Yahoo Forum Archive

> Message: 12
> Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 02:57:30 -0000
> From: "Kathy" <inkling-tcbs@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: points and various voting matters
>
> Happy New Year, everyone! Marta, great job running the post-mortem.

Thanks. Every time I admit to half-thinking I should do a better job,
you guys correct me. ;-)

> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
>>
>> Anyway... the topic is points and how votes will count. There are
>> several issues. And if I forget any on this topic, feel free to
>> speak up.
>>
>> First, I think some people find it hard to write long reviews and
>> so feel that even stories they really like they can't give them the
>> points they're worth. I suggest that we have each review cap off at
>> a lower level (say, five points instead of ten). This effectively
>> means that those 1- and 2-point reviews have more weight. One such
>> spread would be:
>>
>> 1-50 1 point
>> 51-250 2 point
>> 251-500 3 point
>> 501-1000 4 point
>> 1001+ 5 point
>>
>> I know that I tend to be pretty long-winded in my reviews, so I'm
>> very interested in hearing frm people who struggled to write longer
>> ones. Would this point spread work better?
>
> Overall, this seems like a good idea, although I too wonder why the
> point spread is so unevenly distributed. What about something like
> this:
>
> points characters
> 1 1-150
> 2 151-300
> 3 301-450
> 4 451-600
> 5 601+
>
> I just took a look at my 2005 reviews and saw that in most cases I
> was able to say what I wanted to say in about 300-500 characters. And
> I didn't try to pad or manipulate my votes at all. If I find I want
> to say more about a particular story, I have no problem with it
> capping off at 5 points.
>

I'm not too crazy about this, though not completely against it, either.
It just feels a little bit short to me. I easily hit 600 on longer
stories; I'd be happier with 800 or even 1000 being the cap. But I
don't have anything to base this on. I know Anthony's provided some
stats down on the digest, and I'll comment more on this later.

>> Issue #2: honourable mentions. This year we awarded honourable
>> mentions to stories who scored within three points of second place.
>> But it occurs to me this may not be the best system because the
>> larger categories were a lot more competitive.
>> <snip>
>> I can think of several possible solutions. One is to award an
>> honourable mention to all the stories that get a certain number of
>> points and aren't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. For example, we
>> could set the threshold at 20 points; if your story gets 20 points
>> but isn't awarded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, it gets an honourable
>> mention.
>
> I have some reservations about this option. For one thing, in lightly
> reviewed categories there might be NO stories that met the threshold
> number, including 1st place. But as someone pointed out, adjusting
> the threshold after the fact would surely be controversial.
>

I agree - I always preferred the second method, even before I proposed
it, and after seeing the discussion I definitely think this is better.

>> Another way to address this is to assign honourable mentions based
>> on the number of entries per category. For example, let's say we
>> want to have the top half of stories receive a place award or an
>> honourable mention. (Not that out-of-line when you consider 60% of
>> the stories in a five-story category get an award.) Then we could
>> just give honourable mentions to the top stories below the places
>> until we reach this point.
>>
>> 5-6 entries 0 Honourable Mentions
>> 7-8 entries 1 Honourable Mention + 3 places = 4 awards = 50%
>> 9-10 entries 2 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 5 awards = 50%
>> 11-12 entries 3 Honourable Mentions + 3 places = 6 awards = 50%
>
> This approach seems good to me, although I agree with Dreamflower
> that there should be a cutoff at 3 or 4 honorable mentions.
>

Yep, this sounds like a good plan. Like I said before, I suggest that
if we do this, we also limit the size of the sub-category. I wouldn't
object at all to a limit of 4 HM's with a limit of 15 stories to the
sub-category.

>> One more thing: the author awards.
>
> Truth to tell, I still don't understand these awards even though I've
> read the explanations several times over. One problem is that
> although in theory they are supposed to be different than story
> awards, in practice I have read many author awards that seemed
> virtually indistinguishable from story awards. And there are so many
> of them! Is there some way to simplify these...like just having one
> set of author awards per category rather than for every subcategory?
> Or alternatively, having just one author award per subcategory rather
> than 1st, 2nd, 3rd and HMs?
>
> Kathy (Inkling)
>

To be honest, the author awards are more of an irritation for me than
anything. They're a lot of trouble to explain, and I'd almost prefer it
if we didn't have them at all. If we do continue to have them, I like
Dwim's suggestion of doing content-based.

But I'm not the one that needs to be convinced. This is a major change,
and I think Ainae's the one who really needs to decide whether we
should do anything. I'll email Ainae and ask her to follow the list. As
a courtesy to her, why don't we put "(attn: Ainae) in the subject line
so she can find these easily.

Oh, and this will probably be the last time I comment on author
reviews, unless I change my mind. I think I've pretty well said my
opinion on this one.

Thanks,
Marta