Hi Linda,
I appreciate that you are concerned that your story may not be getting
votes. However, there are better ways than posting "spoiler" chapters.
I suggested one of them (encourage people to review stories at the
MEFAs where you normally post, since you know people there like to read
the type of story you're writing).
I should probably clarify that point: you shouldn't ask people to join
specifically to vote for your story. According to rule V.D.2.d,
"Authors encouraging vote stacking (by bringing in new members who only
vote on their entries) will be disqualified from the Author categories
and have their stories and poems disqualified as well." But you could
make a general post, saying you have a story nominated, and encouraging
people to vote for any of the stories entered.
Btw, if you'd like to read all of our rules you can find them at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ainae/mefa/rules.html
But back to this "teaser" chapter. This isn't a good idea for several
reasons.
First off, some people may find the subject matter disturbing. I
realise that this chapter is not particularly graphic, but many people
(including myself) are easily offended when it comes to how difficult
topics like child abuse are handled, and don't appreciate being exposed
to this type of material when we aren't expecting it. More importantly,
if someone has a more graphic story they'd like to post a "teaser" for,
they may interpret your post as permission to do so.
Also, there's the question of list volume. This can be a high-volume
list, and so many people are just on digest (meaning they receive
several posts in one email). They have to scroll past this whole
chapter, and that can be inconvenient for them. This list isn't one
where people post chapters, and we want to keep it focused on its
purpose: discussing the MEFAs.
Third, and this is the real problem, it comes very close to vote
stacking. According to V.D.2.d, the rule I quoted above, it's against
the award rules to ask someone to join just so they will vote on your
story. By posting this teaser chapter you are doing something similar:
you are asking people who normally wouldn't be voting to log in and
vote for you. This isn't technically against the rules as they stand
now, but this may be a rule we want to consider adding for next year
now.
The fact is, you've given your story an unfair edge over the other
stories it's competing against. If someone votes for your story now, is
it because they like what you are doing, or is it because they only
noticed your story because of this post? To be fair should we allow the
other authors you are competing against to post a teaser chapter of
their story? But I don't want that to happen, for the first two reasons
I cited above.
I understand that you probably didn't mean to cause a problem. However,
I would really appreciate it in the future if you and everyone else
refrained from doing this.
Cheers,
Marta