Hey guys,
This year the awards volunteers (esp. Elliska and myself) have noticed
that there are several authors who have ended up with more than one
account. There are lots of ways this can happen, through no fault of the
member's - for instance, if an author's penname and Yahoo ID are
different; or if the author publishes under more than one penname.
If you have more than one membership at the voting website (or know of
someone you suspect does), *please* let us know so we can address the
problem. This is important because you can vote through each membership,
so in theory people with more than one account could vote more than once
for the same story. I'm not suggesting anyone has done this, but even
the possibility can throw doubts on the award's results - and I want
those results to be bulletproof. :-)
For the last few weeks, new members joining the MEFAwards group have
been asked whether they have any other pennames and whether they've ever
participated in the awards before. Liaisons are also starting to ask
those same questions to new authors. So hopefully we'll cut down on this
problem in the future.
To help address this issue, I have written two new FAQs, and Tanaqui has
uploaded them to the website:
www.mefawards.net/MEFA2008/index.php?page=FAQnominations#nom_18
"Can the same author be nominated under different names" in the
Nominations FAQ
www.mefawards.net/MEFA2008/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_18
"Can I have more than one account?" in the Voting FAQ
If you think you might have more than one account, please email
mefasupport(.at)mefawards(.dot.)net so we can investigate the situation,
and correct it if need be. You won't be criticized or punished in any
way - in fact, I'll likely be very happy to be aware of the problem.
*******
Also, Tanaqui has made a few minor site additions and corrections:
--- There was an error in the way the email address of an author's
liaison was displaying at some places on the site: the site was adding a
period to the beginning of the email address. This has now been fixed.
If you've had a hard time reaching your liaison, please check to see if
this might have corrected the problem.
--- Per Dreamflower's suggestion [at MEFAwards], Tanaqui edited the New
Members Guide. The guide now contains a link to the review strategies
from veteran reviewers.
--- There was a small error in how super-long author names were
displayed on the website - they were being shortened, but not quite in
the right way. That's now been fixed.
Thank you, Tanaqui and Aranel, for all your hard work making the site
work so well! If anyone else notices the site behaving oddly, please let
us know.
Marta