Doublestuf

The major board of the fandom I write/read has just launched their new award season. There have been some interesting conversations leading up to this launch and it got me thinking. Here are a couple questions I have in hopes of starting another good conversation.

What do you think about fan fic awards?

Are they a popularity contest or are they reflections of the best work? Can you tell the difference?

Do you ever have any frustrations with the award system?

What are some of your favorite categories you've seen in these awards?

Any other questions/thoughts are certainly welcome. Just come on in and share!

Silversun

Ooh interesting thread!

The only contact I've had with fanfic awards have been the Silver Oar Awards in the Young Americans fandom, where we first send in nominations, and after a period of time, the nominations are tallyed to give a shortlist of nominees, which people can then vote on. We began with about 5 nominees in each category, and many categories indeed (including, say, Best Characterisation for each main character) but as interest in the fandom waned, the list of nominees and number of categories got whittled down substantially. I guess that was my biggest frustration with the awards, although that couldn't have been helped. It was just disheartening to see.

Another thing - we always just used the honour system, and emailed our nominations/votes. It was always possible for someone to vote multiple times. But I don't think that was common practice in our awards.

As far as I could see, they weren't really popularity contests per se. But I also got the feeling that a lot of voters didn't take the time to read all the nominated stories, and instead just voted blind, having read perhaps only one or two in a given category and not bothering with the others. So I guess on the other hand that can be construed as some sort of popularity contest - the more popular stories are more likely to have been read, and hence may have been voted on without giving other nominees a fair chance.

Cold-Blooded Piece of Toast

I think a good number of them are popularity contests. More obscure stories are overlooked even when they are better written than ones nominated. I think it all depends on who does the nominating and who votes. If the nominations are done by people e-mailing names in then the most popular stories are more likely to be given. That's just a fact. What may be overlooked by people who look down on this is that some of these stories are worth nominating and should be up there. Some may not. It's the same with all awards. Instead of it being which makes the most money winning it's the one by the most well known authors.

My favorite categories are the ones for unconventional pairings. Not a Snape/Hermione or Harry/Ginny but something really rare but well written. A character looked at in a new way.

Gabrielle

Orton

I think the Young American fandom always does a great job when nominating a fci comes around. I mean its always well organised the commutiy is always told when its happening.

Unlike the Queer as Folk fandom that does its fic nominations on Live Journals and mostly its all a popularity contest.

Whereas Young Americans awards are actually done on a website

Silversun

Yeah, except for SOA4 when I think everyone neglected to tell Estee and Camisha that they were nominated for best CC fic. Oops.

Orton

*snort* Shhshs lie lie lie Nicky Just a minor mistake nothing big

LouisaB

I haven't really had much to do with the awards for fanfictions so don't know how fair they are.

I do like reading the stories from the unusual categories though. The ones with unusual crossovers (Buffy and Harry Potter for example), if they are well done interest me the most.

Doublestuf

It's been interesting to read how some of the other fandoms do awards. There are a variety of awards in the Rosdom but they each have a different feel given the location of the award. The biggest board is such a massive production and praise to those who run it - I just can't imagine the massive headaches that produces.

It's interesting how awards are done in general. The Oscars you can vote in certain categories if you've watched all the films (like the documentaries, you have to go and watch all of them some place and then you're eligible to vote, or so I hear). But other categories, you can vote as long as you're a member.

I know that I'll vote in categories even if I haven't read all the stories nominated. I won't vote if I haven't read any of them, but on the aforementioned board the idea that people might vote in those categories anyway (based on name recognition) was discussed.

While you could never really do it in a forum like the internet and fan fic, I wonder what it would be like if you had to read every story in a category before you voted. I think it would give those dark horses a better shot as well as the less popular categories (like UC, etc).

Silversun

Definitely. And also I wonder how things would go if a fandom was able to hold awards with a panel of very carefully-selected judges. Of course conflicts of interest would be hard to avoid, and there's the question of who decides who can be a judge; but if that could get off the ground with a panel of mostly-respected fanfic writers/readers in that fandom who could be impartial and objective, it would be really interesting to see what the end result could be.

Doublestuf

Hmmm, a group of impartial judges...

That would be interesting. Of course, it's impossible to avoid all biases, but you could probably whittle away at good portion.

What would that look like, I wonder?

Who would the judges be? Would they be people familiar with the fandom, with fan fic in general? How would they be selected? Maybe you would get some of the top writers from all popular fandoms. You know, one judge who writes Buffy, one who writes YA, Roswell, HP, etc...

But you couldn't exactly ask these judges to read every story ever. Perhaps that's where the nominating from fans process would come in. Fans would nominate 5 or so fics in certain categories and the top 5 or so fics would be passed on to the judging panel...

I don't know. I think it would be an interesting experiment at the least... Hmmmm. If I had more time I would actually consider pursuing that idea.

Nonna

Does anyone know what sites you can nominate stories for awards? I write mostly wrestling fics and I always wanted to post mine but never knew any of the sites.

Orton

Queer as Folk Fan Fic Awards Started

http://qafawards.bravehost.com/

Ms Carolyn

The newsgroup startrek.alt.creative has had annual awards for several years now, which were always determined not just by votes, but by volume of favorable commentary. The idea was to get people to actually provide feedback about the stories. The more someone talked about a certain story, in a generally favorable way, the more points went in that story's column, until a winner was determined. There was a set time frame during which the commentary was made, and the stories that won did seem to be extremely good.

Catalinay

That's an interesting way to do it, Ms. Carolyn.

Personally, I don't know all that much about awards...although I do seem to vaguely remember participating somehow in the UC Roswell awards once upon a time!

sweet_zelda

I think that's an interesting question. What do you guys think?