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.