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2014 Fanfiction Awards - RESULTS

Hakajin

Obsessive Shipper
Oh, hey, I won something? Wow, I'm surprised! I mean, my fic hasn't gotten very far yet, so... Thanks, you guys! I'm happy about what I won, too, because the emotional connection with the characters is the heart of my story. That gives me encouragement as I continue to work on this fic. Third chapter's almost done!

Eheh, I actually felt kind of guilty that I got nominated for reviewer categories, because I have slacked off on that soooo much. Work, and writing my own stuff... oh, and working on my Japanese has been taking my time. I keep trying to get back to it, but it's kind of piled up... Well, I'll do my best
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
Wow, Salvage did really well this year! It's an honor to win or share an award with some of the other excellent stories on this board. Congratulations to everyone who was nominated or managed to place in this years awards, and a big thank-you to everyone who participated in the nominations and voting; the awards couldn't go on without all of you!

Also, I thought the new app for the awards was great. I particularly liked how the comments on the nominations were handled. My only feature requests would be to port some of the functionality from the nominations phase over to the voting phase--I would have appreciated a counter that showed how many catergories I'd entered votes for out of how many I needed to vote in to have a valid ballot, as well as the ability to save my votes and return to them later. I could vote immediately in a lot of categories, but there were definitely a few where I had to go out and read some stuff, so I would have appreciated not having to restart my ballot after doing so.
 

Dragonfree

Just me
I mean, really, the only hiccup was all of those ineligible nominations needing to be taken out, but you're already working on that, looks like.

Once I got around to figuring it out and stopped overlooking glaringly obvious buttons in plain view, I found the voting system quite intuitive and very user-friendly, so no complaints on that score. However, I do think next year's process could be made a lot smoother by setting a clear, unambiguous cut-off date for what stories can be nominated as well as a clear definition for what qualifies as a new story (or a who counts as a new author for that matter) and including those definitions prominently in the first post. There was quite a bit of debate about what does and does not qualify for one thing or the other throughout, which created a lot of extra work and headache for the staff and a bit of delay and frustration for voters. Mutually agreeing on a policy beforehand and putting it out in public for easy reference should hopefully nip that problem right in the bud.

Yeah, that was definitely the biggest issue. I plan to lay out the rules for this stuff very explicitly in addition to trying to enforce it automatically as far as possible, and furthermore I'd like to make it easier for the staff to monitor all the nominations that come in - this time around we were basically just keeping an eye on the same "All nominations" page you all saw, but it was difficult to keep track of what was new and ensure everything got checked for eligibility in an organized way. Seeing as everyone might be interested in seeing what nominations have been added since they last came there, I'm thinking some sort of general "What's new" feature - probably just a marker next to nominations added or updated since you last visited the page. It would also be useful to have a page for viewing one particular user's nominations and nomination comments and link the usernames of nominators to that, as well as having a new marker next to users who have added or updated their nominations in the list.

I might also explicitly add some sort of marker for whether a nomination has been checked for eligibility and force us to actually click a button to set that flag, but it may not be necessary with everything else.

From what I saw of the voting system it seems to be pretty good. The only issue I ever noticed was that the text size in the popup thingies explaining the fic quotes and other related things was too small, or made it look like the letters were all pushed and crunched together, which made reading information from more than one at a time a PITA - but one key combo later that was fixed, so... Yeah, it's nice to see an automated semiindependent system to assist voting in as much as it can.

I can definitely enlarge the text - I wanted to keep it small enough so that you wouldn't need to keep scrolling up and down to read nomination comments, but it could stand to be at least a point or two bigger.

Also, I thought the new app for the awards was great. I particularly liked how the comments on the nominations were handled. My only feature requests would be to port some of the functionality from the nominations phase over to the voting phase--I would have appreciated a counter that showed how many catergories I'd entered votes for out of how many I needed to vote in to have a valid ballot, as well as the ability to save my votes and return to them later. I could vote immediately in a lot of categories, but there were definitely a few where I had to go out and read some stuff, so I would have appreciated not having to restart my ballot after doing so.

I can definitely do something that shows you how many categories you've entered a vote in, sure.

Saving and returning later actually works exactly the same way in the nomination and voting phase: it will stop you unless you submit a valid ballot, but once you do you can return and modify it at any time. Presumably you noticed it as an issue in the voting phase because an incomplete ballot in the voting phase is more likely to also be invalid, whereas you just need four different fics/authors to have a valid nomination ballot.

I could add a feature for saving incomplete ballots in addition to submitting them for real, but I have a certain worry that that would lead to people forgetting to actually submit their nominations/votes, even when they have perfectly valid ballots. Alternatively, I could make it so that you can save incomplete ballots the same way as complete ones but they're only counted if they're complete, but that also sounds like it could potentially lead to people not realizing (or forgetting) that their ballot is invalid and failing to fix it. Maybe it'd be better to just have a localstorage thing that autosaves whatever you've done with the form in your browser and fills it in for you automatically if you return to the page later, but actually clicking the submit button will always validate that it's complete and reject it if it isn't, the way it does now? Opinions?
 

Umbramatic

The Ghost Lord
Welp, I got no votes, but I'm just gonna take what Jax and Dragonfree and Creepychu said to heart and be honored my silly little oneshot got nominated at all. Hopefully I'll have better luck this year, especially since I'm trying to have more of an output. :p
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
Seeing as everyone might be interested in seeing what nominations have been added since they last came there, I'm thinking some sort of general "What's new" feature - probably just a marker next to nominations added or updated since you last visited the page.
I think having a "what's new" page would be great! There were definitely some nominations that kind of snuck in there that I didn't notice until voting. Being able to see individual users' noms would be cool, too, but the "what's new" is the feature I'd be most excited about out of what you listed.

Ah, yeah, I pretty much wanted the save option when I hadn't racked up enough votes yet and needed to come back later; once I had enough votes I was pretty much ready to submit. Some kind of autofill sounds like a reasonable solution, maybe with a note in the directions indicating that your votes will be saved if you leave the page and come back, but they don't actually count until you hit the "submit" button.

btw, are you planning to archive the nominations from previous years on the site, or just reset everything with each new awards cycle?
 

Dragonfree

Just me
The site's already built to associate nominations and votes with a year and work with a single "current year" setting that controls what's saved and displayed, so that when I switch the year, the nominations/votes will appear to reset but actually still be unchanged in the database where they were. I'd like to add an archive view where you can actually see previous results, but that doesn't exist yet and I consider it low-priority for now. (At some point I'd also like to import the nominations and votes from the database I used on the old system, to have the complete history of the awards since 2008 there.)
 

Mrs. Lovett

Rolling writer
I'm always honored whenever I see my name on the nominations list, and this year I'm particularly grateful that Roots got so many votes, despite my hiatus. Now that classes are over, I'll have to catch up with the goings-on around here again :p

Particularly, it's a pleasant surprise for me that so many people enjoyed the subplot between Lona and Ted. Those definitely gave me something nice and refreshing to write about when the main plot was about to get serious, and Lona herself is special to me because she changed the way I imagined a big part of Roots.

I want to thank everyone who has read my story and everyone who decided to give it their vote. Your interest is what motivates me to keep going in tough times, and I'm keeping you all in mind as I work on the revision.

Congrats to all the winners and nominees! Keep writing and keep posting, because there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of completing a story.
 

Blackjack Gabbiani

Clearly we're great!
Aww shucks, thanks for all the love for Heart Like a Stone.

Though it's funny...it seems like nobody read it, and then it came out of nowhere.
 

Spiteful Murkrow

Early Game Encounter
While incredibly late due to getting bogged down by some other stuff in life, I'd like to give my thanks to the people that voted for me in the awards, as well as to congratulate the writers and reviewers that won their nominations this year. It's been fascinating catching up with the stuff you've all been up to, and these awards have helped to draw my attention to the creativity and hard work that everyone here at SPP's fanfiction community puts into their works.
 

Sidewinder

Ours is the Fury
First off I'd like to apologize for the late response to the results. Like Spiteful Murkrow above, I've been caught up with life stuff and haven't had time. Thanks to everyone who voted for Requiem and Shatterpoint. The validation that I felt when I saw the awards that my fics won brightened my whole day and will probably bleed over into making me smile throughout the entire year. Thank you all so very much! Congratulations to all my fellow winners as well and I hope to see everyone here next year :)
 
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