Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Pre-Kerth Story Reviews Project--Reviewer Guidelines

A 13th thread sounds like a good way to go. Right now, I'll be happy just to see January done.

c.

Okie dokie. I edited the post above so that it says 13 threads. And with that, it looks like were on a roll.

I'm just about to post my first three reviews, but I thought I'd point out two things first.

1. I'm going in order from shortest drabble to longest epic when I do my reviews. This is just my particular quirk--that's usually the order I try to go in when I read the stories in the whole archive--I go to an alphabetical-by-author-name page, then read from shortest to longest (unless it's a series). Others may choose a different method. This also helps me to get the more easily-re-readable stories reviewed first. It'll take longer to review the longer stories, simply because I'll either have to skim enough to remember the story, or read the whole story because I might've skipped it in my previous readings.

2. I have NOT chosen the "Best Overall Story" for ANY of the stories when I review them, because I believe that ALL stories could be considered as candidates for that particular category at this point. The actual nomination process will narrow down the stories more appropriate for this category.

And now, without further ado, I will post my first three reviews in the January thread. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for the great explanations, LabRat.

LabRat, you are talking about stories having to be uploaded by the end of the year. So now I'm going to be brave and ask... What takes so long for the stories to be uploaded? (After the GE is done.) I know you guys are busy so please don't think I'm complaining - I'm trying to understand the process. (I hate it when I don't understand.) I submitted two stories at the same time, but one got lost in cyberspace and had to be resubmitted. The one that I resubmitted got posted to the archive first. I find this totally confusing.

If a story is submitted within the time frame, then what makes it not eligible? And if I want to review a story, how am I going to know whether is eligible or not?

Usually if the story is uploaded to the Archive within the calendar year, it is eligible for the Kerths awarded the following spring. So stories uploaded between Jan-Dec 2006 would be eligible for the Kerths in spring 2007.

But there are usually a few exceptions. Sometimes an author has made a specific request that his/her story not be considered eligible, in which case that would have been noted in the story file itself. There are also stories that were eligible for the previous year's awards. For example, the exceptions that I listed for 2007 are stories that were posted to message boards or on other websites at some point in 2005. They were not uploaded to the Archive during 2005, yet the authors of these stories wanted them considered for the 2006 Kerths, rather than waiting for 2007. There are always a few stories that fall into this category each year, usually posted right near the end of the calendar year. The Kerth Committee will include them in the "Eligible Stories" list that will be posted before nominations begin.

Well, even though my list is not the official one, I don't think I've omitted anything. And the Eligible Stories list for the 2006 Awards is still up, so you can also look through that and make sure that the story you want to review wasn't listed last year.

Hope that helps,
Kathy

I'm not aware that it does take a long time. Certainly not in December, when I'm basically throwing as many stories up per week as I can fit in in a frantic attempt to make sure I don't have any spare at the end of the year! <g>

Do you mean why do we need a month and a deadline for submissions of December 1st? That's not really to deal with the upload time. It's mostly lead-in editing time. There is an editing process between submitting a story and upload it to the Archive. And that's what takes up the time.

Because of the sheer number of stories we usually get submitted in December, we need that extra time to allow for the story to be edited and still have time for it to be uploaded by year end. We get so many stories submitted in December, generally, that I usually have to ask the GEs to 'double up' if they can in this month, many of them taking on more than one story at a time. At this time of year, then, more than any other time, a story may have to be held pending just waiting for a GE to edit it, never mind the time it takes to do the work.

It follows that if an author was to submit their story in the middle of December, their chances of having it edited will be much slimmer than if they did so at the start of the month. It's like having three months worth of normal submissions all crammed into one month.

Having said that, the December 1st deadline is really only a safety net. It always gets a bit hectic and there are always times when I think, "This one's not going to make year end...", but somehow we usually get there in the end. I don't think I've had to disappoint an author yet. Our marvellous GEs and Lauren usually pull out all the stops to ensure they all get there in time.

But, obviously, the sooner you can get your story in, the best chance it has of being uploaded timeously. And we definitely appreciate as much pressure being taken off our GEs as can be managed at this time.

Actually, it sounds pretty normal. <g> There's usually very little correlation between the two. Very rarely is the first story I sent out for editing in a month the first that comes back to me for uploading. The second the second...and so on and so on.

If the second story you submitted was uploaded to the Archive first, then it follows that it was probably returned to me by the GE first.

And the reasons for that are infinite. GEs, of course, edit at different rates. Some are quicker than others. One story might be cleaner copy than another, so require less work. One story may be shorter than another. The author in one case may be slower to respond to edits or there may be more to and fro discussion on edits than in another case...and so the list goes on and on. And that's not counting in RL, which is as capable as throwing spanners in the works of GEs as anyone else.

Once a story is returned to me by the GE, it goes into the upload queue. There are very few reasons from that point why it wouldn't simply work its way up the queue to upload. In 99% of stories, it's first come, first uploaded. Only very rarely would I skip over a story on the list when choosing stories to upload in any particular week. Or artificially advance a story to the head of the queue.

One reason for the former would be if, say, the first four stories in the queue were all by the same author. Then, I'd skip a couple and choose stories by other authors further down the list, rather than have an upload one week that was all by the same author.

Reasons for the latter may include a story which had a particular problem and had taken an unusually long time to be returned to me, for whatever reason. I might feel that the author had waited longer than they should for upload and put it at the top of the queue. Or - as this week - if a time specific story has been submitted, such as Tank's Halloween story, I'll put it to the top of the queue so that it gets uploaded as close to the date of the special occasion it's about as possible.

But that happens very rarely and the most usual process is for a story just to naturally work it's way to the top of the queue.

Hope that clears up any confusion, Classicalla. If not, just email/PM me and I'll see what I can do.

LabRat

I have a generic question, not about the Kerths, but about uploading stories in general.

Why are there only 3-4 stories uploaded per week? I know there was one story that I GE'd which waited a week or two between the time I sent it back to you and the time it showed up on the archive, and only 3-4 stories were uploaded to the archive in the weeks between. Why is that? Are only 3-4 stories allowed to be uploaded at a time, whether there are more ready to go or not?

Just wondering.

Thanks, Kathy, for the link to last year's eligibles. Just checked it and noticed that the story I reviewed for January 2006 was on the eligibles for 2005 and so is not eligible. Oops. I guess I'd better remove that review.

c.

Part of my job as EIC is to 'manage' the stories in the upload queue. That means, parcelling them out for upload as best suits the Archive. A week or two's wait for upload is usually about normal for most stories.

No, there's no set limit to how many stories are uploaded each week. 3-4 isn't even standard. We've had many weeks with fewer than that number uploaded and more than that.

In lean times, with few submissions coming in, I've dropped down to two or even one because that's all that's been submitted. We have to work with what authors give us. If stories aren't submitted, they obviously can't be uploaded.

In busier times, the opposite doesn't always apply, however.

Mostly, that's because I have to balance how many stories I can upload each week, while not leaving myself short for weeks to come. So if I have zero stories currently being GE'd, for example, I'll have to be very careful not to empty out the list, because I need to factor in leaving enough time for new submissions to come in and be edited before I can upload them and still ensure that we don't end up with an empty week.

If, as with most other fanfic archives out there, submissions were uploaded straight away, without being edited inbetween, it would be much simpler to balance, of course. But factoring in editing time is what makes it slightly more complicted in FoLCdom. I'm always having to think two or three weeks in advance.

If there are stories being GE'd, it's easier to balance, because I can reasonably assume that some of them will come back in before the next upload is due, so I can pretty much clear the queue entirely, or almost entirely. (I usually like to ensure that I have at least one story still in the queue, just in case of emergencies. ) But, yeah, those are the really easy weeks and I love it when I have enough of a backup list in GE to be able to throw up 6 or more stories at once.

So, yes, it's never a case of I just throw up all the stories in the queue that week. If I did that, we'd end up with weeks where there was no upload at all. And while it might be nice to give Lauren the odd week off <g>, our readers wouldn't be so happy. They've kind of gotten used to weekly uploads over the years.

LabRat

Thanks for the great answers, LabRat. The answer to Darcy's question was particularly helpful.

You're welcome, Nancy. Any time you need answers just hollar. What I'm (partly <g>) here for.

LabRat