Post-Awards Discussion

[AetherX]

Now that we’ve had some time to celebrate the winners and rest for a little bit, it’s time for post-awards discussion. My apologies for how long this has taken. Real life took its toll over the past few weeks. But we’re back now and ready to go. We're doing it publicly this time because honestly there isn't a great reason not to. A vast majority of participants were judges anyway, and we'd be glad to hear from everyone on this stuff.

To preface this a bit, we’re looking to potentially shake up the awards in a big way. What that’s going to look like, well… who knows. But our goal is to communicate with you all on what you want to participate in. I’ll start with a quick breakdown of the changes we made this time and what might happen with them in the future:

Category changes:

• Best Supporting to Best Deuteragonist didn’t change much. I’m thinking removing the “Characters who are important in a story with no clear lead character” clause might clear up any remaining issues with the category.
• Best Character Interaction was a little tricky to judge, but ended up going fairly well anyway. I’m happy with how the category turned out, and I got the impression you all enjoyed it.
• Best Speculative and Best Character-Driven were apt replacements for Drama, in my opinion. There was some confusion with what stories fit best in each category, but as we all get used to them I think that will balance itself out.
• Best Expansion being expanded to include all PMD fics was a bit of a leap, and I’m not sure I’m too keen on how it worked out. I think PMD fics would be better suited in whatever category best fits their tone.
• Best Journey… it’s one of the oldest categories, but I can see it dying out. All three nominations this season could have fit comfortably in other categories where they would have found better comparisons. The way I see it, we have two possible paths forward for this. First, we could mess with the judging guide to emphasize judging a journey story on how it tackles common journey tropes. That is, focus hard on the journey part and compare that rather than the various different tones and subplots that a journey fic could have. Our other option is to scrap the category. That would leave us with a potential opening for a new category, maybe something like Action Fic to counter Character-Driven for fics that don’t quite get speculative enough for Speculative.
• No more Best Character. Didn’t really receive any complaints about this, so I’m not going to mourn it. Like I mentioned back in the thread where I announced these changes, the number of times it ended up being Best Protagonist made the whole thing kind of a waste of time.
• No more Best Story. I know some of you wanted this to continue to be a thing, and honestly I really wish it had worked out. One issue with Best Story is comparing stories across categories. Something that fared well against similar fics may not stand a chance against the wider field. And if some categories or genres/tones/styles end up at a disadvantage then how could we possibly compare them fairly? But the real problem comes from judging, which I’ll cover next.

Judging changes:

• No more scores! Discrepancies in how judges gave scores always led to issues. Even when we discussed after the fact, the discussion was usually limited to the top two scoring stories. No scores at all encouraged everyone to read into the judging posts a little more to make determinations. I’m actually fairly impressed with how smoothly it went for the most part when it came to determining winners. Thank you so much to all of you who read extra and took the time to engage your fellow judges in discussion.
• Blocking judges from seeing character categories where they have an entrant in the running. I still think this was a good idea and eliminated a lot of potential stress and drama. That said, it also increased stress since we had less people involved in each conversation. Combine that with no scores to go off of and it’s honestly a miracle that we managed to determine winners. I had no idea if it would work out going in to this, but fortunately we had enough judges who were willing to go through the recommended reading for other stories to bring each category to a satisfactory conclusion.
• Related to the above: Best Story judging. Ultimately it failed because once we’d cut out the judges who weren’t allowed to participate and the ones who weren’t willing to read even more for all of the eligible fics (no shame in that, it was a lot of potential reading), we ended up with a rather small group with a very large task in front of them. To reiterate what I said in the Best Story thread for those who couldn’t see it: I don’t feel comfortable giving as lofty a title as “Best Story” to a fic without giving every eligible story a fair shot with a variety of judges who have read all of them and discussed thoroughly. It’s not right to let a small “elite” group of users elect a singular best story.
• Discussion in general… like I said above I’m glad that it worked out as well as it did, but part of me also feels like it could have been better. In fact, I think this is the root of improving the quality of the awards. Rigorous discussion from every judge is key if we’re to leave scores behind. But… maybe that’s too much. Would you rather scores come back?

Please feel free to respond with your thoughts on any or all of the above. How do you think you personally did as a judge this season? What’d you do well? Where could you improve? The awards as they are live and die by the judges. We rely on you all a lot, and improving at judging directly improves the quality of the awards.

Badges

We still haven’t updated the leaderboard or trainer cards yet. Apologies to those of you who look forward to that stuff. Category changes mean changing the badges, and we don’t really want to spend the time to design a brand new badge if we’re going to be messing with the categories any more. This might take some time, depending on the direction this discussion goes.

Looking Forward…

It’s easy for us mods to put on largely the same awards as we have for years, making various changes small and large based off of complaints or perceived problems. We’ve done it for years and could continue to do it for many more. But what’s our end goal?

It takes a lot of time and energy to put this on each season, so we want to make absolutely sure it’s worth the effort. I’ve never been a big fan of doing something purely because it’s just how things have always been. So I want to take a bit of a poll/ask you all to think about this.

• What do you want out of the awards? Some people are looking for validation, others are in it just for the feedback at the end, others are competitive. I’ve heard lots of people make allusions to what they like about the awards, but let’s hear plainly why you participate.
• What would the “perfect” awards event look like to you? Regardless of feasibility. You don’t have to give a full breakdown, you could just state something you think would be cool and we could potentially work backwards from there. For example, I think that ideally every single judge would read and judge the entirety of every single story in their category. It’s not practical, but it’s something to think about. Just give us an idea of what you think an end goal for the awards would look like.
  
• Do you want the awards as they are to continue at all? Like I said above, it takes a lot to put these on. If we cut them out entirely or bumped them down to once per year (an idea that has been floating around for a while now), we could dedicate those resources to putting on different events. Events that might better scratch the competitive itch, or provide more feedback for people, or whatever it is you want out of these (see the first question). Personally, I enjoy being able to put on our Sunday best and take ourselves seriously. Seriously judging and critically analyzing our works is enjoyable and inspiring to me. The awards covers that fairly well now, but we could potentially bump it down to once a year and make it even more competitive and analytical, leaving the other half of the year open for something more loose and fun. That's just one idea.

Let us know what your thoughts are. We don’t do this for us, we do it for you. And we want to guarantee that the things we do make you love being a part of this community.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Thanks for this, Aether.

I have plenty of thoughts on various matters and I'll be sure to lay them out here in the near future, hopefully by tonight.

 

[AceTrainer14]

Firstly, thanks to Aether and the other mods for arranging the awards and doing a great job, and for offering the opportunity for feedback. I’d like to see what other people have to say about those questions raised, but first I’ll start off with this round itself and a few suggestions that have occurred to me. Some stuff here is a little critical, but I hope it will be read with an open mind.

Current Categories:
- The split for Best Speculative and Character Driven was an excellent idea that worked out very well – much, much better than my daft idea of Best Drama! The issues around stories in the wrong categories I think was more down to the nature of some of the stories straddling the line, and should not cast a shadow over these excellent new additions.
- I approve the idea of Best Action / Epic. It would be good to stop judging big, adventure fics with quieter character pieces and thinking it is fair to compare the two when their only similarities are badges. An ‘Epic’ category would also leave room for similarly-written PMD fics rather than putting them in Expansion. The two PMD fics this season were too big and broad for the two shorter and more experimental works in that category to really get a fair look in. I think one big category will allow those types of stories to face each other fairly and let all works face things on a semi-equal level
- Personally, Character Interaction was strange to judge. It may have been the two stories I had to work with, but there wasn’t really a lot to ‘judge’. Largely this came down to me beingunsure what I was meant to be judging. With Salem, for example, is it bad character interaction because she ignores most characters, even though that’s her personality? On the other side, the CI feedback I got for DTYD did not tell anything that I did not already know.
- I agree with the suggested changes for Deuteragonist; it was a little hard to judge a character as secondary when they were basically the lead.

Judging:

I think the debates and discussions this year were as healthy and productive as ever. Some people were more enthused by works they had already read rather than those they had not, but that pretty much always happens.

On the question raised about slightly stilted discussions, I would like to see more interaction from the person in charge. This is purely my own personal view, but I think the ‘Head Judge’ or whatever you want to call the person running the show should be more active in the discussions. Not there to offer their view, but to draw out more responses from people and raise further questions. There was a bit of that this year, but only about once a day/picking up on one small point rather than covering the board.

This can be a lot for one person to handle – speaking from experience – so it might be time to split up duties rather than expecting one person to handle everything. Different moderators or experienced judges could oversee different categories, reporting to the same person in charge. They aren’t judges in that category, but will be facilitators, moving the discussion along and drawing out responses from those less willing to speak up. Having done this enough time, the one consistent is that if certain people aren't addressed directly and encouraged to be in the discussion, things will be dominated by one or two people. There needs to be someone overseeing things and making sure that the eventual winner is not just one person's decision.

Bests:

To be blunt, this experience was frustrating for several reasons. I do not think Best Story can be fairly written out when it was not given a fair chance in this round.

The tone prefacing the judging was essentially “I don’t want this to be a thing”. I am paraphrasing, but that was how it came across. I am not surprised that people didn’t feel that enthused from participating, and those of us who tried did not receive much encouragement or interaction.

The very large task was not made easier by only having a week; I spoke to at least three other users who said they would have participated but did not have time to read all the stories. There was a good discussion that could have started. Kin, LK and I offered commentary on all the fics, and with another week, and some more encouragement, I think more people could have become involved.

Therefore, I think we need to limit time spent on category judging to three weeks or so and increase time spent on Best Story. It’s not really reasonable to expect people to read six or so stories in one week when they’ve had over a month to read just two. I will be the first to admit I could rush things back in my tenure, but now that I am on the other side, I can see that a good game is definiely not a fast one.

For Character, I think it still has a role to play as well. Judging in the past was largely based on prominence rather than quality, an issue made more apparent in the Winter 2017 round, which had a narrow choice of characters that had enough flaws to equal their good qualities. I think in the next awards it deserves another chance, with emphasis placed on the quality of the character and their role within the story, rather than how much of a role they have. That is an issue that has always annoyed me, and I can understand the frustration here.

Also on judging. Something I have learnt since no longer running these is just how much discussion the author misses out on. Most judges only copy their initial judging directly when it comes time to share. That leaves behind a lot of feedback that is stirred up by the debates afterwards that the author never gets to see. What’s more frustrating is that the other three/four judges in that category rarely realise that they have technically judged the story as well and could just as easily share their feedback. It’s a little awkward to be the one posting feedback on a winning story that you judged, yet you were not in favour of it winning. It’s confusing for the authors if they’ve claimed the top prize but then get feedback pointing out numerous faults.

Suggested categories:
I have baulked at this idea in the past, but after discussing with another user, I think there is potential merit in separating human and Pokémon protagonists. Pokémon-led fics are more popular now, so I doubt we’d be short of strong contenders.

More personally, I would like to see a Best Minor Character. To re-use an old metaphor, Harry Potter is a protagonist, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Sirius and some teachers are deuters, and most other non-villains as Minor. Minor/background characters are often what make a story, and it would be nice to see some more recognition there.

I’ve written quite enough now. Am happy to expand on any ideas raised here further.

 

[kintsugi]

Hey Aether, thanks for typing this up! Lots of lovely insight for a lotta things across the board.

CATEGORY CHANGES

• Supporting to Deutero didn't change much, but it at least sounds better when you list it as Protagonist/Antagonist/Deuteragonist. The suggested redefinition you gave is good.
• Best Drama split was a good and necessary one. Many thanks.
• Best Journey - I think both of your suggestions are good here, but I like the first one a little more. OT trainerfic going around the region is so vanilla at this point that I think being able to compare how stories handle this and still make a an original premise out of it is an important distinction -- that and, because they'll inherently focus on a badgequest to some degree means that they won't have as much space as their competitors to explore category-specific plot aspects if they got moved

JUDGING CHANGES
Removing scores and blocking judges from categories they're in were both things that made judging a lot harder, but I don't see a better way around it. Agreed.

BEST STORY THOUGHTS

I think your reasoning behind being wary of the Best Story category is fair, but I don't think that using this season's performance as grounds to remove it as a category is necessarily an experimentally robust conclusion. I agree that there are a lot of difficulties in getting a group of users to come to a conclusion for Best Story, including the inherent difficulty of a shadowy cloister of judges getting together and circlerjerking to their favorite, but as one of the active voices in that discussion, I think the outcome stalled due to to reasons:

• the very large task in front of them, as you already mentioned
• apathy

unpacking what both of these mean from a holistic perspective:

1. Task Size
The changes to the recommended reading meant that the bare minimum required to read each story in Best Story, with just the bare minimum of chapters, amounted to approximately 208,000 words of reading in seven days (note that if you wanted to read the entirety of Guiding Light, which I imagine most judges actually want to do since, despite its best intentions/while it often works for Best Protag/Antag/Interaction, recommended reading makes it incredibly difficult to assess the entirety of a work). Seven days to read several novel's worth of fanfiction, assess it critically, and then discuss with several other users which of these is best. As a task for a single user, this would be intimidating. As a task given across a month, this would be intimidating. As a task for the largest number of judges (eleven, compared to the other categories, which I believe capped out at six people), in a single week? I don't blame any of the judges for not participating. It took me five days to read the stories I hadn't judged, and that was with me having been a judge for 1/3 of the categories, having background familiarity with two of the other fics, and being relatively free that week to do some hardcore catchup.

So yeah, when only three judges even indicated by the end of the week that they'd read all the stories, I honestly don't blame any of them. I don't think this task was possible. We had 8 weeks to read a fraction of the text for the category judging (for reference -- even maxxing out my reading for both Alternate and Non-Pokemon, aka reading every single story to its entirety, brings me to around 105k words in 8 weeks), so an expected reading of 13.5k words per week for the category judging, versus an expected reading of 208k words per week for the Best Story judging. That also fails to account for the fact that a week is a hard sample size for someone's free time, and the particular week we had for Best Story was when a lot of American students go back to school and shotgunning Pokemon fanfiction is probably the last thing on their minds.

2. Apathy
I kind of got the feel from the outset that mods didn't want Best Story to be a thing. Which is fair. And honestly, if the rest of the feedback from this thread is an overwhelming "we don't want best story to be a thing", then that's a community choice, and I'll agree with it. But the way things were structured now, with the cornerstone post of the Best Story judging conversation 1) starting with "I'm skeptical that this category should exist" and "I'll leave it to the quality of your discussion here to prove me wrong" and 2) laying out the frankly impossible reading deadline outlined above, I don't think this category had a shot to begin with. Whether this is due to the soft variables that you outlined both here and in the judging conversation for why it's impossible to judge, or because of the different conditions that the judging was subjected to this year compared to others, I can't say. Experimental setup should only alter one variable at a time if you want a sound conclusion, and the variable of "gutting the amount of time necessary to read everything, which is the gateway to having a productive discussion", is absolutely one that should be considered alongside these soft variables.

---

So what now? There's little benefit in running it again with a more realistic amount of reading time for the judges, and I sympathize with the "not right to let a small “elite” group of users elect a singular best story" as an underlying reason to be wary of the category. I'm a bit more optimistic about the ability to compare wildly different fics that have few similarities, if only because that's a thing that we expect regularly from Alternate and Non-Pokemon anyway.

On the flip side, I also see the benefits of having a Best Story for a given year. Some authors achieve an downright commendable amount of work in a given year and can create a compelling fantasy struggle from scratch over the course of 365 days. And while the title of Best Journey/Expansion/Speculative is rewarding in its own right, there are sometimes works where I really want to grab the author and tell them, "this thing you did this year? it was amazing. it was the best thing i've read on this site this year. you poured your heart into this and it worked so goddamn much". Which is also why we have the review feature, but it's one thing to hear it from one reader, and another thing to hear it coming officially. It's validation and competitiveness and feedback all rolled into one.

I could see a community-based discussion either going really well or really poorly for this one. We already handle Reviewer/Newbie/Contributor in public, which are literally about the people and not their writing, with minimal drama, so I don't think it'll be a huge shitshow if we limit posts to be only about saying why you're voting for X instead of saying Y and Z are absolute scumbag trash and no one in their right minds should vote for them.

Pros: it moves the focus away from the shadowy judge bandwagon, encourages the entire community to have input in this big "best number one gold star" badge we slap on something, and in general moves "best" from being "most liked by five people" to "best fit for the community"
Cons: still the same amount of recommended reading lol. I would propose a soft rule to future things in general that we don't create deadlines that require people to read and digest two small novels in a week. also probably a non-trivial amount of drama

---

LOOKING FORWARD

hey this isn't related to anything you posted, but I do think that the "hello here is the winner you get a badge" ends up being a little impersonal, which is a shame since there's 3-6 personal judges right there already. I think it'd be really cool to have judges write a short blurb for why they picked the winner that they did, and have that posted alongside the award/banner.

What do you want out of awards? -- hard to say what I want out of it; i'll say instead why I look back on the time spent and think it was good time spent. As a judge, the awards encourage me to read and review works I normally wouldn't, in genres I normally wouldn't. It doesn't instantly cement me in the community, but it also gives me a good sampling of where people are, how they've improved over the course of a year, and what new and inventive techniques people are taking. A lot of this can also be accomplished by just reading regularly, but I enjoy the structure that the awards provide.

As a participant, the feedback is invaluable (it's really the only time someone will comment on the overall nature of your story rather than chapter-by-chapter, which is a huge perspective shift), the unofficial competition is always nice, and it's good to know that someone read a thing I did and thought about it. So, all three of the things you listed. Gimme Best Cop-Out, please.

Perfect Awards -- ...i'mma get back to you on that one, actually. There's a lot of brainstorming to unpack here.

Continue? -- sweet lord yes. Appreciate your Sunday Best comparison.

 

[Persephone]

Not goi ng to go point by point, but will follow general order.

Story Categories

I think the split worked, I support journey getting changed to epic or something. Or just being nixed. I think the other categories cover almost everything currently running with any frequency save 8ES, which can go in Alternate, Character Driven or Expansion I guess.

Best Story

I broadly agree with kintsugi, with a few additions. First, I think that the main judging phase could've been shorter. Gave people two more weeks than usual and they all got their reviews in at the last minute anyway. Some of that time should go to best story for the reasons listed above. You can't possibly do a nuanced best story discussion in a week if you also want everyone to contribute.

I also think that if we're going to have a best story, we need to insist from the start that there will be a best story. Otherwise there simply won't be. Good faith actors might just not want to do the reading load for something they perceive as optional. It's the bad faith actors I'm far more concerned about.

I think that the changes this cycle made bad faith acting a lot harder. If you think that it's something's "time" to win or have a personal vendetta against an author or story, it's much harder to force that through when you can't just give someone a 35 instead of a 65, or a 95 instead of an 80. Best Story still strikes me as ripe for that, where someone who just doesn't want a best story chosen or has a vendetta against the story that's currently in the lead can kill the award without actually stating their intent. Because it's a lot easier to tear down a fan fic than to build it up,

For example, I've read all but one of the stories up for Best Story nominees this time around. I genuinely like all of them that I've read. If I wanted to, I could publicly tear them all a new one to such a degree that the discussion would suddenly be turned from "which story is better" to "which story is the least garbage" and that would probs kill any interest in awarding any of them. Or if I was one of the only people who had read all of them I could, say, just repeat ad nauseum my attack points rather than contributing anything, knowing that would kill the conversation without me ever having to defend my real beliefs.

Like, I love guidance. I write it. I've gotten quite a bit of glowing praise and won an award this time. But if I just went flailing wildly into the best story chat calling it "a story about a one dimensional fox with a gimmick that gets really old journeying with a blatant mary sue," There, well poisoned. Instead of having a nuanced discussion on a story I've reduced it to the basest of terms in one sentence.

I think if you want to prevent race to the bottom tactics or strategic silence among bad faith actors, you have to say that there will be a best story up front. And then give there time for an actual conversation to occur.

Second, I think it's actually quite possible to compare different stories. If anything, this round is proof. Different Eyes, guidance, and Phantom Project are all kinda somber Pokemon POV stories. Guiding Light is also Pokemon POV, and Any World You Want is at least arguably xenofiction. The last entry, The Deprogramming thrives on meta commentary and narration gags. Tbh they're way more similar to each other than the character driven and speculative entries were to each other.

Character Categories

I think that part of the struggle this time around is that one category had nine entries, taking almost as many judges out of the debate. Smaller categories might be better. I know I proposed it last time, but I think you could comfortably split protagonist into Best Human and Best Non-Human. Would be a roughly even split at present and add more judges into each debate.

I have no particular thoughts on best character interaction.

Best Character

It can stay dead for reasons well outlined above.

Format / Timing / Other

I think that the awards are the best thing bulba has going for it. I also understand the rationale for taking them down to once a year. My only concern is that the number of entries might start outstripping the number of judges we have available, especially if protagonist bloated from nine to fourteen or something like that. I think if you went to an annual awards you'd have to reduce the threshold for mandatory judging or reintroduce some culling mechanism on nominees.

Can we please not do best story (or any awards but the user ones) in public? Puts us into competition with serebii, who we share an increasing number of fics with, and also takes any illusion of skill away from the winner.

I really love the awards, however much I pick at the margins when they're done.

 

[lucarioknight56]

Might as well chip in my thoughts:

Judging
I think it turned out mostly alright, even if there were some questionable decisions in my opinion. There was only one thing I didn't like, but I'll talk about that later.

Story Categories
Honestly, my one complaint here is that my story, Unequivocant, really didn't fit into Expansion. Sure, it's classified as PMD, but if you read into it, it bears almost no resemblance save for the presence of certain tropes, like the Guild or the human-turned-Pokemon. Guiding Light was immediately a better candidate because it not only kept more true to PMD, but it also expanded on the story of the previous games and characters.

So yeah, don't group things simply based on their description or title. I think I would've had a better time in Journey than in Expansion, or even a brand new category like Epic, like AT14 suggested.

Best Story
There is definitely potential for Best Story; it really shouldn't be culled out, especially if we're using this year's judging as reason for it. I would have loved to talk more, but there simply wasn't time due to only having a week. We just need stricter deadlines to keep our reading and judging in control so we actually have time to determine this.

Character Categories
The one thing we're missing is a Minor Character category. There are some characters that don't play an important part in the plot of the story, yet they are great because of their personalities, quirks, or other things, despite the fact they don't receive much development. I think we would have every base covered if we had something like this.

Reviews
This was where the ball went flat in my opinion. It took a while for me to receive both my reviews, but I can understand because life happens. What irked me is that I was completely unable to see the discussion that lead to my story not making it in, or any of my characters for that matter. I want to see what made the other stories better or worse, but I can't; it's all restricted to the discussion in their respective threads, which the judges are not obligated to post. I won't name any awards in particular awards, but I was genuinely surprised by some of the winners and wanted to see what is essentially their path to victory.

Timing
I almost think that having a single awards season would be worse, considering that we already had quite a few be eligible over the past year, to the point that the judging took way longer than it should have. While I would like to see other events like maybe a challenge to write a fantasy story (I'd be down for that), I think we just need to consider the workload.

Not that I plan to take part in the next awards. Unless some changes are made to allow me to see how I win or lose post-awards or even during the awards, I'm little better than an outsider for most things about this. I can fully understand the reasons for keeping that discussion private, what with the drama that can come about. But I want to see so I can make my stories even better, and if a significant part of the review is gone, that makes it far more difficult.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I could see a community-based discussion either going really well or really poorly for this one. We already handle Reviewer/Newbie/Contributor in public, which are literally about the people and not their writing, with minimal drama, so I don't think it'll be a huge shitshow if we limit posts to be only about saying why you're voting for X instead of saying Y and Z are absolute scumbag trash and no one in their right minds should vote for them.

Pros: it moves the focus away from the shadowy judge bandwagon, encourages the entire community to have input in this big "best number one gold star" badge we slap on something, and in general moves "best" from being "most liked by five people" to "best fit for the community"
Cons: still the same amount of recommended reading lol. I would propose a soft rule to future things in general that we don't create deadlines that require people to read and digest two small novels in a week. also probably a non-trivial amount of drama

hey this isn't related to anything you posted, but I do think that the "hello here is the winner you get a badge" ends up being a little impersonal, which is a shame since there's 3-6 personal judges right there already. I think it'd be really cool to have judges write a short blurb for why they picked the winner that they did, and have that posted alongside the award/banner.

Would just like to say I am in favour of both of these ideas. I think opening up to the public, with some restrictions, could help determine a broader winner. The main downside would be that most people probably wouldn't have read most of the fics, likely won't read them all, and it would turn into a popularity contest.

The idea of blurbs is a great idea. A lot of awards ceremonies do things like this already, and it would be good to highlight the positives of a work and the reasons so that authors have more to work on.

I think the split worked, I support journey getting changed to epic or something. Or just being nixed. I think the other categories cover almost everything currently running with any frequency save 8ES, which can go in Alternate, Character Driven or Expansion I guess.

I don't think nixing Journey entirely is a good idea. With something like 8ES, it isn't really CD as it is more plot focussed, it's only Expansion is a broad sense and putting it there means setting a precedent for any sequel to go into Expansion and probably cruise to victory, and I don't think Alternate should just be a big, broad dumping ground for every story that doesn't quite fit inside the relatively narrow guidelines of our categories.

Unless some changes are made to allow me to see how I win or lose post-awards or even during the awards, I'm little better than an outsider for most things about this. I can fully understand the reasons for keeping that discussion private, what with the drama that can come about.

Speaking from experience, I don't think a lot can be gained for reading feedback as it comes in live during the awards. Frankly, I don't see how that would be possible, unless the awards were judged entirely publicly and that would just make things horribly messy. Perhaps expanding the 'judged a fic' points bonus in the RL to include all judges from the category could encourage more feedback, but despite my pleas on this last night, I don't think there is a lot that can be done from a rule or implementation point of view. It really comes down to judges leading by example and going beyond copying and pasting their initial review.

Onto the other questions asked in the first post:
- I largely want feedback when I enter the awards, as I rarely get it outside of that. However, it is a good way to interact with other users and it ensures I read more stories that I probably would not have read without that encouragement.
- Similar to other people: once a year would be fine, but problem is there would be too much to judge and consider in one season. It would be nice to see a variety in competitions - perhaps ones encouraging writing new works - to change things up.
- I think most judges do end up reading and commenting on every story anyway regardless of the two they are given to judge. Getting five people to read and comment on five stories - and then add in how many characters and what not are involved - and you are going to run into chaos. I'd rather have more time to discuss Best Story/Character then have more time for five people to read all 500k words of 8ES just so we get more discussion.
- I love the awards, I think the format works well - better than other forum systems have done it. We are continually fine tuning it with small category changes such as the three from this round, I don't think a massive overhaul or revamp is necessary when that could prove to be just as contentious or flawed or difficult. This system has been changed almost every season since it first started, and each season we work on making it better. No reason to start that eight year or so process afresh.

 

[LightningTopaz]

You guys have all brought up some wonderful points. Here's my two cents on some of the more common suggestions and criticisms I have seen so far:

I love the idea of splitting Best Journey up into other categories and the idea of Best Action/Best Epic. I'm curious to know about other possible categories we could change or split Journey into. Granted, someone may still want to write a traditional journey story out there, so I don't want to get rid of it completely.

I also like the idea of including a blurb/summary when a story is nominated. This way, we have something to go on/possible talking points when we judge the story.

Best Story needs to stay, but not in its current format--as it is, it was a Herculean task, and I was burnt out from juggling the awards and another event on another board I am on, so being asked to read thousands more words was out of the question. As Ace said, I'd prefer to have more time to discuss Best Story/Character.

My main suggestion is how we can make judging a bit more manageable for us judges--does that mean breaking up broad categories? Limiting entries in categories? Something else completely?

That's all for now, but I'll add more thoughts as I read your feedback.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Different moderators or experienced judges could oversee different categories, reporting to the same person in charge.

I like this idea. Splitting the load is probably a good idea, as I know that Aether doesn't have a lot of free time on his hands and I imagine running these things is an exercise in frustration even when you've got a lot of it. I disagree with the notion of the helping hand not being a judge in the category, though. It's entirely possible to have a responsible and impartial judge being given the reigns for helping to maintain their category, someone who's ready to engage with others and encourage discussion. This wouldn't necessarily be the most active or loudest member in a given category.

I think in the next awards it deserves another chance, with emphasis placed on the quality of the character and their role within the story, rather than how much of a role they have.

This is the only way I can see Best Character being brought back. Anything else will likely just see the discussion almost immediately hop to the protagonists and ignore everything else. Though, I can't remember... was the wording in the judging guidelines changed at all between Summer and Winter 2017? It was the first season I remember where "supporting" was taken almost literally to the detriment of most of the characters in that category.

That said, I don't mourn the loss of Best Character, personally. In effect, we already have four categories for this, as it's very difficult to compare anything other than protagonists with antagonists, and there simply aren't enough compelling antagonists within the WW for that to really matter.

I have baulked at this idea in the past, but after discussing with another user, I think there is potential merit in separating human and Pokémon protagonists. Pokémon-led fics are more popular now, so I doubt we’d be short of strong contenders.

This gets my support. This should be a flexible category anyways, one that splits if there's a flood of characters and combines if there's a dearth of them.

More personally, I would like to see a Best Minor Character.

I'd love to see this too. Plenty of minor characters have a heavy effect on the chapter or arc they feature in, or are just plain enjoyable to read when they appear, but they never get any representation in the awards because they're not important.

OT trainerfic going around the region is so vanilla at this point that I think being able to compare how stories handle this and still make a an original premise out of it is an important distinction

Hell yes. Full support from me!

On the flip side, I also see the benefits of having a Best Story for a given year.

This could be interesting. I'm not sure specifically how we'd do it, but I do like the idea. I think it'd definitely carry more weight if the awards remain a twice a year affair, otherwise we're back to square one with it just being another category if we downgrade to once a year.

there are sometimes works where I really want to grab the author and tell them, "this thing you did this year? it was amazing. it was the best thing i've read on this site this year. you poured your heart into this and it worked so goddamn much". Which is also why we have the review feature, but it's one thing to hear it from one reader, and another thing to hear it coming officially. It's validation and competitiveness and feedback all rolled into one.

Hearing it officially would be nice, but I think that weight could still be attached to a run of the mill review. I've seen some of your recent reviews for stories that you've been putting off for awhile and they hit this exact nail on the head. The question now becomes, how can we achieve this when we tend to write and review chapter by chapter? Maybe we could encourage people to sum up thoughts on arcs (or what the reviewer assumes to be an arc) once they're done with?

We already handle Reviewer/Newbie/Contributor in public, which are literally about the people and not their writing, with minimal drama, so I don't think it'll be a huge shitshow if we limit posts to be only about saying why you're voting for X instead of saying Y and Z are absolute scumbag trash and no one in their right minds should vote for them.

I'm not sure about forcing people to be nice, as nice as that sounds. I've seen discussion from some judges over the past year where it seems they're incapable of or uninterested in being nice during the awards and use it as a purge to justify being needlessly harsh. That needs to change before we start taking this into the realm of public discussion.

hey this isn't related to anything you posted, but I do think that the "hello here is the winner you get a badge" ends up being a little impersonal, which is a shame since there's 3-6 personal judges right there already. I think it'd be really cool to have judges write a short blurb for why they picked the winner that they did, and have that posted alongside the award/banner.

I am firmly opposed to the splitting of or disappearance of the journey category. I like. I want. Let's make this happen <3

For example, I've read all but one of the stories up for Best Story nominees this time around. I genuinely like all of them that I've read. If I wanted to, I could publicly tear them all a new one to such a degree that the discussion would suddenly be turned from "which story is better" to "which story is the least garbage" and that would probs kill any interest in awarding any of them. Or if I was one of the only people who had read all of them I could, say, just repeat ad nauseum my attack points rather than contributing anything, knowing that would kill the conversation without me ever having to defend my real beliefs.

I think in this case, it would be up to the host and other judges to identify this type of bullshit and stamp it out quick. Even revoke that judge's rights for the discussion and possibly not even ask them to come back in the next season. Poison deserves no space in an honest competition.

You mentioned bad faith and this is something I've wanted to say for awhile. I'll preface this by saying that I don't claim to be the best judge around (especially this season, as I didn't vocalize my concerns that I would not be able to get my Best Story reading done on time), but I've noticed a dip in quality from some of the other judges (I will not be naming names, even in private, so I'll save you the trouble of asking), and I wonder if this is because they know they'll have to be asked again next time. With circumstances like these, we can not have an earnest Best Story discussion. I understand that some of our judges are busy getting their lives sorted out, attending university or working long hours at their jobs, but these circumstances should be brought up at the start of the season rather than the host chasing judging out of missing people.

This was where the ball went flat in my opinion. It took a while for me to receive both my reviews, but I can understand because life happens. What irked me is that I was completely unable to see the discussion that lead to my story not making it in, or any of my characters for that matter.

I agree whole-heartedly with this one. I was able to see the ongoing discussion about my story and my characters last season (at least when it came to the Best Story/Best Character discussion), and that was some of the best feedback I've ever received in all my time here. It pointed out flaws in my characters' development and my plot/pacing that I never would have gotten unless a new reader decided to drop a mega review on me one day. I didn't participate this time but I feel like I would have missed out on what I find to be the most important aspect of the awards, seeing my story and character deconstructed in a helpful way, with the problems and perfections listed out.

The major reason we didn't do that this time was because some authors have felt powerless (and were, in the interests of fairness) when they could see their characters, their plot or some other aspect of the story being interpreted incorrectly and thus losing any chance of winning because of it. Other authors who happen to be judges just simply can't easily handle the level of criticism their story receives while seeing something else get glowing praise. Drama can arise between authors/judges that can poison that atmosphere and potentially damage the next season if it's bad enough.

When we were discussing these changes, I personally vouched for judges to continue seeing these discussions. It's simply some of the best stuff you can get. But I also realize that people who take it well are probably in the minority, being honest. Perhaps with this discussion being more open, there's room for persuasion, or different ideas altogether. One I'm seeing is incentivizing those who discuss a story to post their thoughts with extra review league points, an idea that looks pretty good to me at the moment.

As far as how long it takes to get your reviews back... I'm not sure of the point of the two week requirement (other than, c'mon, you have to do it at this point). Literally every awards season, a majority of the judges wait until the 11th hour of the final day to post their feedback (myself included, usually). Seems kinda silly.

One last note about something else you brought up that I didn't quote, comparing stories: Personally, the competitive spirit of the awards is dwindling for me. I'm not really aspiring to craft my story in a way that'll put me on the best footing for winning a particular category (or best story), so comparing my works to others to see what works and what doesn't isn't quite as important to me. What every author wants out of the awards is indeed different, and I'm not saying your wrong. Perhaps we could figure out a way to encourage the discussors to engage with the author on that same level.

• What would the “perfect” awards event look like to you? Regardless of feasibility. You don’t have to give a full breakdown, you could just state something you think would be cool and we could potentially work backwards from there. For example, I think that ideally every single judge would read and judge the entirety of every single story in their category. It’s not practical, but it’s something to think about. Just give us an idea of what you think an end goal for the awards would look like.

• Do you want the awards as they are to continue at all? Like I said above, it takes a lot to put these on. If we cut them out entirely or bumped them down to once per year (an idea that has been floating around for a while now), we could dedicate those resources to putting on different events. Events that might better scratch the competitive itch, or provide more feedback for people, or whatever it is you want out of these (see the first question). Personally, I enjoy being able to put on our Sunday best and take ourselves seriously. Seriously judging and critically analyzing our works is enjoyable and inspiring to me. The awards covers that fairly well now, but we could potentially bump it down to once a year and make it even more competitive and analytical, leaving the other half of the year open for something more loose and fun. That's just one idea.

I don't have any specific answers to these questions at this time. I might return in the future for these, as they're very complex questions with potentially heavy consequences.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I also like the idea of including a blurb/summary when a story is nominated.

I think the mention of a blurb was to sum up the judges views of a winner, not summarise stories.

This is the only way I can see Best Character being brought back. Anything else will likely just see the discussion almost immediately hop to the protagonists and ignore everything else. Though, I can't remember... was the wording in the judging guidelines changed at all between Summer and Winter 2017? It was the first season I remember where "supporting" was taken almost literally to the detriment of most of the characters in that category.

I think that was just a side-effect of what had happened for a while around the whole 'Contribution to the Plot/Story' conflict. I changed Plot to Story after it became clear that people were judging based on the character's screen time and influence over the plotline rather than how the character fit into the wider story and what purpose they had. Still, people continued to judge based on Plot role rather than Story role, often even referring to it as 'CTTP' in their reviews.

I support removing Best Character in that sense, as the incorrect form of judging does lean towards Protagonists. However, we should not just drop an award because judges are judging incorrectly. They should be corrected and called out for flawed judging and pointed towards a better way of handling things.

That said, I don't mourn the loss of Best Character, personally. In effect, we already have four categories for this, as it's very difficult to compare anything other than protagonists with antagonists, and there simply aren't enough compelling antagonists within the WW for that to really matter.

If we add in the other categories (species Protag split and Minor Character) there will be more room to examine a wider range of characters. I do think there are often good characters that don't get nominated, and it would be nice to have a wider variety of characters entered into the equation. With only three categories (Pro/Deuter/Antag), there isn't that much point, I agree.

I've seen discussion from some judges over the past year where it seems they're incapable of or uninterested in being nice during the awards and use it as a purge to justify being needlessly harsh. That needs to change before we start taking this into the realm of public discussion.

The notion of 'I'm more critical cause it's the awards' has always frustrated me. If you like something, you should make note of it. If you don't like something, you should say so and give a reason. You should not be nitpicking minor flaws or stretching to make criticisms that are not needed or welcome.

When we were discussing these changes, I personally vouched for judges to continue seeing these discussions. It's simply some of the best stuff you can get. But I also realize that people who take it well are probably in the minority, being honest. Perhaps with this discussion being more open, there's room for persuasion, or different ideas altogether. One I'm seeing is incentivizing those who discuss a story to post their thoughts with extra review league points, an idea that looks pretty good to me at the moment.

The thing though is that the only category people could see would be characters, they wouldn't be able to see the discussion of their fic unless we make every single judging thread open to author scrutiny. That would make things a little messy and I can only imagine the bitterness that could be caused if people do have to vehemently argue why one fic is less deserving than the other while the people watch. Speaking from roughly five years experience of being able to see people's unfiltered judgements on my work, it can be a bit rough at times.

Perhaps we could list judges alongside the categories in the winners list again. At least then authors would know who to approach to ask for any additional feedback

 

[kintsugi]

I think the mention of a blurb was to sum up the judges views of a winner, not summarise stories.

tossing in an @LightningTopaz because I can't figure out how to multiquote at the moment, but yes! It'd be a joint statement from the judges saying why they chose their winner. For example, for Non-Pokemon, we might write something like:

The winner of Non-Pokemon is GhostSoul's Any World You Want, an ambitious, character-driven story set in the Hetalia universe. We were impressed by the story's strong grasp of description and seamless integration of canon worlds and characters into an original, thought-provoking plot that hits the ground running.

I'm not sure about forcing people to be nice, as nice as that sounds. I've seen discussion from some judges over the past year where it seems they're incapable of or uninterested in being nice during the awards and use it as a purge to justify being needlessly harsh. That needs to change before we start taking this into the realm of public discussion.

@Misfit Angel
(Sorry can't figure out how to quote you here either)
Fair point here. I do think that judging gets inherently awkward because the point honestly isn't always to make the author feel good about their story -- the most common approach (and one that I take, so I can't really condemn unironically) is to pick a story apart and plaster all of its flaws up there with all of its good things. It's harsh, but it's also necessary when you're trying to distill thousands of words of text into a quick write-up that'll be used by other judges to try to figure out what was best. That's part of the reason why I think copy/pasting judging directly is usually one of the most harsh reviews that you can get, because it's not really trying to point out any sort of improvement but it's mostly just a laundry list of good/bad.

...but yes, this + Athena's comment that it doesn't work well on Serebii makes me think that public Best Story might be more of a shitshow than I'd envisioned. Meep.

I think that was just a side-effect of what had happened for a while around the whole 'Contribution to the Plot/Story' conflict. I changed Plot to Story after it became clear that people were judging based on the character's screen time and influence over the plotline rather than how the character fit into the wider story and what purpose they had. Still, people continued to judge based on Plot role rather than Story role, often even referring to it as 'CTTP' in their reviews.

I still struggle with this differentiation, and I don't think there's much of a difference aside from a semantic level. Plot is part of a story. If a character contributes to plot, they contribute to story. There are instances where characters can contribute to story and not plot, but I don't think that any of those instances ever came up in Best Character. Best Character kept going over and over to Protagonist for this reason -- most of the fics here are about plot, whether "plot" is "big magical creatures doing laser battles" or "animal crossing but with pokemon". The nuances that might allow a side character to have the same "worth" as a Protag rarely come up, and when they do, it's usually from a character who's a protagonist in disguise as a secondary protagonist anyway.

I'm very okay not having people see judging for stuff they're in. Judges should absolutely be allowed to be critical of my work without fear of offending me; that's part of the process. It's like writing a rec letter that the recomendee is allowed to see -- it inherently becomes less holistic because people are afraid to step on toes. This might be because I don't see the benefit from the author's point of view, so if I'm missing something there, please point it out.

 

[Ambyssin]

To be honest, I'm not really sure what (if anything) I can say that won't just be incoherent rambling, but I guess I'll add stuff. I'm-a start with those questions.

What do you want out of the awards?
In the case of these awards (my first around here), that was a simple answer: I just wanted feedback. I had been in, like, a month-long drought as far as feedback went on this site when nominations closed. And and I hadn't gotten any whatsoever beyond, like, chapter 12, so I was left the impression that the early chapters were so badly flawed that they killed any interest anyone would have in reading unless the reader was too young to really appreciate good writing. The thing with any awards going forward is that I know my fic's going to be under the "absurdly long" banner with 8ES and, well, I'm not sure a judge can/will/would give it the time of the day. This was probably my one chance for the spotlight and I was somehow able to have a moment. So, yeah, going forward, for me it'll still be about feedback. Namely, if the later parts of this story are interesting and an improvement from the early stuff or if this whole thing is fatally flawed.

What would the “perfect” awards event look like to you?
Structurally speaking, it wouldn't be run by a single person. I didn't have any problems with how Aether ran it... I just think it would be far more efficient and probably better overall if there were multiple people coordinating the event. Along those lines, I liked the idea of having different people who can guide judging discussions in the different categories. For my money, it felt like the categories I judged each had one brief spurt of discussion and then a clear runaway favorite emerged and that was that. In the case of Best Character-Driven and Best Antagonist... I think part of it just goes down to the entrants. In the former, you had a oneshot, a bit of a quirky idea that only had one chapter, and a fic that didn't feel like it belonged in that category. In the latter, there was clearly one entrant who had plenty of material to work off of – which proved to be a double-edged sword – and one entrant who had virtually nothing. And so the results were a general lack of discussion and, on top of that, no runner-ups in those categories.

I guess the only other thing I would add is that, ideally, I'd like oneshots (and possibly smaller entries like The Missing One) to be considered separately from chapter fics. I know we don't get too many of these, but I just don't feel like a shorter works will ever really have a fair shot in any of the categories as we've listed them. You'd need the perfect storm of a short work that is absolutely breathtaking and a total lack of competition in that category to see a win, if you ask me.

Do you want the awards as they are to continue at all?
I don't see why not. People have brought up Serebii and it should be noted there system is simply A) open nominations (no blurbs/reasoning required) and B) popular votes by "secret ballot." It's highly subjective and, while judging has subjectivity to it as well, it offers the opportunity for everyone to get feedback. With the other method, a fic that is never reviewed by anyone could conceivably win and nobody (including the author) would ever know why.

Category Stuff

1. I was never around for Best Supporting... but I think Best Deuteragonist feels better overall. I do support having a Best Minor Character though, even if what defines "minor" is very gray and would need a fair amount of discussion. At the very least, it would give the Pokémon in human-centered fics an opportunity to get some attention.
2. Can't really comment on Best Character Interaction considering I wasn't part of it... only to say it looked like a crazy crowded field and I'm quite curious what happened since the results conflicted some harsher feedback I've gotten about my fic. XP
3. Again, I never was around for Best Drama. I think Character-Driven, especially, is going to be a tough one and I wouldn't be surprised if a fic is tossed into it in the future that may have performed better in another category.
4. I was a bit surprised that all PMD fics got tossed into Expansion. Personally, I thought the category was supposed to be focused on how well you utilized canon materials to craft an original, compelling narrative... which I definitely don't do because I only have very bare-bones canon stuff. Like, it really should emphasize canon characters and canon locales. I'm pretty sure the results reflect that and future awards would prove these results to be a fluke.
5. I can understand wanting to change Best Journey and I see Best Action getting tossed around a lot. My big concern is that I feel like that kind of category would quickly run into the same problem Best Journey currently has where there are, maybe, two or three fics that would probably fall into that category, leaving it very empty and possibly resulting in empty, halfhearted judging as a result. I think Best Epic was also mentioned. In my mind that makes me think "long-runner" and I honestly don't know how you'd get judges willing to tackle a category like that and not get upset and have their feedback possibly reflect that they're not happy with having to read multiple long fics.
6. Best Character is far too apples and oranges for my liking. Like I mentioned above with oneshots vs. chapter fics, I cannot see a scenario when any character other than a protagonist (or maybe deuteragonist) would win this award. I think that the much better options are adding in a Best Minor Character category and splitting best Protagonist between humans and non-humans (hey, a machine or a cthulu demon could qualify, let's not restrict it to just 'mons). Deuteragonist could potentially get split up too considering there's a high volume of both human-centric and Pokémon-centric fics.
7. I can't comment on Best Story. I was fully expecting to be part of that conversation and have something to say, but it seems a little fluke in category requirements prevented that. *nervous laugh* Anyway, I'm willing to give it a chance. I think some of the ideas I saw made perfect sense, with regards to condensing category time to give more time to read Best Story contenders. It may also just have to come down to find judges who are able (and willing!) to avoid the issue of apathy. Like, say, when you're getting judge sign-ups, just have a question that outright asks, "Are you willing to judge Best Story if asked to?" Maybe I'm putting too much faith in people, but I'd like to think those not interested would answer "no."
8. As I said in my ideal part, I think we ought to at least consider the possibility of giving oneshots (and maybe short fics that, say, are under a certain word count) their own category. Maybe it used to exist and got phased out and I'm just being dumb. Still thought I'd pitch it.

Judging
Okay, I need to go to sleep and I can't come up with anything solid to say at the moment. I'll just state that I do think it'd be nice to include a blurb of why the winner and runner-up earned their respective podium slots. It'd be nice to incentivize the other category judges to get them to say something to help authors piece together what exactly happened (I know I am very confused about the results), but I'd argue that it could got a slight step further. I think it's reasonable to ask that the assigned judges include, in their judging feedback, a short part (maybe a paragraph or two) about the "overall consensus" that the judges reached on their story. I seem to remember something about us not being allowed to post "why your fic won/lost" when giving feedback, so I at least think that letting the assigned judges say "Here are the things all the judges agreed on that you did well/need to improve on going forward," would go a least a little ways toward helping that.

Yeah, uh, that's all I got at the moment. Sorry it wasn't very helpful. ;~;

 

[Persephone]

To clarify because I think I gave the wrong impression through one line, I'm not bashing the serebii awards. We also have a history of awarding badges through the popular vote. But I think that if you do it that way you strongly bias fics with large readership and wind up making the win more about the writer than the story.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Thanks for all the comments, guys! Here's an outline of what the mods have gathered from this convo so far. Please let me know if I missed anything or if there's anything else. This thread will be open until Friday, October 5 for further comments.

What Worked

- Best Drama -> Best Speculative/Best Character-Driven Split
- Best Supporting -> Best Deuteragonist changes
- Best Character deletion

What Didn't Work

- PMD fics being shoved into Expansion
- Best Character Interaction (kind of)
- Best Story deletion test run
- No scores (kind of)
- Deletion of Best Short Prose/Poetry category

Potential Ideas

- Best Action/Epic, thereby getting rid of Best Journey
- Encourage post-awards reviews to not be copy/paste jobs
- Ask judges to add a blurb about the winner(s) to spice up the winners announcement
- Separate Best Protagonist -> Best Human Protagonist and Best Pokémon Protagonist
- Best Minor Character
- Bringing awards more to the public

*

There's a lot of good stuff here. There's also a lot here to think about.

Most people know the awards have been around for many, many years, and that it's easily the Writers Workshop's largest and most in-depth event hosted. It's hosted two times a year, at that! It appears that what people like about the awards is the feedback and opportunity to read other peoples' works. Reading and reviewing are staple writing community concepts that can, and should, be done all throughout the year. It should be done by the community as a whole and not just a small amount of judges. To help get some attention to overlooked fics like long runners or certain genres and so on, or just to showcase our works in a new and unique way, events can be hosted, sure. Other competition-esque events could be hosted, too, if that's what the community wanted; others advocated for a poetry and/or short prose contest last post-awards discussion. But there's not been time to implement that.

Right now, it's extremely hard for the mods to plan out and execute the awards for (a process which can take up 6 months of the year) and other events that'll appeal to all aspects of the community and maintain other weekly and monthly parts of the site (Academy, FOTM, etc). We're all adults with busy lives - full-time jobs, college/grad school, whatever. The busy-ness does not look temporary. Maybe the answer is to cut out parts of the site where there's not a lot of interest to make room for other, bigger ideas like the awards. Maybe we need a larger mod team. Maybe we need to just think of ideas that are far, far less complex and time consuming than the awards, but will accomplish the same things the community likes about them. Maybe it's some combination of the above, or none of these.

Like I said, it's a lot to think about, and we don't have a lot of wiggle room that'll give us time to think about it. It's already October, and that means Winter Awards should be right around the corner. However, in the interest of trying to decide where best to go from here, and to not rush through deciding what to do with the badges and the next planning stage, the Winter Awards will not be held this year. I hope you all understand.

 

[AceTrainer14]

To clarify my criticisms of Best Character Interaction, I just was not sure what exactly I was meant to be judging. I don't dislike the category (though I would prefer a broader Best Cast award, which I feel like this was kind of trying to be) but I think some more examples of how we should be judging it would make it more obvious. It's an award that leans towards characters that fit nicely as a pair rather than really awarding or analysing the interactions of characters.

I think a poetry/short story competition held across a month during some point in the year is a nicer fit. It could be open to public voting in order to have minimal mod-involvement/not take up their time.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Oh man, I thought I'd have a good chunk of free time to carefully plan out my thoughts and write them up and that is absolutely not what happened. Busy busy busy busy. @AetherX or somebody, if you could give me Saturday (GMT+1) I'll write up something better, but otherwise I'm gonna just slam out as much as possible as fast as possible in as few words as possible before I hit the hay.

Immediate thoughts, barely structured:

Categories are weird. Some of them have overlap or are broadly defined. We're simultaneously judging things like "speculative" and "journey" alongside things like "character-driven" as if those are mutually exclusive or in line with eachother. It doesn't feel right that fics can only go in one category and we have to decide which one to fit them into. Fics aren't written to specification, but they're judged as if they were.

It's strange to me that eligible fics are made so by being updated within the last half-year. It means that most competitors are unfinished stories! At least two winning entries (Different Eyes and Phantom Project) are about to change their focus in significant ways. What would another few chapters have meant to the judging process for any of these fics? Why is this the qualifier? It means that longrunning fics are up against new fics, and longfics are up against oneshots. The playing field isn't level in many ways, but this is the way in which it's egregious.

I wouldn't be averse to huge shakeups, as much as I love the existing awards structure. Shakeups like, ad hoc single-category awards rather than biannual sweeping grand awards. Or the thing we're doing where it's annual now. Change and experimentation are good with me.

Okay cool, now I'm gonna try and skim a bit and respond to what's in here. Don't have long enough to do it thoroughly.

Best Deuteragonist and Best Interaction both feel like stand-in for Best Cast which I think someone suggested. Nice one, that user.

PMD should either fit in other categories or have its own. Being a subset on Expansion feels off to me.

No more best-ofs suits me just fine. Back in 2012 it felt like giving a second, larger award to the winner of Best Protag and whichever genre was 'in'.

Do we need to have character discussions in the same threads as story discussions? I know to do it otherwise might create more administrative hassle, but would it not also free up a lot of judge-power, so to speak? I wouldn't really know, but I didn't want to leave it unsaid.

I want to leave scores behind, I'm not a fan of scores applied to prose fiction and I think we can do without the alleged advantages it would confer. Perhaps policy changes could ameliorate the slow uptake in discussion. Each group could have a more senior participant set guided readings, maybe? Only a thought, not a proposal.

How did I do? Well, I put things off because I'm spread too thin. I'm newly employed, and it's more weird than anything to have so much less free time, except on buses when I'm tired. We'll see how that affects my future participation. It really helped to have read two of the stories in the category I judged. Gonna try and keep up with fics more in the future. My actual criticism was very well received though, pleased about that.

Why do I participate? Like most things, I have several reasons rather than one big one. I like accruing acclaim, I like receiving the real critique, even when it stings! And I like doing the same for others.

I guess the 'perfect' awards for me would be comprehensive and accommodating and have me in charge I'm joking but during my judging I felt like I spent a lot of thinking time bristling internally about the nature of the judging I was required to do as opposed to the actual judging. I would have liked an explicit judicial carte blanche. It's a bit unrealistic, but you did ask! Oh, and another difficult idea: structuring the awards categories based on the nomination stage. More realistic: several shorter deadlines rather than a couple long ones. "Send your first feedback inside x days" will get the procrastinators, including me, to respond in a more timely fashion.

Thumbs up from me to make it annual and better-planned.

Okay, I just hit my half hour limit on writing this. More tomorrow if I can sneak in before this gets locked. Heads up, mods.

Otherwise, thank you all for being a lovely community. I may not post for hours a day any more but I'm active here, for good. Stick around, everyone. x

 

[Ambyssin]

Jumping in right before this closes to say that I also wouldn't mind seeing Best Character Interaction being replaced by a "Strongest Cast" option of sorts. Or you could expand it and call it "Best Character Dynamics," so that the category focuses overall on how the interactions of the entire cast shape the fic for better (or worse).

 

[diamondpearl876]

Thanks, guys! If anyone else has more to add in the future, a mod's PM box is always open.