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> And I'm also considering an Amnesty Day on October 31st. One
> last chance to
> post any votes for any categorie. But if I do that, will all
> of you just
> wait until then to post your votes? I don't want to encourage
> procrastination so much as give everyone one last shot to
> read a few more
> stories and get some more comments in.

Hi Ainaechoiriel,
I would very much appreciate if there is a Amnesty day !
I am still struggling to write more reviews.
I am one of those persons who first read and later write.

Your advice to write votes early is a _very_ good advice
but one I did not took to heart, because
I thought I could steal more time from real life during
voting season ;-)

So perhaps could you make the voting season per category
longer next time and the overlap larger ?

I started writing reviews only when voting season started, my bad !
Moreover I did not realize that there were only short time windows
for each category, I thought
I could vote for each category the whole season.
Now I am struggling very hard as my main interest "men"
came up at first.

And some votes also induced in me the wish to read the
poems etc. concerned.

Another problem I have, I am not sure when Voting-seasons ends
per category in Europe.

The notice
[MEFAwards] Men and Elves Voting, 9/22/2004, 12:00 am
was sent Thursday 09/21/2004 06:01

while the first
MEFAwards] Men and Elves Voting, 9/16/2004, 12:00 am
was sent Wednesday 09/15/2004 05:55

But probably the notices were sent prematurely
as there is a time difference of 30 hours involved ?

This time window accounting problem
would be extremely serious for Amnesty day
when one has only one day I understood.
I would implore you to make the time window larger
to allow for persons not living in USA to send in
before closing hour.

Sorry for being a befuddled procrastinator.

According to http://www.worldtimeserver.com/
North Dakota has 4:55 Am 09/21/2004
while Middle Europe has 11:55 AM 09/21/2004
six hours later. Thus I could send votes until 18:00 PM
European time to be in time for 12:00 in Central USA.

> Voting Season begins Thursday at 12:01am Central US time
> and ends on October 30th, 11:59pm Central US time.

Has North Dakota the Central US time ?
Or can you please give the name of an US-state
which has the Central US time ?

Many thanks for your great efforts with this project
Elanor

I think Amnesty Day will be a go, if you all promise not to use it as an
excuse to procrastinate. (I lost at least one award this year in the
Alt.StarTrek.Creative Awards, because one of my fans thought she had one
more day to post her votes....)

Don't let that happen to your favorite authors.

Now two Europeans have voiced concerns about Amnesty Day and the lengths of
voting periods.

While I do encourage discussion of policies, I don't make many changes,
unless there is a dire need, while the Awards calendar is running. In ASC
we have an Awards Post-Mortem where we discuss what worked, what didn't, and
how we can improve for next year. As I've borrowed heavily from ASC to make
the MEFA's, I'll be borrowing the idea of Post-Mortem as well.

For now, I want to ensure you that I do have sympathy for those in Europe.
In fact, I have quite an affinity (which I probably misspelled). I lived in
the Czech Republic for a year and fell in love with the country. I was able
to go back last year and because of the 7 hour time difference and the
unfortunate timing of a concert, I was unable to get tickets to the showing
of the trilogy here in Missouri. Sigh.

However, I want you also to see the other side of the coin. The MEFAs need
to be workable for the voter/readers, but also for the administration. I
have a hard enough tiem getting the necessary number of vote counters. To
get two dozen people to agree to be available for this for the entire 1 1/2
months would be asking too much. I can't get two dozen people to start with.
As it stands, most of us counters have 6 categories (breaking the 16
categories into their Story and Author parts) to watch for. We can take a
break when it's not our category. That's a good thing. So not having all
categories open the entire time is beneficial. Your votes will be counted,
and we can make the announcement of the winners, I predict, on time on the
15th of November. And we can be assured of the accuracy of the votes,
because three people count each category. If the numbers of voters were
thinner (and I could still use at least one more), we'd have a hard time
doing that. I almost had to cut us down to 2 per category as it was.

And now to time differences....All times in these awards have been based on
Central US time. And yes we have Daylight Savings Time here (spring forward,
fall back), but then, I think most places do nowadays. But look at this on
both ends: if Amnesty Day is only 24 hours, it's 24 hours in the US, 24
hours in Europe, 24 hours in Australia.... Given, people sleep on an average
of 8 hours per every 24. Well, we all still have 16 hours. Some will take
their sleep in the middle of the Central US Time-d 24 hours, others will
split it on either end (as we will here in the Central US).

There were polls early on (before Nomination Season opened) about the
lengths of some of the seasons, and in ASC these same debates come up.
Voting time was too short. Voting time was too long and bored people. Not
enough time per category, too much time, etc. There's really not a good way
to make everyone happy. But there was a vote, and it was decided that 1 1/2
months would be the allotted amount of time for Voting Season. When I sat
down with paper calendar and a pencil (so I could erase and start over) and
tried to work out how to fit 16 (putting Author and Story together)
categories in 6 weeks with the same number of days per category, 10 days was
the only way to work it. And that's with the 5-day stagger. (ASC has only 6
main categories and gives each group of 2 two weeks to run, with a one week
stagger.) And yet, it leaves me just one extra day. October 31st would be
the 11th day for LOTR and The Hobbit, so I came up with the idea of the
Amnesty Day. Amnesty Day wouldn't be an "addition" to Voting Season, but the
last day of the already established Voting Season.

To make it 48 hours will alter the schedule, and thus when the winners are
announced, especially when you account for the fact that all those Amnesty
votes will have to be counted, and I haven't even begun to figure out how
that will happen. Do I ask for three more volunteers to count every vote?
Do I ask the already assigned vote counters to come back on duty to count
the votes in their assigned categories? And, once all that is done being
counted, all the counters have to get their counts back to me, we have to
make sure all the counts match (and recount them if they don't) and produce
a list of winners in 14 days. At least with Amnesty Day only 24 hours, I
get 15 days.

So, if it's 12am here in Missouri (Chicago is also Central and often used as
a reference city for the Central US time zone, as New York is for Eastern
and LA is for Pacific), and the Czech Republic is 7 hours ahead of us..... A
24 hour Amnestday Day would begin at 7am in the Czech Republic and run to
7am on November 1st. One might see that that is more convenient 'awake
time' for the Czech Republic than it is for Chicago, where the Amnesty Day
starts in the middle of the night and ends in the middle of the next night.

Regardless of all that, we can discuss changing things (and put it to a
vote, if need be) for next year. This year, Amnesty Day will be one day, 24
hours, the last day of the already allotted 1 1/2 months of Voting Season.

That said, I'm going to fill you in on a little trick (for those of you
using an e-mail program--I doubt this will work with webmail or within the
YahooGroup site): You can set a delay on your e-mail. I presently have
every single official ballot for every category sitting in my Outbox. I
don't have to post them. They will go out on their proper day, so long as I
haven't made a mistake in setting that day (as I had with Hobbits and
wondered why it didn't post right when Orcs did--found I'd set it to the
24th instead of the 21st). In Outlook, for example, you click Options on
the toolbar (of the message) and set the 'Do not deliver before' settings.

So, for example, I could potentially read that last one or two Elves stories
that I want to read after the Elves category is closed, and, knowing I will
be busy or not around on October 31st (since that day is Halloween and there
will be dressing in costumes and children Trick-or-Treating....), I could go
ahead and write up the vote and set it to 'not deliver before' 12am October
31st and then simply not worry about it, except to maybe check and make sure
it went as planned.

Check the settings on your e-mail program to see if this is workable for
you.

So, in the end, we must balance the voting side with the admin side.
Amnesty Day will happen, and--at least this year--it will be just 24 hours
between 12:01am on the 31st and 12:01am on Nov. 1st. (I usually say 12:01
am just so no one will be confused between midnight and noon or midnight on
which day....).

In the Czech Republic, that will be 0700 31eho Rijna and 0700 Prvneho
Listopada. (Yes, that's 7am Oct. 31 and 7am Nov. 1/)

In Australia, it might be noon to noon (I don't know how many hours we are
different but I can find out!) but that's still time to vote before you go
to bed, and more time to vote when you wake up. Still 24 hours for
everyone. (Would you all like me to put up a Database where we can load the
equivalents of 12:00am Central with all the places members are from? I think
I will. Feel free to go and add your country/time zone.)

(And don't worry about Yahoo lags. We've had some delayed posts here and in
the MEFAStaff group, but the timestamp on all of them still showed the time
they were sent, not the time they arrived. So if your stamp says 12:02 am
Oct. 31st (It shows in the reader's time zone, thus I'll see when it is sent
in Cental US) but doesn't show up on the YahooGroup until 1:24am on Nov.
1st, it will still be counted because the timestamp will show it was sent on
time.)

And finally, just remember there will be a post-mortem and we can change
things if necessary for the 2005 MEFAs. :-)

Now, who wants to help count votes for Amnesty Day?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

I can count mine.


--- Ainaechoiriel <mefaadmin@earthlink.net> wrote:

>
> Now, who wants to help count votes for Amnesty Day?
>
> --Ainaechoiriel
> MEFA Admin and Founder

=====
Larian
larian_elensar@yahoo.com
Keeper of the OEAM archive http://www.ofelvesandmen.com
Archive addy archive@ofelvesandmen.com

Thanks!

-----Original Message-----
From: Larian Elensar [mailto:larian_elensar@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 9:31 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Amnesty Day, Voting Season length, etc.

I can count mine.


--- Ainaechoiriel <mefaadmin@earthlink.net> wrote:

>
> Now, who wants to help count votes for Amnesty Day?
>
> --Ainaechoiriel
> MEFA Admin and Founder

=====
Larian
larian_elensar@yahoo.com
Keeper of the OEAM archive http://www.ofelvesandmen.com Archive addy
archive@ofelvesandmen.com


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Okay... Resident Aussie speaking up here!
Australia is GMT+10 (greenwich mean time) and
Central is GMT-6.

Naresha

------
In Australia, it might be noon to noon (I don't
know how many hours we are
different but I can find out!) but that's still
time to vote before you go
to bed, and more time to vote when you wake up.
Still 24 hours for
everyone.

=====
~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

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