mithrilawards: What's wrong with the Mithril Awards?

alcanazar (

alcanazar) wrote in

mithrilawards,
@ 2007-04-14 02:28:00

What's wrong with the Mithril Awards?
Before we start the 2007 Mithril Awards, I would like to know what needs fixing.

On my personal list is finding out why the web forms sometimes fail to post.

For most I suspect the biggest issue is that we took too long to finish.

Please, post your thoughts.

Alcanazar

(Post a new comment)

telperion1
2007-04-14 01:43 pm UTC (link)

For most I suspect the biggest issue is that we took too long to finish.

That was the biggest issue I had with the awards this year. I was more "in the loop" than most authors in that I at least lurked at the lotr-ff-awards Yahoo group, so I knew that there were real problems that were being addressed.

I would say you guys need to work up a rough timeline for how much each period of the award needs to last. Let's say you agree that judging the quarter-finals should take two weeks. If after the end of that time a judge hasn't gotten in touch with you with their results, then you email the judge to see if they need help. They either give you a time when they *will* have the judging done by, or you assign the stories to new judges. From what I remember there are usually people eager to help; it seems like a lot of the length of the awards has to do with miscommunication rather than not having enough people to do the work.

I also would encourage you to email the authors periodically with the status of how things are going. Especially if there's a delay of some kind. If an author isn't a member of lotr-ff-awards, I think they might be frustrated because they didn't know what was going on. Just knowing why there's a delay can take away a lot of the frustration. But maybe you already did this--I can't exactly remember.

I saw the previous post about someone not hearing that they were nominating. Not to comment specifically on that post, but people do have spam filters and email addresses change or are mistyped by the nominator. Might it be a good idea to post a list of nominated authors here and at lotr-ff-awards who have not responded to their nomination emails, maybe once every two weeks and at the end of nominations? I know if I saw someone I know on that list I'd give them a nudge to contact you. I help out with another fanfic award and we do this; the end result was that this year less than 1% of nominations never had their author responded to our emails, and I think a similar effort could help this award. If you're nominated but then feel left-out, it's easy to get a bit offended. Even if the awards-organizers aren't intentionally trying to box anyone out.

One last thing. How were announcements like that the winners had been announced this year? Again, I can't remember *exactly*, but IIRC you made an announcement at lotr-ff-awards, this LJ, and at the mithrilawards.com website? Which not everyone reads. I think it would be helpful to have people make announcements in less mithril-specific locales. It would get the word out better, raise awareness about the awards, and also get you a better cross-section of the fandom doing the judging.

I'm not expecting the awards organizers to do this themselves, you guys have enough on your plates! But maybe when you get ready to start the next awards cycle, you could post here and at lotr-ff-awards and ask people to volunteer to make announcements at their forum/listserv/blog of choice. Then when you have an announcement you'd post here, just send it to them as well and they'll post it where they've volunteered to do it. Maybe worth considering? It's your choice, of course, but I think it might be helpful.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	telperion1 2007-04-14 01:43 pm UTC (link)
	I should have signed my previous post, as my LJ name is different from my penname--this is Marta. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Thank You

alcanazar
2007-04-15 07:18 am UTC (link)

Marta,

You made several good points and I'm glad they're on the record now so that we can refer to them later.

As for notifying the authors, we discussed that at this thread, http://community.livejournal.com/mithrilawards/20388.html

I also have reposted at http://www.mithrilawards.com/Results_for_2005.html the list of the nominated stories for 2005. We had posted this and updated it on the website upto the finals. We did this so that people could see if something had already been nominated and also so nominators could check to see that the message got through.

I've had a great deal of frustration trying to get the website and forms to work consistently and my contacts at Yahoo, our host, have not been helpful.

Again, thank you for your suggestions.

Alcanazar

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	torn_eledhwen 2007-04-15 11:19 am UTC (link)
	I like your last idea. Nice one. That would save a lot of admin work. (Reply to this) (Parent)

spacellama
2007-04-14 04:15 pm UTC (link)

I monitor the submissions on the Open Scrolls site, and we're seeing a huge posting of drabbles. Perhaps a drabble category would be worthwile?

Also, I think firm deadlines for judges would help. I know that when I was judging, I kept waiting for a "get these scores back to me by this date or else!" statement, and it never came. I tried to be timely, but I was a bit of a slug last year (something to do with infant twins, I guess).

Also, instead of letting judges concrit stories, they should have to list only why they "counted off" on a story. For instance, if they gave a story a low grammar score, they should provide a few (maybe three of the more horrific) examples. I know I kept such lists in private, to justify my scores to myself. I don't think those lists should be made available to the authors, either. But the comittee should have access to them, so that when Author A wonders why her story didn't get a Finalist nod, Mithril Committee Member B can say, "The semifinals judge found grammar errors" or something to that effect. I think the committee members may be more diplomatic than the judges in phrasing these things.

I could easily have also made a "list" of the many things that impressed me about two or three stories in my category, in case someone wanted to know why the hell a particular story won. I suppose that list could be made available to the author's ego. ;)

I loved all the automation this year, by the way. The site was easy to use, and the judging form was clear.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	alcanazar 2007-04-15 07:21 am UTC (link)
	Khazar recently got back the results from a pro contest she entered and they included detailed and specific points scored with notes. We may be lifting some of the criteria. (Reply to this) (Parent)

torn_eledhwen
2007-04-15 11:18 am UTC (link)

I'd love to get deadlines set and adhered to, but in past years it's never worked. And this year I was so deluged I wasn't able to meet any deadlines myself. Timetabling will be key in the 2007 round. :)

I think a drabble category might be worthwhile, although we could be deluged with nominations and they might be tricky to judge. And would we restrict it to strict 100-word drabbles, or merely very short fics?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2007-04-14 05:00 pm UTC (link)

I'm not interested in debate, I don't have the inclination or the energy, but because I do think that there is concern at the heart of these awards, I'll answer this question as to why *I* won't participate again (for whatever it is worth) because I think I've learned enough in the last couple of years to verbalize it better than I did during our previous discussions. and because the unhappily-judged post reinforces for me that the in spite of all the improvements that have been made, you still have a 'fatal flaw' in the very basis of the setup.

I think you are trying to straddle the fence between fandom and professionalism in a way that - after how many years - doesn't look like it's going to work.

the criteria for your judges are simply that someone is willing to volunteer, yet the results are touted to be 'the best'. ... and so, at least in my mind, as I can't speak for anyone else - it's simply not possible for you to deliver what you claim. You continually set yourself up for contention and failure.

I think that if you would slide one way or the other, that these awards would be more accepted by the general fandom.

I saw the comment regarding the RWA contest. I do some pro contests (including RWA) and the difference there is that the judges are 'professionally' qualified. By that I meant they have some type of credentialing that enables the general populace to be excited to be judged by them and (big one here - at least for me) they sign their critique. I've never done a pro contest that the judge didn't sign the critique. (and I've done about one a month for three or four years) at that's at *all* levels, from local clubs to national orgs such as OWFI and RWA.

My suggestion to the Mithril Awards organizers would be that they need to consider doing one of two things:

One:) to pull back a little. to change the statement of THE BEST to something along the lines of THE ONES OUR JUDGES LIKED BEST. Because that's the truth of what it is and I think people would swallow that. .... list the judges if they are going to stay anon per cate and story. Say that they are simply "readers like you who love the fandom" and be upfront that the winners are the ones that they liked. That takes away the arrogance and pretentiousness that has hurt so many people these last few years and puts the critique in perspective. Because in the end - the truth is, it's just one more critique. BUT - because it comes from a JUDGE in the MITHRILS .... somehow people put more weight on it because they think it should somehow mean more than crit gathered anywhere else, and that's not true. ESPECIALLY not true if you don't know who the judge is since you can't know what their experience and perspective is to be judging you. I could go on but how to take crit is a whole 'nuther subject -

Two:) to push forward and be more professional:
Qualify your judges in some way and list that on the website:
suggestions include:
1)Lean on the few professionally published authors in the fandom if you can. There are a LOT of authors and professionals out there who do support fanfic. Approach them about judging the final round. Google your favorite authors to see what their attitude is about fanfic. I suspect that many midlist authors might be willing to help out.
2)maybe restrict the final round judges to past mithril winners.
3) - can't think of a third one, I'm out of coffee. but do you get the idea? Have SOME SORT of qualifying standard.

HAVE THE JUDGES SIGN THE CRITIQUES. If they aren't willing to do that, IMO, they don't need to be judging. It will limit your pool of judges - so be it. It will add the element of professionalism, legitimacy, and personalization that you are missing. I think that if a judge isn't willing to stand behind their judgments, what the heck are they doing passing judgment.

.... anyway - for what it's worth - and nothing I didn't say three years ago - or whenever it was. I think you've made some positive changes in the scoresheets and the process, but I keep hearing over and over (AND OVER) again how unhappy people are with the judging and so I think that if you really want to improve the awards image, that is what you're going to have to address.

Sulriel

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Judging standards and such

alcanazar
2007-04-15 08:14 am UTC (link)

I'm afraid that amateur or professional, there will always contention and unhappiness. Even highly regarded awards like the Oscars and the Nobels have their issues.

I don't mean to make light of anyone's feelings. Writing is a VERY personal endeavor and any setback can be quite painful.

I believe we've been quite open in explaining that the judges are volunteers. I think that it's obvious that when we say "The Best" it is the best in the opinion of our judges. They did not always score highest the ones THEY liked the best. In some cases, they scored works higher because of technical merit rather than their personal likes and dislikes.

It would be nice to have previous winners become the judges for the final round but some of the best works come from the same authors each year and they would need to disqualify some of their works.

It may be helpful to ask each to submit a bio to be posted at the website for the public. I will try to think of how we can give the authors more information about who judged their works and why they scored the way they did. Some our judges ARE professional writers and editors and it may help for the public to know more about them.

Organizations such as the Romance Writers' Association have a pool professionals in the field to call upon for judges. By the nature of Tolkien fanfiction, this would be difficult to do with the Mithrils. Certainly we welcome professional writers and editors to judge but without the ability to pay for their time a doubt that we can insist that every judge be a qualified professional. The RWA contests do have entry fees to pay for the judges and staff whereas the Mithrils are funded by donations. As fanfiction matures, it may reach a point were authors will be willing to pay to have their work judged. However, that may require a paying market for fanfiction to develop which I don't see happening will LOTR is under copyright.

We will never make everyone happy but we will try to improve our process and make it fairer and more open. We are not doing this to hurt anyone. We are trying promote Tolkien fanfiction and the authors.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Alcanazar

(Reply to this) (Parent)

torn_eledhwen
2007-04-15 11:16 am UTC (link)

Hi Sulriel,

First of all, thanks for the comments; they're always welcome.

1) We've always made the process clear. We can aim for something - if we didn't aim for it, we'd never get close. We're not pretending to be the only awards in the fandom, or the definitive awards. I hope the website makes it clear what we're about and what we're trying to do - and I've just checked it again, and can't find anything saying we're "the best" awards in the fandom. "Mithril" is intended to refer to the quality of the fanfic, not the quality of the awards!

Unfortunately at the end of the day we're only human and sometimes things don't go as planned. This year was a timetabling disaster. The next round should be better - I at least will have more time on my hands (thank goodness) thanks to a change in RL commitments. This year was only the third year. We've a long way to go before we have things working exactly how we'd like.

2) Judges: if we were able to get all the professional writers in the fandom on board that would be lovely, but unfortunately we can't. It's just not possible. To make any attempt at having a fair judging process we need a lot of judges, ergo we need a lot of volunteers. Anyway sometimes a good writer is not a good critic, and vice-versa.

As for professionalism: well, I'm a professional writer insofar as I'm a journalist. Does that help? Khazar has degrees in literary criticism. We at least have a little idea about good writing.

We can't restrict judges to previous winners. We usually ask past winners if they'd like to help judge, and generally a few do. But we can't force anyone to do anything. We need three judges per category, and we have around 25 categories. Some people can judge two or three categories, but still ... well, do the maths! On the whole I've always found in each year so far that the judges have been overwhelmingly hard-working and quick to respond to requests for help and so on. We couldn't do this without them.

I have always thought that it would be unhelpful for it to be known who judged what, and I will continue to think this. However it's something we tend to raise each year and it's something to discuss on the Yahoo Group again before we kick off the nominations for 2007.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Professionalism
(Anonymous)
2007-04-15 02:30 pm UTC (link)

Professionally published authors may not be the best judges of other peoples work. They are trained to produce, not to evaluate. Editors are trained to evaluate, but might be harder to recruit since you'd be asking them to do for free what they are ordinarily paid for.

Another possibility is to invite individuals to judge based on the organizers' knowledge of their competency rather than throwing it open and accepting all comers.

The opinions of random self-selected people are necessarily random.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Professionalism

khazarkhum
2007-04-15 08:13 pm UTC (link)

It isn't exactly random.

We try to eliminate all gross technical & canonical errors in the first round. We hope that good criteria will improve judging, but since it is at some point subjective, there's a limit to what we can do.

We do ask judges to tell us about their qualifications. Even if we only used professional editors, though, there is no way to guarantee that they would be ideal judges.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	khazarkhum 2007-04-15 08:23 pm UTC (link)
	They don't always sign the critiques for RWA. Not all of mine were signed, for example, and the scoresheet specifically says that they do not have to do so. Some of their contests DO list who will be judging which category, and who winners will get to contact. But not all do this. (Reply to this) (Parent)

rhapsody11
2007-04-15 08:04 am UTC (link)

I read the request at the yahoo group, so here are my two eurocents. I can only give feedback of what I saw as a nominated author.

I completely agree with Marta about keeping the author's informed about the progress. You might want to consider assigning a person who takes care of this. I know you guys had an incredibly tough year, dealing with a lot of things that ... well I completely understand why it took so long. Do not be afraid to give this task to a volunteer who will ask others to pass the info onto other boards/forum/sites (these other persons only has to pass on announcement, but do not write them, this assigned person can do that). From experience, I know that communicating any setback or pending announcement or entering a new stage helps keeping the author in high spirits, but also is good for the awards programme itself.

I know that in order to figure out what was going on, I joined the yahoo group for that reason, but it didn't feel right to join a group that specifically says: "Join us to discuss the set-up and administration of the awards, or to volunteer assistance in any capacity." I lurked yo keep track of news and announcements... and I don't feel comfortable about that.

I personally am not going to volunteer for any award programme anymore for personal reasons, so anything that can be arranged to have this covered so that I can quit the yahoo group would be greatly appreciated.

Another thing that struck me as odd and I did drop the question at an admin a few months ago (I never received an answer, but normally and big kudo's for that, you answer always fast and quickly to questions a participant asks) is that when I received my nomination, I could also 'compete' in the jury asssigned cate of English Second Language. I know that there were other ESL's in the MA 2005, so I am still wondering what happened with that. If it was a time pressure thing and wanting to get the results out: I understand, but people knew that they were assigned to that cate and well... are confused, including me.

The same goes for newcomer cate (I 'debuted' late 2004 and one of my debute fics was in the MA 2005), yet I saw not my name listed there while I did see author's on there who already had fics posted before I did. I found that a bit awkward, but I thought that there might have been a reason for that, but what? I really don't know. Communication is the key here as well.

The basic line is: Author's would like know what is going on.

For the rest, an an author and how things were handled as far as I could see them: I don't think any changes have to be made. This was my 1st experience and it was a nice one. :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

alcanazar
2007-04-15 08:31 am UTC (link)

Don't feel bad about lurking on the Yahoo group.

We tried to post important announcements, like delays, on the LiveJournal site as well as the Yahoo group. We could certainly use help getting the word out to the other sites. The committee was responsible for that for 2005 but the burden of administration kept them too busy.

I will see what happened to the ESL category.

BTW, if you're "not going to volunteer for any award programme anymore", I hope that does not mean you have stopped writing. Even if you don't want to enter a contest, please keep writing.

Alcanazar

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

rhapsody11
2007-04-15 08:53 am UTC (link)

We tried to post important announcements, like delays, on the LiveJournal site as well as the Yahoo group. We could certainly use help getting the word out to the other sites. The committee was responsible for that for 2005 but the burden of administration kept them too busy.

Being a MEFA admin in the past: I can completely understand this! I know this worked very well for that award programme and as we say in Dutch:

'vele handen maken licht werk' which means: many hands make light work.

BTW, if you're "not going to volunteer for any award programme anymore", I hope that does not mean you have stopped writing. Even if you don't want to enter a contest, please keep writing.

Oh no, I haven't! I am still writing, fan fic and original fiction: it's a passion and I am not willing to let go of that. But my personal circumstances have changed thusly (motherhood) and after two fantastic years helping out at the MEFA's, I had to set priorities. :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Suggestions for what needs fixing ...

calanthe11
2007-04-15 05:35 pm UTC (link)

Hi everybody,
here are my two eurocents (love that one!) on what needs fixing (or not) with the Mithril Awards.

1. Time issues
As time was the biggest issue in my opinion as well, I'd like to suggest to make the Mithril Awards a BI-ANNUAL AWARD. I wish I had had more time to read more stories, also read some of the novel-length fics. All in all the Mithril Awards 2005 took two years, so this seems to be the time period necessary for the kind of detailed and thorough judging which makes the Mithrils what they are.
Deadlines are always great, but we are all doing this as volunteers. I doubt that Mithril Award deadlines will go before work deadlines. Also, infant twins don't stick to deadlines ,-). My suggestion would be to set deadlines for the judges to hand in their scores (as guide-lines), but still accept late scores.

2. Judging Criteria, Judges
Personally, I am more than impressed with the continuing effort of the Mithril organisers to come up with judging criteria broad enough to allow for creative diversity and precise enough to guarantee quality writing. This is very hard, and as Alcanazar already pointed out, there will never be the one perfect solution for everyone. Perhaps it would be helpful to think about judging criteria as something which is under constant debate and open to discussion rather than a set of fixed rules and guide-lines. I am excited to hear about any suggestion that Khazar is taking from the pro-contest.
People already pointed out all the many good reasons why it makes not sense to limit the judges to "writing professionals". For me - myself a professional editor - it is a huge part of these Awards (and fanfiction in general) that here is a place for amateurs to both learn from professionals and also teach them something about different qualities and sensibilities for which there is little room left in the publishing world. I rather have the occasional "weak" story among the Mithril Award winners, as long as criteria like specific fanfic criteria (canon and characterisation come to mind) are well-represented. As for the quality of the Mithril Awards winning stories - almost all of them are of good and often outstanding literary quality. That in itself tells me that the judging process of the Mithril Awards does indeed work.

3. Drabbles
Please, NO!! Too bad that the fanfic-sites is swamped with drabbles, let's please not have a category for them and get swamped here as well. Drabbles, especially the 100 word kind, are the death of good story telling. They may be a worthwhile exercise for beginning authors, they may be a nice format to quickly develop a story idea. But they are NOT stories in themselves. Which, too, makes them exceedingly hard, if not impossible, to judge. Tolkien dedicated his entire life as an author to the re-creation of Middle-earth telling these magnificent stories in the long and winded ways in which good story-tellers have always told them - he would be appalled at the idea of the piece-meal, easy-to-consume, easy-to-forget drabble. In a world where nobody seems to have time anymore, let's keep this a place where stories get the all words they need. (And please excuse my rant :-))

4. Technical aspects
I loved the automation of the new website. These last Awards were a kind of trial-run for the new site, and with hopefully many glitches worked out, the next Mithrils should run smoothly as ice-cream.

Looking forward to the next Mithril Awards.

All the best
Calanthe

(Reply to this)

ghyste
2007-04-16 09:54 am UTC (link)

Whilst no one can control RL events, it was unfortunate that the delay in judging coincided with the period within which the fandom was in sharp decline. I have no idea how widespread it was but, speaking for myself, I stopped reading and writing Tolkien fanfic between the time my story was nominated and the announcement of the final results and thus had little or no interest by the time they finally came out.

As other people have said above, the big problem the Mithrils will always have is that the the winning stories are promoted as being an absolute best when the judging process can never be more than subjective. If you intend to continue promoting the awards in this way it might be useful to support the "best" claim by allowing participants/watchers to see details of the spread of qualifications/experience of the judges - not just in the writing/editing world, but also with respect to the languages and history/mythology upon which Tolkien's work is based - even if the individuals themselves opt to remain anonymous. I didn't bother to ask for the critique of my own story, but at least one person I know of did and was upset by the remarks. Criticism is never particularly easy to swallow but would, I should think, be better received if the authors knew ahead of time that the criticisms were being levelled by a bona fide expert in the field.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Judging qualifications questions (Anonymous) 2007-04-16 07:10 pm UTC (link)
	Is there an agreed-upon definition of a bona fide expert? If so, how many are there? Are they interested in fanfic? Would the organizers have the temerity to propose their own definition and list of people who qualify? Would this amount to pricing the Mithrils out of the judging market? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Judging qualifications questions ghyste 2007-04-16 07:45 pm UTC (link)
	I'm certain there isn't a definition and I'm equally sure that you know that too. However I would assume that the organisers already require some sort of resumé from their judges in order to ascertain whether they were capable of doing their job and I think that sharing this (in an anonymised form where necessary) might go some way to alleviate concerns. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	spacellama 2008-07-24 02:49 pm UTC (link)
	Are the Mithrils dead? Curious. For all their stumbles over the years, they did provide an excellent reading list. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Mithril Awards alcanazar 2008-07-31 12:37 am UTC (link)
	The Mithril Awards are inactive due to health issues in the family. We also need more people in the executive committee to keep things rolling when one or two members are unable to contribute. Alcanazar (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Mithril Awards spacellama 2008-07-31 12:51 am UTC (link)
	Best thoughts for you and Khazar. I'm sorry you're having to deal with health issues. I certainly volunteer to do legwork and all sorts of time-consuming stuffness (just tell me when and where), but you probably want someone more visible/respected in the fandom community to be on the executive committee. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	My Question about (Anonymous) 2008-10-06 02:00 pm UTC (link)
	How i may contact admin this site? I have a question. iijiivei (Reply to this)

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