Yahoo Forum Archive

Hey guys,

As you may have noticed, voting for the 2009 MEFAs ended a little while
ago. As always, the results continue to be impressive, with over 5,800
reviews for 742 stories! It's an incredible amount of effort by so many
people for so much of the year, and it makes me very happy to know how
much fannish love gets shared through these awards and how much pleasure
authors received from the reviews they get.

This post rounds up a some topics where a few words might be helpful
although, like Bilbo, "I shall not keep you long." (Although, unlike
Bilbo, I'm not planning to disappear in dramatic fashion.)

RESULTS

The authors who placed or received an honorable mention will be informed
of their results by private email to the address registered at our
website. You may want to check your spam mail box; the emails will come
from mefasupportATgmailDOTcom.

Full results will be available on the voting website at just after
midnight on Monday 4th January, and will also be posted here soon after
that.

REVIEWS

Annmarwalk will continue posting reviews in several batches a day at the
mefas LJ so that the many reviews submitted near the end of the awards
are all posted. Do read them if you're interested, because it's always
fun to see what other people thought of a story.

You can also view all of the reviews at the voting website,
http://www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/. Just log in and click "Reviews" at
the top of the site.

BANNERS

We would like to give winning authors a banner of their choice. You can
find the banners at our photobucket account at
http://www.photobucket.com/mefa09w, password: aelfwine.

This year, we have two kinds of banners

1) We have a set of pre-made banners for each place (First, Second,
Third and Honorable Mention) in each subcategory (such as Times: Post
Ring War and Beyond: General). You can use these immediately, either by
linking directly to the banner at the MEFA photobucket or by downloading
the banner and then uploading it to your usual image hosting site. Use
the [cat] tags listed down the left hand side of the page to help you
find the banners for each subcategory.

2) We have general winners banners that have space to be customized with
the place and subcategory for your story. Use the character [ch], format
[fm], miscellaneous [ms], place [pl], race [rc] and times [tp] tags to
find banners that suit your story, or browse all of a particular
artist's banners by using the [ar] tag.

Authors may download and customize banners themselves (or ask a friend
to do so!) or may ask one of the volunteers who've kindly agreed to help
to customize it for them. To make a request to have a banner customized,
please go to the post at the mefas lj at
http://community.livejournal.com/mefas/174466.html and follow the
directions in the post. Please follow the directions *exactly*, in order
to make the task as easy as possible for our customizers, who are very
generously providing their time to help with this part of the awards.

Some of our artists are also willing to customize the nomination banners
they made to create winners bannerssee the post at the mefas lj for
details of which artists are making this offer and where you can find
their banners.

By the way, we could always do with more customizers to share the load
if anyone else would like to volunteer!

SUGGESTIONS FOR 2010

Every year at the end of the awards we have held what's known as a
post-mortem, where participants can make suggestions. I'll be posting
details of how we're going to run this year's post-mortem in a couple of
days. In the mean time, you can start thinking about if there are any
areas of the awards that you think could be improved.

THANKS

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has participated so fully in these
awards. Authors, thank you for sharing your work with us. Reviewers, I
really appreciate your investment of time. Volunteers deserve our
special gratitude; many deserve a great deal more than that, but
unfortunately gratitude is all I have to offer.

In particular, thank you to:

--- Marta for the incredible amount of work she puts in over the course
of each year to make the awards happen and make sure they run smoothly.
Having stepped in to help her out with the end of the awards this year,
I cannot believe how much she does, while making it all seem so effortless.

--- Elliska, for approving and processing new members.
--- Aranel, for sharing managing the technical end of our website with me.
--- Radbooks and Inkling, for their invaluable advice and help on
special projects as they came up

--- Annmarwalk for posting the reviews at the MEFAwards Yahoo group and
mefas LJ - EVERY DAY
--- Elea24 for helping to forward on author responses to their reviewers

--- Nieriel Raina for coordinating banners with wonderful efficiency; it
was a great relief to know that such a complex part of the awards was in
good hands, allowing me to concentrate on other aspects
--- The banner creators: Cactuskim, Elea24, Elena Tiriel, Elleth, Nath,
Nieriel Raina, red lasbelin and Viv
--- The banner customizers: Elena Tiriel, Elleth, Nath, Nieriel Raina
and red lasbelin

I also want to give particular thanks to Nieriel Raina and Elleth, who
between them created all the pre-made banners that winning authors can
use immediately. That was a huge task that they carried out at very
short notice, and I know it's something many authors will very much
appreciate.

These are just the people who have volunteered extensively since
categorization. For a full list of all the volunteers, please see
http://mefawards.net/MEFA2009/index.php?page=FAQvolunteers

And, finally, a big *thank you* to all the MEFA members for their
participation and for making the awards what they are.

Tanaqui
The MEFA Admin Team