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Lovely to see the thousands of reviews at the site. So much good
reading to look forward to (I mean the stories, of course, that I
haven't yet looked at, but the reviews I've seen have convinced me to
add them to my "want to read" list).

Just spent a couple of hours writing author reviews. Did you know there
are only 50 finalized author reviews so far? Seems as if there ought to
be more. Do people just prefer to write reviews about individual
stories and not record their cumulative impressions of the authors
they've been reading? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Thanks,
Lin

In a message dated 11/11/2006 12:57:08 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
BLJean@aol.com writes:

Just spent a couple of hours writing author reviews. Did you know there
are only 50 finalized author reviews so far? Seems as if there ought to
be more.


If there are 50 now, then that's a lot more than when I looked the other
day. There were only 19 for the longest time. Maybe it's something people were
saving for last, after they'd read several of an author's story.

Isabeau


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Login as yourself at the review site. Go to "Read Author Reviews by
Reviewer"--this defaults to showing your own reviews first. But by
doing that, it gives you access to hidden review counts, too. YOur own
non-final reviews show (for you), but you get a total count of hidden
and finalized reviews. You will still only be able to see finalized
reviews by others and the author reviews you've written, whatever
their status, but that will give you a better idea of how many there
are in the system.

Keep in mind, of course, that a lot of them will be doubles or triples
or whatever, as people copy-paste their author reviews across genres.

I suspect that Isabeau is right, that a lot of people are saving the
author reviews for last. After all, it helps to have read all you're
going to read by a given author before writing a review about his or
her work!

Dwim

Hi Lin,

I have wondered a bit about author reviews and why there aren't that many of
them. I know a lot of people do author reviews last, and maybe some just
haven't gotten to it yet. I'm hoping so. I plan to write a few, not sure if
I'll get round to it or not but I intend to.

Anyway, if you have the time - please DO write author reviews. If you're
confused about them feel free to ask and someone will answer (me and other
people as well, if anyone has anything to add).

Marta

PS - Absolutely AWESOME about all of the story reviews. I am a little blown
away by how many of those we've had. I don't mean to downplay that at all.
:-)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of shippingindustry
> Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2006 12:50 AM
> To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MEFAwards] Musing aloud... a question
>
> Lovely to see the thousands of reviews at the site. So much
> good reading to look forward to (I mean the stories, of
> course, that I haven't yet looked at, but the reviews I've
> seen have convinced me to add them to my "want to read" list).
>
> Just spent a couple of hours writing author reviews. Did you
> know there are only 50 finalized author reviews so far? Seems
> as if there ought to be more. Do people just prefer to write
> reviews about individual stories and not record their
> cumulative impressions of the authors they've been reading?
> Or am I misunderstanding something?
>
> Thanks,
> Lin
>
>
>
>
>

I'm a bit confused. I'd like to try writing a few Author Reviews,
but I don't understand why the ones I see are for Authors in various
sub-cats. I thought the point of Author Reviews was to review the
Author's work (as submitted to this year's MEFA Awards) as a whole.
If Author X has stories in five different subcats, do I have to
review her in all of those subcats, or can I just do one review and
reference her work in subcats other that the one in which I'm
reviewing?

(for example, Author X has stories in Times: Late Third Age,
Genres: Humor: Parody, Genres: Romance: Fixed-Length Ficlet,
Times: Fourth Age and Beyond: Gondor, and Races: Cross-Cultural.
I want to do one Author Review of Author X. Is it appropriate to do
so, posting the review in Author X: Times: Late Third Age, when I
plan to call attention to the skills of Author X as seen in stories
in all those categories?)

Or am I completely misunderstanding the Author Review posting system?

By the way, I'm also delighted at the number of reviews for this
year's awards. Huzzah for all the reviewers!



RAKSHA THE DEMON




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

>
> Hi Lin,
>
> I have wondered a bit about author reviews and why there aren't

that many of

> them. I know a lot of people do author reviews last, and maybe some

just

> haven't gotten to it yet. I'm hoping so. I plan to write a few, not

sure if

> I'll get round to it or not but I intend to.
>
> Anyway, if you have the time - please DO write author reviews. If

you're

> confused about them feel free to ask and someone will answer (me

and other

> people as well, if anyone has anything to add).
>
> Marta
>
> PS - Absolutely AWESOME about all of the story reviews. I am a

little blown

> away by how many of those we've had. I don't mean to downplay that

at all.

> :-)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> > [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of shippingindustry
> > Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2006 12:50 AM
> > To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [MEFAwards] Musing aloud... a question
> >
> > Lovely to see the thousands of reviews at the site. So much
> > good reading to look forward to (I mean the stories, of
> > course, that I haven't yet looked at, but the reviews I've
> > seen have convinced me to add them to my "want to read" list).
> >
> > Just spent a couple of hours writing author reviews. Did you
> > know there are only 50 finalized author reviews so far? Seems
> > as if there ought to be more. Do people just prefer to write
> > reviews about individual stories and not record their
> > cumulative impressions of the authors they've been reading?
> > Or am I misunderstanding something?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Lin>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I have exactly the same question as Raksha.

Oshun


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Raksha and Oshun,

This is actually a really common confusion.

Author reviews should be about the author generally, not about any specific
award. But this year there were 224 authors. If they all ran in one big
category, that would obviously be too much.

So we decided to break things down a little bit. Every place an author has a
story entered, they are also entered into an author subcategory with other
authors who wrote stories in that main category.

For example, the Dwarves main category has two subcategories for stories

Dwarves: General
--- [untitled] He: Gimli fic prompt #84 by Thevina Finduilas
--- Antiphon to Light by Thevina Finduilas
--- Gimli's Tale by Pearl Took
--- Gundabad by Salsify
--- The Heads of One Thousand Goblins: A Love Story by SickleYield
--- The Stone's Lament by Thevina Finduilas
--- Too Few Words by annmarwalk

Dwarves: Fixed-Length Ficlet
--- Aglarond by annmarwalk
--- For the Dwarves by Tanaqui
--- The Groomsman by Elen Kortirion
--- A New Tradition by Tanaqui
--- A Thing Unheard Of by Tanaqui

For Dwarves, there would also be two sub-categories set up: one for authors
of FLFs, and one for authors of full-length stories. If there had been a
"Dwarves: Poetry" subcategory, there would also be a subcat for authors of
poetry.

Those two author subcats are:

Dwarves: General Authors
--- annmarwalk
--- Pearl Took
--- Salsify
--- SickleYield
--- Thevina Finduilas

Dwarves: Fixed-Length Ficlet Authors
--- annmarwalk
--- Elen Kortirion
--- Tanaqui

If there had happened to be two subcategories for full-length stories, the
author of every story in *either* of those two subcategories would go into
Dwarves: General Authors, and similarly if there had been two subcats for
dwarf FLFs.

This is just to break up the authors into manageable groupings, so more
authors can be recognized.

Now, if an author ahs more than one story entered in more than one category,
they'll be in two author subcategories as well. Which makes things more
complicated. Different people handle this different ways. Some people write
a unique review for each subcategory an author is in. Some people only
change part of the review for each subcategory the same author is in. And
some of us use the exact same review for an author in every subcategory
they're in.

If you want to use the same review in more than one subcat, you would need
to go through like you were casting a vote for each subcategory and
copy-and-paste the same review into the window. You can use the same review
for the same author in different sub-categories, but you *can't* use the
same review for different authors.

Hope that helps clear things up! If you're still confused let me know how
and I'll try to explain that bit.

Marta

Hi, all! Remember me? Ainaechoiriel who founded the MEFAs had then
apparently sailed West and left this land during the second year! Or was it
3rd? I get confused.

Well, I must be a Teleri because I plan on sailing back to some degree. I'm
not taking over, just getting involved again. Don't know how far my
involvement can go, since we'll be trying to sell our house, then moving,
then starting the adoption process, then bringing adopted child home, etc.
But I've found myself finding some time and energy for my old hobbies that
got swept aside by my courtship and marriage.

Thus I was perusing the list today and found this post:


_____

From: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of shippingindustry
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 11:50 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Musing aloud... a question



Lovely to see the thousands of reviews at the site. So much good
reading to look forward to (I mean the stories, of course, that I
haven't yet looked at, but the reviews I've seen have convinced me to
add them to my "want to read" list).

Just spent a couple of hours writing author reviews. Did you know there
are only 50 finalized author reviews so far? Seems as if there ought to
be more. Do people just prefer to write reviews about individual
stories and not record their cumulative impressions of the authors
they've been reading? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Thanks,
Lin

.

<http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97359714/grpId=12538722/grpspId=1705213040/msgI
d=7570/stime=1163224435/nc1=3848591/nc2=4064471/nc3=3848445>
Lin, author have always got less reviews than their stories, even
in
the awards group that inspired this one and has run since 1995 or 1996.
Many
find it harder to write an author review. Especially when an author is in a
lot of
categories. We should want to see more, but I would never worry too much if
we
get nearly as many as the story reviews. It would be great if we did, but
don't
worry if we don't. Such is the way of things.

--Ainaechoiriel
Whose niece and nephew are due over soon for Christmas presents.....



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Ainae,

> Hi, all! Remember me? Ainaechoiriel who founded the MEFAs had
> then apparently sailed West and left this land during the
> second year! Or was it 3rd? I get confused.
>

We have been going on for three years now: 2004, 2005, and now 2006. (Wow,
didn't realize it was that many until I counted...) You had to pull out in
the middle of 2005, so it was the second year. Which again seems so much
longer than a year ago. I guess time can fly when you're enjoying yourself.

> Well, I must be a Teleri because I plan on sailing back to
> some degree. I'm not taking over, just getting involved
> again. Don't know how far my involvement can go, since we'll
> be trying to sell our house, then moving, then starting the
> adoption process, then bringing adopted child home, etc.
> But I've found myself finding some time and energy for my old
> hobbies that got swept aside by my courtship and marriage.
>

I am glad to hear from you, and that things seem to be doing well. It sounds
like you have a lot on your plate, so do take things slowly. But by all
means write and nominate and vote next year, and even get involved as a
liaison or categorizer if you like. You're always welcome.

Though I have to say I'm relieved that you don't want to take over - I love
these awards, and I think I might have to fight you for that. ;-) I've
simply invested too much work and grown too attached to them.

> Thus I was perusing the list today and found this post:
>
> _____
>
> Lovely to see the thousands of reviews at the site. So much
> good reading to look forward to (I mean the stories, of
> course, that I haven't yet looked at, but the reviews I've
> seen have convinced me to add them to my "want to read" list).
>
> Just spent a couple of hours writing author reviews. Did you
> know there are only 50 finalized author reviews so far? Seems
> as if there ought to be more. Do people just prefer to write
> reviews about individual stories and not record their
> cumulative impressions of the authors they've been reading?
> Or am I misunderstanding something?
>
> Thanks,
> Lin
>
> Lin, author have always got less reviews than their stories,
> even in the awards group that inspired this one and has run
> since 1995 or 1996.
> Many
> find it harder to write an author review. Especially when an
> author is in a lot of categories. We should want to see more,
> but I would never worry too much if we get nearly as many as
> the story reviews. It would be great if we did, but don't
> worry if we don't. Such is the way of things.
>

Well, voting's been over now for over a month. As it turns out there were
5,511 story reviews and 941 author reviews - that's about 85% story votes
and 15% author votes. In 2005 there were 6,023 story reviews and 678 author
reviews, giving us about a 90%/10% split. That means that there were
significantly more author reviews this year than last year. But it's still a
small portion.

I do think it's amazing that the number of author reviews and story reviews
stayed about the same as last year, when we had nearly double the stories
that we had this year. There are some truly commited (and perhaps commitable
;-P) reviewers out there.

Author reviews are a topic on the agenda of topics we're discussing in the
post-mortem . We're making good progress on that, it's just happening over
at the mefa-discussions Yahoo group rather than here. There seems to be a
lot of confusion about them, and we'll talk about how we can best handle
them. But I think Ainae's right, we'll always have less author reviews than
story reviews, no matter what we do.

Marta

Have I missed it, or is it still going on, and if so, where?


RAKSHA

Apparently the post-mortem is going on on the other list, and I'm not a
member of that list, either. Marta, would you let us know the
subscriber information regarding the other list? Thanks.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large

"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." LOTR

"Don't go where I can't follow."

I mourn for this nation.

To all those who are interested in joining in, please go to

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mefa-discussion/

and become a member. We are currently discussing fixed word length stories.

For all those who do not know, we moved the post mortem to this new group so as not to interfere with official MEFA stuff that goes on here.

For anyone who is interested in helping us decide how to run the 2007 MEFAs and effect changes that will impact upon the awards for years to come!


Naresha.


~One forgives for as long as one loves.~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://nareshaninya.livejournal.com Writing LJ: http://writingsofresha.livejourna.com
My Website! http://theinnermuse.freespaces.com
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha
Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks so, Naresha. Will do.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large

"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." LOTR

"Don't go where I can't follow."

I mourn for this nation.

Hello Raksha, Larner, and everyone else,

I am sorry if anyone feels "boxed out" of the post-mortem. That wasn't
at all my intention.

As I explained at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MEFAwards/message/7754
, we have been carrying out the post-mortem at the Yahoo group
"mefa-discussion". The reason for this is that in the past some
members of this group have felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of
posts when they just wanted to participate in the awards, not deal
with all of the policy decisions. So at some point during the 2006
awards I made the decision to reserve this list for those policy
discussions (which would definitely include the post mortem!), and
reserve this list for making official announcements and also giving
people a place to ask how to do things.

The post mortem is still going on, and you or anyone else is still
welcome to join in. If you are not a member of the group please join
at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mefa-discussion/, or email me at
mefasupport(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll send you an invitation.

Marta