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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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