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I definitely appreciate the way reading reviews can entice you to read
a story you might not have otherwise. This is one of the beauties of
this particular form of voting, I think. I nominate fics in the hopes
that others will do the work of showing that these are really good
stories deserving of wider readership.

That said, consider the following examples. What's more likely to make
you read a fic?

"This story has one of the best characterizations of Aragorn ever."
(55 chars, no spaces)

versus

"This story shows Aragorn as you've never seen him before. It traces
his evolution from his arrival among his own people to his departure
for Rohan, and believably shows him as an awkward, isolated, slightly
stand-offish young man, feeling overwhelmed in a world utterly foreign
to him yet trying his best to hide it out of a sense of duty. You'll
laugh, you'll cry, you'll recognize despite it all the kernel of the
man he will become. Anyone who loves this character, read this story."

(401 chars, no spaces)


The first one *might* make me read, if it was repeated often enough by
multiple reviewers, and because I am a rabid Aragorn-fangurl anyway.

However, it's the second kind of review that will in itself make me
curious.

I'm not trying to bring up the issue of how hard it can be to write a
longer comment, merely to point out that I'm not sure how useful a
25-100 character "nominator's comment" would be. It'd be very
repetitive, I imagine, and wouldn't give that much insight, just a
bare claim. I personally don't find a bare claim to be the most
effective advertisement--the author's summary is usually more
insightful and intriguing than that because it has more space.

So I'm not convinced that implementing this is going to function as
desired, is all I'm saying: it might be off-putting to nominators
without being terribly helpful to potential reviewers.

Dwim

Oh, I wouldn't dream of limiting the number of characters in a comment --
but if it were a nominator's comment, then the nominator could still do a
"vote" review later, right? The thing is, if I like a story enough to
recommend it to other people, then I like it well enough to write about why
I like it. I can't imagine nominating something for an award that didn't
deserve at least a word or two, and more likely a sentence or two at the
very least.
On another topic:
I do like the idea of being able to look from nominators to stories,
although I don't know how much work that would be for Anthony. There were
definitely nominators who chose a lot of things I liked, though.

On 11/2/05, dwimmer_laik <dwimmer_laik@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I definitely appreciate the way reading reviews can entice you to read
> a story you might not have otherwise. This is one of the beauties of
> this particular form of voting, I think. I nominate fics in the hopes
> that others will do the work of showing that these are really good
> stories deserving of wider readership.
>
> That said, consider the following examples. What's more likely to make
> you read a fic?
>
> "This story has one of the best characterizations of Aragorn ever."
> (55 chars, no spaces)
>
> versus
>
> "This story shows Aragorn as you've never seen him before. It traces
> his evolution from his arrival among his own people to his departure
> for Rohan, and believably shows him as an awkward, isolated, slightly
> stand-offish young man, feeling overwhelmed in a world utterly foreign
> to him yet trying his best to hide it out of a sense of duty. You'll
> laugh, you'll cry, you'll recognize despite it all the kernel of the
> man he will become. Anyone who loves this character, read this story."
>
> (401 chars, no spaces)
>
>
> The first one *might* make me read, if it was repeated often enough by
> multiple reviewers, and because I am a rabid Aragorn-fangurl anyway.
>
> However, it's the second kind of review that will in itself make me
> curious.
>
> I'm not trying to bring up the issue of how hard it can be to write a
> longer comment, merely to point out that I'm not sure how useful a
> 25-100 character "nominator's comment" would be. It'd be very
> repetitive, I imagine, and wouldn't give that much insight, just a
> bare claim. I personally don't find a bare claim to be the most
> effective advertisement--the author's summary is usually more
> insightful and intriguing than that because it has more space.
>
> So I'm not convinced that implementing this is going to function as
> desired, is all I'm saying: it might be off-putting to nominators
> without being terribly helpful to potential reviewers.
>
> Dwim
>
>
>
>
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, C Dodd <rabidsamfan@v...> wrote:

>
> Oh, I wouldn't dream of limiting the number of characters in a

comment --

> but if it were a nominator's comment, then the nominator could still

do a

> "vote" review later, right? The thing is, if I like a story enough to
> recommend it to other people, then I like it well enough to write

about why

> I like it. I can't imagine nominating something for an award that didn't
> deserve at least a word or two, and more likely a sentence or two at the
> very least.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that we should limit a comment's
characters (the actual vote), but I was referring to the idea (I
thought Anthony had brought it up?) of limiting a nominator's comment
(not the nominator's vote) to a short length to make it easy on the
nominator.

I think this idea has the same problems that #6 has: on the one hand,
the shorter the initial nominator's comment is in order to make it not
a burden on the nominator, the less it serves its intended purpose (to
give potential other reviewers an idea of why this story is great). A
"word or two", as you put it, is not going to entice me to read; the
summary would be much more helpful to me at that point. Even a line or
two, unless extremely suggestive, are not going to significantly
impact my decision to read a story, unless I already know the
nominator and tend to agree with his or her taste in fics. I suspect
others probably would react in the same way.


On the other hand, the more that is permited/required in order to
serve as a hook for other potential readers, the more burdensome it is
on the nominator, who may well decide not to nominate if it seems like
not only do the awards want a vote (eventually) but they want
something substantial *up front* which will not actually count towards
anything (although one could copy-paste and alter if one wished).


Again, I'm thinking in terms of simplicity when it comes to the
nominations process. Obviously, people are reviewing without the
enticement of a sentence or two from the nominator; so my thought is
that this suggestion is a bell/whistle that doesn't address a
short-coming so much as offer itself as a nice feature but one that
strikes me as strictly superfluous and perhaps downright problematic
as a *structural* requirement of the nomination form.

> On another topic:
> I do like the idea of being able to look from nominators to stories,
> although I don't know how much work that would be for Anthony.

I'm a little confused. Do you mean you wished it'd be easy to find a
list of what any given nominator had nominated? I could be wrong, but
I"m pretty sure you could see that if you clicked on the nominator's
name.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, though.

Dwim

>

Hi Dwim,

> >  On another topic:
> >  I do like the idea of being able to look from nominators to
> stories,
> > although I don't know how much work that would be for Anthony.
>
> I'm a little confused. Do you mean you wished it'd be easy to find a
> list of what any given nominator had nominated? I could be wrong, but
> I"m pretty sure you could see that if you clicked on the nominator's
> name.
>

That's how I interpret what was being requested. I think if you click
on the nominator's name it will take you to that person's
"information": email address, web page (if applicable), and any stories
authored by that member that have been nominated. I could be wrong
myself, too.

One thing I've suggested is that we have a filter where a member cna
display only those stories nominated by a certain member just like they
can display just the stories authored by a certain member. I don't know
whether that's possible.

Cheers,
Marta

*****
Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis
of Assisi