Yahoo Forum Archive

Hey guys,

*rushes in, out of breath*

If you have been to the MEFA website in the last two hours you ay have
noticed that your links to nominate stories are gone. While North/South
Americans, Australians, Asians, and the like may still have the calendar
turned to June 30, according to GMT we have passed into July 1, which
means the end of nominations.

*throws confetti*

Great work, guys! As of right now there are exactly 750 nominations, 528
of which are 100% ready to compete. (The status "nomination finalized"
in MEFA parlance.) Over the next week, hopefully we will see a lot of
those finalized. Those nominations that aren't finalized will be
withdrawn so by about July 7, you can be reasonably sure that every
piece on our website will be competing in the awards.

But you don't have to wait until next week. The MEFA website tells you
how much progress an author has made toward accepting the nomination. Go
to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/ and click the "Stories" link at the top
of the page. Now look on the right side of your screen - you will see
things like "Nomination Finalized," "Email sent to Author," etc. Any
story with the status "Nomination Finalized" is 100% ready to go and
will compete in this year's awards. Why don't you try to review one
"Nomination Finalized" story this week?

I want to take the opportunity to thank some very special volunteers who
helped out during nominations.

* Tanaqui, our technical support volunteer, not only developed many
useful features that made nominations easier, she also handled errors
people came up with. Aranel Took pitched in admirably as well whenever
she was needed.

* Elliska has set up member accounts, putting in the legwork to make
sure members don't already have an account on the website. This is the
one area of the awards that I really take for granted, because Elliska
does such a great job making it run smoothly. And this year was far from
an exception.

* PipMer is our one-woman welcome wagon. As welcome manager she contacts
every new member and answers any questions they have. That's a lot of
emails, and I think it helps a lot.

* Speaking of lots of emails and questions, I really can't thank all the
liaisons enough. This year the liaisons are Agape4gondor,
Aranelgoldenflower, Brindlemom2, Cathleen, Dreamflower, Dwimordene,
Elea24, Elliska, Fiondil, Foxrafer, Inkling, Linaewen, and Nancy Brooke.
They each worked (and are still working) with nominated authors to get
their nominations ready for the competition. This is an incredibly time-
and energy-intensive way of helping out, but they did it admirably.

* Nieriel Raina has taken on the job of organizing this year's banners.
And there are some beauties! Check out www.photobucket.com/mefa09n (pwd:
celebrimbor), even if you aren't a nominated author, just to check out
all the shinies our banner artists have created. Thanks to Cactuskim,
Elea24, Elena Tiriel, Elleth, Nath, Nieriel Raina, red lasbelin, and Viv
for making banners and buttons.

* This year's rating panel is comprised of Annmarwalk, Oshun, Sulriel,
and Raksha. They have read many stories, quickly, and gave their opinion
on what rating was appropriate -- even when the material was not their
cup of Earl Grey.

* Dawn Felagund and Larner have taken on the task of making MEFA
announcements every week, telling you how to use site features. There
have been some very informative posts so far, and more is yet to come.

* Our promoters have talked up the awards across the intarwebz. Hats off
to Agape4gondor, Alassante, Annmarwalk, Aranel Took, Branwyn,
Brindlemom2, Cathleen, Dawn Felagund, Dreamflower, Dwimordene, Ellie,
Inkling, Larner, Nancy Brooke, Nieriel Raina and Obsidianj.

And I'm sure I'm leaving some people off. Obviously lots of people have
worked very hard to make the MEFAs happen. Thanks, one and all for all
your hard work.

And thank *you*, everyone who nominated a story or accepted a nomination
for one of their own stories. We wouldn't be here without you. :-)

Marta
(MEFA Admin.)

PS - Promoters, please hold off on forwarding this message. I'm going to
write up a special announcement for you to pass along.

Thanks to all of you that worked so hard - including you Marta since you don't pat yourself on the back. =)

I'm assuming that since they are not all finalized yet, the categories we'll be competing in haven't been set yet? Or have they?

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta <marta.fandom@...> wrote:
>
> Hey guys,
>
> *rushes in, out of breath*
>
> If you have been to the MEFA website in the last two hours you ay have
> noticed that your links to nominate stories are gone. While North/South
> Americans, Australians, Asians, and the like may still have the calendar
> turned to June 30, according to GMT we have passed into July 1, which
> means the end of nominations.
>
> *throws confetti*
>
> Great work, guys! As of right now there are exactly 750 nominations, 528
> of which are 100% ready to compete. (The status "nomination finalized"
> in MEFA parlance.) Over the next week, hopefully we will see a lot of
> those finalized. Those nominations that aren't finalized will be
> withdrawn so by about July 7, you can be reasonably sure that every
> piece on our website will be competing in the awards.
>
> But you don't have to wait until next week. The MEFA website tells you
> how much progress an author has made toward accepting the nomination. Go
> to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/ and click the "Stories" link at the top
> of the page. Now look on the right side of your screen - you will see
> things like "Nomination Finalized," "Email sent to Author," etc. Any
> story with the status "Nomination Finalized" is 100% ready to go and
> will compete in this year's awards. Why don't you try to review one
> "Nomination Finalized" story this week?
>
> I want to take the opportunity to thank some very special volunteers who
> helped out during nominations.
>
> * Tanaqui, our technical support volunteer, not only developed many
> useful features that made nominations easier, she also handled errors
> people came up with. Aranel Took pitched in admirably as well whenever
> she was needed.
>
> * Elliska has set up member accounts, putting in the legwork to make
> sure members don't already have an account on the website. This is the
> one area of the awards that I really take for granted, because Elliska
> does such a great job making it run smoothly. And this year was far from
> an exception.
>
> * PipMer is our one-woman welcome wagon. As welcome manager she contacts
> every new member and answers any questions they have. That's a lot of
> emails, and I think it helps a lot.
>
> * Speaking of lots of emails and questions, I really can't thank all the
> liaisons enough. This year the liaisons are Agape4gondor,
> Aranelgoldenflower, Brindlemom2, Cathleen, Dreamflower, Dwimordene,
> Elea24, Elliska, Fiondil, Foxrafer, Inkling, Linaewen, and Nancy Brooke.
> They each worked (and are still working) with nominated authors to get
> their nominations ready for the competition. This is an incredibly time-
> and energy-intensive way of helping out, but they did it admirably.
>
> * Nieriel Raina has taken on the job of organizing this year's banners.
> And there are some beauties! Check out www.photobucket.com/mefa09n (pwd:
> celebrimbor), even if you aren't a nominated author, just to check out
> all the shinies our banner artists have created. Thanks to Cactuskim,
> Elea24, Elena Tiriel, Elleth, Nath, Nieriel Raina, red lasbelin, and Viv
> for making banners and buttons.
>
> * This year's rating panel is comprised of Annmarwalk, Oshun, Sulriel,
> and Raksha. They have read many stories, quickly, and gave their opinion
> on what rating was appropriate -- even when the material was not their
> cup of Earl Grey.
>
> * Dawn Felagund and Larner have taken on the task of making MEFA
> announcements every week, telling you how to use site features. There
> have been some very informative posts so far, and more is yet to come.
>
> * Our promoters have talked up the awards across the intarwebz. Hats off
> to Agape4gondor, Alassante, Annmarwalk, Aranel Took, Branwyn,
> Brindlemom2, Cathleen, Dawn Felagund, Dreamflower, Dwimordene, Ellie,
> Inkling, Larner, Nancy Brooke, Nieriel Raina and Obsidianj.
>
> And I'm sure I'm leaving some people off. Obviously lots of people have
> worked very hard to make the MEFAs happen. Thanks, one and all for all
> your hard work.
>
> And thank *you*, everyone who nominated a story or accepted a nomination
> for one of their own stories. We wouldn't be here without you. :-)
>
> Marta
> (MEFA Admin.)
>
> PS - Promoters, please hold off on forwarding this message. I'm going to
> write up a special announcement for you to pass along.
>

After all, Marta, you've been working at this harder than anyone else. Thank
you so!
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large

"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." LOTR

"Don't go where I can't follow."

Hiya Alassante,

> Thanks to all of you that worked so hard - including you Marta since you
> don't pat yourself on the back. =)
>

Well, it feels weird congratulating myself! And I think because my name
is on all the announcements I get more thanks than a lot of people do -
and some of those people work very hard indeed. So I want to make sure
they are recognized for all their work.

> I'm assuming that since they are not all finalized yet, the categories
> we'll be competing in haven't been set yet? Or have they?
>

Categorization takes a bit of time, because it's not an automatic thing.
After nominations are finished off on July 7, a group of us will start
sorting them into categories and subcategories. We aim to start posting
check-ballots by the last week of July. Check ballots are posts to this
group listing what stories will be in what subcategories. At that point
authors are welcome to point out that we've made a mistake - that they
selected Humor but the story was put into Horror by accident, or that
they didn't select a certain location, that kind of thing. We usually
only move stories around in case a mistake was made, not because authors
see a subcategory they think would be a better fit. (Often in the larger
categories there is more than one appropriate subcategory a story could
get put into. Which subcat it's actually put into has to do with a lot
of factors to do with *all* the stories in that subcategory, not just an
author's individual story.)

For those new to the awards: Categories are what you select when filling
out your form. Romance, Ring War, Elves, etc. We break categories into
groups of 5-13 stories based on the story content (characters, places,
story type, etc.), and these groups are called *sub*categories. That's
where you'll actually be competing. I think of it kind of like heats in
a race. There may be lots of runners, but only so many can run at one
time, and the first place will be the one *of that heat* that finishes
first. And so on. The categorizers (Inkling, Radbooks, Elliska, and
myself) look at the story forms and sort all the nominations into an
appropriate subcategory, and that takes a few weeks.

Anyway, to answer your question: No, the categorizations aren't
available quite yet. Preliminary versions will be posted here in the
last week of July, and the final version will be available on the
website starting in August. But you can check out the category choices
other people selected. So if you like you can start to look at the other
stories that selected your same first-choice category, to see what
you're likely to compete against.

Marta

Thanks, Larner. I do appreciate hearing it. :-)

Marta

Bonnie L. Sherrell wrote:

>
>
>
> After all, Marta, you've been working at this harder than anyone else. Thank
> you so!
> Bonnie L. Sherrell
> Teacher at Large
>