaction.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, the issue has been almost
immediately transformed from "What would be the advantages and
disadvantages of changing the points thresholds *and* lowering the
points cap by half?" into "How long does a review have to be before it
is good?" We can't answer the second question (other than that they
are as long as they need to be to say what you think you need to say
about the story's good qualities, whether that's 1 word or 2,000+
characters), but the first one strikes me as answerable without having
to go through the quality argument.

So I would suggest we avoid trying to couch the question of whether to
change the way points are awarded in terms of the inherent quality of
longer versus shorter reviews, and instead ask what good it does (and
also what bad it does) to change the thresholds while simultaneously
(or independently, which might be another option) changing the scale
by changing the points cap.

I can think of some benefits for changing these things:

Changing the thresholds:

1) If the issue is one of time management, such that given much more
limited time than we all wish we had to read and review massive
amounts of fanfic, it'd be better to make it easier to score at least
5 points by making shorter reviews worth more, then Marta's proposal
makes a lot of sense. It becomes relatively easy to give middling to
high-points reviews with the same amount of words you would've used
last year to give fewer points. Assuming the cap isn't changed, it'd
allow for higher points values to exist, but might mean you had to
make a significant leap to reach, say, an eight, nine or ten compared
to points values solidly in the mid-high range. Those who want to
write that much are encouraged to do so while acknowledgment is made
that we just don't always have the time to sit down with a story and
write a really detailed, careful analysis-cum-review.

Changing the points cap:

1) If the issue is that it feels somehow snobbish to have such a wide
points spread for stories, so that some are evaluated as a one whereas
others are evaluated as a ten, then it makes sense to restrict the
range of points possible by some degree. OR I suppose one could say
that if there's less pressure to put out a higher char count to reach
the higher scoring levels (because there are far fewer levels at which
to score) people might read and review more stories than they did in
previous years.

Changing both:

1) This would certainly address two perceived problems at once. (Ok, I
admit, I can't think of a good reason for doing both at once other
than that.)


Cons:

Changing the thresholds:

1) If a 10-point scale is retained, then the intervals between
thresholds will vary. This could be confusing to reviewers and authors.


Changing the points cap:

1) Ok, admittedly, I also don't think my pro is very strong in this
area. I'm not an egalitarian sort of person when it comes to actual
evaluations rather than opportunities available to someone's work
(obviously, I'm assuming that the problem is one of perceived unfair
bias that has its roots in what I would say is a really problematic
sense of egalitarianism, and this may just be very wrong). However,
the second possibility mentioned above is, I think, stronger. BUT
changing the points cap is not the only way to address that problem
and it is, I think, arguably less flexible and less able to recognize
problems of reviewer motivation that may crop up by reducing the
points cap.

I think there's the possibility of a sort of reverse Murphy's Law
happening here: if the points cap is lower, people will be likely
adjust their reviewing downwards, so that they just don't try to write
as much or do more complicated kinds of evaluations. Especially under
time pressure, you don't generally do anything more than you *have* to
anyway; if there is no incentive of giving significantly more points
because the scale tops out at 500 chars, I suspect we'll adjust to
that level.

Changing both:

1) The worst of both worlds, I think. The lack of more regularly
spaced thresholds due to the lower cap will reduce the spread of
actual points awarded even further, I think. Really, who wants to work
as hard to give five points as you did last year to give ten points
when the person writing up to five hundred fewer words than you did is
only giving one less point to the author? We are tired, we all have
work and lives, and we are all programmed to worship at the altar of
the Law of the Conservation of Energy.

Dwim

I like Anthony's idea of counting 100% of the first so many characters,
2/3rds of the next so many, etc. and giving 5% of the characters over 1000.
And I like the ten point spread much better than a lower spread, too.

To me, the goal is to get reviews which aren't puffed or trimmed according
to how many points awarded, but rather to get reviews which took a little
thought and effort on the part of the reviewer -- encouraging more thought
and more effort for good stories by awarding points.  With a really good
story I do want to go and point out specifics, and if I can tag quotes to
keep my conscience clear, I'll be very happy to point out precisely what
made me bounce up and down in my chair going "ooh!  ooh! ooh!"

If the point system is weighted a little toward short reviews, but not so
heavily that there's no reward for longer reviews, I think that most
reviewers will be less point obsessed not more.  And that's not a bad thing.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Laura" <thunderalaura@j...> wrote:
>
> "Marta Layton" <melayton@g...> wrote:
> >> First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and
> >> so feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the
> >> points they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at
> >> a lower level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively
> >> means that those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such
> >> spread would be:
> >>
> >> 1-50 1 point
> >> 51-250 2 point
> >> 251-500 3 point
> >> 501-1000 4 point
> >> 1001+ 5 point
> >>
> >> I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm
> >> very interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer
> >> ones.
> >> Would this point spread work better?
>
> *chiming in once more as the voice of dissent*
>
> I'm honestly not trying to play devil's advocate. Really, I'm not!
And I think we've had some excellent ideas out of the post-mortem. But
I have to weigh in as _strongly_ opposed to a change in the point
levels. At least, a change like the one proposed.
>
> Granted, I'm probably among the long-winded reviewers, but be that
> as it may, if I rambled off a review and hit as many aspects of the
> story as I could, I only got up to about 5 points on average. On
> rare occasions, I could hit 6. But that was if I rambled, and I
> caught most of those when I went back through and edited the
> reviews. That being said, I know I gave out several 10-point
> reviews, quite a few 9-point reviews, and even more 8-pointers and
> 7-pointers. For all of them, I went back and put in enough effort to
> get the story that high because I felt that strongly about it. I
> think there should be a difference between a 2-point story and a
> 10-point story, and I think the margin between points should reflect
> that. Furthermore, if I go to the effort to get a 1001-character
> review, I want it to count. I want the author to get those ten
> points.

I am a rambler as well, but when I leave reviews in general, they
*are* long. No matter where I leave them. Story archives, MEFA's..
While for the MEFA's, I only finalised them after I checked spelling,
I really didn't care for the points, I was merely aiming at leaving a
nice review that would make the author in question smile or for an ego
boost. So if I really loved a story, wanted to pass back to the author
how good it felt to have read the story, and I left a glowing review
(since I did leave long glowing reviews to stories with just one
review for the MEFAs I guess).. it feels like being ticked on my
fingers for doing so. Weren't these the Feel good awards? So why not
leave a story a glowing review (a glowing review can be either short
or long) if my aim is to make a writer feel good about their work? Is
that so wrong?

*scratches her head* Just please, don't loose sight of the aim to make
author's feel good about their work before it boils down to a points
debate.

> Competition-wise, it doesn't make that much of a difference. But as
> far as the quality of the reviews is concerned, I think there is a
> difference. happen to think that the 1000+ reviews are good ego
> boosters. I like receiving them, and I like giving them. And I think
< there's more incentive to give them if it actually makes a
> difference in the competition.

I agree completely, changing the points system won't stop me from
leaving long reviews since I didn't pay much attention to the number
of points a story got in the  first place.

As for quoting from stories... isn't it an idea to add a button to the
system, review form where a reviewer can click on (telling or putting
it in the faq that you have to put the <blockquote> code around it
will not work...). Let's say you want to quote from a story, a quick
click, in which it automatically adds the quote-code (or maybe a java
script kind of thing where you can paste the part in, click on ok and
it gets inserted)...

Rhapsody

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "sulriel" <Sulriel@h...> wrote:
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@v...>

Just a few cents from me....

> I have to say that I wouldn't be in favor of using straight character
> counts because one long glowing review could effectively keep the
> other stories out of the running.  I like the point system because
> while it allows for more or less points, it also somewhat levels the
> playing field.  I think that using a straight character would would
> have the effect of lessening the motivation of the readers leaving
> the shorter reviews because (I'm guessing) they'd feel that it
> wouldn't make any difference.

I agree wholeheartedly.

> I'd be fine with having a single set of authors' awards without
> having them by category.  Their strengths could be commented on in
> the text of the review/vote (great at drabbling, espcially Hobbits,
> but also shows great talent in Elves, ...etc..)

I would not.  Let me just give you my experience with the
Alt.StarTrek.Creative Awards, even with their Author categories.
Though from 1196-2002, I had one Best General Story in my category
(DS9 or MIS/Combined) every other year, had been asked for my
autograph on multiple occassions and even Armin Shimmerman remembered
me two years late simply by name, I NEVER won Best DS9 Author, and
very definitely never won the Best Author award which has a fancy
name.  That last one is only eligible for winning once. Once you've
won, people can vote on you again but only for comment. No points.

Anyway, I always wanted to win one of those. I got 2nd place once in
DS9, but that might have been a smaller set, the
Alt.StarTrek.Creative.All-Ages Tribble Awards, from a sister-group.  I
never even go so much as a comment for the fancy one.  Alas.  And I
felt it. It hurt.  Yeah, it's great when someone likes your story.
It's even better when they like your WRITING.  A story may have a fan
but when you have a fan, that's a step up.  When your name is known.....

Ah, but it feels good. And it feels sad when it's not even noticed.
Here I was a famous DS9 fanfic-writer (I'm a bit out-of-date now) and
still never won the fancy award. Or the Best DS9 Author award.  Never
so much a single comment for the main one.  (That I can remember.)  It
is sad.  And that was in the smaller pond of ASC.

How much harder will it be to win in this huge group of LOTR writers?
And not just those members here.  We might grow as much next year as
we did this year.

So I don't want to see Authors all lumped into a few categories and
just a handful of awards. I want to share that wealth. I may never win
Best Tolkien Author, but I covet my Witch King Award for Horror Author
Award for 2004 and I display my banner proudly, still wishing I'd
gotten something for DS9.

(ASC does not break down further than the series and then the overall
best fancy-named award and best fancy-named New Author award.  I think.)

PS. I like the idea of letting you repeat the review but being able to
edit if you want.

--Ainae

>

Hi Dreamflower,

> Message: 1
>    Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 08:36:27 -0600
>    From: <aelfwina@...>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Marta Layton" <melayton@...>
> To: <MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2006 11:47 PM
> Subject: [MEFAwards] points and various voting matters
>
>
>> Hey guys,
>>
>> This is the last issue that I think it's absolutely critical we
>> discuss
>> before next year's awards. This post-mortem surely has stretched out!
>> I
>> think we've covered a lot of good ground, and if I've started a topic
>> and we never reached a decision, please remind me.
>>
>> Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
>> several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to speak
>> up.
>>
>> First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and so
>> feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the
>> points
>> they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at a lower
>> level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively means that
>> those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such spread would
>> be:
>>
>> 1-50 1 point
>> 51-250 2 point
>> 251-500 3 point
>> 501-1000 4 point
>> 1001+ 5 point
>>
>> I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm very
>> interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer ones.
>> Would this point spread work better?
>
> It's possible. I know that generally, I wrote my reviews at first with
> no
> regards to how the points fell, but just said what I felt about the
> story.
> Then, for certain stories that I felt had exceptional merit, I went
> back and
> added to the reviews to get higher point counts. I didn't go back to
> any and
> remove words to get less points.  However, I often felt the longer
> reviews
> were "padded" and had less impact than my original shorter and more
> heartfelt reviews. With a smaller point spread, this problem could be
> avoided.  It would also make it easier to do more reviews in a shorter
> time
> period.
>


I can see where you would feel that way, given how you say you wrote
your reviews. On the other hand, I would often go on about those things
that I liked about a story until I felt I had written enough to get it
the points I wanted to. This meant that I was not adding anything to
the longer reviews; if anything, I was stopping before maybe I would
have liked for the shorter ones.

I don't know that there's anything intrinsically better or worse about
longer or shorter reviews. It all depends on the reviewer and which
they're better at. I do know that I received quite a few comments from
people who really struggled to write longer reviews, who felt
discouraged because their longest reviews were worth so much less than
other peoples' longest reviews. That was my reason for lessening the
number of points that each review was worth. This wound in effect make
each point worth more.

>> Issue #2: honourable mentions. This year we awarded honourable
>> mentions
>> to stories who scored within three points of second place. But it
>> occurs to me this may not be the best system because the larger
>> categories were a lot more competitive. Think about it, in a
>> sub-category with five stories the top 60% of stories received first,
>> second, or third place, whereas in a sub-category with ten stories
>> only
>> the top 30% of stories received first, second, or third places. That
>> means there will be more competition for the third place position in a
>> larger category, and *that* means that the third place story will
>> likely have a higher score than in a smaller category - which means
>> stiffer competition for those honourable mention positions.
>>
>> I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
>> honourable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
>> points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we
>> could
>> set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points but isn't
>> awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honourable mention.
>>
>> Another way to address this is to assign honourable mentions based on
>> the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we want to
>> have the top half of stories receive a place award or an honourable
>> mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of the stories in
>> a five-story category get an award.) Then we could just give
>> honourable
>> mentions to the top stories below the places until we reach this
>> point.
>> So
>>
>> 5-6 entries 0 Honourable Mentions
>> 7-8 entries 1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = >50%
>> 9-10 entries 2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 award = >50%
>> 11-12 entries 3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards =>50%
>
> I like this second formula better. It would be more fair than the
> current
> system, yet not so complicated as your first suggestion.  My only thing
> would be an upward limit: say from 12 entries upwards, 4+3=7 and not go
> beyond four honorable mentions, for I think that would dilute the
> value of
> the award *too* much in the other direction.
>

I think we could work with this. But I think it might be easier to do
this by limiting the number of stories in any sub-category. Let's say
we say each sub-category has to have between 5 and 15 stories. Then we
could have:

5-6 stories 0 honourable mentions
7-8 stories 1 honourable mention
9-10 stories 2 honourable mentions
11-12 stories 3 honourable mentions
13-14 stories 4 honourable mentions
15 stories  5 honourable mentions

This would preserve giving half the stories an honourable mention,
which would be nice to be able to point to. It's always easier to give
a blanket statement than have to point out exceptions. If we really
want to cap it off at 4 honourable mentions I'd live with that, though.

Marta

If I remember, someone mentioned the potential of ties as a reason not
to lower the point spread to 1-5, but if I remember, that shouldn't be
an issue, because the system automatically ranks the stories by
points, then those with the same number of points by (?) number of
reviews and those with the same number of reviews by character count.

I think it'd be highly unlikely to have ties once those steps had been
taken.

it would also give the potential to reward those reviews that were
longer than the point cap on character count.

Sulriel

> Message: 3
>    Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:12:08 -0000
>    From: "sulriel" <Sulriel@...>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
>
>
>
>>>>> Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
>>> several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to speak
>>> up.First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and
>>> so
>>> feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the
>>> points
>>> they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at a lower
>>> level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively means that
>>> those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such spread would
>>> be:1-50 1 point
>>> 51-250 2 point
>>> 251-500 3 point
>>> 501-1000 4 point
>>> 1001+ 5 point
>>>
>
>
> I support this change.  If I remember, we talked privately and my
> suggestion was for an even more dramatic change.  ... a point spread
> of 1-3 points, or a 1-5 with a maximum counted character count of 500
> instead of a 1000. (? it's been too long and I'm still on my first
> coffee this morning)  But I would be happy with the suggestion above.
>

I'd be against putting the cap at 500 characters because I would have a
very hard time rationing that. I can't write a decent review,
especially for a longer story, in less than 300 or so characters even
if I try to.

As far as the three-point thing, I think that might be flattening it
too much. Just my opinion, of course... I'll go with whatever most
people want here, within reason.

Marta

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> Message: 4
>    Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:14:30 -0000
>    From: "sulriel" <Sulriel@...>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
>
>
>
>>>>>> Issue #2: honorable mentions. This year we awarded honorable
>>> mentions
>>> to stories who scored within three points of second place. But it
>>> occurs to me this may not be the best system because the larger
>>> categories were a lot more competitive. Think about it, in a
>>> sub-category with five stories the top 60% of stories received first,
>>> second, or third place, whereas in a sub-category with ten stories
>>> only
>>> the top 30% of stories received first, second, or third places. That
>>> means there will be more competition for the third place position in
>>> a
>>> larger category, and *that* means that the third place story will
>>> likely have a higher score than in a smaller category - which means
>>> stiffer competition for those honorable mention positions.
>
>
> I'm ok with the HMs being within a count or percent of the total
> points because I feel like it rewards the 'likability' of the story
> and correctly conveys the reader's votes.   If there are 5 stories in
> a cate or 20 ....  if the point spread is so close, the HMs show what
> a close race it was, and I like that.
>
> What about making them be within a three points of first place
> instead of second?  or the top ? % of the point spread? or within ? %
> points of first place?
>

I think these are likely to overly favor a smaller subcategory if
there's a "power-house" in a small category that drives the number of
points the first place story received way up. Let's say we want to
award within 20% of the points awarded to first place, and first place
receives 50 points. That means everything that receives 40 or more
points gets an honourable mention. Now, the larger categories are
likerly to have "tighter" races (more stories scoring within fewer
points of each other) by virtue of having more stories. So in a smaller
category where first place scores high, it's very likely that *no*
stories will get honourable mentions because third place is lower than
forty points. Whereas in a larger category, there are likely to be
enough stories that some would fall in this interval and would receive
honourable mentions.

>>>>> I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
>>> honorable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
>>> points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we
>>> could
>>> set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points but
>>> isn't
>>> awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honorable mention.
>>>
>
> I think this is an overall good idea and would be ok if it were
> implemented, but I think it would be a difficult call to set that
> number, especially if we change the point system.
>

You're right, this would be a problem, but I'm not sure it's any more
random than the current three-point rules. One solution might be to
wait to determine this limit until we have the actual figures from next
year. Anthony, would it be possible to see the number of points that
the top third (or half, or whatever percent of stories we want to
award) scored above? Say we decide we want to give honourable mention
to the top third of stories. I guess this would in effect be
recognising the top % of stories instead of within a certain point
range. The only problem is it wouldn't necessarily be an honourable
mention in a certain category, as which stories get an HM id etermined
by the *overall* pointspread, across all the categories.
>
>>>
>>>>>> Another way to address this is to assign honorable mentions based
>>> on
>>> the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we want to
>>> have the top half of stories receive a place award or an honorable
>>> mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of the stories
>>> in
>>> a five-story category get an award.) Then we could just give
>>> honorable
>>> mentions to the top stories below the places until we reach this
>>> point.
>
>
> I know that some judged contests do this and I highly support it in
> those venues,  and I would support it here, but I don't think  that
> it reflects the spirit of the awards as well as the first option,
> especially if we reward those who place within a percent of points of
> first place.
>
>
>

How is this not in keeping with the spirit of the awards? Is it that
there could be some stories that place very close to the last
honourable mentions that just don't get recognised? If so, I wonder if
some hybrid situation might be doable:

1. Give honourable mentions to enough stories so that 50% get either
1st, 2nd, 3rd place or an honourable mention.
2. Give honourable mentions to any stories with the same number of
points as the last story to win an honourable mention by (1) above.

I have to admit that this is my favourite option, provided it's
codeable. But I can see the merit of either, and so I'm flexible.

Marta


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