Spanking Fiction Oscars?

Probably a recipe for disaster but something I'd quite like to have done is to have held our own equivalent of the Oscars but for spanking fiction ..

It would be for those stories etc that were written (and loaded to the library) in the previous year. Somehow we'd need to have a way of nominating stories and then have to think about how to vote on them. I also wonder if we'd did do something like that whether it should just be other authors doing the voting or open to everyone. One of the main problems would be de-terming what was actually written (as opposed to loaded) the previous year since we don't recorded the date items were written.

Then there's which categories to have ? Best M/F story, Best X/X story and so forth, Best Serial, Best Snippet, Best Poem, Best Whatever etc. And of course the Lifetime Achievement Award.

As long as the whole thing wasn't taken too seriously it might be something worth having a go at. Any other opines welcome .. (apart from personal abuse of course as I get enough of that from the other librarians )

p.s Best Comment Grubber Award wouldn't be one of the awards as the same person would get it every year

You know me - I don't take ANYTHING seriously, so I got that part covered.

Any I think this is a marvelous idea.

For the first year, how could the lifetime achievement award go to anyone other than Ross Kilahara himself?

There could be an infinite number of categories, and some might have so few entires there'd practically be an automatic winner, so rather than announce categories in advance, how about there just be nominations for stories generally, which someone (again... the elusive someone) could categorize into groups for voting purposes.

Allow each person to nominate a limited number of stories altogether - maybe just two or three? Or perhaps, if an author, two or three for oneself, and two or three from other people.

I have no problem telling which of my stories were written last year, and which were merely loaded, and I imagine other authors would be willing as well, but if a few older stories manage to slip through, so what?.

I think EVERYONE should be allowed to vote.

And what's wrong with the same person winning the Best Comment Grubber Award every year? But if you INSIST, then how about the Best Comment Grubbing Story award. There's one from 2010 that I could think of to nominate...

I think it could be fun as long as people take it as such and play fairly, which I realise is asking a lot but hey, has to be worth a go

I think we should perhaps include the Rick Marlow award for the person who can write the best story inspiring people to comment each year

I support this idea.

I think it's a good idea, too, but the implementation may be problematic.

Thinking about it a bit more we can break it down into a few parts:

Categories
We'd need a definitive list of categories, not that difficult to do although there are one or two things to think about.


Nominating
Who would be able to nominate, just authors or anyone?
Can authors nominate their own works?
How easy will it be to determine what was actually written during the previous year?
There'd need to be a maximum number of nominations in any one category (maybe 8 or so?) so some means of deciding what gets in and what doesn't would be needed.
Might be possible to nominate selections using software with a simple form to be filled in.

Voting
Who would be able to vote, just authors or anyone?
Authors would not be allowed to vote for themselves.
Method of voting needs to be decided, i.e.. a single vote available in each category or perhaps a selection of first, second and third choices (i.e. 3 votes, 2 votes and 1 vote)
Need to assign a voting period as we do for the challenges.

Results
Need to decide how the results should be displayed
Might be fun to allow the winners to input their acceptance speeches.


That's as far as my Red Bull-deprived brain has got with it at the moment. Anyone else that has any suggestions feel free to chip in.

p.s. Have moved the off-topic bits to their own thread, please keep on topic in here or else Miss Thrashbottom will/will not be paying you a visit depending on your proclivity...

Do you think there should be some sort of booby prize for most Under-appreciative Reader. The prize being a visit from Miss Thrashbottom with CSA reinforcements!

This may be the hardest part of the whole business. You certainly don't want too many categories. The questions is where you break it down by type (snippet, poem, serial, story), or orientation (M/F, F/M, etc) or genre (fantasy, comedy, DD, etc) If you do ALL of them, the number of permutations create a HUGE number of categories.

My suggestion:

1) Poems (all)
2) Snippets (all)
3) Serials (adult/chld)
4) Serials (M/F)
5) Serials (F/M) - are there many of these? I don't know
6) Stories (adult/child)
7) Stories (M/F)
8) Stories (F/M)

Then a few special categories:

9) Best Comedy
10) Best Fantasy
11) Best Sexy Story
12) Best Historical
13) Best contest story (the nominations automatically being the winners of the four contests)

We could either allow stories to be entered one of the last four as well as the first eight, or allow them one nomination apiece.


I'm going to suggest allow authors only to nominate, but I will suggest allowing everyone to vote. As much as it pains me, I'm going to suggest NOT allowing authors to nominate their own works. And I'm going to suggest allowing each author to make no more than three nominations in a category. Even though this allows a lot of initial nominations (more than one each) it'll give more chances of overlap between nominations by different authors, which is important, because the limitation on number of stories to be voted on can be achieved by picking those named most often. I'd leave the staff to resolve ties by various factors as eliminating stories whose authors already have other entries, giving preference to an author who must multiple stories initiall nominated but without making the cut, and even their own preferences They should get some additional say for all the work they put in).

As for eliminating stories that may have been written in a previous year, I don't think it's of critical importance, but I'd suggest a three-fold approach:

1) restricting nominations to stories posted in 2010 (perhaps even with software)
2) starting a thread in the forum where the staff and individual authors can list the stories they know were written earlier. The staff can start it by listing a) all the various magazine letters/articles; b) Daria Little; c) anything else they know they culled from older listing elsewhere. Individuals can add their own. There is short list of mine that I'd be happy to post. So as not to waste their limited nominations, voters would be encouraged to refer to the thread, since ultimately the staff (or software that Februs would be happy to code!) would cull those out.
3) tentative nominations could be referred to the authors to ask if the stories were indeed written this year (if the staff is in doubt). An author who admit to an earlier date culd be given preference on a replacement story if he/she had another one suggested.


.
EVERYONE votes.
oh, ok - authors can't vote for themselves
first, second and third

I would allow the staff discretion, when announcing the final results, to create any special categories and announce the winners based on their own preferences (lifetime achievement, or most versatile author to one who had entries in multiple categories, most unappreciative reader, most appreciative reader, or whatever). Again, they should get SOME privilege for the work they put in.

Ok, peeps - pick it apart.

I think everything sounds great but it would be nice for readers to nominate their favorite stories as well as the authors especially if they are going to vote.

Katie B

Well, maybe - but only if they have especially low VCRs.