I think the idea of us nominating and voting on the fics would be a good one, and it would mean the pressure would be off Astinus.
Well, perhaps not publicly nominating or voting but more like sending secret ballots to Asty via PM to point her in the direction of particular titles that may have stood out more than others. In other words, they're suggestions. That way, she won't actually have to kill herself over reading
every fic that's been updated or published within the past month/time period.
The main reason why I'm concerned about doing it publicly is because I'm worried that doing that may just end up with a popularity contest -- as in, people end up voting for certain fics because they know their ballots would be read or because they see other people voting for a certain fic. That and she's not pressured to go with the fic with the most votes. She's merely told which fic to pay attention to because of whatever reason, and we'd have no reason to gripe over it not being democratic if she decides certain fics with less nominations/votes is of higher quality than one that got over 9000 votes that particular month.
Of course, then the problem lies in the question of who's qualified to pick out quality and what happens if no one except the n00bs who point to cliched crapfic sends in nominations, at which point, the secret ballot system might end up being moot because Asty would then have to decide whether or not to pay attention to those votes or go out and find something that actually stands out by herself. On the other hand, if this system is mentioned in a sticky or something explaining FFotM, then we can be sure that weeds out n00bs because they often don't actually read stickies (at least, in this forum) in the first place. *shrug*
The system also has a problem in that you've got the possibility of underdogs who write goodfic that's simply passed over for one reason or another, but then again, I guess then it wouldn't have qualified for the definition of "fic that stood out" in that case. Put simply, such a fic would inherently not be FFotM for obvious reasons, right?
There's probably other problems with the system I'm proposing, but at the moment, the ones I was referring to in my earlier post have almost completely slipped my mind. Anyone else can offer to shoot the idea out of the air if they'd like. I really don't mind. XD