Yahoo Forum Archive

Congrats to shemyaza1, who has finished her WIP

#235 "Dark Power Arising"

I have moved it into a subcategory where it can compete against
finished stories. It was previously in Races: Cross-Cultural:
Incomplete, but can now be found in Races: Cross-Cultural: General.

Marta

Hey guys,

There's just over a month left in the 2010 MEFAs. Voting ends December
15. So it's not too late to get involved or to get back into the
groove of reviewing if you were already doing that but have gotten out
of practice.

To help with that, today I'd like to talk about two ways to find stories.

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MAIN CATEGORIES AND SUBCATEGORIES - WHAT ARE THEY?

When a story is nominated the author selects three main category
groups. These are broad types of genre, race, or time period. For
instance, Romance or Hobbits. Volunteers then place it in one of the
three choices, and further split up the main category into
subcategories.

Subcategories make sure that only the same type of story compete with
each other (WIP with WIP, drabble with drabble, etc.). We then
separate those groups further, based on location, subgenre, characters
involved, and other similar elements. So for instance you might see a
subcategory like "Genres: Romance: With Faramir" or "Times: Mid-Third
Age: Shire Drabbles." If it doesn't contain the word "Incomplete,"
"Poetry," or "Drabble," then the pieces are all finished, full-length
stories.

It's the subcategory authors win. Subcategories are roughly the same
size, whereas main categories can vary wildly. Think about how many
stories you see at an archive about Dwarves, versus about Elves or
Hobbits. But main categories are important, too. They are important to
authors because they control what subcategory an author ends up in,
but also they matter to readers. Our website lets you pull up all the
stories that are actually competing in a main category, or where the
author selected that main category as one of his or her options. So do
you want to find all the stories set during the Ring War? Or all the
stories about Villains? The main category choices can help you do
that.

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HOW TO FIND STORIES BY SUBCATEGORY OR MAIN CATEGORY

1. Log in to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/
2. Click the "Stories" link at the top of the page.
3. Click the "Show Filter" link if it isn't already displayed.
4. Click the "Clear All Filters" button.

--- To find all the stories competing in a certain main category:
5. Select the main category you want from that menu.
6. Click "Display Selected Nominations."

--- To find all the stories competing in a certain sub-category:
5. Select the main category you want from that menu.
6. Click "Display Selected Nominations."
7. Select the subcategory you want from that menu.
8. Click "Display Selected Nominations" again.

--- To find all the stories that selected a main category, wherever
they ended up competing:
5. Select that choice from the "Genres, Races, Time Periods" menu.
6. Click "Display Selected Nominations."

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WHAT ARE WISH AND SKIP LISTS

The wish lists let you keep track of stories you want to read later.
The skip list lets you tell the website not to display a certain story
to you again unless you specifically ask for it. This is helpful for
those reviewers who want to focus on stories they haven't considered
yet. (Sometimes you just aren't interested in a certain type of
story.)

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HOW DO THE WISH AND SKIP LISTS AFFECT WHAT STORIES I SEE?
HOW CAN I VIEW MY WISH OR SKIP LIST?

Stories on your wish lists show up on the main story list as well. The
wish list simply lets you see *just* those stories if you choose to.
However, skipped stories aren't displayed on most pages unless you
specifically tell the website to show them.

To view your wish list:
1. Log in to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/
2. Click the "Stories" link at the top of the page.
3. Click the "Show Filter" link if it isn't already displayed.
4. Click the "Clear All Filters" button.
5. Select "Wish" from the Review Status list.
6. Click "Display Selected Nominations."

To view skipped stories:

1. Log in to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/
2. Click the "Stories" link at the top of the page.
3. Click the "Show Filter" link if it isn't already displayed.
4. Click the "Clear All Filters" button.
5. Select "Wish" from the Review Status list.
6. Click "Display Selected Nominations."

("Ignore Review Status" will bring up all stories, including skipped
and non-skipped ones.)

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HOW DO I ADD A STORY TO MY WISH OR SKIP LIST?

1. Log in to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/
2. Click the "Stories" link at the top of the page.
3. Find your way to the story you want to wish-list or skip.
4. Click the "Wish" or "Skip" link on the right side of the page.

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P.S. - Annmarwalk is posting reviews to [mefas] LJ comm and
[mefa-reviews] Yahoo group. Join either place to receive the reviews
on your LJ friends list or in your email box.

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Happy reviewing,

Marta (MEFA Admin.)

Hey guys,

Voting for the 2010 MEFAs ends on December 15, just under a month away. That
of course means that we'll be announcing the winners in late December. But
what exactly does it mean to win the MEFAs? People vote by leaving reviews
for stories - is thee some super-sekrit formula we use to quantify those
reviews? This week I want to talk about just those kind of questions.

HOW DO YOU CONVERT REVIEWS TO POINTS?

We don't really look at the *quality* of the review or how glowing the
praise was for the story it was writing about. (Purple prose does not get
you extra points!) Rather, we look just at the length of the review. The
idea is that longer reviews take more time and effort to write than shorter
rviews, and they require more thought about the story in question just
because you have to comment about more things about the story.

Our website calculates how many characters are in a review. It skips over
space and certain odd punctuation marks and diacriticals (essentially for
technical reasons), and also doesn't count quotes placed between [square
brackets]. But pretty much everything else is tallied up. We then assign a
point value using the length of the review:

1 pt = 1-75 chars
2 pts = 76-150 chars
3 pts = 151-300 chars
4 pts = 301-450 chars
5 pts = 451-600 chars
6 pts = 601-750 chars
7 pts = 751-850 chars
8 pts = 851-925 chars
9 pts = 926-1000 chars
10 pts = 1001 chars or longer

Obviously, this method disregards what a reviewer is actually saying about a
story. If you are criticizing a story, those words count just the same as if
you are singing its praise. But I think that's better than any other
approach I can think of. You don't want some volunteer coming along
afterward and deciding how complementary your review is, even if it was
feasible. (Which it isn't!) The only other option is to have reviewers rank
stories on a scale of 1-10, and that would take the focus away from
reviewing, and would also make the MEFAs into much more of a popularity
contest.

That doesn't mean the MEFA set-up is hopelessly flawed or anything. I think
it's pretty good, actually. Just like everything else in life, there are
strengths and weaknesses to this approach, and I hope understanding them
will help you see what MEFA scores mean.




MAIN CATEGORIES VS. SUB-CATEGORIES - WHICH DO PEOPLE WIN?

You do *not* win a main category. There is no such thing as winning first
place in Drama. Rather, each category is broken down into a set of
subcategories, sized 6-13 entries, and you win *their.*

Sometimes a smaller category will only have one subcategory, so in that
sense someone may win a certain award out of all the pieces competing in
Non-Fiction. Or Dwarves, or Mystery, or whatever. But in those cases, the
person who wins those groups isn't getting a higher honor than someone who
wins a subcategory in a larger main category. It just so happens that there
are less stories competing in Mystery than in Drama, so there is no need to
split Mystery up like there is Drama.

Awards are handed out at the sub-category level.




HOW WINNERS ARE CALCULATED

1. Each time you review a story, the website gives your review a points
value, and connects that point value to a particular story.
2. At the end of the awards we add up the point values for each of the
stories (skipping over the points for draft reviews; those don't count).
3. We then look at all the stories in a certain subcategory:

--- (i) The highest-ranking story gets first place.
--- (ii) The second highest-ranking gets second place.
--- (iii) The third highest-ranking gets third place.

If two stories have the same number of points:

--- (a) We look first at the number of votes received. If one story got
votes from three people, and another from two, then then story with more
votes wins.

--- (b) We then look at the characters entered. Remember, each vote has a
number of counted characters, which is then converted into a point value. If
a story got longer reviews than another with the same number o points, the
one with longer reviews wins.

If none of those breaks the tie, then we give an award to both stories. And
we don't skip the next place. (So you may have two second-place stories, and
another third-place story. That's never happened, but it's a theoretical
possibility.



WHAT ABOUT HONORABLE MENTIONS?

We recognize the top three stories in each subcategory. In a six-story
subcategory that's 50% of the stories, but in a thirteen-story subcategory
that's only 23%. To make up the difference we give HMs in the larger
subcategories. Essentially, we give an HM to any story that ranked in the
top half of the subcategory but didn't also get a first, second, or third
place. That usually means:

7-8 stories ==> 3 places + 1 HM
9-10 stories ==> 3 places + 2 HM
11-12 stories ==> 3 places + 3 HM
13 stories==> 3 places + 4 HM



WHAT DO THE WINNERS GET?

Like most things in fandom, the winners just get recognition. The results
will be posted many different places:

--- (a) on the official voting website, http://www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/,
until the next year begins
--- (b) on the website http://www.mefawards.net/mefa-archive/, after that.
--- (c) on the [MEFAwards] Yahoo group and [mefas] LJ community.

Anyone whose story won a place or an honorable mention will also get a nice
banner that they can display anywhere that allows graphics, so they can
share the good news. All authors also get reviews submitted as votes,
whether they actually win a subcategory or not. I also hope that authors
will have picked up some new readers through the awards, even if they didn't
actually win.



P.S. - Don't forget, annmarwalk is posting reviews to [mefa-reviews] and
[mefas] LJ. Follow her there to get the reviews in your inbox.

Marta


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