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----- Original Message -----
From: "Marta Layton" <melayton@gmail.com>
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

>>Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are

>>>Issue #2: honorable mentions. This year we awarded honorable

>>I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an

>>>Another way to address this is to assign honorable mentions based

>>>>>>>>One more thing: the author awards. This one may be more

> 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

> 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.

> 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.

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

On 1/2/06, aelfwina@cableone.net <aelfwina@cableone.net> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Marta Layton" <melayton@gmail.com>
> 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>
> I wouldn't mess with the point system, unless it were to drop it in

>
> As far as the author review goes, I thought it was silly repeating

>
> I'd rather get an option to open up a second reply window after

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

>
> 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

>>
>
>
> Topic we possibly have forgotten:
>
> How do we treat quotes in reviews? What about quotes from sources

> 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

>
>
> >
> > 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.

>
> 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

> sources... hmm. That's tougher. Might be a judgment call for the

> 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

> year?

--- 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)

On 1/2/06, dwimmer_laik <dwimmer_laik@yahoo.com> 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

> 750

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

> 1100 (either no additional, like present, or 5% of additional chars)

>> 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.

>> 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?

>> 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%

>> 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.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laura" <thunderalaura@juno.com>
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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> <snip>
> In the end, I suppose it comes down to what our priorities are. In

>

>> 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!

>
> --- 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?

>
> "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!

>
> 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.

> 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

> difference in the competition.

>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@v...>

> 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'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..)

>

> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 08:36:27 -0600
> From: <aelfwina@cableone.net>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Marta Layton" <melayton@gmail.com>
> 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.
>

> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:12:08 -0000
> From: "sulriel" <Sulriel@htcomp.net>
> 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.
>

> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:14:30 -0000
> From: "sulriel" <Sulriel@htcomp.net>
> 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 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.
>
>
>

> >>>>>> Issue #2: honorable mentions. This year we awarded honorable
> >>> mentions> >>> to stories who scored within three points of

> >>> a> >>> larger category, and *that* means that the third place

> >
> >
> > 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

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

> >
>
> 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

>
>


>
> >>>>> I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
> >>> honorable mention to all the stories that get a certain number

> >
> > 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

> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:17:58 -0000
> From: "sulriel" <Sulriel@htcomp.net>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters

>>> 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.
>

> >>>>>> Another way to address this is to assign honorable mentions

> >
> >
> > I know that some judged contests do this and I highly support it

> >
> >> >> > How is this not in keeping with the spirit of the awards? Is

>
> 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 >

>
> I have to admit that this is my favourite option, provided it's >

>
> Marta

> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 17:28:02 -0000
> From: "dwimmer_laik" <dwimmer_laik@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
>> 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.
>
>

> *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.
>

> Message: 7
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 18:34:44 -0500
> From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> 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.
>

> Message: 8
> Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:07:36 -0000
> From: "sulriel" <Sulriel@htcomp.net>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> --- 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.
>

>
>
>
> Let me be clear about this (because I think I'm being misinterpreted
> further down in the digest): I'm not suggesting we have one giant
> category for all authors. I'm actually pretty against this.
>
> What I *am* suggesting is that a person be able to enter a review for
> an author and have it automatically generate reviews with the same text
> in all other categories in which that author is entered. To give an
> example... let's say someone has the following nominations:
>
> - "The Trouble With Brandybucks" in "Hobbits : Fourth Age"
> - "Envinyatar" in "Drama : Drabble"
> - "A Dwarf Among Elves" in "LOTR : Lothlorien".
>
> This author is then entered in the following author categories.
>
> - Hobbits : General Authors
> - LOTR : General Authors
> - Drama : Drabble Authors
>
> Let's say I'm looking at the nominations for "Drama : Drabble". I see a
> listing for "Envinyatar", and by that drabble I see a link to vote on
> the story, and a second like to vote for the author. I click on the
> second link, and it takes me to a page where I can enter that vote.
> What I'm proposing is that we have a check-box that I could click, and
> whatever I enter for "Drama : Drabble Authors" is also entered as a
> vote for "Hobbits : General Authors" and "LOTR : General Authors".
>
> If you do want to customise the vote to the subcategory you could just
> not click that check-box and enter separate reviews when you're ready.
>
> Going back to my example, let's say I submitted a vote for all the
> categories and want to go back and change them all. I could edit the
> review and click the check-box, and it would make the changes to all
> the different reviews. Alternatively, if I only wanted to change the
> "Hobbits : General Authors" one, I could navigate to "The Trouble With
> Brandybucks", click the link to edit the existing author review, make
> my changes, and save the review *without* clicking the checkbox.
>
> I'm honestly not sure if this is practical. But that's what I'm
> suggesting - *not* stripping down to a single authors' category.
>
> Marta

>> What I *am* suggesting is that a person be able to enter a review
>> for an author and have it automatically generate reviews with the
>> same text in all other categories in which that author is entered.
>> To give an example... let's say someone has the following
>> nominations:
>>
>> - "The Trouble With Brandybucks" in "Hobbits : Fourth Age"
>> - "Envinyatar" in "Drama : Drabble"
>> - "A Dwarf Among Elves" in "LOTR : Lothlorien".
>>
>> This author is then entered in the following author categories.
>>
>> - Hobbits : General Authors
>> - LOTR : General Authors
>> - Drama : Drabble Authors
>>
>> Let's say I'm looking at the nominations for "Drama : Drabble". I
>> see a listing for "Envinyatar", and by that drabble I see a link to
>> vote on the story, and a second like to vote for the author. I
>> click on the second link, and it takes me to a page where I can
>> enter that vote. What I'm proposing is that we have a check-box
>> that I could click, and whatever I enter for "Drama : Drabble
>> Authors" is also entered as a vote for "Hobbits : General Authors"
>> and "LOTR : General Authors".

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Laura" <thunderalaura@j...> wrote:
>
> -- Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
> >> What I *am* suggesting is that a person be able to enter a
review
> >> for an author and have it automatically generate reviews with
the
> >> same text in all other categories in which that author is
entered.
> >> To give an example... let's say someone has the following
> >> nominations:
> >>
> >> - "The Trouble With Brandybucks" in "Hobbits : Fourth Age"
> >> - "Envinyatar" in "Drama : Drabble"
> >> - "A Dwarf Among Elves" in "LOTR : Lothlorien".
> >>
> >> This author is then entered in the following author categories.
> >>
> >> - Hobbits : General Authors
> >> - LOTR : General Authors
> >> - Drama : Drabble Authors
> >>
> >> Let's say I'm looking at the nominations for "Drama : Drabble".
I
> >> see a listing for "Envinyatar", and by that drabble I see a link
to
> >> vote on the story, and a second like to vote for the author. I
> >> click on the second link, and it takes me to a page where I can
> >> enter that vote. What I'm proposing is that we have a check-box
> >> that I could click, and whatever I enter for "Drama : Drabble
> >> Authors" is also entered as a vote for "Hobbits : General
Authors"
> >> and "LOTR : General Authors".
>
> Okay, that clears things up. Thanks.
>
> However...I've got some major reservations with this idea. I still
like the idea of either changing the author awards or doing away with
them entirely, but I can't get behind this proposal and here's why:
>
> Let's say we have an author. We'll name him Fred. Fred has possibly
the best fanfiction ever written entered in the Silmarillion
category. Fred himself is an amazing author but has only written one
story. That story blows all competition out of the water, but it's
still just one story. And being a Silmarillion story, it doesn't get
as much attention as other stories might.
>
> Now let's say we have another author. We'll call her Fredita.
Fredita is a pretty good author. She has some pretty good stories.
She's prolific. She's well-known. She has a large and faithful
following. Fredita has entries in Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves,
Drama, Adventure, and one little vignette in Silmarillion that she
did on a dare.
>
> The voting season begins. People read Fredita's stories because
they're good stories and they're familiar. A few adventurous souls
try Fred's story in Silmarillion and discover it to be the best thing
they ever read. They give him glowing author reviews as a result,
knowing he is hands-down the best Silmarillion author out there.
>
> In the meantime, Fredita's faithful following is reading her
stories in Hobbits, Elves, Men, Drama, and Adventure. They find her
to be the pretty good author they've come to expect and they give her
pretty good reviews. Being faithful fans, they wish they could do
more, but being faithful fans mired in reality, they're also pressed
for time. So they compromise and click the box that duplicates their
author reviews throughout the system.
>
> Voting season ends. Fred's Silmarillion story clearly wins its
subcategory. But Fred himself, despite being a brilliant author, gets
no author award because Fredita's accumulation of pretty good reviews
written elsewhere in the system were enough to beat out Fred's few
glowing reviews written by those who'd actually taken the time to
stroll through the Silmarillion category.
>
> And the moral?
>
> Difficult to say, actually. Writing is such a subjective thing that
you could argue a pretty good writer who's able to get by in multiple
areas is a better writer than someone who is able to completely
dominate in just one. But that doesn't feel like a fair way to run
awards, especially if we still intend to separate the authors into
their various categories. Sure, you can still duplicate an author
review throughout the system by saving and then going through by hand
and pasting it in. But that takes time, and not everyone is going to
do that. Plus, those who do it at least have to LOOK at the
categories when they go through to give their authors a review.
Giving reviewers a box to click makes it too easy and, in my mind,
invites blanket reviews when blanket reviews might not be deserved.
>
> Anyway, that's my major reservation to a box that will ease the
propogation of duplicate author reviews. I hope something up there
made sense. I'm actually opposed to duplicate author reviews in the
first place, but given time constraints and the current system, I
don't see a way past those. I would, however, like to see something
in place (such as the forced copying and pasting) that would limit
the number of duplicate reviews going around.
>
> Just my two cents for whatever the current economy deems that to be
worth.
>
> 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
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>

>Giving reviewers a box to click makes it too easy and, in my >mind, invites blanket reviews when blanket reviews might not be >deserved.

>-- Marta Layton <melayton@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> What I *am* suggesting is that a person be able to enter a review
>>> for an author and have it automatically generate reviews with the
>>> same text in all other categories in which that author is entered.
>>> To give an example... let's say someone has the following
>>> nominations:
>>>
>>> - "The Trouble With Brandybucks" in "Hobbits : Fourth Age"
>>> - "Envinyatar" in "Drama : Drabble"
>>> - "A Dwarf Among Elves" in "LOTR : Lothlorien".
>>>
>>> This author is then entered in the following author categories.
>>>
>>> - Hobbits : General Authors
>>> - LOTR : General Authors
>>> - Drama : Drabble Authors
>>>
>>> Let's say I'm looking at the nominations for "Drama : Drabble". I
>>> see a listing for "Envinyatar", and by that drabble I see a link to
>>> vote on the story, and a second like to vote for the author. I
>>> click on the second link, and it takes me to a page where I can
>>> enter that vote. What I'm proposing is that we have a check-box
>>> that I could click, and whatever I enter for "Drama : Drabble
>>> Authors" is also entered as a vote for "Hobbits : General Authors"
>>> and "LOTR : General Authors".
>
>Okay, that clears things up. Thanks.
>
>However...I've got some major reservations with this idea. I still like the idea of either changing the author awards or doing away with them entirely, but I can't get behind this proposal and here's why:
>
>Let's say we have an author. We'll name him Fred. Fred has possibly the best fanfiction ever written entered in the Silmarillion category. Fred himself is an amazing author but has only written one story. That story blows all competition out of the water, but it's still just one story. And being a Silmarillion story, it doesn't get as much attention as other stories might.
>
>Now let's say we have another author. We'll call her Fredita. Fredita is a pretty good author. She has some pretty good stories. She's prolific. She's well-known. She has a large and faithful following. Fredita has entries in Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, Drama, Adventure, and one little vignette in Silmarillion that she did on a dare.
>
>The voting season begins. People read Fredita's stories because they're good stories and they're familiar. A few adventurous souls try Fred's story in Silmarillion and discover it to be the best thing they ever read. They give him glowing author reviews as a result, knowing he is hands-down the best Silmarillion author out there.
>
>In the meantime, Fredita's faithful following is reading her stories in Hobbits, Elves, Men, Drama, and Adventure. They find her to be the pretty good author they've come to expect and they give her pretty good reviews. Being faithful fans, they wish they could do more, but being faithful fans mired in reality, they're also pressed for time. So they compromise and click the box that duplicates their author reviews throughout the system.
>
>Voting season ends. Fred's Silmarillion story clearly wins its subcategory. But Fred himself, despite being a brilliant author, gets no author award because Fredita's accumulation of pretty good reviews written elsewhere in the system were enough to beat out Fred's few glowing reviews written by those who'd actually taken the time to stroll through the Silmarillion category.
>
>And the moral?
>
>Difficult to say, actually. Writing is such a subjective thing that you could argue a pretty good writer who's able to get by in multiple areas is a better writer than someone who is able to completely dominate in just one. But that doesn't feel like a fair way to run awards, especially if we still intend to separate the authors into their various categories. Sure, you can still duplicate an author review throughout the system by saving and then going through by hand and pasting it in. But that takes time, and not everyone is going to do that. Plus, those who do it at least have to LOOK at the categories when they go through to give their authors a review. Giving reviewers a box to click makes it too easy and, in my mind, invites blanket reviews when blanket reviews might not be deserved.
>
>Anyway, that's my major reservation to a box that will ease the propogation of duplicate author reviews. I hope something up there made sense. I'm actually opposed to duplicate author reviews in the first place, but given time constraints and the current system, I don't see a way past those. I would, however, like to see something in place (such as the forced copying and pasting) that would limit the number of duplicate reviews going around.
>
>Just my two cents for whatever the current economy deems that to be worth.
>
>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
>------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

>
>Sam, in Mordor, RoTK

On 1/4/06, Kathy <inkling-tcbs@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> In consideration of the Freds out there, I agree with Thundera. And I
> have to question a system that permits an author review in a drabble
> category to be duplicated in a general category, whether it's done
> automatically or manually. The skills just seem too different to me.
>
> Kathy (Inkling)
>


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

> > 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.
>
>
> You're absolutely right about there being a pretty big difference
> between the two. The way I broke down the points probably isn't the
> best way, and we could certainly rework that maybe a point every 250
> characters or some such thing. Besides wanting to simplify things and
> make reviewing easier, I heard from a few reviewer who said they felt
> bad writing reviews when they could only do short ones because they
> were "only" worth one point or two points, and this shocked me quite a
> bit. Every point can make a difference, and I don't want people to feel
> like short reviews aren't worth much.

> There really *wasn't* any rhyme or reason to the point levels, except
> that they were round numbers.

> A good way to avoid all of this would be to go with Rabidsamfan's
> suggestion to do away with points and just go with character counts up
> to a certain cap. 1000 characters or whatever. The more I think about
> it, the more I like that idea - though I'm not so sold on it as to
> insist on it.

> >
> > I rather like this more proportional system. <snip>
>
> Thanks for articulating this so well. These were a lot of the reasons I
> like this option so much, but you've presented them more clearly than
> I've been able to. I whole-heartedly agree with what you've said.

> > 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.
> >
>
> Well, technically you can enter the same author review for every
> category an author is entered in. But this does get repetitive when
> trying to read through author reviews, I agree. It would be nice to not
> display duplicate reviews; I'm not sure how we'd program this.
>
> Short of that, the only way I can see this suggestion working would be
> to have all the authors in a single category - and I'm not crazy about
> that idea.

> > 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.
> >
>
> I think we decided that all reviews, regardless of source or length,
> had to be within blockquote tags. You can include them but they won't
> count for scoring purposes. Am I misremembering this?

> Message: 10
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 20:26:31 -0500
> From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> On 1/2/06, sulriel <Sulriel@htcomp.net> 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?
>

> Message: 11
> Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 02:09:04 -0000
> From: "dwimmer_laik" <dwimmer_laik@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> --- 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.
>

>
> Ok, so with author reviews, we've got the problem of the Freds of

> world versus the Freditas, and the sense that author awards are
> artificially fragmenting an author's work, encouraging meaningless
> repetition of reviews which then results in bizarre rankings, where
> someone wins an author award for "The Hobbit" drabbles on the basis

> work s/he did as a novelist in the Horror category and some humor
> pieces. Also, it's not always clear how to distinguish the author
> review from the story review, leading to questions about why we

> allow copying author reviews and not copying of story reviews.
>
> We need a compromise that gives us sensible author review

>
> 1) do not seem artificially to fragment an author's work, resulting

> weird copy-pastes that result in even weirder rankings;
>
> 2) are distinct enough from story reviews that we don't just repeat

> extend story reviews;
>
> 3) are not so all-inclusive as to make competition absolutely

>
> 4) are organized in a manner that is less confusing all around,
> thereby encouraging more people to actually review authors.
>
> What if we changed things up somewhat for author awards and looked

> *forms* of writing? Poetry, non-fiction, ficlet, short story,

> novel, drabble, drabble cycle: these are all things that authors

> have to select when filling out their story forms. So it's not like
> we'd be making any executive decisions about how to classify an
> author's work--the author has done it for us. That would be a big
> benefit, requiring no extra work or forms for anyone.
>
> The other benefit would be that we consolidate groups of authors
> across the story-awards genres and subgenres into logical categories
> that are specific enough that we have some idea of how to compare

> authors. The form of their writing holds them together across the
> divisions we'd imposed to judge stories against each other, so it
> wouldn't work to just copy a review about an author's skill as a
> writer of novels into the poet category, for example. It makes sense
> to write a different review.
>
> At the same time, using form instead of content as the basis of
> categorizing the author awards gives us enough abstraction that we
> don't need to deal with author awards in subcategories, which would
> cut down on a sense of pernicious repetition. It's also just

> an already existing trend (see below).
>
> Now, it is true, there's a reason we split the stories into

> categories and subcategories--but we've got the story awards to deal
> with recognizing merits of specific content. Author awards are (I
> think) about assessing individual style and a more general sense of
> substance within certain, more abstract bounds than "Silmarillion:
> drabble cycle", for example. So we're not doing an injustice by
> comparing incomparables here.
>
> Would it be more competitive than the current scenario? Yes, it

> be. There would be more people competing for author awards under any
> form-based category than in any individual story category since
> *every* drabbler and *every* novelist would be elligible for an

> award for writing drabbles or novels, irrespective of whether they
> wrote the novel about Silm characters of Ring-war characters,

> they wrote the drabbles about hobbits or dragons.
>
> Also, by moving away from category/subcategory combinations

> used for author awards, we would have fewer categories to compete

> However, there are only three subcategories within any given author
> awards category anyway: general, drabble, and poetry, which already
> tends in the direction of recognizing *form*, but does not go all

> way and recognize that novels are a unique form or that vignettes

> a unique form, each requiring different skills to pull off. Those
> kinds of stories compete together under "general." So this would
> rectify that situation in a way by recognizing different skill

>
> Against the fear that this would be too cutthroat, it's much more
> competitive (and I think a fairer competition in some cases, where
> maybe only two poets make up an entire category/subcategory combo
> elligible for author awards, whereas a different c/s combo might pit
> twenty poets against each other) than being allowed only a single
> author review for any given author.
>
> So I think (I hope) this would meet all four of what I see as the
> major problems we currently have with author reviews and awards. I'm
> fairly certain that we could come up with a few more categories that
> wouldn't repeat the story award categories if desired (maybe an

> for characterization, for example, or splitting non-fiction into

> and research article since those do require totally different

> But the basic idea hopefully would be a way out of our current
> difficulties.
>
>
>
> Taking the above sketch as a possibility for reorganizing author
> reviews, and combining it with my request for a simpler user

> when it comes to writing those author reviews, I could see a page
> somewhat like this (and I hope yahoo doesn't destroy the formatting)
> to try and streamline things, make them clearer, and hopefully
> encourage more author reviewing because it would be less confusing:
>
>
> Author Name: Dwym the Evil Twyn
>
> Story Title Story Type Have I

>
> <link>Gimli's Gift</link> Short Story

>
> <link>Oops, I Sued It Again!</link> Short Story No
>
> _____________________________________
>
> Enter Author Review for Short Story: [text box]
>
>
> <link>Fear and Loathing Novel

> in the White City</link>
>
> ______________________________________
>
> Enter Author Review for Novel:[text box]
>
>
> <link>Grey</link> Drabble No
>
> <link>Purposive</link> Drabble No
>
> _____________________________________
>
> Enter Author Review for Drabble: [text box]
>
>
>
>
>
> Etc., etc., and alphabetically by review category (as I failed to

>
> This I am taking as a possible modification of the author's main

> on the website. It would give us every story the author has written,
> links to the story (so we can read it if we want to before writing

> author review), the category it is listed under *for the purposes of
> author reviews*, and a notice whether I've reviewed the story (and

> I have, a quick way to see what I'd said and so refresh my
> memory--best if opens in a new screen). It automatically breaks up

> stories into the appropriate groups and offers us an immediate
> opportunity to write an author review. It'd be easy to see in what
> categories we had already reviewed the author since they'd be right
> there. No fuss, no bother, no reloads.
>
> If we did revamp author pages this way, there'd have to be a more
> obvious pointer towards them so that people would actually go there

> review the author as an author, of course, but that's another issue
> that can be handled if something like this page revision were to go
> through. I'm mainly using it as an illustration of how to simplify

> process of reviewing authors and to show how the category change I'd
> proposed could be easily fitted into that revision.
>
> What do you all think?
>
> Dwim
>

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
>
> > Message: 10
> > Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 20:26:31 -0500
> > From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@v...>
> > Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
> >
> > 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'd think it
would
> > be a
> > situation which wouldn't often arise, but I don't know. Did it
happen
> > this
> > year?
> >
>
> I don't want to make this an admin judgement call because if we do
> this, then it leaves the admins open to criticism. Whether a quote
> counts or not affects how many points a story gets which controls
who
> wins -- and I don't want someone second-guessing the results.
That's
> why for this I want a rule we can apply objectively and can point
to as
> a reason for why we make a certain decision.
>
> Marta
>

>> Seems like the simplest rule--and I think this has already been
> suggested--is to just say that ALL quotes, not matter what the
> source, have to be inside blockquote tags.
>
> Kathy (Inkling)

>
> -
>
> If I understand what Dwim is saying here, I would support this.
>
> What I think is being proposed it so have the author categories
> different than the story categories.
>
> - essentially by form only? Novel, short story, poetry, drabble...
>
> in that case, it should be easy enough to write distinctly different
> reviews regarding the author's strength in that specific form, such
> as well-woven sub-plots in novels or snappy paced short story with a
> complete plot arch, intensity and emotion in a drabble. (?)

>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "sulriel" <Sulriel@h...> wrote:
> >> > If I understand what Dwim is saying here, I would support

> > What I think is being proposed it so have the author categories
> > different than the story categories.
> >
> > - essentially by form only? Novel, short story, poetry,

> >
> > in that case, it should be easy enough to write distinctly

>


> Yes, that's essentially it. Undoubtedly, some of these things would

> mentioned in story reviews, but in author reviews, the focus would

> > Dwim

>
> Ok, so with author reviews, we've got the problem of the Freds of

> world versus the Freditas, and the sense that author awards are
> artificially fragmenting an author's work, encouraging meaningless
> repetition of reviews which then results in bizarre rankings, where
> someone wins an author award for "The Hobbit" drabbles on the basis

> work s/he did as a novelist in the Horror category and some humor
> pieces. Also, it's not always clear how to distinguish the author
> review from the story review, leading to questions about why we

> allow copying author reviews and not copying of story reviews.
>
> We need a compromise that gives us sensible author review

>
> 1) do not seem artificially to fragment an author's work, resulting

> weird copy-pastes that result in even weirder rankings;
>
> 2) are distinct enough from story reviews that we don't just repeat

> extend story reviews;
>
> 3) are not so all-inclusive as to make competition absolutely

>
> 4) are organized in a manner that is less confusing all around,
> thereby encouraging more people to actually review authors.
>
> What if we changed things up somewhat for author awards and looked

> *forms* of writing? Poetry, non-fiction, ficlet, short story,

> novel, drabble, drabble cycle: these are all things that authors

> have to select when filling out their story forms. So it's not like
> we'd be making any executive decisions about how to classify an
> author's work--the author has done it for us. That would be a big
> benefit, requiring no extra work or forms for anyone.
>
> The other benefit would be that we consolidate groups of authors
> across the story-awards genres and subgenres into logical categories
> that are specific enough that we have some idea of how to compare

> authors. The form of their writing holds them together across the
> divisions we'd imposed to judge stories against each other, so it
> wouldn't work to just copy a review about an author's skill as a
> writer of novels into the poet category, for example. It makes sense
> to write a different review.
>
> At the same time, using form instead of content as the basis of
> categorizing the author awards gives us enough abstraction that we
> don't need to deal with author awards in subcategories, which would
> cut down on a sense of pernicious repetition. It's also just

> an already existing trend (see below).
>
> Now, it is true, there's a reason we split the stories into

> categories and subcategories--but we've got the story awards to deal
> with recognizing merits of specific content. Author awards are (I
> think) about assessing individual style and a more general sense of
> substance within certain, more abstract bounds than "Silmarillion:
> drabble cycle", for example. So we're not doing an injustice by
> comparing incomparables here.
>
> Would it be more competitive than the current scenario? Yes, it

> be. There would be more people competing for author awards under any
> form-based category than in any individual story category since
> *every* drabbler and *every* novelist would be elligible for an

> award for writing drabbles or novels, irrespective of whether they
> wrote the novel about Silm characters of Ring-war characters,

> they wrote the drabbles about hobbits or dragons.
>
> Also, by moving away from category/subcategory combinations

> used for author awards, we would have fewer categories to compete

> However, there are only three subcategories within any given author
> awards category anyway: general, drabble, and poetry, which already
> tends in the direction of recognizing *form*, but does not go all

> way and recognize that novels are a unique form or that vignettes

> a unique form, each requiring different skills to pull off. Those
> kinds of stories compete together under "general." So this would
> rectify that situation in a way by recognizing different skill

>
> Against the fear that this would be too cutthroat, it's much more
> competitive (and I think a fairer competition in some cases, where
> maybe only two poets make up an entire category/subcategory combo
> elligible for author awards, whereas a different c/s combo might pit
> twenty poets against each other) than being allowed only a single
> author review for any given author.
>
> So I think (I hope) this would meet all four of what I see as the
> major problems we currently have with author reviews and awards. I'm
> fairly certain that we could come up with a few more categories that
> wouldn't repeat the story award categories if desired (maybe an

> for characterization, for example, or splitting non-fiction into

> and research article since those do require totally different

> But the basic idea hopefully would be a way out of our current
> difficulties.
>
>
>
> Taking the above sketch as a possibility for reorganizing author
> reviews, and combining it with my request for a simpler user

> when it comes to writing those author reviews, I could see a page
> somewhat like this (and I hope yahoo doesn't destroy the formatting)
> to try and streamline things, make them clearer, and hopefully
> encourage more author reviewing because it would be less confusing:
>
>
> Author Name: Dwym the Evil Twyn
>
> Story Title Story Type Have I

>
> <link>Gimli's Gift</link> Short Story

>
> <link>Oops, I Sued It Again!</link> Short Story No
>
> _____________________________________
>
> Enter Author Review for Short Story: [text box]
>
>
> <link>Fear and Loathing Novel

> in the White City</link>
>
> ______________________________________
>
> Enter Author Review for Novel:[text box]
>
>
> <link>Grey</link> Drabble No
>
> <link>Purposive</link> Drabble No
>
> _____________________________________
>
> Enter Author Review for Drabble: [text box]
>
>
>
>
>
> Etc., etc., and alphabetically by review category (as I failed to

>
> This I am taking as a possible modification of the author's main

> on the website. It would give us every story the author has written,
> links to the story (so we can read it if we want to before writing

> author review), the category it is listed under *for the purposes of
> author reviews*, and a notice whether I've reviewed the story (and

> I have, a quick way to see what I'd said and so refresh my
> memory--best if opens in a new screen). It automatically breaks up

> stories into the appropriate groups and offers us an immediate
> opportunity to write an author review. It'd be easy to see in what
> categories we had already reviewed the author since they'd be right
> there. No fuss, no bother, no reloads.
>
> If we did revamp author pages this way, there'd have to be a more
> obvious pointer towards them so that people would actually go there

> review the author as an author, of course, but that's another issue
> that can be handled if something like this page revision were to go
> through. I'm mainly using it as an illustration of how to simplify

> process of reviewing authors and to show how the category change I'd
> proposed could be easily fitted into that revision.
>
> What do you all think?
>
> Dwim
>

> Message: 12
> Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 02:57:30 -0000
> From: "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> Happy New Year, everyone! Marta, great job running the post-mortem.

> --- 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)
>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@sbcglobal.net>
To: <MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 8:46 PM
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Author Review Blues


>I was disappointed to see no mention here of Dwym the Evil Twin's
> story, "The Great Adventure of Bingo Baggins and Trotter." ;)
>
> I like your idea, Dwim, though I think we would definitely want to
> look at adding some categories to supplement story forms, as you
> suggested...in addition to characterization, perhaps descriptive
> writing, dialogue, suspense, etc. It might even be fun to have
> author awards for things like "best opening line"...one of
> the most important elements of a story, IMO. It's usually what
> entices me to read a story--or not.

Oh my! I *really* like this: speaking to an author's strengths *as an
author*, and not simply within the confines of a single story. Forms would
be one way, but adding such things as characterization, dialogue,
descriptive writing, plotting, and so forth would add a whole new element to
voting for the author awards--it would increase the number of categories of
author awards from just drabble, poem, short story, vignette, novel and so
open it up to be more author awards that could be given (One of
Anaechoiriel's concerns being that only a few author awards would be
counter-productive.) and yet have them different enough from story awards to
make them far more interesting. And I would think an analysis of one's
strengths as a writer would be not only flattering, but also provide an
author with some valuable insight that doesn't always come in a story
review. ("Why, goodness, I had no idea people thought I was good at
dialogue!" or "Gee, after all my hard work, it's nice to know that readers
appreciate my plotting!" or "If they think I am that good at drabbles,
perhaps I should write more of them.")

Yes, I do indeed like *this* idea very much!

Dreamflower
(Barbara)


>
> Kathy (Inkling)
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "dwimmer_laik" <dwimmer_laik@y...>
> wrote:
>>
>> Ok, so with author reviews, we've got the problem of the Freds of
> the
>> world versus the Freditas, and the sense that author awards are
>> artificially fragmenting an author's work, encouraging meaningless
>> repetition of reviews which then results in bizarre rankings, where
>> someone wins an author award for "The Hobbit" drabbles on the basis
> of
>> work s/he did as a novelist in the Horror category and some humor
>> pieces. Also, it's not always clear how to distinguish the author
>> review from the story review, leading to questions about why we
> should
>> allow copying author reviews and not copying of story reviews.
>>
>> We need a compromise that gives us sensible author review
> categories that
>>
>> 1) do not seem artificially to fragment an author's work, resulting
> in
>> weird copy-pastes that result in even weirder rankings;
>>
>> 2) are distinct enough from story reviews that we don't just repeat
> or
>> extend story reviews;
>>
>> 3) are not so all-inclusive as to make competition absolutely
> cutthroat;
>>
>> 4) are organized in a manner that is less confusing all around,
>> thereby encouraging more people to actually review authors.
>>
>> What if we changed things up somewhat for author awards and looked
> at
>> *forms* of writing? Poetry, non-fiction, ficlet, short story,
> novella,
>> novel, drabble, drabble cycle: these are all things that authors
> would
>> have to select when filling out their story forms. So it's not like
>> we'd be making any executive decisions about how to classify an
>> author's work--the author has done it for us. That would be a big
>> benefit, requiring no extra work or forms for anyone.
>>
>> The other benefit would be that we consolidate groups of authors
>> across the story-awards genres and subgenres into logical categories
>> that are specific enough that we have some idea of how to compare
> the
>> authors. The form of their writing holds them together across the
>> divisions we'd imposed to judge stories against each other, so it
>> wouldn't work to just copy a review about an author's skill as a
>> writer of novels into the poet category, for example. It makes sense
>> to write a different review.
>>
>> At the same time, using form instead of content as the basis of
>> categorizing the author awards gives us enough abstraction that we
>> don't need to deal with author awards in subcategories, which would
>> cut down on a sense of pernicious repetition. It's also just
> extending
>> an already existing trend (see below).
>>
>> Now, it is true, there's a reason we split the stories into
> different
>> categories and subcategories--but we've got the story awards to deal
>> with recognizing merits of specific content. Author awards are (I
>> think) about assessing individual style and a more general sense of
>> substance within certain, more abstract bounds than "Silmarillion:
>> drabble cycle", for example. So we're not doing an injustice by
>> comparing incomparables here.
>>
>> Would it be more competitive than the current scenario? Yes, it
> would
>> be. There would be more people competing for author awards under any
>> form-based category than in any individual story category since
>> *every* drabbler and *every* novelist would be elligible for an
> author
>> award for writing drabbles or novels, irrespective of whether they
>> wrote the novel about Silm characters of Ring-war characters,
> whether
>> they wrote the drabbles about hobbits or dragons.
>>
>> Also, by moving away from category/subcategory combinations
> currently
>> used for author awards, we would have fewer categories to compete
> in.
>> However, there are only three subcategories within any given author
>> awards category anyway: general, drabble, and poetry, which already
>> tends in the direction of recognizing *form*, but does not go all
> the
>> way and recognize that novels are a unique form or that vignettes
> are
>> a unique form, each requiring different skills to pull off. Those
>> kinds of stories compete together under "general." So this would
>> rectify that situation in a way by recognizing different skill
> sets.
>>
>> Against the fear that this would be too cutthroat, it's much more
>> competitive (and I think a fairer competition in some cases, where
>> maybe only two poets make up an entire category/subcategory combo
>> elligible for author awards, whereas a different c/s combo might pit
>> twenty poets against each other) than being allowed only a single
>> author review for any given author.
>>
>> So I think (I hope) this would meet all four of what I see as the
>> major problems we currently have with author reviews and awards. I'm
>> fairly certain that we could come up with a few more categories that
>> wouldn't repeat the story award categories if desired (maybe an
> award
>> for characterization, for example, or splitting non-fiction into
> essay
>> and research article since those do require totally different
> skills).
>> But the basic idea hopefully would be a way out of our current
>> difficulties.
>>
>>
>>
>> Taking the above sketch as a possibility for reorganizing author
>> reviews, and combining it with my request for a simpler user
> interface
>> when it comes to writing those author reviews, I could see a page
>> somewhat like this (and I hope yahoo doesn't destroy the formatting)
>> to try and streamline things, make them clearer, and hopefully
>> encourage more author reviewing because it would be less confusing:
>>
>>
>> Author Name: Dwym the Evil Twyn
>>
>> Story Title Story Type Have I
> Reviewed?
>>
>> <link>Gimli's Gift</link> Short Story
> <link>Yes</link>
>>
>> <link>Oops, I Sued It Again!</link> Short Story No
>>
>> _____________________________________
>>
>> Enter Author Review for Short Story: [text box]
>>
>>
>> <link>Fear and Loathing Novel
> <link>Yes</link>
>> in the White City</link>
>>
>> ______________________________________
>>
>> Enter Author Review for Novel:[text box]
>>
>>
>> <link>Grey</link> Drabble No
>>
>> <link>Purposive</link> Drabble No
>>
>> _____________________________________
>>
>> Enter Author Review for Drabble: [text box]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Etc., etc., and alphabetically by review category (as I failed to
> do).
>>
>> This I am taking as a possible modification of the author's main
> page
>> on the website. It would give us every story the author has written,
>> links to the story (so we can read it if we want to before writing
> the
>> author review), the category it is listed under *for the purposes of
>> author reviews*, and a notice whether I've reviewed the story (and
> if
>> I have, a quick way to see what I'd said and so refresh my
>> memory--best if opens in a new screen). It automatically breaks up
> the
>> stories into the appropriate groups and offers us an immediate
>> opportunity to write an author review. It'd be easy to see in what
>> categories we had already reviewed the author since they'd be right
>> there. No fuss, no bother, no reloads.
>>
>> If we did revamp author pages this way, there'd have to be a more
>> obvious pointer towards them so that people would actually go there
> to
>> review the author as an author, of course, but that's another issue
>> that can be handled if something like this page revision were to go
>> through. I'm mainly using it as an illustration of how to simplify
> the
>> process of reviewing authors and to show how the category change I'd
>> proposed could be easily fitted into that revision.
>>
>> What do you all think?
>>
>> Dwim
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> Message: 13
> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 00:03:50 -0500
> From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> 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@yahoo.com> 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
>>
>>
>>
>

>> > ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@s...>> > I like your idea, Dwim, though

> > look at adding some categories to supplement story forms, as you
> > suggested...in addition to characterization, perhaps descriptive
> > writing, dialogue, suspense, etc. It might even be fun to have
> > author awards for things like "best opening line"...one of
> > the most important elements of a story, IMO. It's usually what
> > entices me to read a story--or not.
>
> Oh my! I *really like this: speaking to an author's strengths *as

> Yes, I do indeed like *this* idea very much!
> > Dreamflower
> (Barbara)

>
> >
> > Kathy (Inkling)
> >
> > --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "dwimmer_laik"

> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Ok, so with author reviews, we've got the problem of the Freds of
> > the
> >> world versus the Freditas, and the sense that author awards are
> >> artificially fragmenting an author's work, encouraging

> >> repetition of reviews which then results in bizarre rankings,

> >> someone wins an author award for "The Hobbit" drabbles on the

> > of
> >> work s/he did as a novelist in the Horror category and some humor
> >> pieces. Also, it's not always clear how to distinguish the author
> >> review from the story review, leading to questions about why we
> > should
> >> allow copying author reviews and not copying of story reviews.
> >>
> >> We need a compromise that gives us sensible author review
> > categories that
> >>
> >> 1) do not seem artificially to fragment an author's work,

> > in
> >> weird copy-pastes that result in even weirder rankings;
> >>
> >> 2) are distinct enough from story reviews that we don't just

> > or
> >> extend story reviews;
> >>
> >> 3) are not so all-inclusive as to make competition absolutely
> > cutthroat;
> >>
> >> 4) are organized in a manner that is less confusing all around,
> >> thereby encouraging more people to actually review authors.
> >>
> >> What if we changed things up somewhat for author awards and

> > at
> >> *forms* of writing? Poetry, non-fiction, ficlet, short story,
> > novella,
> >> novel, drabble, drabble cycle: these are all things that authors
> > would
> >> have to select when filling out their story forms. So it's not

> >> we'd be making any executive decisions about how to classify an
> >> author's work--the author has done it for us. That would be a big
> >> benefit, requiring no extra work or forms for anyone.
> >>
> >> The other benefit would be that we consolidate groups of authors
> >> across the story-awards genres and subgenres into logical

> >> that are specific enough that we have some idea of how to compare
> > the
> >> authors. The form of their writing holds them together across the
> >> divisions we'd imposed to judge stories against each other, so it
> >> wouldn't work to just copy a review about an author's skill as a
> >> writer of novels into the poet category, for example. It makes

> >> to write a different review.
> >>
> >> At the same time, using form instead of content as the basis of
> >> categorizing the author awards gives us enough abstraction that

> >> don't need to deal with author awards in subcategories, which

> >> cut down on a sense of pernicious repetition. It's also just
> > extending
> >> an already existing trend (see below).
> >>
> >> Now, it is true, there's a reason we split the stories into
> > different
> >> categories and subcategories--but we've got the story awards to

> >> with recognizing merits of specific content. Author awards are (I
> >> think) about assessing individual style and a more general sense

> >> substance within certain, more abstract bounds

> >> drabble cycle", for example. So we're not doing an injustice by
> >> comparing incomparables here.
> >>
> >> Would it be more competitive than the current scenario? Yes, it
> > would
> >> be. There would be more people competing for author awards under

> >> form-based category than in any individual story category since
> >> *every* drabbler and *every* novelist would be elligible for an
> > author
> >> award for writing drabbles or novels, irrespective of whether

> >> wrote the novel about Silm characters of Ring-war characters,
> > whether
> >> they wrote the drabbles about hobbits or dragons.
> >>
> >> Also, by moving away from category/subcategory combinations
> > currently
> >> used for author awards, we would have fewer categories to compete
> > in.
> >> However, there are only three subcategories within any given

> >> awards category anyway: general, drabble, and poetry, which

> >> tends in the direction of recognizing *form*, but does not go all
> > the
> >> way and recognize that novels are a unique form or that vignettes
> > are
> >> a unique form, each requiring different skills to pull off. Those
> >> kinds of stories compete together under "general." So this would
> >> rectify that situation in a way by recognizing different skill
> > sets.
> >>
> >> Against the fear that this would be too cutthroat, it's much more
> >> competitive (and I think a fairer competition in some cases,

> >> maybe only two poets make up an entire category/subcategory combo
> >> elligible for author awards, whereas a different c/s combo might

> >> twenty poets against each other) than being allowed only a single
> >> author review for any given author.
> >>
> >> So I think (I hope) this would meet all four of what I see as the
> >> major problems we currently have with author reviews and awards.

> >> fairly certain that we could come up with a few more categories

> >> wouldn't repeat the story award categories if desired (maybe an
> > award
> >> for characterization, for example, or splitting non-fiction into
> > essay
> >> and research article since those do require totally different
> > skills).
> >> But the basic idea hopefully would be a way out of our current
> >> difficulties.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Taking the above sketch as a possibility for reorganizing author
> >> reviews, and combining it with my request for a simpler user
> > interface
> >> when it comes to writing those author reviews, I could see a page
> >> somewhat like this (and I hope yahoo doesn't destroy the

> >> to try and streamline things, make them clearer, and hopefully
> >> encourage more author reviewing because it would be less

> >>
> >>
> >> Author Name: Dwym the Evil Twyn
> >>
> >> Story Title Story Type Have I
> > Reviewed?
> >>
> >> <link>Gimli's Gift</link> Short Story
> > <link>Yes</link>
> >>
> >> <link>Oops, I Sued It Again!</link> Short Story No
> >>
> >> _____________________________________
> >>
> >> Enter Author Review for Short Story: [text box]
> >>
> >>
> >> <link>Fear and Loathing Novel
> > <link>Yes</link>
> >> in the White City</link>
> >>
> >> ______________________________________
> >>
> >> Enter Author Review for Novel:[text box]
> >>
> >>
> >> <link>Grey</link> Drabble No
> >>
> >> <link>Purposive</link> Drabble No
> >>
> >> _____________________________________
> >>
> >> Enter Author Review for Drabble: [text box]
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Etc., etc., and alphabetically by review category (as I failed to
> > do).
> >>
> >> This I am taking as a possible modification of the author's main
> > page
> >> on the website. It would give us every story the author has

> >> links to the story (so we can read it if we want to before

> > the
> >> author review), the category it is listed under *for the

> >> author reviews*, and a notice whether I've reviewed the story

> > if
> >> I have, a quick way to see what I'd said and so refresh my
> >> memory--best if opens in a new screen). It automatically breaks

> > the
> >> stories into the appropriate groups and offers us an immediate
> >> opportunity to write an author review. It'd be easy to see in

> >> categories we had already reviewed the author since they'd be

> >> there. No fuss, no bother, no reloads.
> >>
> >> If we did revamp author pages this way, there'd have to be a more
> >> obvious pointer towards them so that people would actually go

> > to
> >> review the author as an author, of course, but that's another

> >> that can be handled if something like this page revision were to

> >> through. I'm mainly using it as an illustration of how to

> > the
> >> process of reviewing authors and to show how the category change

> >> proposed could be easily fitted into that revision.
> >>
> >> What do you all think?
> >>
> >> Dwim
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

> The problem is that whether it's pertinent is a judgment call, and

>
> CHARS --- POINTS
> 1-150 --- 1
> 151-300 --- 2
> 301-450 --- 3
> 451-600 --- 4
> 601+ --- 5
>
> I still think it's a little low, but not so much when you consider

> > Cheers,
> Marta

> Message: 14
> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 00:01:08 -0600
> From: Anthony Holder <aaholder@swbell.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
>
>>> 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
>
> <snip stats>

> 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.
>

> 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).
>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Holder" <aaholder@swbell.net>
To: <MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 11:47 PM
Subject: [MEFAwards] Author Award changes


> (By the way, I passed the PE exam, and am now a Licensed Professional
> Engineer in the State of Texas! I did very well on the exam, not that
> it really matters, because my license and the guy/gal that just
> squeaked by look exactly the same.)

Congratulations! That is a lot of work, and *you* know how well you did.
(And there are always *ways* to get info of that sort into a resume.)
Dreamflower

>
> -- Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
> >> What I *am* suggesting is that a person be able to enter a review
> >> for an author and have it automatically generate reviews with the
> >> same text in all other categories in which that author is
> >> entered.
> >> To give an example... let's say someone has the following
> >> nominations:
> >>
> >> - "The Trouble With Brandybucks" in "Hobbits : Fourth Age"
> >> - "Envinyatar" in "Drama : Drabble"
> >> - "A Dwarf Among Elves" in "LOTR : Lothlorien".
> >>
> >> This author is then entered in the following author categories.
> >>
> >> - Hobbits : General Authors
> >> - LOTR : General Authors
> >> - Drama : Drabble Authors
> >>
> >> Let's say I'm looking at the nominations for "Drama : Drabble". I
> >> see a listing for "Envinyatar", and by that drabble I see a link
> >> to
> >> vote on the story, and a second like to vote for the author. I
> >> click on the second link, and it takes me to a page where I can
> >> enter that vote. What I'm proposing is that we have a check-box
> >> that I could click, and whatever I enter for "Drama : Drabble
> >> Authors" is also entered as a vote for "Hobbits : General
> >> Authors" and "LOTR : General Authors".
>
> Okay, that clears things up. Thanks.
>

> Just my two cents for whatever the current economy deems that to be
> worth.

> I was disappointed to see no mention here of Dwym the Evil Twin's
> story, "The Great Adventure of Bingo Baggins and Trotter." ;)

> I like your idea, Dwim, though I think we would definitely want to
> look at adding some categories to supplement story forms, as you
> suggested...in addition to characterization, perhaps descriptive
> writing, dialogue, suspense, etc. It might even be fun to have
> author awards for things like "best opening line"...one of
> the most important elements of a story, IMO. It's usually what
> entices me to read a story--or not.

>
> I really like the suggestions on how to change the author awards, but...
>
> It does mean that I have a lot more work to do, if it is going to get
> done, and I'm not sure I have time to do that.

> I have MEFA2006 and another group (LLL of Texas) to support with
> websites this year, and you all are asking for quite a few changes.
> Hopefully, the LLL folks won't need too much, but I know that I have
> quite a bit to do for them as well, and a similar deadline. On top of
> that, I have a late February RL work deadline that may involve
> overtime.
>
> (By the way, I passed the PE exam, and am now a Licensed Professional
> Engineer in the State of Texas! I did very well on the exam, not that
> it really matters, because my license and the guy/gal that just
> squeaked by look exactly the same.)

>
> As far as point counting goes, you all have lots of good ideas, and as
> long as it's all based on math and simple if-then statements, I'm OK
> with it.
>
> For honorable mention, again it needs to be a specific mathematical
> formula, with some conditionals, and I can make it work.
>
> I guess I would say that you should get done soon, so I can tell you
> what is possible.

> I'll start looking at my list for other issues and compiling them into
> a more succinct to-do list for myself, and just leave specifics of
> Author awards off the list for now.

>>> I like your idea, Dwim, though I think we would definitely want

> suggested...in addition to characterization, perhaps descriptive >

>Exactly--think of all the technical skills that go into writing.

>
> (By the way, I passed the PE exam, and am now a Licensed

>
>

>
> (By the way, I passed the PE exam, and am now a Licensed

>
>

>
> I really like the suggestions on how to change the author awards,
> but...It does mean that I have a lot more work to do, if it is going
> to get done, and I'm not sure I have time to do that.

> (By the way, I passed the PE exam, and am now a Licensed Professional
> Engineer in the State of Texas!

> I guess I would say that you should get done soon, so I can tell you
> what is possible.

>
> I'm thinking a couple of things, and I know this is an area where
> I've put my foot in it in the past, so please read this as I'm
> treading lightly and mean NO OFFENSE to *anyone*.
>
> I do believe that writing demands a combination of skills, both
> emotional and technical, and author awards are the natural place to
> reward those. I would, personally, be happy to go nuts thinking up
> good ways to award authors technical and creative achievement
> buttons, - and would strongly support Inkling's and Dwim's
> suggestions above. - but also we need to remember that this is
> specifically a hobbyist fandom and love and professional excellence
> don't always go hand in hand. - that, often, striving for technical
> correctness simply causes stress rather than an improved story.

> I have a couple of suggestions to throw on the table - first with
> the comment that I'm not sure how much work any of this would be
> for Anthony.
>
> 1. my suggestion would be to have the authors automatically go
> into the forms categories when their story's nomination was
> accepted. epic, novel, novella, short story, vignette, drabble,
> poetry. These will be big categories, what about awarding more
> than three places -
> or like the story awards, award HMs to a percent of the overall
> category.

>
> 2. my other and/or semi-related suggestion is to have author
> nominations separate from the story nominations. This is where you
> could have categories on active dialogue, true-to-canon
> characterization, engaging original characterizations, style, plots
> & well-woven subplot, brilliant first line, satisfying ending, most
> surprising yet logical plot twist. - all of those sorts of
> things.
> plot act, character growth, most terrifying use of conflict. (#2
> would of course be limited to authors who had stories in the MEFAs)
>
> - so instead of having my #1 and #2 as cate and subcates of each
> other, they would all be main cates.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of rabidsamfan
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 2:15 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Re: points and various voting matters
>
> Me too. I think of drabbles as being much more closely
> related to poetry than general fiction, actually but that's
> another question.
>
> I'd far rather see a story review duplicated into an author
> review than multiple, identical author reviews. Since the
> two votes are going in different directions, why not?
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of dwimmer_laik
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 5:23 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MEFAwards] Author Review Blues

>
> What if we changed things up somewhat for author awards and looked at
> *forms* of writing? Poetry, non-fiction, ficlet, short story,
> novella, novel, drabble, drabble cycle: these are all things
> that authors would have to select when filling out their
> story forms. So it's not like we'd be making any executive
> decisions about how to classify an author's work--the author
> has done it for us. That would be a big benefit, requiring no
> extra work or forms for anyone.
>
> The other benefit would be that we consolidate groups of
> authors across the story-awards genres and subgenres into
> logical categories that are specific enough that we have some
> idea of how to compare the authors. The form of their writing
> holds them together across the divisions we'd imposed to
> judge stories against each other, so it wouldn't work to just
> copy a review about an author's skill as a writer of novels
> into the poet category, for example. It makes sense to write
> a different review.
>
> At the same time, using form instead of content as the basis
> of categorizing the author awards gives us enough abstraction
> that we don't need to deal with author awards in
> subcategories, which would cut down on a sense of pernicious
> repetition. It's also just extending an already existing
> trend (see below).

>

> Message: 15
> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 06:00:02 GMT
> From: "Laura" <thunderalaura@juno.com>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> "Marta Layton" <melayton@gmail.com> 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.
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Marta Layton
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 7:32 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Re: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> > Message: 10
> > Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 20:26:31 -0500
> > From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> > Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
> >
> > On 1/2/06, sulriel <Sulriel@htcomp.net> 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?
> >
>
> I don't want to make this an admin judgement call because if
> we do this, then it leaves the admins open to criticism.
> Whether a quote counts or not affects how many points a story
> gets which controls who wins -- and I don't want someone
> second-guessing the results. That's why for this I want a
> rule we can apply objectively and can point to as a reason
> for why we make a certain decision.
>
> Marta
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of sulriel
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 8:21 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Quotes
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@s...> wrote:
> >> Seems like the simplest rule--and I think this has already been
> > suggested--is to just say that ALL quotes, not matter what
> the source,
> > have to be inside blockquote tags.
> >
> > Kathy (Inkling)
>
>
> As the person who personally managed the quote/blockquote
> situation last year, I *highly* recommend that any and all
> quotes from any source must be blockquoted.
>
> It's a simple rule, easy to remember and allows for as much
> quotage as
> anyone wants to use.
>
>
> Sulriel
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of sulriel
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:01 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Author Review Blues
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, <aelfwina@c...> wrote:
> >> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@s...>> > I like your idea, Dwim, though
> I think we would definitely want to
> > > look at adding some categories to supplement story forms, as you
> > > suggested...in addition to characterization, perhaps descriptive
> > > writing, dialogue, suspense, etc. It might even be fun to have
> > > author awards for things like "best opening line"...one
> of the most
> > > important elements of a story, IMO. It's usually what
> entices me to
> > > read a story--or not.
> >
> > Oh my! I *really like this: speaking to an author's strengths *as
> an > author*, and not simply within the confines of a single story.
> Forms would > be one way, but adding such things as
> characterization, dialogue, > descriptive writing, plotting,
> and so forth would add a whole new element to > voting for
> the author awards--it would increase the number of categories
> of > author awards from just drabble, poem, short story,
> vignette, novel and so > open it up to be more author awards
> that could be given <<snipped>>
> > Yes, I do indeed like *this* idea very much!
> > > Dreamflower
> > (Barbara)
>
>
> I third this - wonderful idea!
>
> Sulriel
> >
> > >
> > > Kathy (Inkling)
> > >
> > > --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "dwimmer_laik"
> <dwimmer_laik@y...>
> > > wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Ok, so with author reviews, we've got the problem of the Freds of
> > > the
> > >> world versus the Freditas, and the sense that author awards are
> > >> artificially fragmenting an author's work, encouraging
> meaningless
> > >> repetition of reviews which then results in bizarre rankings,
> where
> > >> someone wins an author award for "The Hobbit" drabbles on the
> basis
> > > of
> > >> work s/he did as a novelist in the Horror category and
> some humor
> > >> pieces. Also, it's not always clear how to distinguish
> the author
> > >> review from the story review, leading to questions about why we
> > > should
> > >> allow copying author reviews and not copying of story reviews.
> > >>
> > >> We need a compromise that gives us sensible author review
> > > categories that
> > >>
> > >> 1) do not seem artificially to fragment an author's work,
> resulting
> > > in
> > >> weird copy-pastes that result in even weirder rankings;
> > >>
> > >> 2) are distinct enough from story reviews that we don't just
> repeat
> > > or
> > >> extend story reviews;
> > >>
> > >> 3) are not so all-inclusive as to make competition absolutely
> > > cutthroat;
> > >>
> > >> 4) are organized in a manner that is less confusing all around,
> > >> thereby encouraging more people to actually review authors.
> > >>
> > >> What if we changed things up somewhat for author awards and
> looked
> > > at
> > >> *forms* of writing? Poetry, non-fiction, ficlet, short story,
> > > novella,
> > >> novel, drabble, drabble cycle: these are all things that authors
> > > would
> > >> have to select when filling out their story forms. So it's not
> like
> > >> we'd be making any executive decisions about how to classify an
> > >> author's work--the author has done it for us. That would
> be a big
> > >> benefit, requiring no extra work or forms for anyone.
> > >>
> > >> The other benefit would be that we consolidate groups of authors
> > >> across the story-awards genres and subgenres into logical
> categories
> > >> that are specific enough that we have some idea of how to compare
> > > the
> > >> authors. The form of their writing holds them together
> across the
> > >> divisions we'd imposed to judge stories against each
> other, so it
> > >> wouldn't work to just copy a review about an author's skill as a
> > >> writer of novels into the poet category, for example. It makes
> sense
> > >> to write a different review.
> > >>
> > >> At the same time, using form instead of content as the basis of
> > >> categorizing the author awards gives us enough abstraction that
> we
> > >> don't need to deal with author awards in subcategories, which
> would
> > >> cut down on a sense of pernicious repetition. It's also just
> > > extending
> > >> an already existing trend (see below).
> > >>
> > >> Now, it is true, there's a reason we split the stories into
> > > different
> > >> categories and subcategories--but we've got the story awards to
> deal
> > >> with recognizing merits of specific content. Author awards are (I
> > >> think) about assessing individual style and a more general sense
> of
> > >> substance within certain, more abstract bounds
> than "Silmarillion:
> > >> drabble cycle", for example. So we're not doing an injustice by
> > >> comparing incomparables here.
> > >>
> > >> Would it be more competitive than the current scenario? Yes, it
> > > would
> > >> be. There would be more people competing for author awards under
> any
> > >> form-based category than in any individual story category since
> > >> *every* drabbler and *every* novelist would be elligible for an
> > > author
> > >> award for writing drabbles or novels, irrespective of whether
> they
> > >> wrote the novel about Silm characters of Ring-war characters,
> > > whether
> > >> they wrote the drabbles about hobbits or dragons.
> > >>
> > >> Also, by moving away from category/subcategory combinations
> > > currently
> > >> used for author awards, we would have fewer categories to compete
> > > in.
> > >> However, there are only three subcategories within any given
> author
> > >> awards category anyway: general, drabble, and poetry, which
> already
> > >> tends in the direction of recognizing *form*, but does not go all
> > > the
> > >> way and recognize that novels are a unique form or that vignettes
> > > are
> > >> a unique form, each requiring different skills to pull
> off. Those
> > >> kinds of stories compete together under "general." So this would
> > >> rectify that situation in a way by recognizing different skill
> > > sets.
> > >>
> > >> Against the fear that this would be too cutthroat, it's
> much more
> > >> competitive (and I think a fairer competition in some cases,
> where
> > >> maybe only two poets make up an entire
> category/subcategory combo
> > >> elligible for author awards, whereas a different c/s combo might
> pit
> > >> twenty poets against each other) than being allowed only
> a single
> > >> author review for any given author.
> > >>
> > >> So I think (I hope) this would meet all four of what I
> see as the
> > >> major problems we currently have with author reviews and awards.
> I'm
> > >> fairly certain that we could come up with a few more categories
> that
> > >> wouldn't repeat the story award categories if desired (maybe an
> > > award
> > >> for characterization, for example, or splitting non-fiction into
> > > essay
> > >> and research article since those do require totally different
> > > skills).
> > >> But the basic idea hopefully would be a way out of our current
> > >> difficulties.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Taking the above sketch as a possibility for reorganizing author
> > >> reviews, and combining it with my request for a simpler user
> > > interface
> > >> when it comes to writing those author reviews, I could
> see a page
> > >> somewhat like this (and I hope yahoo doesn't destroy the
> formatting)
> > >> to try and streamline things, make them clearer, and hopefully
> > >> encourage more author reviewing because it would be less
> confusing:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Author Name: Dwym the Evil Twyn
> > >>
> > >> Story Title Story Type Have I
> > > Reviewed?
> > >>
> > >> <link>Gimli's Gift</link> Short Story
> > > <link>Yes</link>
> > >>
> > >> <link>Oops, I Sued It Again!</link> Short Story No
> > >>
> > >> _____________________________________
> > >>
> > >> Enter Author Review for Short Story: [text box]
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> <link>Fear and Loathing Novel
> > > <link>Yes</link>
> > >> in the White City</link>
> > >>
> > >> ______________________________________
> > >>
> > >> Enter Author Review for Novel:[text box]
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> <link>Grey</link> Drabble No
> > >>
> > >> <link>Purposive</link> Drabble No
> > >>
> > >> _____________________________________
> > >>
> > >> Enter Author Review for Drabble: [text box]
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Etc., etc., and alphabetically by review category (as I failed to
> > > do).
> > >>
> > >> This I am taking as a possible modification of the author's main
> > > page
> > >> on the website. It would give us every story the author has
> written,
> > >> links to the story (so we can read it if we want to before
> writing
> > > the
> > >> author review), the category it is listed under *for the
> purposes of
> > >> author reviews*, and a notice whether I've reviewed the story
> (and
> > > if
> > >> I have, a quick way to see what I'd said and so refresh my
> > >> memory--best if opens in a new screen). It automatically breaks
> up
> > > the
> > >> stories into the appropriate groups and offers us an immediate
> > >> opportunity to write an author review. It'd be easy to see in
> what
> > >> categories we had already reviewed the author since they'd be
> right
> > >> there. No fuss, no bother, no reloads.
> > >>
> > >> If we did revamp author pages this way, there'd have to
> be a more
> > >> obvious pointer towards them so that people would actually go
> there
> > > to
> > >> review the author as an author, of course, but that's another
> issue
> > >> that can be handled if something like this page revision were to
> go
> > >> through. I'm mainly using it as an illustration of how to
> simplify
> > > the
> > >> process of reviewing authors and to show how the category change
> I'd
> > >> proposed could be easily fitted into that revision.
> > >>
> > >> What do you all think?
> > >>
> > >> Dwim
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Yahoo! Groups Links
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of sulriel
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:04 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: points and various voting matters
> (Rabidsamfan)
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
> > The problem is that whether it's pertinent is a judgment call, and
> so > open to critique. I think things will run smoother all
> around if we > just don't count any quotes. Actually, if we
> did that, it would make me > feel more friendly to Kathy's
> point system of
> >
> > CHARS --- POINTS
> > 1-150 --- 1
> > 151-300 --- 2
> > 301-450 --- 3
> > 451-600 --- 4
> > 601+ --- 5
> >
> > I still think it's a little low, but not so much when you consider
> it > wouldn't be counting any quotes.
> > > Cheers,
> > Marta
>
>
> I think this is a reasonable point spread and division,
> especially if, as you say, *all* quotes from any source are
> blockquoted.
>
> Sulriel
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> Message: 18
> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 09:13:40 GMT
> From: "Laura" <thunderalaura@juno.com>
> Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> -- "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@sbcglobal.net> 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.
>
>