Fanfiction Awards

[Swift!]

I'm sorry if something like this has already been suggested or there's a good reason why they've stopped, but I think we should bring back the Fanfiction of the Month/Year Awards.

We could use the same nominating techniques as Serebii.net, you know... where they have a whole bunch of different categories and people vote for for their favourite Fanfic's that fall into each category.

Some of them include:

Best Chaptered Fanfic
Best One-shot Fanfic

Favourite Main Character
Favourite Villain

And some of the more in depth categories, like:

Most Suspenseful Scene
Saddest Scene

etc, etc.

 

[Grovyle42(Griff8416)]

When you say Fanfiction of the month awards, do you mean it's only accessable to those who have won FFotM? What about those who won but then gave up the title voluntarily?

 

[jasonresno]

When you say Fanfiction of the month awards, do you mean it's only accessable to those who have won FFotM? What about those who won but then gave up the title voluntarily?

What are you talking about? (S)he just means that we just vote on the categories listed out of the selection of fanfics in this forum.

 

[Astinus]

I don't really like doing awards for fanfiction because I like for everyone to be on equal footing here. This is why I stopped using both the Revision Bin and Fanfiction of the Month. I don't want this forum to separate into the "greats", the "goods", and the "you write so horribly that you need to be tossed into the special class where you can be babied". Everyone here in PFF&P gets the same treatment.

Then again, I'm just one of those old-fashioned people who believe that writing should be done for the sake of writing and not to win a silly award. You can write and win awards, but that shouldn't be the only reason to write.

Besides, there aren't a lot of fics here. Unlike SPPf, where the awards worked because there were a lot of fics there, PC doesn't have a wide selection of fics to choose from for each category.

 

[jasonresno]

I don't really like doing awards for fanfiction because I like for everyone to be on equal footing here. This is why I stopped using both the Revision Bin and Fanfiction of the Month. I don't want this forum to separate into the "greats", the "goods", and the "you write so horribly that you need to be tossed into the special class where you can be babied". Everyone here in PFF&P gets the same treatment.

Then again, I'm just one of those old-fashioned people who believe that writing should be done for the sake of writing and not to win a silly award. You can write and win awards, but that shouldn't be the only reason to write.

Besides, there aren't a lot of fics here. Unlike SPPf, where the awards worked because there were a lot of fics there, PC doesn't have a wide selection of fics to choose from for each category.

I think that the recognition of particularly talented individuals should be celebrated. I understand what you mean by not wanting to alienate by celebrating others but I think it's ok so long as there are only a limited amount of awards.

I think that writing should be done for the sake of writing but if you happen to be rewarded for writing well--that's O.K.

 

[Blue Screen of Death]

Actually, I had an idea like this planned. I even got judges. We came up with maybe 20 awards, and we planned to launch it this year. But, as you can see, that kinda fell through. Although, we did decide it should be a winter and summer thing, so we might still be able to launch it.

Yeah, I have to get back to the judges I had on that...

 

[Bay]

Actually, I had an idea like this planned. I even got judges. We came up with maybe 20 awards, and we planned to launch it this year. But, as you can see, that kinda fell through. Although, we did decide it should be a winter and summer thing, so we might still be able to launch it.

Yeah, I have to get back to the judges I had on that...

I don't think judges would really work. Even judges might have different ideas of what qualities make a very good fic and maybe even a couple could be bias.

 

[Ninja Caterpie]

I don't think judges would really work. Even judges might have different ideas of what qualities make a very good fic and maybe even a couple could be bias.

A rating system. :D Get POB

 

[Astinus]

Even then, there's still going to be discrepancies with what fic gets what rating. Also, depending on what categories are used as awards because not all fics are written in the same genre, or even type of Pokemon fanfiction. You can't really compare an OT fic to an all-Pokemon-cast fic.

If the awards will go through (and don't look at me to take them on, for I refuse to), then the nominations system that was used at SPPf would be the best choice. Everyone gets to nominate a fic for the categories, and then the fics with the most nominations go onto a final voting round, where everyone gets to vote on them.

That way, it's the community's choice.

 

[JX Valentine]

I think that the recognition of particularly talented individuals should be celebrated.

I had a long rant about this point starting on this page, but because I'm jet lagged and it's past two in the morning, allow me to summarize it thusly:

And whose standards are we using to define what fics get such and such category?

I mean, okay, I can understand a "let's nominate and see who gets the most votes" kind of thing, but that still opens up the possibility for crap fics getting the vote. For example, I'm sorry, but I'm a firm believer in the fact that while "Pokemon MASTER" was a decent fic in terms of style, its storyline bored me. And, on top of that, the characterization made me weep for the Ash fan I was many a moon ago. Yet, it's probably still one of the most famous Pokemon fanfics simply because it has fans that either fawn over it like teen girls on Twilight or assume it's great because of the fans that fawn over it like teen girls on Twilight. Nowadays, it's usually the latter, from what I've noticed. Meanwhile, you might have better fics out there that might not get too much attention at all because the author's not a recognizable name. (I'm willing to say DGExe's one of these examples.)

So, you've got a dilemma. Either you risk having biased judges (or judges who can't agree on quality at all -- or worse, won't be able to select what would be considered "universal quality," as I've brought up in that other thread), or you risk having the majority put something that isn't particularly quality on a pedestal to parade it around as the best of the best in terms of X, Y, and Z categories for a Pokemon fic.

 

[Blue Screen of Death]

I don't think judges would really work. Even judges might have different ideas of what qualities make a very good fic and maybe even a couple could be bias.

The idea was that we would show the story to all of the judges, four in all, and the agreement on the story that receives the award would be unanimous I guess. We really only talked about what awards to put in or not, and how we could give awards without having a lot of people posting in the thread asking why they didn't get one. But I think the people asking why they didn't get one are the ones who deserve it the least, in terms of any stories they wrote, and the fact that they would most likely brag about it. We even had a little fairness seal I made! That seal was halfway between a joke and seriousness to me.

A rating system. :D Get POB

A rating system wouldn't really be an award. Also, to your other comment: I did not not already get him. *Shifty eyes*

 

[JX Valentine]

The idea was that we would show the story to all of the judges, four in all, and the agreement on the story that receives the award would be unanimous I guess.

From my experience with panels of judges that are looking for quality (approval queues -- ASB reffings, character approvals, et cetera), what tends to happen is that you might have one person who's got a strong opinion, and then the other three (or however many) end up getting lazy and agreeing with what the other person said out of laziness or a lack of balls to disagree with the one with the strong opinion. The only time where I've seen a quality contest of any sort where the judges weren't biased was probably a single writing contest, and that was only because there was absolutely no communication between the judges. So, what ended up happening was whoever got the highest score got the title, and even then, you had disagreements on who got what beneath that, if I recall correctly.

But I think the people asking why they didn't get one are the ones who deserve it the least, in terms of any stories they wrote, and the fact that they would most likely brag about it.

And you're assuming that the ones who would get it wouldn't brag about it?

Additionally, the concept of insult by exclusion doesn't just cover the people who are whining that they didn't get the award. It also covers the people who work hard on their fic and actually write really well but never get so much as a glance because they're not a particularly well-known name around the forums. So, mostly, it's the argument that the fic will, in part, become a popularity contest for the author, rather than their work.

That and it's the fear that decent work will be overlooked for something sub-par, just because the panel of judges all have like opinions or seem to zero in on only one thing. Read my arguments on the Quality Fic Archive thread concerning one particular work that people put on the nominations list.

 

[jasonresno]

I had a long rant about this point starting on this page, but because I'm jet lagged and it's past two in the morning, allow me to summarize it thusly:

And whose standards are we using to define what fics get such and such category?

I mean, okay, I can understand a "let's nominate and see who gets the most votes" kind of thing, but that still opens up the possibility for crap fics getting the vote. For example, I'm sorry, but I'm a firm believer in the fact that while "Pokemon MASTER" was a decent fic in terms of style, its storyline bored me. And, on top of that, the characterization made me weep for the Ash fan I was many a moon ago. Yet, it's probably still one of the most famous Pokemon fanfics simply because it has fans that either fawn over it like teen girls on Twilight or assume it's great because of the fans that fawn over it like teen girls on Twilight. Nowadays, it's usually the latter, from what I've noticed. Meanwhile, you might have better fics out there that might not get too much attention at all because the author's not a recognizable name. (I'm willing to say DGExe's one of these examples.)

So, you've got a dilemma. Either you risk having biased judges (or judges who can't agree on quality at all -- or worse, won't be able to select what would be considered "universal quality," as I've brought up in that other thread), or you risk having the majority put something that isn't particularly quality on a pedestal to parade it around as the best of the best in terms of X, Y, and Z categories for a Pokemon fic.

How do you think any rating or reviewing works? It works by opinion! Everyone gets a chance to vote and thus everyones opinion is heard. That is ultimately fair and any flaw would be found in the people, not the system.

As writing is purely subjective and mostly for entertainment the only calibration we have on what is "good" and what isn't is what we personally think. So everyone chimes in and those that get the most votes were meant to win.

 

[Shrike Flamestar]

The problem with allowing anyone and everyone to vote is that it becomes less of a quality contest as originally envisioned and more of a popularity contest. As Xanthine mentioned, fics that aren't as great but more popular than more original and overall better fics that just don't have as big the fanbase will win out. Fics written by those under-appreciated authors who are just as good as or even better than the more popular ones take a backseat just because not as many people know them to vote. So in the end, the entire contest loses focuses and the original point.

Now with judges, you still have problems. One judge may influence the others as mentioned, but even that's not always the case. You may just get judges who aren't so good at actually judging, who will deduct points or whatever for more arbitrary aspects of the fic that in the end may warrant some negative points, but not so many. Yes, I am speaking out of experience here. Recently I took part in a sci-fi contest at Serebii and while most of the judges thought my entry was either average or outstanding, the last rated me last place for minor reasons: the entry's length, my lateness in submitting it, swearing (twice in 27 pages)... None of those are really valid reasons to deduct points, and their only other excuses were because it may have been a bit too influenced by Battlestar Galactica, and the slow pacing at times. They made absolutely no mention of the plot and the only technical aspect mentioned was pacing, nothing else. The judge's bias towards having to read something long (but still within the length specifications) and submitted late (but still right on the deadline) won out over what it really should have been judged on, the writing itself.

Now, I'm not the sort of man to go stirring up trouble so I decided not to make a big deal over their unfair judging, however you can be sure that plenty of other people in my place would have argued with the judge over the matter, thus bringing up the biggest problem with judges: unlike in a voting contest, judging gives the losers someone to complain too (and, well, people who still placed well but could have placed better if not unfairly penalized). You can be sure that if awards such as proposed were to be judged, there would be plenty of whiners complaining about how the judges had been unfair to them. I don't think anyone wants that.

Judging also gives the opportunity for corruption, such as one judge favoring a friend and giving them a high score even if they don't deserve it. The whole popularity thing with voting can become an issue as well, depending on the number of judges and who they are. Even if they have to read every entry, they may be inclined to score more popular entries and authors higher on principle alone.

Overall, while I don't necessarily discourage contests or awards (I like getting an ego boost just as much as anyone else if I actually happen to win anything), it's hard for them to be executed in a way that both pleases everyone and stays true to its original purpose. Contests such as the sci-fi one I entered on Serebii have an advantage over general awards like this: you have to actually write something new instead of submitting something you've already done, for one. But more importantly, the focus is smaller. You get far less entrants, meaning that the probability of whiners is less (sci-fi also had an advantage in that it's a nontraditional genre for a Pokémon fic, thus keeping the unimaginative herd of n00bs out).

Man, I just realized how much I write these posts like essays. Damn school...

 

[Astinus]

And again I say that the variety of fics on PC is really really...small. And it's time for me to go into the "Way Back Machine" and pull out a thread probably none of you know about: Fanfiction Award - July.

The idea of awards were attempted here before, but back then, the variety of fics were small. The mod at the time was the only one who wrote manga-based fics. He would then be the only one to win the "Best Manga Fic" award.

It's the same thing here now. Over four years later, and there's still a lack of fics that fill a variety. Sure, if there was a category as to what fic would win "Best Based On Special But Not Really Because We're Just Jumping On Bandwagons" award, then there are quite a few fics to chose from. But what about "Best Pokemon-centric Fic"? There's a fic here that's Pokemon-centric, in that there's no humans at all or very little, and no one aside from me as probably read it. So it would get ignored even though it's good and deserving of awards because...well, no one knows who it is that posted it.

Pretty much, awards are popularity contests. (Any awards, which is why Fred Claus is not going to win any awards because no one likes Vince Vaughn.) The popular fics are the ones that get the votes. The popular fics aren't always the fics that are deserving of awards. There's problems with every way to do an awards program, either by judging, a rating system, or voting.

Everyone gets a chance to vote and thus everyones opinion is heard.

Everyone might get a chance to vote, but will everyone actually vote? You're thinking that everyone who's ever read a fic in PFF&P will give a vote, but I can say right now that not everyone will participate.

So everyone chimes in and those that get the most votes were meant to win.

Again I say that the best fics I've ever read that met my high standards for this fandom's fanfics are the fics that won't get the votes because no one else has read them. Same with Xanthine's example of DGexe. Not a popular writer. One of the better writers I've seen.

As for judging, who's going to pick the judges? How many judges will there be? What rating process are the judges going to use that encompasses all fics that are on this forum that can win an award? Heck, what categories are there going to be for the fics? What fics will you look at? Every single one? The ones that are nominated by the people?

And so on.

Recently I took part in a sci-fi contest at Serebii

No, Shrike! Don't mention that drama contest!

Oh gods, Xanthine. Remember the writing contest on PFU that I had to judge because the judges all disappeared? I hated that thing. ;;

 

[Dr. Mack Foxx]

I'm sorry if something like this has already been suggested or there's a good reason why they've stopped, but I think we should bring back the Fanfiction of the Month/Year Awards.

We could use the same nominating techniques as Serebii.net, you know... where they have a whole bunch of different categories and people vote for for their favourite Fanfic's that fall into each category.

Some of them include:

Best Chaptered Fanfic
Best One-shot Fanfic

Favourite Main Character
Favourite Villain

And some of the more in depth categories, like:

Most Suspenseful Scene
Saddest Scene

etc, etc.

Well, that seems like an excellent idea to me. :)

 

[Venia Silente]

It sounds to me that it can actually be made to work, but that would require a stage of research first. Not only from potential judges but also *cough*fromreaders*cough*. I know, unlikely to happen, but what other way is for fics that are pretty good but pretty "old" to be noticed?

One way out would be to filter out potential votes by giving extra vote power to those who are known, or better yet proven, to be good readers in a sense (which sense? IDK yet...). Other important factor would be to limit the number of categories, as more categories = more reduncance = more unnecessary discussion. 17 looks like a bit too much to me, maybe it would be good to rework that list.

Beyond that, it's pretty little what can be done. The real problem is always how to give the good fics the adequate light.

 

[JX Valentine]

How do you think any rating or reviewing works? It works by opinion!

Reviewing and voting for a "best of the best" (i.e., whatever would get these awards) are two different things. For reviewing, that's the reviewer's personal opinion (barring any grammatical/spelling corrections the reviewer may bring up). However, what you (and the OP) are asking for here is a system in which fanfics are put on a pedestal and paraded around as the best of the best. As in, an award going by your system wouldn't just be one person's opinion the way it is in individual reviews. It's everyone's opinion.

To make things simple, the difference between a review and an awards system is all in the pronoun. In a review, the message is, "I think this is good or bad." In an awards system, the message is, "We think this is good or bad." There's two problems with this:

1. Your definition of quality is probably my definition of crap. (Not saying that it actually is. Just saying this as a generalization.) To say this is the best in the category is therefore false advertisement. (That is, not only would there be disagreements and wank up the wazoo, but you're running at a risk of advertising something that not everyone will like but just got the most votes because the writer's friends are particularly vocal.) In other words, while a set of personal reviews would be designed to dispense a variety of points of view that should highlight what the audience thinks is good and bad about a fic (and therefore allow the author to understand how to improve), an awards ceremony gives the writer the idea that there's nothing wrong with their writing because the majority agree they deserve the vague title of "best of whatever." Therefore, they're encouraged to keep making the same mistakes, which sends them into a creative plateau because they think that just because they won a title, they don't need to improve.

2. As implied by the above and as quoted by Astinus: "Pretty much, awards are popularity contests. .... The popular fics are the ones that get the votes. The popular fics aren't always the fics that are deserving of awards." You may run into either good fics being overlooked for crappy, bandwagon, "it's another OT story with the trainer having being the Child of the Ultimate Prophecy," or you may run into situations where your only votes are from kids who think awards are serious business (ironic, but yes) and vote for all the crappy fics because those are what they and their friends write.

The rest of your comment can really be addressed with what I've said before concerning the flaw that is the hive mindset. *motions to the example of "Pokemon MASTER"*

Everyone gets a chance to vote and thus everyones opinion is heard. That is ultimately fair and any flaw would be found in the people, not the system.

But considering the fact that the system you're proposing works by using the people's opinion as a basic foundation, wouldn't a flaw with the people therefore be a flaw with the system itself? This is like saying you've got a faulty motherboard, but the computer itself is just fine. It makes sense on first glance, but still, without that motherboard, you just have a very nice paperweight.

As writing is purely subjective and mostly for entertainment the only calibration we have on what is "good" and what isn't is what we personally think. So everyone chimes in and those that get the most votes were meant to win.

What about the quality fics out there that don't get much attention? They exist, thus opening up your primary problem: they get skipped over for something that isn't as up-to-par.

Oh gods, Xanthine. Remember the writing contest on PFU that I had to judge because the judges all disappeared? I hated that thing. ;;

Ironically, this was also the one I was talking about earlier -- the contest in which the judges weren't just lazy and voted for whatever the one with the strongest-sounding opinion voted for. XD That had to be the most disorganized piece of crap of a contest ever held, but what was awesome was you all ended up having completely different and somewhat objective opinions because not one of you communicated with one another to do it.

Either that, or I was too intensely amused to notice how bad the situation was.

 

[jasonresno]

What about the quality fics out there that don't get much attention? They exist, thus opening up your primary problem: they get skipped over for something that isn't as up-to-par.

If they are truly good, then they will get notoriety. It's as simple as that. People aren't mysteriously going to get skipped over. Everyone appears on the same forum and everyone is on the same page as everyone else. If you write a good story then somebody will find out and the word will get spread around.

Your basing your entire argument on "What if". That just doesn't work and it's simple why.

Over the span of how ever many voters vote here on the awards you will have bias, undoubtedly you will, but the sheer amount of voters will outweigh the steep bias and things will fall to a median--they will, they always do. Just look at other "popularity" contests such as the Grammies, the Golden Globes, hell--even look at the All Star game in baseball. A few "hot" or "popular" players/movies/artists win big for a little bit but eventually it all evens itself out.

In fact: since this would be a community award I have to argue that your opinion on quality doesn't matter. If the overwhelming majority of voters choose a piece for an award than that is the choice of the community. While it may not fit to your standards it will have fit to the collective PokeCommunities standards, and that is what matters.

And the same goes for Astinus: It doesn't matter that your favorite fics aren't popular. It doesn't. If the overwhelming majority of readers on this forum enjoyed a particular piece--be it better or worse than your own personal tastes--than that piece deserves to win because it's a majority vote. The people have chosen. It's democratic.

Your other point was: "Do you really think everyone will vote?". No, I don't. But the people who do care about the awards WILL vote and--much like the Presidential elections--this will help to weed out uninformed voters. I think that is a positive.

 

[icomeanon6]

I hate to sound condescending, but I don't think the majority of this little writer's community is critical enough to vote intelligently on this sort of a contest. If we were to have some sort of contest (which I don't really think we should), it would definitely need to have judges, IMO. The main problem with having people vote for these kinds of things is that most of the voters probably won't even bother to read all of the nominated fics.

I'm kind of wondering why we'd bother having an award system at all. When we smack some award on a fic, we're essentially saying "This is just great the way it is, don't change it," which is not what we should do to any story on this forum. We should be encouraging people to improve, not telling them that they can rest on their laurels.

If you write a good story then somebody will find out and the word will get spread around.

Do you honestly believe that? There is no guarantee that any fic will get noticed. A lot of one-shots can get missed entirely just because they can't stay on the front page long enough.