Hey guys,
Every year we have welcomed suggestions from all MEFA members about
ways that we can improve the awards in future years. In past years
this has been done through posts at a Yahoo group, either this group
or mefa-discussion, where any member could make a suggestion and any
other members could comment on it. The final decision has always
rested with those volunteers most involved with running the awards,
but we're a pretty reasonable bunch and really do want the awards to
reflect what the majority want from it, so we've made many changes and
(I hope) improvements over the years - sometimes quite substantial
ones, like doing away with the author awards portion of the MEFAs.
This year, the other volunteers and I have decided to do things a
little differently. The MEFAs have grown so large that the format of
public debate really isn't the best way to consider suggestions
anymore. And I'll be too busy with RL things to keep up with the
discussion like I have in past years. Therefore, we've decided that
we'll still be accepting suggestions and input on those suggestions,
but the way we'll discuss them will have to be different.
If you have a suggestion for the 2009 MEFAs, please email it to
mefasupport@gmail.com with the subject "2008 Post-Mortem." It will be
discussed (at a bare minimum!) among the most active volunteers -
myself, Inkling, Radbooks, elliska, and the tech support team. If we
think more input would help us make a better decision, we'll talk to
those members most affected by the suggestion - by emailing the
volunteers involved in a certain portion of the awards, for instance,
or by posting an opinion poll that anyone can participate in. (As in
the past, these polls would be for our information only, to help us
see what the majority wants; we will consider the majority opinion but
weigh it against other factors as well.)
Once all the suggestions have been considered, I will post here about
the changes that will be made for the 2009 awards. That way, everyone
will know what was decided upon.
One other thing: our tech support volunteers will be working hard over
the next few months to upgrade our website in ways that may not be
obvious to site users. This is necessary to make the site more secure
and more efficient (so it runs faster), and also to make it play well
with computing advancements that all websites rely on. Because of
this, any suggestions you make shouldn't require any changes to the
website itself. There's still a lot of areas that we can make changes
to without requiring technical changes to the website, though. And
we'll still take bug reports, of course; just please don't ask for new
features.
If you have any suggestions, please send them to
mefasupport@gmail.com
Because we need to plan for next year, please email your suggestions
to us by January 15 at the latest.
Thanks,
Marta
(MEFA Admin.)