Yahoo Forum Archive

Hey guys,

Tomorrow's a busy day for me, so I'm going to do this week's
educational post a day early. Last week we talked about why you'd want
to vote for stories by their subcategory, and how to go about doing
that. But sometimes you just want to find pieces about a certain
character, or set in a certain region, or involving a certain
subgenre. That's fine. And the MEFA site gives you some tools to help
you do just that.

--- Log in to http://www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/
--- Click "Stories" at the top of the page.
--- Click "Show Filter" link if you don't see the list of drop-down
menus to begin with.

Near the bottom of the page you will see menus for "Character",
"Setting," "Sub-Genre," "Canonical Event or Time Period," and
"Sources." These let you choose pretty much any type of content you
like. Want to see all the entries about Frodo, or set during
Maedhros's childhood in Valinor? Select the character or time period
(or source, or sub-genre, or setting) and you can narrow down the list
of stories to a manageable size. You can even use more than one
option, for instance to find vignettes about Faramir.

==> Quick hint: Remember, the website holds on to what you selected
before. If you searched for Frodo stories, and then left the page and
came back and did a search for Doriath, the website would only display
stories involving both Frodo and Doriath. (Precious few, I'm sure!) To
avoid this problem click "Clear all filters" before doing a new
search.

Maybe the characters listed are too narrow. Perhaps you want to find
all the stories about hobbits. To do this using the character menu,
you'd have to search first for the first hobbit listed, then clear out
that page and do a search for the second hobbit, and on down the list.
But we provide another filter that lets you do something similar a lot
more easily. Right above the filters I mentioned you will see one
called "Genre, Race, Time." This lists all the main category choices,
and will pull up those stories that selected that main category.
Authors get to select *three* category choices, and volunteers only
put it into one of those choices. So if you selected "Races: Hobbits"
from the Main Categories menu this would pull up all those stories
that ended up competing in the Hobbits main category. If, however, you
made the same choice from this "Genre, Race, Time" menu, you'd see all
the stories that selected that "Races: Hobbits" choice AT ALL. No
matter what category they ended up competing in.

Now, it's possible that authors would choose not to select "Races:
Hobbits" for some reason. Maybe they don't want to compete against
other hobbit-centric stories, or they had other category choices that
were better fits. That's their right. But in most cases, if a story is
about a certain race, the author will select that race as *one* of the
three main categories. Which means, filtering for "Races: Hobbits"
will get you most of the stories involving Hobbits. Not all, but it's
a quicker way to get a broad grouping than working through the
characters one by one.

One caveat: these menus reflect what authors told us. There's no
guarantee that every story turned up by filtering for "Theoden" will
have Theoden as a major character, as some authors tend to list every
character that shows up in their story. Use your good judgment, look
at the summary and other story information, and see whether this story
is one you're likely to be interested in. Obviously the same goes for
the other filters as well.

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

Another way to find stories based on content is using the "Quick Links" pages.

--- Log in to http://www.mefawards.net/MEFA2010/
--- Click "Stories" at the top of the page.
--- Click on one of the links beside "Quick links to lists of stories by".

These pages list all of the characters, locations, etc., along with
the number of stories involving that item. Click on the item you're
interested in, and you will automatically see all the stories
involving that item, along with links to vote for it and add it to
your skip/wish list. The page takes a while to load but once it's
loaded you won't have to reload it like you do every time you change
the main filter. It also provides a simpler user interface that some
folks find easier to navigate.

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

Please remember, even if you search by characters or locations etc.,
when you vote you're still voting in a contest. People will have
different preferences and so you shouldn't worry if you only read
certain characters. But whatever stories you read, only vote for those
stories you like the best, and if you are able to vary the length of
your review, give the longest reviews to those stories you enjoyed the
most.
*****************************

More info?

--- How do I vote?
http://mefawards.net/MEFA2010/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_1
--- How do I find a story to vote for?
http://mefawards.net/MEFA2010/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_15
--- How do I find stories featuring a certain romantic pairing?
http://mefawards.net/MEFA2010/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_23

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

P.S. - Don't forget, Annmarwalk is posting reviews to the Yahoo group
[mefa-reviews] and the LJ community [mefas].

Marta
(MEFA Admin.)