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.