Yahoo Forum Archive

This is an archive of the MEFA Yahoo Group, which was shut down by Yahoo in 2019. The archive can be sorted by month and by topic ID. You can use your browser to search by keyword within the month or topic you have open.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2004---18210426558925263362316285
20051895610753834744697276194358565136
200623166277611713912756676615979
200720257-297299143318583103
2008561335424014127477516090106
2009283-39194101722722153624
201067-14103138129321316330
20111-172625906132758
201230---812276-----
2013------------
2014---------1-2
2015------------
2016------------
2017------------
2018------------
2019---------1--

Msg# 6741

Re: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is the a Posted by Marta Layton January 14, 2006 - 17:35:14 Topic ID# 6741
> Message: 13
> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:51:21 -0600
> From: "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@earthlink.net>
> Subject: RE: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is
> the answer?
>
> That's better than the 5-point scale. And see my more recent post
> about why
> I post 1 point reviews. It's not for lack of time. I don't think I've
> seen
> anyone (up to this point) admit to that. If I'm rushed for time, I'll
> probably at least give a 3 to a story I liked fairly well. But a 1 is
> given
> for a reason. And a 0 (no vote) is left for a reason too. Not every
> story
> is a gem. Not a fun thing to hear, but it's truth. And while this
> awards
> program is based on feedback that means a lot of SUBJECTIVITY goes
> into it.
> We can't take the subjectivity out of it. That would be the most fair,
> wouldn't it? To give everyone equal feedback so that no one feels bad
> for
> not getting a review or only getting a few short ones. But we can't
> and
> won't do that.
>

Ainae, I disagree with tghis pretty strongly, or at least with how I'm
reading this. I won't review every story next year but sometimes not
reviewing a story has nothing to do with the story. It doesn't mean
it's bad, it just means I didn't get to it. And I don't want people to
think that just because they're not getting enough reviews, that the
reviewers don't like their story. It may be that it's just about
different characters than the most active reviewers like, or that
people are just too crunched for time.

Now this doesn't mean we have to vote for every story. Not saying that.
Just saying that the absence of a vote can't automatically be
interpreted as a thumbs-down.

What do you think about the review scale I proposed earlier, with
75-character point brackets at the two ends and 150-character brackets
in the middle? Would it do what you want it to do? It's still a
10-point spread, and I think this will help people write appropriate
reviews -- it's pretty easy to move around in the 1-2-pt area and in
the 8-10 pt area, but pretty hard to get from one to the other so you
have to put in more effort for a story you really like.

Thanks,
Marta

Msg# 6743

Re: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is the a Posted by Ainaechoiriel January 15, 2006 - 0:03:13 Topic ID# 6741
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Marta Layton
> Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2006 5:42 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] RE: What is the problem to which
> "reduce the points scale" is the answer? (Ainae)
>
> > Message: 13
> > Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:51:21 -0600
> > From: "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@earthlink.net>
> > Subject: RE: What is the problem to which "reduce the
> points scale" is
> > the answer?
> >
> > That's better than the 5-point scale. And see my more recent post

> >
>
> Ainae, I disagree with tghis pretty strongly, or at least
> with how I'm reading this. I won't review every story next
> year but sometimes not reviewing a story has nothing to do
> with the story. It doesn't mean it's bad, it just means I
> didn't get to it. And I don't want people to think that just
> because they're not getting enough reviews, that the
> reviewers don't like their story. It may be that it's just
> about different characters than the most active reviewers
> like, or that people are just too crunched for time.
>
> Now this doesn't mean we have to vote for every story. Not
> saying that.
> Just saying that the absence of a vote can't automatically be
> interpreted as a thumbs-down.

I think I stated the other side of the no review in another post. Yes, of
course, sometimes it meant you didn't read the story at all, for one reason
or another (summary didn't catch you, you got engaged and ran out of time to
read stories....). But SOMETIMES it DOES mean you couldn't find anything
good to say about a story.

It can't automatically be interpreted as a thumbs-down, I agree. You can't
tell either way. We had what 500-ish members in 2004. I can't assume
because one of my stories only got 4 votes that the other 496-ish didn't
like it. That comes with the whole "read what you want thing." You just
can't know. If you got no reviews, you have questions , not necessary
answers:

1) Did anyone read it?
2) If someone did read it, did they think it not worth a review?

You cannot tell the answer from a 0 review. I will say that I reviewed
something like 40 stories last year (not a very good ratio but I blame my
fiance...). I can say I read more than 40. I did not even come close to
reading the whole 1200. So my reasons for not leaving reviews are both of
the reasons you mentioned, and no author of those 1160 stories I didn't
review can know which reason it was that I didn't leave one based on the
fact that I didn't review alone.

It's just that we seemed to get stuck on the "not enough time" or "just
can't write a long review" reasons for short reviews and I realized we were
kind of missing the other side of that coin: sometimes a short quote is
because you could only say a little about what was good about the story.
The point of the feedback being a competition is the amount you write is
what gets points for a story to win. You say more for stories you like
more, as a general rule. Thus short votes can mean "not enough time" or
"just can't write a long review" but they can also mean "not very good".
Sad, but true.

As to QC: while every nominator should seek to nominate only good stories,
we DO allow self-nomination and that leaves room for less QC. We all may
have tendency to think highly of our work when others may not. That being
said, I never want to stigmatize self-nomination. In both years, I
self-nominated my own stuff to prove that. So I encourage it, but that
means that anything (gem or not) can get in the door. Let the reviews fall
as they will.

>
> What do you think about the review scale I proposed earlier,
> with 75-character point brackets at the two ends and
> 150-character brackets in the middle? Would it do what you
> want it to do? It's still a 10-point spread, and I think this
> will help people write appropriate reviews -- it's pretty
> easy to move around in the 1-2-pt area and in the 8-10 pt
> area, but pretty hard to get from one to the other so you
> have to put in more effort for a story you really like.

Honestly not being math-minded, I can't say. I think so. But I could be so
completely not math-minded as to be completely and utterly wrong.

--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

Msg# 6749

Re: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is the a Posted by Marta Layton January 15, 2006 - 16:05:44 Topic ID# 6741
> Message: 13
> Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:03:00 -0600
> From: "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@earthlink.net>
> Subject: RE: RE: What is the problem to which "reduce the points
> scale" is the answer? (Ainae)
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
>> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Marta Layton
>> Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2006 5:42 PM
>> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
>> Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] RE: What is the problem to which
>> "reduce the points scale" is the answer? (Ainae)
>>
>>> Message: 13
>>> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:51:21 -0600
>>> From: "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@earthlink.net>
>>> Subject: RE: What is the problem to which "reduce the
>> points scale" is
>>> the answer?
>>>
>>> That's better than the 5-point scale. And see my more recent post
>
>>>
>>
>> Ainae, I disagree with tghis pretty strongly, or at least
>> with how I'm reading this. I won't review every story next
>> year but sometimes not reviewing a story has nothing to do
>> with the story. It doesn't mean it's bad, it just means I
>> didn't get to it. And I don't want people to think that just
>> because they're not getting enough reviews, that the
>> reviewers don't like their story. It may be that it's just
>> about different characters than the most active reviewers
>> like, or that people are just too crunched for time.
>>
>> Now this doesn't mean we have to vote for every story. Not
>> saying that.
>> Just saying that the absence of a vote can't automatically be
>> interpreted as a thumbs-down.
>
> I think I stated the other side of the no review in another post.
> Yes, of
> course, sometimes it meant you didn't read the story at all, for one
> reason
> or another (summary didn't catch you, you got engaged and ran out of
> time to
> read stories....). But SOMETIMES it DOES mean you couldn't find
> anything
> good to say about a story.
>
> It can't automatically be interpreted as a thumbs-down, I agree. You
> can't
> tell either way. We had what 500-ish members in 2004. I can't assume
> because one of my stories only got 4 votes that the other 496-ish
> didn't
> like it. That comes with the whole "read what you want thing." You
> just
> can't know. If you got no reviews, you have questions , not necessary
> answers:
>
> 1) Did anyone read it?
> 2) If someone did read it, did they think it not worth a review?
>
> You cannot tell the answer from a 0 review. I will say that I reviewed
> something like 40 stories last year (not a very good ratio but I blame
> my
> fiance...). I can say I read more than 40. I did not even come close
> to
> reading the whole 1200. So my reasons for not leaving reviews are
> both of
> the reasons you mentioned, and no author of those 1160 stories I didn't
> review can know which reason it was that I didn't leave one based on
> the
> fact that I didn't review alone.
>

I see what you're saying here, and I agree, there are some stories that
don't receive a review from a certain person because that reviewer
didn't like them. I just don't want some author to think badly of
themselves unduly.

As for the 500-ish members in 2004.... you have to remember that a lot
of Yahoo groups have a problem with low participation. Chew on this:
out of the 319 members of this group, 184 either don't receive emails
or receive only special notices. This doesn't mean they don't
participate at all, but it is a pretty good indication. Oh, and 24
members are bouncing.

Why would someone be a member if they weren't even going to lurk? Well,
I suspect a lot of people join because they want to vote or nominate -
they may never get around to it, of course. Also, a lot of people
probably joined when they first heard about the MEFAs, maybe out of
interest to see what the awards are about, and have since moved on to
other things. My point is that looking at the total number of group
members isn't a good indication of the actual reviewers pool.

<snip>

> As to QC: while every nominator should seek to nominate only good
> stories,
> we DO allow self-nomination and that leaves room for less QC. We all
> may
> have tendency to think highly of our work when others may not. That
> being
> said, I never want to stigmatize self-nomination. In both years, I
> self-nominated my own stuff to prove that. So I encourage it, but that
> means that anything (gem or not) can get in the door. Let the reviews
> fall
> as they will.
>

I've said it before, and I'll repeat myself here. Yes, an author can
self-nominate anything of theirs they like. And yes, some authors think
highly of their work where others don't. But others such as myself are
actually their harshest critic. Regardless, I think all authors have
some feel which of their stories are their best and which are their
worst. And so there has to be some sort of QC on the part of the
author. If the story was written by someone else, would you still
recommend it to a friend? Because that's basically what a nomination
amounts to, recommending it to those people who will be reading it. If
you feel it's not your best work you probably shouldn't recommend it --
not because you're the author but because of the story's quality.

This doesn't stigmatize self-nominations. If anything, it puts them on
equal footing with stories where the nominator and author aren't the
same, by holding them to a similar standard. In the case of
self-nominations it's the author's own choice whether a story deserves
a nomination and the author is only accountable to his or her own
conscience, but I still think that most of us can tell the difference
between the best of our own writing and stuff that's good but not quite
as excellent.

>> What do you think about the review scale I proposed earlier,
>> with 75-character point brackets at the two ends and
>> 150-character brackets in the middle? Would it do what you
>> want it to do? It's still a 10-point spread, and I think this
>> will help people write appropriate reviews -- it's pretty
>> easy to move around in the 1-2-pt area and in the 8-10 pt
>> area, but pretty hard to get from one to the other so you
>> have to put in more effort for a story you really like.
>
> Honestly not being math-minded, I can't say. I think so. But I could
> be so
> completely not math-minded as to be completely and utterly wrong.
>

Well, if you don't have any strong objections, I'll take that as a
"yes". I can't see the future, either, but I think a bell-shaped
distribution like this will work best by giving weight to both long and
short reviews.

Msg# 6752

Re: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is the a Posted by Kathy January 15, 2006 - 20:33:06 Topic ID# 6741
--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta Layton <melayton@g...> wrote:
>
>
> As for the 500-ish members in 2004.... you have to remember that a
> lot
> of Yahoo groups have a problem with low participation. Chew on this:
> out of the 319 members of this group, 184 either don't receive emails
> or receive only special notices. This doesn't mean they don't
> participate at all, but it is a pretty good indication. Oh, and 24
> members are bouncing.
>

Don't know if there are many members like me, but I prefer to read at
the MEFA Yahoo group site, and have my email preference set to special
notices only. So that's not always an indicator of low participation.
But I may be an exception to the rule...

Kathy (Inkling)

Msg# 6754

Re: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is the a Posted by elliska67 January 16, 2006 - 18:31:17 Topic ID# 6741
<snip>Chew on this: out of the 319 members of this group, 184 either
don't receive emails or receive only special notices. This doesn't
mean they don't participate at all, but it is a pretty good
indication. Oh, and 24 members are bouncing.

Why would someone be a member if they weren't even going to lurk?
</snip>

I have been reading but not participating too much in the post-
mortum, mainly because I really didn't see anything wrong with the
way things worked the last two years, so I didn't see much point in
making big changes. But this comment made me laugh so I thought I'd
say something.

I am one of the people in this group that does not receive emails or
even special notices--I read everything online. Why? Not because I
don't participate. Not because I don't read what's going on. Simply
because I don't want 50-100 emails from the 13 very active groups I
belong to innundating my mail box every day. I couldn't keep them
straight much less read them. I find reading online to be more
organized. And I know a lot of people who feel the same.

My point: I think we sometimes draw conclusions that aren't
necessarily valid in all cases. I'm not arguing for/against anything
in particular that has been suggested or decided; I'm just
cautioning against making assumptions. :-)

Msg# 6755

Re: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is the a Posted by rhapsody\_the\_bard January 17, 2006 - 13:03:25 Topic ID# 6741
--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "elliska67" <elliska67@y...> wrote:
<snip>
>
> I am one of the people in this group that does not receive emails or
> even special notices--I read everything online. Why? Not because I
> don't participate. Not because I don't read what's going on. Simply
> because I don't want 50-100 emails from the 13 very active groups I
> belong to innundating my mail box every day. I couldn't keep them
> straight much less read them. I find reading online to be more
> organized. And I know a lot of people who feel the same.
>
> My point: I think we sometimes draw conclusions that aren't
> necessarily valid in all cases. I'm not arguing for/against anything
> in particular that has been suggested or decided; I'm just
> cautioning against making assumptions. :-)

What she said. I am on no mail for most of my groups or on special
notice, also for this group. But I am still active... that is if I
have the energy to log in.

Rhapsody

Msg# 6767

Re: What is the problem to which "reduce the points scale" is the a Posted by Ainaechoiriel January 22, 2006 - 23:42:26 Topic ID# 6741
I have no problem with that. Heck, I've not even been a good lurker this
year. I just fear that too many decisions are made by too few that effect
everyone and that everyone may not be happy with. If that's the case, I
simply advocate more people getting involved in those decisions.

--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 rhapsody_the_bard
> Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 1:00 PM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: What is the problem to which "reduce
> the points scale" is the answer? (Ainae
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "elliska67" <elliska67@y...> wrote:
> <snip>
> >
> > I am one of the people in this group that does not receive
> emails or
> > even special notices--I read everything online. Why? Not because I
> > don't participate. Not because I don't read what's going on. Simply
> > because I don't want 50-100 emails from the 13 very active groups I
> > belong to innundating my mail box every day. I couldn't keep them
> > straight much less read them. I find reading online to be more
> > organized. And I know a lot of people who feel the same.
> >
> > My point: I think we sometimes draw conclusions that aren't
> > necessarily valid in all cases. I'm not arguing for/against
> anything
> > in particular that has been suggested or decided; I'm just
> cautioning
> > against making assumptions. :-)
>
> What she said. I am on no mail for most of my groups or on
> special notice, also for this group. But I am still active...
> that is if I have the energy to log in.
>
> Rhapsody
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Back to Top
If you have any questions about the archive, or would like to report a technical problem, please contact Aranel (former MEFA Tech Support and current Keeper of the Archive) at araneltook@mefawards.org or at the MEFA Archive group..