2012 Fanfiction Awards - planning thread

[The Great Butler]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nominations don't begin until January 1 and not in this thread.

Question: Can we nominate people who have not finished stories?

Sure.

Best New Writer - Can I vote myself? Haha, Chapter of Charizard

No. We just had this discussion a few days ago, in fact - you can not nominate yourself. I turn it over to Dragonfree:

No, you can't nominate (or vote for) yourself. It puzzles me how this question comes up every time there are awards, as if the nomination process could possibly have any meaning whatsoever if people could go around nominating their own work. The distinction between who gets lots of nominations and who doesn't would just turn into who has the gall to openly nominate themselves for an award and who doesn't.

And yes, rules like this are generally stated in the actual award threads. It's not here because this is a planning thread.

[JX Valentine]

Not to mention...

Who Do You Think You Are? I don't recall Pokemon in this, but if there were any then move it to that category please.

Fo' serious, dude, you've got to read a fic in order to nominate it properly. (That's partly because nominations are the time to advertise for your nominees and get people thinking about them and also because, well, you'd need to know a bit about it in order to figure out what category it goes in.) If you were talking about this fic, not only does it not contain Pokémon at all (and is even located in the Non-Pokémon Fic forum), but it's also not eligible for nomination. It was written and completed in 2011; only fics that were updated/completed in 2012 qualify for the awards.

Also, side note related to ysmr's post, but don't we have a minimum number of nominees per ballot anyway? As in, isn't a nominees sheet that only contains two names sort of invalid? Or did we discuss that/decide not to keep that from last year?

[The Great Butler]

Also, side note related to ysmr's post, but don't we have a minimum number of nominees per ballot anyway? As in, isn't a nominees sheet that only contains two names sort of invalid? Or did we discuss that/decide not to keep that from last year?

I... honestly do not remember if we did or not.

Do you think it would be an effective way to encourage people to make more nominations, or would it simply prompt people to not bother even trying?

[Sid87]

I personally think that kind of "ballot" shouldn't count. There should at least be a minimal number of categories that have to be nominated for. Not saying every ballot has to fill out every category, but that ballot was, like, 5% complete. Maybe each ballot should have to have at least 15-20 nominations? But then I worry about what happens to johnnys-come-lately for whom a lot of stuff has already been nominated, so... I dunno.

[bobandbill]

I am for a minimum number and (as previously discussed? don't recall) a minimum number of different fics one can nominate for (doesn't have to be big, but could discourage some votes for just one fic by people who have only read said fic they nominate for).

[Chapter of Charizard]

uhhhh.... sorry, but could u dumb tht down a bit? u r saying that we shouldnt nominate one fic more than once, right? but what if we read multiple fics, and not all were nominated, and some were nominated twice. like, voted on twice. for example, I voted CHA-05: You Are Replaceable and Shadows of Fear: Traversing Darkness twice. Is that Okay, if other stories / fics / oneshots were voted for?

EDIT:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nominations don't begin until January 1 and not in this thread.

Originally Posted by Chapter of Charizard
Question: Can we nominate people who have not finished stories?

Sure.

Best New Writer - Can I vote myself? Haha, Chapter of Charizard

No. We just had this discussion a few days ago, in fact - you can not nominate yourself. I turn it over to Dragonfree:

Originally Posted by Dragonfree
No, you can't nominate (or vote for) yourself. It puzzles me how this question comes up every time there are awards, as if the nomination process could possibly have any meaning whatsoever if people could go around nominating their own work. The distinction between who gets lots of nominations and who doesn't would just turn into who has the gall to openly nominate themselves for an award and who doesn't.

And yes, rules like this are generally stated in the actual award threads. It's not here because this is a planning thread.

Oh, I thought votes were in this thread. Sorry for that...
And yeah, that really makes sense, haha. Because, then, who wouldn't just vote for themselves? LOL. What thread will hold the votes. Is that going to be made on the New Year? Thanks, and Happy Holidays.

~Chapter of Charizard

P.S. Never thought I'd use soooo many qoute boxes LOLOLZ!

[Brutaka]

uhhhh.... sorry, but could u dumb tht down a bit? u r saying that we shouldnt nominate one fic more than once, right? but what if we read multiple fics, and not all were nominated, and some were nominated twice. like, voted on twice. for example, I voted CHA-05: You Are Replaceable and Shadows of Fear: Traversing Darkness twice. Is that Okay, if other stories / fics / oneshots were voted for?

What he was saying is that you have to nominate a certain number of fics. This will discourage people from voting two stories five times and being done with it. You could still do that, but if you have to vote for at least, say, 5 authors, then the chance that two of them getting all your nominations would be smaller.

[Chapter of Charizard]

ah, okidoki

[Dragonfree]

Also, side note related to ysmr's post, but don't we have a minimum number of nominees per ballot anyway? As in, isn't a nominees sheet that only contains two names sort of invalid? Or did we discuss that/decide not to keep that from last year?

We didn't have that last year; we had an upper limit on how many times a single story/author could be nominated by a single person, and during voting people would have to vote in at least half of the categories, but there was no minimum of categories or authors that somebody must nominate in order for nominations to be counted. It was just assumed that if some story that wasn't really any good was nominated by someone who hadn't read anything else, it wouldn't get any votes anyway.

Although now that you mention it, it could in some ways be a better idea to apply that kind of restriction to the nomination phase rather than the voting phase. Like with the "Can I nominate myself?" question, every voting phase somebody complains "In most of the categories I hadn't read any of the stories, so I had to just vote for one at random to pass the limit!", and since nominations are write-in, it's far less likely people would pull a "nominate random things I haven't read so that my nominations for my friend will count". But having that kind of limit in both phases doesn't appear to solve any problem at all, and it excludes a huge portion of the forum from the entire process (people who, due to high standards and/or lack of free time, just haven't read X number of fics this year that they think are that good), which I'm not sure is entirely fair. (Especially given cases like we were discussing with jireh the provider, where a fic barely has any readers - if we have a minimum number of authors for nominations, it will have to not only have some readers who genuinely think it's good, but those readers have to be people who happen to also think several other fics posted here are good enough to nominate. That seems pretty arbitrary.)

[The Great Butler]

Don't you think not requiring a minimum number of categories voted in would just lead to people voting for their friends? Granted, people can just vote randomly now, but at least then there are actual votes.

[Dragonfree]

Yeah, but their friends probably wouldn't be nominated in the first place unless they were deemed to be good by people who have read more than just their fics. And even among the nominees, people voting only in categories their friends are nominated in would have the same effect upon the results as people voting consistently in categories their friends are nominated in but randomly in all or most of the others - the former option just means less noise for all the other categories. If you're determined to vote for your friend without reading anything else, having to fill out the rest of the ballot at random probably isn't much of a deterrent - checking a few random radio boxes takes only a matter of minutes.

I'm not necessarily advocating we do it that way, just raising it as a thought.

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

When's the deadline anyway? I know "before Jan 1st" but is there a specific time zone we're looking at?

[Knightfall]

I've been wondering this myself, actually. Because I'm working on something and I need to know when the deadline is exactly.

Knightfall signing off...

[The Great Butler]

When's the deadline anyway? I know "before Jan 1st" but is there a specific time zone we're looking at?

Eastern Standard Time, I suppose.

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Oh yike, that's three hours less than I thought I had (based off previous years). I'd better get crackin'!

[Chapter of Charizard]

So, uhh, where is the voting thread? Sorry, I'm slow. LOL

EDIT: Oh, no, nvm. Sorry. Found it... Yeah...