Yahoo Forum Archive

I hit on this in my last email, but I'll expand on it here. I think it
deserves some further discussion, as it caused some confusion behind
the scenes this last year.

An "orphan" story is one that isn't able to compete in its first-choice
category. This can happen because the first-choice category itself
receives less than five nominations, but it also happens with mandatory
subcategories (poems, drabbles, and WIPs) when that category receives
less than five of either of those types. We did things a little
differently this year than we did in 2004, and I think that made things
a little harder this year. Let me give an example.

Let's say there are 5 stories nominated this year with "Adventure" as a
category choice.

4 have "Adventure" as its first choice category.
1 has "Drama" as its first choice category and "Adventure" as its
second. Drama has enough other stories that moving this story to
"Adventure" will not make "Drama" inviable.

In 2004, we might have moved the one "Drama" story with "Adventure" as
its second choice category into "Adventure". This would mean that
"Adventure" would have five entries and "Drama" would still have
plenty, and both would be viable. But this year I think we only looked
at stories that were "orphans" - those whose first choice category
didn't have a viable Incomplete subcategory. This meant that some
stories ended up in their third choice category where I think we could
have avoided it.

I'm not sure I'm making this clear; if I need to explain something, let
me know. The basic question is: If a story's first choice category will
be viable with or without that story competing in it, can we move that
story to make its second-choice category viable?

Marta