Hi Everyone!

Since the completion of the 2013 Kerths, the committee has been thinking long and hard about the process. Over the last couple of years numbers of FoLCs nominating and voting have been extremely low. We want to make it easier to nominate and encourage more readers and writers to participate. We are going to streamline the categories.

The suggested categories for 2014 are:

Best Super Short (1-10k)
Best Short Story (11-50k)
Best Mid-Length Story (51 - 100k)
Best Long Story (101k - 200k)
Best Epic Story (Over 200k)

And Best Overall Story.

As well we would like to add a couple of fun categories. E.g. Best Kiss, Best Superman Rescue, Best Original Character etc.
Stories would be eligible for their size category, one fun category and the overall category.

If you have any suggestions for the fun categories or questions please post in this thread and we will get back to you ASAP.

Thank you for your support!

Tricia

Maybe a best crossover category, only to be used when appropriate? It's fun to see stories in which L&C meet characters from other movies/tv shows, but they can be so hard to fit into the usual categories.

I think the fun categories would be more easier to nominate in if when looking at a list of 100 stories people's eyes didn't glaze over and they start mumbling because they couldn't remember if a story was funny or a tear-jerker or one of those odd ones that mixes the two ( ) Maybe for 2014 we could have threads in FanFic Related folder that said, if your story was a comedy (or action or WAFF or Alt-Dimension / Next Gen / Elsewhere, etc) and is on the eligible list, put it one this list, so people say. Okay, here are all 20 comedies eligible. I liked these 4 the best; I'll nominate those. I believe that would make the nomination process easier, especially for people who don't visit the boards on a regular (hourly, daily, weekly) basis or have limited time.

Speaking as a not-so-new newbie (old newbie?), the Kerth Awards seem a bit intimidating. (Especially for those of us who have been VERY Clark-patient in visiting the IRC.) Some of our newer members might not realize that this isn't the Oscars(r), and that one doesn't need to have written an Archived story to nominate or vote in the process. You just need to have read a story you like (preferably read them all, but that just the writer in me speaking) and want to show that writer how much you appreciated their story and give them their due. If you only had a chance to read 10 new stories this year, but one of them either moved you to tears or made you laugh so hard you... well, you know... or sucked in you into their universe so completely, when you next looked crossed-eyed away from your screen, you noticed that it was now a different day, those authors & stories should really get a nod (i.e. nomination). You DO have to be a member of the Boards (is that not correct?) with a member name / alias / pen-name to vote, but that doesn't mean you have to give up your lurker status. The Kerth Comm is very privacy conscious and won't give away your e-mail address to spammers. I've been here for 3 years now and I have yet to... well, best not tempt those fates by mentioning it aloud... but you know what I mean.

I believe if the list of eligible stories and attached links to them were to come out significantly sooner (as they seemed to do in 2012) it would make nominating stories easier. The jumping between screens trying to figure out which stories you liked, and then trying to find them on the boards/Archives to make sure it was the correct story can be frustrating for some, especially those of us with limited time to drop by.

Once we get past the nomination process and head into voting, would it be all that difficult to send an e-mail to all the nominated authors? Perhaps letting them know that they've been nominated for XYZ stories / categories, so those who maybe busy in RL or writing (or both) can be nudged into dropping by the boards and voting themselves (although, not necessarily for themselves), or at least stop by the Awards. I know there was usual circumstances for this year's nominations process, voting, and awards, but tying down firm dates and times way in advance would be helpful as well.

I find the quizzes were lots of fun and hope continue into the future. Plus, they are a great way to get us to refresh our memories on the stories eligible for the awards.

People, I currently have a goal of over-flowing Labrat's inbox by August 1, with stories to be Archived, and I know I can't do it on my own. It's the surest way to know your KB count (and which category your story will fall into) and to be automatically eligible to be nominated. So, if you've posted a story recently (or not so recently), join with me to send them to Labby (who I'm sure would also accept applications for new GEs if you are grammatically inclined).

Now that I've rambled on like Lois, I better go post my next part of my epic to break all epics' back. Oh, and K-Comm thanks for all your hard work. We do appreciate you.

Hi Tricia,

First of all, THANK YOU once again to you and to the entire Kerth Committee for spending so much time behind the scenes to plan and run the ceremonies. Thanks, too, for trying to come up with ways to improve them.

I'm not so sure that changing the categories would necessarily encourage more voters. I, personally, liked the categories as they were. I agree with Virginia that it would have been helpful to have the hyper-linked list of nominated stories available early, and then had a date and time announced as early as possible. If it has to be rescheduled, so be it, but then have the new date and time announced as early as possible. Some FoLCs probably need more than a few days' notice to arrange their schedules so that they can attend the ceremony.

One other possible suggestions: Maybe authors could voluntarily post one-paragraph summaries of their nominated stories, and the summaries could be included with the hyper-linked list. That would help jog readers' memories about which story they had read was which. (I know that the archived stories all have one or two line summaries, but my suggestion would let the authors have more detailed summaries, and it would permit the readers to see all the summaries in a single location, rather than having to follow the hyperlinks to each story.) Or, if the paragraph idea doesn't appeal, perhaps the one-sentence summaries of archived stories could be put in the hyper-linked list.

Thanks again.

Joy,
Lynn

Hi Tricia:
I agree with Lynn. I'd hate to lose WAFFY, Comedy,Revelation, Drama, Episode Adaptation, Relationship and Alt Universe. It's the mood that's fun.

Usually if I've read a story during the year, I can recall it by reading a few pages. Epic only over 200k? It seems like we had some stories over 500k. I admit that the super long stories are harder to read and quantify and I think they suffer in the voting because of that.
Just my 2 cents (and I just realized the keyboard no longer has a cents sign)
regards
Artemis

These are good suggestions. Another which might be helpful - back in the day, it used to be common for readers to keep a Kerth file on their pc and add to it throughout the year whenever they read a story they felt was Kerth-worthy, adding in the cat(s) they felt it might fit. That way, when the Kerths rolled around, the info was right there at our fingertips. I recall, it definitely made noms much easier! Plus, we used to have a lot of fun on IRC, chatting about recent additions we’d made to our lists.

Oh, not at all. No, all you need to be to qualify for participation in the Kerths is a genuine FoLC. We often get noms/votes in from FoLCs who don’t hang out here, but simply read the stories on the Archive, for example. We’ve had issues in the past with authors/nominees trying to pad their vote with noms from family / friends / work colleagues / the cat, who wouldn’t know Lois or Clark if they stepped on them, but those non-FoLCs are usually easy to spot, one way or another.

Absolutely! It’s been getting increasingly difficult over the past few years to find FoLCs willing to give up some of their free time to GE and as a result, it doesn’t take much to tip us over into a growing list of stories pending assignment to a GE, while we wait for GEs to free up.

Recently, we’ve seen the best year ever for the Archive with regards to submissions – the upload queue has never looked healthier and I have so much red on my assignments sheet, I swear it looks like a Russian flag these days! (red being how I denote a story out on assignment). So a big thanks to all those who’ve turned that around for us. You’re all stars! And keep it up! I’d rather have a large pending file, than months of nothing coming in.

So, it would be nice to have just one or two more GEs in the pool, to help avoid log-jams and spread the workload a little more for our current small band of Edit Elves. You know where to mail if you’re keen.

LabRat

Glad you pointed that out, LabRat. That's what I thought, but it is more authoritative coming from you.

Artemis

I think the 200k is intended to be a minimum limit only, isn't it? If a story is 500k, then it's over 200k, and so qualifies for the cat.

Or am I missing something? (Always possible.)

Thanks!

LabRat

True, LabRat. What I was really trying to say is that Epic at 200k, IMHO, is a weak size for it. Maybe that should be "Long Story" or something. EPIC would be over 500k. Like a 4 hour movie. I just checked M.L. Thompson's file and hers run around 400k to 800k. And she does write good epic tales.

Artemis

Ah, got you now! Sorry, I'm slower than usual today it seems.

I've just had another thought re. Virginia's suggestion:

There might be a problem with this one as not all authors feel comfortable with self-promotion and it could lead to a particular author being at a disadvantage if they felt too shy or embarrassed to post to such a thread, promoting their own story.

Another issue might be you end up with posts linking stories to wrong cats and potentially end up with K-Comm spending a lot of their time having to post corrections.


LabRat

Yes, but if you have another category between 200K-500K then there will be even fewer of us in the Epic category and it will be dropped again. Let's take a quick unofficial look at the stats (this is from 1/1/2012-12/31/2012 and isn't a record of stories eligible for the 2013 Kerths as several of these were nominees for the 2012 Kerths):

Number of stories per KB count posted to the Archives in 2012:
200+K = 3
300+K = 3
500+K = 8 (although 2 of these were 900+K)
1000+K = 0
2000+K = 2 (Go FH and Me! )
Total "epic" (current definition) stories posted to Archives in 2012 = 16

That sounds good. It occurred to me that the amount of reading to be done is based on the number of stories posted here and on the Archive, not the number of categories. First the nominations have to come and that means reading everything in the time frame of the Kerths.

Yes, it would be good if we made a file of stories we liked as we read. But that requires more organization than people seem to be up to in the present world. There are so many diversions in modern society.

Just my thoughts.
Artemis
An additional thought just occurred. Most larger stories are a mix of WAFF and drama and all other things and while one reader will love the WAFF and nominate the story for that, another reader will focus on the drama and nominate it for that.

I don't necessarily believe we need to shorten down the categories-- I like the ones we have already and I think they're fairly straightforward. Nevertheless, I think the "fun" categories you posted would be a great way to spark some interest (perhaps replacing a few of them, such as trading best relationship for best kiss or something). You could even probably turn something small like that into a challenge, but I think that would kind of defeat the purpose.

The Kerth Quizzes are a fun way to catch up on your reading and refresh your brain on some stories, but they are a bit of a time chunk. I had fun writing one but I only participated in like 3 total. )

I would like to keep the current categories, not shorten them. I find it difficult to nominate stories since they aren't in categories, and many didn't have kb listed. I read all the stories. But, I did not have time to reread every one of them in order to decide which category to put them in before I could even nominate them. Once they were in a category, I had no problem.

Maybe when starting the story on the boards the author could include a list of possible categories?

I think it would be helpful to have an Excel spreadsheet, just like the Archive Database. Except this one would just contain the stories that are Kerth-eligible for that year.

The Eligibles database would have all the fields that are in the regular Archive Database, like title, author, story length, and story theme keywords. This way it would be easier to categorize the fics by any way one wanted to.

Exactly, Io. A couple of seconds of adding to it every time you read a story you think you might want to vote for and when the Kerths roll around you'll have all the info you need.

Surely even the busiest life can find time to add "Title, Author, Best Drama!" to a file right after reading a story? If you've just spent time on the story what's a couple of seconds more?

LabRat :-)

I had to laugh at the last two posts here....after the 2012 Eligible list was posted,. I copied it to a spreadsheet, sorted it by size and went to reading!

Yeah, making such a list through the year would be very helpful. That way, people aren't reading 112 stories in 2 weeks (I got to 89 of them, I think...)

No, I meant for the Kerth Committee to make the spreadsheet.

/me lazy/

Also, that way, everyone has the same info.

Conspicuous in its absence is the Best New Author category.

I for one think that category should be continued. It is an incentive for new authors and something for which they can strive.

Being selected as the recipient of the 2013 award was quite a thrill.

There are new authors joining the boards all of the time and it would be one of the goals urging them on to excellence.