Yahoo Forum Archive

This is a "how-to" email for those of you slightly scratching your
head about what you should be doing now. You may want to get involved
in the MEFAs but are feeling just a tad overwhelmed.

Well, the best way to get involved at this stage is to VOTE. You vote
by leaving some feedback on the story, like you would in a review at
an archive. But to do that first you have to find stories.

There are several ways, but the easiest way is at our voting website.

Go to http://www.mefawards.net/2006/ and log in. If you do not have an
account or do not remember your password please email
mefasupport(at)gmail(dot)com. Please note, this is different than the
log-in information you use for Yahoo, and it is also different from
the information you use to log in to our FAQ bulletin boards at
http://www.mefawards.net/faq/ .

Once you are logged in, click on "Browse Nominated Stories".

By default this page lists twenty-five stories. The order the stories
are displayed in comes from a fairly complicated mathematical formula.
The important thing to realize is that the order you see the stories
in is different from the order any other user sees the stories in, but
it's always the same for you. You can tell the website to display more
stories to a page by selecting a different option in the "Per Page: "
drop-down menu on the right side of the screen.

If you want to see stories set in a certain place, or featuring a
certain character, or many of the other pieces of information author
provided, you can use one of the filters on that page. For example,
selecting "Ringbearers" from the "Major Characters" drop-down and then
clicking the "Display selected nominations" button will display all of
those stories whose authors ticked "Ringbearers" as one of their major
characters. In this case, that's four stories:

"We Don't Say Goodbye" by Iorhael
"Love Me Now, Forever" by Iorhael
"The Tenth Walker" by Lindelea
"Boromir's Song" by Rhiannon Merdon

Clicking on the title of any of these stories will open up that story
in a new window. Read it, and when you're done close that window. If
you would like to vote for either the story or the author then click
the appropriate link in the right column. You will then be led through
the process of entering a review (more on that in another email,
probably tomorrow).

You can use more than two filters at the same time; if you do so, this
will display stories that have selected *both* of your selections for
that filter. For example, if you select "The Ringbearers" as a major
character and "Aragorn heals Faramir, Eowyn, and Merry" as a canonical
event, you are not likely to get any stories as none of the
ringbearers are present at this event. If on the other hand you were
to select "Returning from the Ring War" and "The Ringbearers" you
would just get "Love Me Now, Forever" - because it is the only story
that both has "The Ringbearers" as a category and "Returning from the
Ring War" as a canonical event.

If you want to clear all the filters to do a new search, click the
"Clear All Filters" button.

If you want to see all the stories by a certain author, you can do
that using the author filter. Make sure you have clicked the "Clear
All Filters" button and then select the author's name from the
"Author" filter (fourth from the top). Then click the "Display
selected nominations" button.

If you know a story's ID #, you can find it fairly easily. Click the
"Clear All Filters" button to clear the current search, and then
scroll past the filters to where you see a search button. Type in the
story's ID#, followed by the pound sign (#) and click search. This
will bring up that specific story.

For example, typing "83#" and then clicking search will bring up story
#83: "By the Light of Earendil Star" by Branwyn.

If you remember some word in the story's title, author name, or
summary, you can also use the search feature. Type in the word you
want to search for and it will bring up all of the stories where that
word appears in the author name, title, or summary. Searching for
"alawa", for instance, pulls up two stories:

72. "Heirlooms" by annmarwalk
[because Alawa's name appears in the summary: "While awaiting the
birth of her grandchild, Morwen Steelsheen crafted two gifts. A tale
of how these simple gifts became precious heirlooms in both Rohan and
Gondor. The character of Winfrith is used with the gracious permission
of her author, Alawa. "]

88. "Was It For This?" by Alawa
[because the word "Alawa" is the author's name]

I should point out that the website uses this text search as a filter,
so if you want to start a new search you should click the "Clear All
Filters" button. Otherwise selecting a filter will only display those
stories that meet both the filter and have the words that you searched
for.

I said before that the *default* order stories are displayed is
determined by a math formula. But you can change this order. Click on
the heading "ID" (below the search bar, before the stories are listed)
and the page will display them by number order, smaller number first.
Click on "Title" and "Author" and the stories will be displayed
alphabetically by title or author (depending on which one you click).
To go back to the default display, just click the "Stories" link at
the top of the page.

You can also select main categories and subcategories. Lots of people
want to vote for a whole subcategory at a time. Select the appropriate
main category or the appropriate subcategory from those filters, and
you will see the stories in that main category or subcategory. You can
use this in conjunction with other filters, i.e., selecting "Drama"
from "Category" and "Sam Gamgee" from "Main CHaracters" will show you
those stories in the main category "Drama" that have Sam listed as a
major character.

Oh, and one last thing: there's a very nifty filter called "Genre,
Race, Time Choice". This is different from the main category filter,
though the choices are the same. Selecting, for example, "Races:
Hobbits" from this list will show you those stories whose author
selected "Races: Hobbits" as their first *or* second *or* third choice
- wherever they ended up. Selecting "Races: Hobbits" from the main
category list will only show you those stories that were placed in a
subcategory in that main category.

I think that's enough to absorb in one sitting. If you have any
questions, please ask.

Marta

Posted by: "Marta Layton" melayton@gmail.com aure_enteluva

> By default this page lists twenty-five stories. The order the stories
> are displayed in comes from a fairly complicated mathematical formula.
> The important thing to realize is that the order you see the stories
> in is different from the order any other user sees the stories in, but
> it's always the same for you.

This sounds interesting. Can you tell us more about this? What
determines my or anyone else's
order?

A question to the "skip"-feature.
I have ticked off a couple of stories as "skip", but they nevertheless
show up in any search I conduct.

What is the purpose of this feature? Can I use it somehow to show me
only the stories I have _not_ skipped - so I can work my way through the
nominees without always encountering the stories I wanted to eliminate
from my search?

Imhiriel

> A question to the "skip"-feature.
> I have ticked off a couple of stories as "skip", but they

nevertheless> show up in any search I conduct.

>
> What is the purpose of this feature? Can I use it somehow to show me
> only the stories I have _not_ skipped - so I can work my way through

the> nominees without always encountering the stories I wanted to
eliminate> from my search?

>
> Imhiriel

Look through the filters, I think there is one that is "stories not on
your wish or skip lists".

I went through them as the nominations were coming in and sorted the
entire 650 into the wish and skip lists and now when I have time to
review I pull the filter up and use my wish list to read from.

Is that what you're asking?

Sulriel

Imrihel,

On Jul 20, 2006, at 1:20 PM, Imhiriel wrote:

> Posted by: "Marta Layton" melayton@gmail.com aure_enteluva
>
>> By default this page lists twenty-five stories. The order the stories
>> are displayed in comes from a fairly complicated mathematical formula.
>> The important thing to realize is that the order you see the stories
>> in is different from the order any other user sees the stories in, but
>> it's always the same for you.
>
> This sounds interesting. Can you tell us more about this? What
> determines my or anyone else's
> order?
>
> A question to the "skip"-feature.
> I have ticked off a couple of stories as "skip", but they nevertheless
> show up in any search I conduct.
>
> What is the purpose of this feature? Can I use it somehow to show me
> only the stories I have _not_ skipped - so I can work my way through
> the
> nominees without always encountering the stories I wanted to eliminate
> from my search?
>
> Imhiriel

The 'Skip' function is supposed to make stories not show up in the
StoriesBrowse lists. I'm not sure why it's not working, and right now,
I don't have time to check it out.

As far as the funky math for changing order by person, it's this:

I sort from lowest to highest on the following function:

cos(userid*1000000+storyid*10)

That way, everybody has a different order, and there shouldn't be any
bias for one story always showing up at the top of everybody's list.
That one does seem to be working properly!

If I haven't gotten back to you on the 'skip' item within a week, send
me an email directly, and I'll see about looking at it.

Later,
Anthony

I thought that new Final Reviews were visible after noon on Fridays;
but despite about 185 Reviews being finalized in the last week, they
are not accessible.

Or was the unleashing of last week's 178 Final reviews not supposed to
be repeated with new reviews, until later?


RAKSHA THE slightly confused DEMON

Hi Raksha,

> I thought that new Final Reviews were visible after noon on Fridays;
> but despite about 185 Reviews being finalized in the last week, they
> are not accessible.
>
> Or was the unleashing of last week's 178 Final reviews not supposed to
> be repeated with new reviews, until later?
>
> RAKSHA THE slightly confused DEMON
>

I'm replying to this and changing the subject line to call Anthony's
attnetion to it. Hopefully he can provide a more definitive answer when
he gets a chance to look at emails.

Raksha, I'm honestly not sure when the site releases reviews. I was
under the impression that it was supposed to be done at some point over
the weekend, or at least that's the way it happened last week. But I
can't remember when exactly it happened.

Also, 185 reviews? I just checked and you're right about that - which is
fabulous. Thank you to everyone for all your reviewing.

Marta

Posted by: "Marta Layton" melayton@gmail.com aure_enteluva

> There is a filter, the fifth down from the top, where the last option
> will show those stories that you have not reviewed, but also have not
> wished or skipped. Because of the way the website is programmed,
> selecting this option means the site won't look at the other filters.
> So if you select this option it will display all the stories you
> haven't reviewed, wish-listed, or skipped - even if you also have a
> certain author selected from that filter.

Ah, thank you. So I can't, for example, use this to, say, filter out
stories of a specific genre, or a specific category? It is all or
nothing skipped?

> Warning: geek-speak ahead. :-)

Yes. Erm. Thanks for the warning *g*. I find it interesting nonetheless
to learn what you all had/have to take into consideration with
programming and running the site.

Imhiriel