Yahoo Forum Archive

> You beat me to it, Resha. I was just thinking that. Yes, we have
> advertising banners and buttons. And Nomination buttons. No contest
> involved. The first (advertising banners and buttons) are
> pretty standard.
> There are only a few:
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~ainae/mefa/buttons.html

Hi Ainae,
thank you for this info.
I had forgotten about this.

Please see the following only as musings.
I do not want to belittle any of your efforts.
I think, what you created has enormous merits
and is a very good thing for Tolkien fanfiction.

What I muse about is only how one could enhance
the impact of MEFAwards even further.

I think Marta's idea for a mass e-mail announcement
of the award closure is a very good idea.

Now to the banners:
On my TFT-screen the lower part of the text
written into the landscape (Fanfiction Award)
is nearly unreadable.

Probably it would work better if the text colour
were white or a very light colour,
especially on the landscape.

And, on the Legolas banner the text is too small IMO.

I have still the same problem as before,
the banners look not like an award banner
or like an banner depicting an award.

Thus, I ask, would it not be a good thing
to create an additional banner
with clear allusions to an award contest
in the picture ?


Anyhow, who will use this banner?
I think, only one who makes an extra-link to
the MEFAwards web site.

The larger advertising effect is thus nevertheless
through the award banners which will appear
together with the stories.

>
> The second (noninee buttons) have more variety. They do a
> bit of both.
> They are a kudo to the nominees, but also a bit of advertisement.
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~ainae/mefa/nombuttons.html
>

I just looked on them. An impressive number!
And I saw that anyone can send you new ones.
Good idea.

On my screen many of the texts are not readable very well
due to the smallness in combination with the fancy script types.

The one best working for me is first line, last one.
Still even this suggests (aside of the text)
not an award-contest to me
but is a banner which can depict many things
(again aside of the text).

> The Award Banners were that: Awards! And a contest in themselves. I'd
> actually like to have a full-on FanArt contest, though that
> might be hard to
> host (archive-wise). The present compromise is the banner
> contest. And it
> actually opens up that "art" contest to those of us who
> didn't think we
> could be fanartists. I can draw now and then, but not at the level of
> Gonzai, especially when we're talking about people. But I
> could make screen
> caps and make a banner. Thus I was suddenly able to enter an
> "art" contest.
> Wow!

I probably can simply not empathize the impediment
you feel if you have to adjust your artistry to a standard.
For me this would be an incentive,
for the most of you it would dampen your enthusiasm.

I will accept this, but I wanted to voice my suggestions nevertheless
:-)

>
> So these are meant to be creative first and foremost. They
> are an award to
> the fanfiction winners. And they are the creative entries
> and winners of
> the banner contests. They may lead others to the MEFAs
> (which is why we
> want people who use them on their web sites to link back to
> us) but that is
> a secondary feature. It's not just ad add for us. It's an
> award to be
> proud of for the winners.

I certainly understand what you want to achieve
with artistic banners as gems for the authors.

Yet, I have a very rational and probably cold mind,
thus I think on the practical application of the award banner ;-)
which has for me more importance.
Artistry concerning banners
is for me achieved through the most effective banner ;-)

>
> If we wanted it "corporate", I'd just make some standard ones
> across the
> board. Take a look at my ASC award banners:
>
> http://gabrielle.sytes.net/trek/stories/os1.html

I cannot connect to this site.
Maybe I have a firewall problem?
I allowed browser identification and logging of visited pages.
Have I to allow more?

Or is this server down?

>
> The ASC one is the middle one. The other two are standard as
> well. No
> contest needed to create them. I am proud to have those
> awards, but I like
> this banner better as a prize:
>
> http://gabrielle.sytes.net/lotr/stories/lure.html
>

:-( see above, unfortunately I cannot see this banner

Best wishes Elanor

-----Original Message-----
From: elanor of aquitania [mailto:elanor@codacode.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 5:06 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] MEFA banners and ? website gabrielle.sytes.net

>Hi Ainae,

thank you for this info.
I had forgotten about this.

>Please see the following only as musings.

I do not want to belittle any of your efforts.
I think, what you created has enormous merits and is a very good thing for
Tolkien fanfiction.

Okay, thanks

>What I muse about is only how one could enhance the impact of MEFAwards

even further.

>I think Marta's idea for a mass e-mail announcement of the award closure is

a very good idea.

Me, too. Wanna help?

>Now to the banners:

On my TFT-screen the lower part of the text written into the landscape
(Fanfiction Award) is nearly unreadable.

>Probably it would work better if the text colour were white or a very light

colour, especially on the landscape.

I agree it's a bit hard to read. I think I played around with various colors
and they just didn't look good with the pic. I can certainly try playing
around with them somemore.

>And, on the Legolas banner the text is too small IMO.

I think I could expand them a bit.

And some of you may be asking why those particular pics? Because I am a
hopeless Legolas fan and there is no The Legolas Thranduilion Award at this
time. Thus he will represent ALL the MEFAs!

>I have still the same problem as before, the banners look not like an award

banner or like an banner depicting an award.

Take a look at other contests' and websites' banners. Many of them utilize
screenshots with words. Some do, some don't. I like some that do and some
that don't. But as these are my awards, I will make a banner as I like it,
and it will feature Legolas to feed my inner fangirl. (If we can come up
with Legolas Thranduilion Award, I *might* feel like opening that up a
bit.)

>Thus, I ask, would it not be a good thing to create an additional banner

with clear allusions to an award contest in the picture ?

See above why Legolas is in the picture. But if you'd like to create banner
with a more corporate design, let's see it.

>Anyhow, who will use this banner?

I think, only one who makes an extra-link to the MEFAwards web site.

Yes, on the sites we are affiliated with, they put a link or banner (of
their choosing) to us, as we have put one to them.

>The larger advertising effect is thus nevertheless through the award

banners which will appear together with the stories.

True tehre will likely be more Award banners out there than ad-type MEFA
banners, but that won't change my mind about the Award banners.

> The second (noninee buttons) have more variety. They do a bit of
> both.
> They are a kudo to the nominees, but also a bit of advertisement.
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~ainae/mefa/nombuttons.html
>

>I just looked on them. An impressive number!

And I saw that anyone can send you new ones.
Good idea.

Yep, nominees can choose which one they want to use. As they are small, we
can offer up lots of them.

>On my screen many of the texts are not readable very well due to the

smallness in combination with the fancy script types.

They are small on purpose. I can easily read all but 6. Yes, the first one
has the same problem as the MEFA banners. Hard to read the black in the
landscape. The other five are the last five. All of the others though,
pretty much stay in the size guidelines (with few exceptions if any) and are
legible.

And this is moot anyway, as I see they are 2004 buttons. We'll need new
ones for 2005.

>The one best working for me is first line, last one.

Really? My favorite is the fourth one on the second line, with the hand
writing MEFA Nominee.

>Still even this suggests (aside of the text) not an award-contest to me but

is a banner which can depict many things (again aside of the text).

So? Nominee tells me it's a nomination fo rsomething. MEFA does stand for
Middle-Eath Fanfiction Awards. And the buttons are too small to write that
out. If someone is curious, they can search MEFA or follow the link if the
author has included a link. The basic necessary information is there.
That's all a nominee button needs.

Bottom line: We will need new buttons for 2005. You, as well as any member,
are free to make some however you like. They will still be small and have
just the basic info: 2005, MEFA, and Nominee

>I probably can simply not empathize the impediment you feel if you have to

adjust your artistry to a standard.
For me this would be an incentive,
for the most of you it would dampen your enthusiasm.

>I will accept this, but I wanted to voice my suggestions nevertheless

:-)

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

>I certainly understand what you want to achieve with artistic banners as

gems for the authors.

Yet, I have a very rational and probably cold mind, thus I think on the
practical application of the award banner ;-) which has for me more
importance.
Artistry concerning banners
is for me achieved through the most effective banner ;-)

Different views. Let's rest on a bit of Star Trek philosophy. Vulcan, in
fact: IDIC: Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

>
> http://gabrielle.sytes.net/trek/stories/os1.html

>I cannot connect to this site.

Maybe I have a firewall problem?
I allowed browser identification and logging of visited pages.
Have I to allow more?

>Or is this server down?

Quite possible. Let me tell you the saga of my sites:

Most of my sites (not the main mefa site) are housed on Stormpages.com.
Recently (maybe two weeks ago) I noticed that my lotr page wouldn't come up.
I went to my Trek page, and it had reverted back to a few years ago. (See
the "Updated" notes to the bottom of the page:
http://www.stormpages.com/gabrielle/trek) I thought that was odd. I checked
my Message Board. New messages were gone. Old messages that I had deleted
two years ago had reappeared. I tried logging in so I could reupload the
many pages I'd have to reupload. I get page not found. It would appear
that Stormpages.com is dead.

So, I went and fixed all my external links for my sites (on my hard drive),
so that they pointed to gabrielle.sytes.net. That is a domain that points
to my comptuer named DS9.

DS9 has been having a lot of fun recently. You see, I'm converting a bunch
of very large movie files from .avi to .mpg. And the only one of my
computers that can do it is DS9. Because DS9 has Windows 2000 and a Windows
media Player Version that can play .avi's. If it can't play 'em, it can't
convert 'em.

These movies files are 400+ MB by the time they're done.

As you can imagine, DS9 is a bit taxed. It has been rebooting on me now and
then. So when it reboots and I am not there to log it back in, it comes up
unavailable.

Rest assured, I will not be converting movies forever. (Though I will for
awhile. These things take 5 hours or more apiece!). And this is the
gateway computer for connecting to my home computers remotely. Thus I
connect to it every morning when I get to work. So it won't be down for
long, if it's down.

Ironically, DS9 is still my most stable computer for being a web server.
Starbase, my XP machine likes to reboot itself regularly. Or it will
pretend it can't reach the network anymore (even when I'm still remotely
connected to it via the internet) and so I have to reboot it myself.
Starfleetcmd, my NT Server is stable, but it doesn't want to play nice with
the web server software. I can see it locally on my network but not
externally. And besides, it's where those movie files live. DS9 may be
doing the work, but the files reside on the very large hard drive in the NT
Server. And so it's been rebooting itself now and then as well. (This one
doesn't need to be logged in for the fiels to be available though. Just
booted.)

Thus, the sage of my sites.

> http://gabrielle.sytes.net/lotr/stories/lure.html
>

:-( see above, unfortunately I cannot see this banner

You should be able to now.

--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