Yahoo Forum Archive

> Message: 7
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 18:34:44 -0500
> From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> I wouldn't mess with the point system, unless it were to drop it in
> favor of
> straight character counts.
>

I'd be okay with this, with a caveat: straight character counts to a
limit. Just like now there's a cap of ten points, maybe there could be
a cap of a thousand characters. Or whatever else we decide is fair --
we can debate the exact number if we decide this is a good idea. You
can go on typing past that, but it's not counting for purposes of
votes. It would certainly be simpler, and I think it would be a better
representation of how well-liked a story is. I know I realised that I
was 20 characters short of the next point so I'd add another sentence
that maybe wasn't strictly necessary - a pure point system would have
avoided this, and I think given better reviews.

> As far as the author review goes, I thought it was silly repeating
> author
> reviews over and over and over this year and scattering them
> willy-nilly
> strikes me as sillier, because the way they were presented, they were
> to
> award an author for having a particular strength in a particular
> subject
> area.
>
> I'd rather get an option to open up a second reply window after I've
> done a
> story review, with a copy of the same review already entered, but
> editable,
> which might be submitted as an author review.
>

I'd be pretty strongly against this. Actually if someone submitted an
author review that was identiccal to a story review they had also
submitted, I'd have to question whether this was a copied review and so
whether the second one (the author review should count). We have a rule
against duplicating story reviews, and it seems against the spirit of
this rule to copy a story review into an author review. Even if this is
allowed, I don't want to encourage it by providing this sort of
feature.

Marta

> Message: 13
> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 00:03:50 -0500
> From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> Well, if it's pertinent, and it's not quoting the story under review,
> I'd
> say count the characters. But leave the admins the option of
> blocking questionable quotations if there's a complaint and general
> agreement at the admin level that the complaint is valid.
>

The problem is that whether it's pertinent is a judgment call, and so
open to critique. I think things will run smoother all around if we
just don't count any quotes. Actually, if we did that, it would make me
feel more friendly to Kathy's point system of

CHARS --- POINTS
1-150 --- 1
151-300 --- 2
301-450 --- 3
451-600 --- 4
601+ --- 5

I still think it's a little low, but not so much when you consider it
wouldn't be counting any quotes.

Cheers,
Marta

> On 1/2/06, dwimmer_laik <dwimmer_laik@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm thinking of quotations that are pertinent to the review.
>>> I'd think it would be a
>>> situation which wouldn't often arise, but I don't know. Did it
>> happen this
>>> year?
>>
>> Yes. I did it at least twice, causing you to throw rocks in my
>> general, northerly direction. ;-) I don't recall if other reviewers
>> did this, but I imagine many people may think associatively and want
>> to incorporate useful phrases and quotes from other works as they
>> explain why story X is good reading.
>>
>> Dwim
>>
>>
>>
>

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:

> The problem is that whether it's pertinent is a judgment call, and

so > open to critique. I think things will run smoother all around if
we > just don't count any quotes. Actually, if we did that, it would
make me > feel more friendly to Kathy's point system of

>
> CHARS --- POINTS
> 1-150 --- 1
> 151-300 --- 2
> 301-450 --- 3
> 451-600 --- 4
> 601+ --- 5
>
> I still think it's a little low, but not so much when you consider

it > wouldn't be counting any quotes.

> > Cheers,
> Marta

I think this is a reasonable point spread and division, especially if,
as you say, *all* quotes from any source are blockquoted.

Sulriel

I do like a rounder 1000. And a bigger cap than 5.

--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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of sulriel
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:04 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: points and various voting matters
> (Rabidsamfan)
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
> > The problem is that whether it's pertinent is a judgment call, and
> so > open to critique. I think things will run smoother all
> around if we > just don't count any quotes. Actually, if we
> did that, it would make me > feel more friendly to Kathy's
> point system of
> >
> > CHARS --- POINTS
> > 1-150 --- 1
> > 151-300 --- 2
> > 301-450 --- 3
> > 451-600 --- 4
> > 601+ --- 5
> >
> > I still think it's a little low, but not so much when you consider
> it > wouldn't be counting any quotes.
> > > Cheers,
> > Marta
>
>
> I think this is a reasonable point spread and division,
> especially if, as you say, *all* quotes from any source are
> blockquoted.
>
> Sulriel
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 08:50:31 -0500
> From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> I like Anthony's idea of counting 100% of the first so many characters,
> 2/3rds of the next so many, etc. and giving 5% of the characters over
> 1000.

I like all of this except for the last bit. I'm strongly against not
having any maximum at which we stop counting points; it just seems like
a bad idea. But I do think 100% up to a certain character count and
then a fraction up to another higher character count would work well.
And it's not that out-of-line with what we currently do -- the first
five points are each 100 characters, the last five for 150 characters.

> And I like the ten point spread much better than a lower spread, too.
>

That's good to know. I personally think a lower point spread would help
if we're going to keep counting points at all, but that's far from a
deal-breaker with me. It seems that many people *don't* want a lower
point spread, which helps me realise my opinion wasn't representative
of the group. Always a good thing!

> To me, the goal is to get reviews which aren't puffed or trimmed
> according
> to how many points awarded, but rather to get reviews which took a
> little
> thought and effort on the part of the reviewer -- encouraging more
> thought
> and more effort for good stories by awarding points. With a really
> good
> story I do want to go and point out specifics, and if I can tag quotes
> to
> keep my conscience clear, I'll be very happy to point out precisely
> what
> made me bounce up and down in my chair going "ooh! ooh! ooh!"
>

This is basically what I want to encourage as well. I want the good
stories to get longer reviews (and so more points), but I don't want
the process to be such a task that no one enjoys it. The fun is key,
and if I thought the MEFAs were becoming a chore I'd have to seriously
question why I was doing all that we do.

> If the point system is weighted a little toward short reviews, but not
> so
> heavily that there's no reward for longer reviews, I think that most
> reviewers will be less point obsessed not more. And that's not a bad
> thing.
>

Nope, not a bad thing at all! I do think we need some way to quantify
what story pewople like the best and points (whether by what we have
now or based more purely on character counts) will let us do that. but
I don't think it needs to become an obsession and it certainly doesn't
need to become more important than writing a good review.

Marta

> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 08:18:47 -0500
> From: rabidsamfan <rabidsamfan@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: points and various voting matters (Kathy)
>
> We need to not lose sight of the value of long reviews in the process.
> As
> the discussion coming off of Marigold's comments in another thread
> reminded
> me, not every reader is going to read or review every story in a
> subcategory, either because of popularity of authors or the lengths of
> the
> different stories. A good long review for a story which has had fewer
> readers can give some balance to a lot of short reviews for a story
> which is
> more widely known.
>

I agree with you here. And I don't think this is a bad idea, up to a
point. The goal is balance: long reviews shouldn't dominate, but
neither should short reviews.

> Since one of my "find a story" strategies was to look for stories which
> hadn't gotten any reviews yet, I know I tended to leave reviews which
> were a
> lot more effusive for the ones I found that way which were unnoticed
> gems.
>

Glad to know I'm not the only one who had that experience! I think it's
like when a movie is built up through pre-release advertisements and
you're expecting something great - so even if it's superb, you were
expecting it so you aren't as impressed. On the other hand, I've found
that unexpected films that were excellent or even merely great, I've
raved about to every friend who'd stand still long enough.

Anyway... I found I did this, too. It wasn't a conscious decision, but
it did happen.

> We also need to not lose sight of another problem. In discussions
> about
> weighting the system towards shorter reviews, there's been an
> implication
> that longer reviews are puffed up. I don't think that's true in the
> large
> sense. Adding a word here or there to nudge a review to the next
> level is
> not the same as unthinking verbosity. The long reviews I read at the
> MEFAs
> were usually wonderful -- quite on the same level as the professional
> reviews I read every day as a librarian -- and created with the same
> kind of
> effort that it takes to craft a great story or essay. Those were the
> kinds
> of reviews which prompted me to want to know which other stories that
> reviewer had recommended, and I'd hate to see them devalued.
>

Like I said in an earlier email (much earlier - around a week ago I
think), longer reviews are not necessarily more substantative than
shorter ones, but they certainly have the potential to be. When I
determined how long I wanted a review to be, that determined how long I
wanted a review to be I pretty much grouped them into about four or
five groupings and wrote on some quality on the story like pacing or
characterisation or what-not. I knew that I took about 200 characters
to do each quality justice, so that was how I tried to get my reviews
longer when I wanted to. So it's possible to say more in a longer
review - I know!

Marta