Yahoo Forum Archive

Hey guys,

Periodically during the awards, I or another volunteer will make an
"educational" post - explaining something about the awards or the website.
The goal is to help you see how to use our website better so you can find
stories you like - helping you spend more times reviewing stories and less
time figuring out how to do things. I hope you find them helpful.

This week I want to talk about the "life cycle" of a review - what happens
after it is nominated, until it is either withdrawn or finalized. There are
two types of nominations: stories where the nominator is the author
(self-nominations) and story where the author and nominator are different
people. Let's start with the second case.

Let's say that Jack wants to nominate a story of Jill's. If Jack is a member
of the MEFAwards Yahoo group he will be allowed to nominate twenty pieces
every year. The first thing he should do is make sure Jill's story hasn't
been nominated already, by checking

--- www.mefawards.net/mefa-arhcive/ - for past years' nominations

--- www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/index.php?page=storiesBrowse - for this
year's nominations

Once he's seen that someone else hasn't already nominate it, Jack should
click the "Nominate" link at the top of the screen. He'll enter the
information for the nomination and click the "Submit" button at the bottom
of the form. And the website will tell him that the nomination is submitted.
Jack is now done with his part. He can go ahead and enter a vote for Jill's
story, or he can enter other nominations (or vote for other stories). But
what happens with the nomination he's just made.

Jill, like every author, is assigned a liaison. That's a volunteer who
serves as a sort of tour guide for nominated authors, answering any
questions they have and helping them understand the forms they have to fill
out to compete. Jill's liaison will look over the information Jack entered
and make sure that the story is eligible. If it isn't, Jill's liaison will
withdraw it. If it is, Jill's liaison will send Jill an email, giving her
some basic information about the awards and telling her what she needs to do
to accept her liaison.

Once Jill's liaison emails Jill, the story's status will change. The story's
status is visible on our list of nominations (just click Stories at the top
of every page), on the right side of the screen. "Nomination Submitted by
Author" means you've entered the nomination but the liaison hasn't yet
looked at it; "Email sent to Author" means the liaison has looked it over
and sent an email to the author.)

(If Jill is a new author, she should also be sent her password in a separate
email. This happens the first time an author is nominated each year, unless
that author is also a member of the MEFAwards Yahoo group; in that case last
year's password will still work.)

Now the ball is in Jill's court. Jill should log in and begin work on her
form. To do this she needs to

1. Log in to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/

2. Click the "View your stories that have been nominated" link.

3. Click the "Edit Data" link below the story you want to work on.

Authors can fill out the complete form in one sitting, or they can save
their work and come back to it. Authors should change the status to either
"Author has begun but not finished form" if they still have more work to do,
or "Author satisfied with form" if they're done. They can save their work
using the "Save form without Error Checking" button, or if they want the
website to check their work, they can use the "Submit Changes to Form"
button. (This may seem complicated, but it makes more sense if you're an
author actually looking at the form.)

(Last year, at this point Jill would have emailed her liaison. Jill still
can, if she wants! But she should also check a box saying she's done with
this form, so that's clear to her liaison; the emailing is now optional.)

Anyway - when Jill is finished describing her story, she should change the
status to "Author satisfied with form." This is the liaison's cue to check
over the form to make sure everything is correct. The liaison will read
things over and, if she doesn't find anything that needs changing, she will
change the status to "Nomination approved by liaison." That's *my* cue to
give it a final once-over. When both the liaison and I are satisfied with
the form, I make the status "Nomination Finalized." That means it's 100%
ready to compete.

If you're not the author, you can still see all these statuses on the right
side of the screen, on our stories list. This can help you see how likely a
story is ready to compete. If you're like me, you want to review as many
stories as possible. So you may want to go ahead and get started reviewing -
but you may also want to stick with stories that will probably end up
competing. If the story has statuses like

Author has begun but not finished form
Author has finished form
Nomination approved by liaison
Nomination Finalized

that usually means the author has taken some steps towards getting ready to
compete. They know they've been nominated and are working on it. With the
first status listed above, the information listed may be incomplete or
incorrect; the further down you get on the list, the more "set" the
information is, and the more likely it is that they'll compete.

Authors, you may want to periodically check the status of your nominations.
This is a good way to see whether you may have missed an email from your
liaison. If you think that your form is done but it has the status "Author
has begun but not finished form," this may mean that your liaison or I
caught some mistake that needs fixing. Your liaison may not have had a
chance to email you yet, or they may have emailed you and the email never
arrived for some reason. In either case, if the status isn't what you
expect, you should probably check in with your liaison, especially as we get
closer to the end of nominations.

Btw, you may occasionally see some other statuses:

--- "Author replied but has not begun form" - Jill knows she was nominated,
but just hasn't had time to begin her story form.

--- "No response from author in 1 week" - Jill's liaison is having a hard
time getting in touch; we're not sure whether Jill knows she's been
nominated or not.

--- "Liaison working with nominator to contact hard-to-reach author" -
Ditto.

--- "Liaison unable to contact author" - Ditto.

**********************************

Self-nominations basically follow the same steps, but in a slightly
different order. In brief: Say Jack wanted to nominate a story of his own.
Then

1. Jack would log in to the www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/ website.

2. Jack would check that someone else hadn't already nominated the story.

3. Jack would click the "Self-Nominate" form. He would fill it out as
completely as possible and either

--- a. select "Author has begun but not finished form" and click "Save Form
Without Error Checking," if he needs to finish it later.

--- b. select "Author satisfied with form" and click "Submit completed
form," if he's done.

4. When he selects "Author satisfied with form," the liaison will look over
it.

5. If there aren't any problems, Jack's liaison will pass the story along
to me, for the final check.

6. If I agree that there aren't any problems, I will finalize the
nomination.

The big change is, since the nominator is also the author, most of the work
of describing the story is done by the author/nominator, before the liaison
ever looks at it.

**************************

I hope this gives you a better idea what happens after you nominate a story.
Please remember, liaisons and other volunteers are volunteers - actual
humans who have to check their computer and work with our website, so there
can be a delay between emailing your liaison about some problem and that
actually showing up on our website.

Let me know if you have questions about any of this!

Marta (MEFA Admin.)

I've used up all my noms, and a fic was posted today I find totally awesome!
And I keep finding more of Marta and Dwim's stories I wish I could nominate,
too! Gaack!

I keep a file in which I write information for nominating stories I come across
that I want to nominate in the next MEFAs, and even though I started nominating
on May 15 I found many had already been nominated by the time I started putting
up my own noms. And I keep forgetting to check WIPs to make certain they didn't
compete in previous years--durn!
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."