Yahoo Forum Archive

Hey guys,

As we're nearing the end of our nominations, I wanted to do this week's
informative email on what authors need to do in the next week (if they
haven't already). I know that not everyone here is an author; but if you
nominated someone and know them, perhaps you can point them to this post.

Nominations close on Sunday, June 15, at 11:59 PM GMT. To figure out
what this is in local time, go to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2008/ and look
in the bottom left corner. Compare the "page served at: " time to your
local time; this will tell you the hours that you are ahead of or behind
GMT, as the timestamp displayed is the current time when that page was
loaded.

Authors have another week after nominations close to give the final
approval for each of their nominations. This includes:

--- completing the form about their nomination and giving it the status
"Author satisfied with form"; and
--- emailing your liaison to say you are satisfied with the form.

If you do not know your liaison's email, send your email saying you're
satisfied to mefasupport(.at.)mefawards(.dot.)net.

Authors often are unsure how to fill out their form. If you do not know
how, this is how you do it:

1. Log in to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2008 using the username and password
sent to you.
2. Click on the "View Your Nominated Stories" link.
3. Click the "Edit Data" link.
4. Fill out the questions on the page.
5. At the bottom of the page select the appropriate status: "Author
satisfied with form" if you are done with it and ready for your liaison
to check over it for you; "author has begun but not finished form" if
you'd like to come back to it later.
6. Click the appropriate button - "Submit completed form" if you're
done, "submit partial form" otherwise.

Now your form is saved. If you're done, go ahead and email your liaison
so she knows to look over your work.

***********************************************

Every year, one of the most confusing things for new members is getting
passwords. Some people receive their passwords, no problem. However, if
you aren't sure what your password is, here are some steps to take:

--- Check your email's spam folder. It may be that the email containing
your password was treated as spam.

--- Go to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2008/ and click the "Forgotten
password?" link. This will allow you to resend your password to
yourself. (You have to enter the email address which you were nominated
under.)

--- If you still have trouble, post here and someone can look into it
for you.

*************************************************

Once you email your liaison that you are finished with the form, she
will look over the form to see that everything is correct. Your
nomination will then be given the status "Nomination approved by
liaison" and passed on to yours truly. I give all nominations a final
check-over and, assuming there are no problems, finalize the nomination.
If there *are* problems I will send a message to your liaison who will
in turn pass it along to you, letting you know what to fix. In this case
I'll reset the status to "Author has begun but not finished form."

Statuses are important because they show up on the website. If you log
in to the website and click on "Browse all nominated stories," you will
see the status in the right column. It's the italicised text under the
"Enter New Review" link.

To summarize, here are what the usual statuses mean after you've
submitted your form:

--- Author satisfied with form: you have finished the form, but your
liaison has probably not had a chance to look over it. If it stays like
this for a few days you may want to resend your email saying you were
satisfied with the form, in case your liaison didn't receive it.

--- Nomination approved by liaison: The liaison has approved the form
and passed it along to me for final approval.

--- Nomination Finalized: The ultimate goal. This is the status you see
when I've finalized the nomination.

--- Author has begun but not finished form: This status means two
things. Either you have not finished the form; or your liaison or myself
found an error that needs to be fixed before it can be finalized.

*************************************************

Once your story has that "Nomination Finalized" status, you know your
nomination is ready to compete. You don't need to do anything else.

You have a week after nominations close to finish up your forms. I tell
authors to be done by June 21 (the Saturday after nominations close).
This way you don't run into any problems with misunderstanding time
zones, and if there's a small tweak that needs to be made, you can still
do that. Obviously the sooner you are done the more time you have to
make changes, which is a good thing.

*************************************************

Remember, I will be out of town (and possibly without email access) from
tomorrow until Wednesday. Inkling will answer the mefasupport email
address in the mean time, but any nominations you complete the forms for
will not be looked at until that time.

Good luck to all the authors!

Marta