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Survey Results, Sad News and Good News

AceTrainer14

AceTrainer14

The acest of trainers
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Hello once again everyone. This is quite a heavy, news-y announcement as I am cramming about five announcements into one for space reasons, so please bear with!

Starting off, here are the results/our findings from the survey we did in January

Most people were actually generally quite happy with how things are being done. There was a lot of general agreement that the moderators are doing enough to encourage reviewing, that people seem fine with the Directories how they are, and most people understood the rules in the Welcome Hub, and others were largely unaware it existed.

The main area of disharmony was that many people felt that the Awards categories do not cover all types of stories and characters fully, while others found that they were alright.

We are going to be looking over the Awards and discuss potentially changing the categories if we feel it necessary. LightningTopaz and I have already discussed potential improvements and variation in the Weekly Prompts so look out for those changes, and we will continue tidying up the Directories so they are neater in general. Most of the other threads will be updated and worked on in due course. If you would like any more details, such as about specific questions, then let me know.

Sad News
- This may be sad for some, others a relief, but it is going here anyway; we have decided to cut back the Awards from thrice a year to twice. It takes up to two months, sometimes longer, to plan, organise, set up, do the voting, the judging, the posting and creating banners, which tallies up to half our year being spent on these. By cutting it back, we hope to allow more fics to enter in each time as more will have been updated, to allow for things to be not as rushed and to be more fun, and there is the potential for other events to be held in between.
- The truly sad news, and something many of you may have noticed already. After years of loyal service, @Caitlin has decided to step down from her post as a moderator. We respect her decision and must thank her for all the work she has done, including being one of the best and most detailed judges in the Awards. Her insights on matters will be missed but we hope to see her hang around and continue contributing to the forum.
Also, @Soulmaster is taking an undetermined leave of absence due to computer issues and other matters affecting his time on the site. We hope he will return later in the year but currently things are entirely up in the air, so this is currently goodbye for now and we hope to see him around too.
We wish them both the very best and hope to see them around.

Good News
- One of the things we will be doing to replace the trimmed down Awards will be resurrecting the Workshop Quiz! It has been rejigged so that it will now be on an entirely first-come, first-served basis in terms of throwing questions in, and the main issue at the moment is sorting out the prizes and such. Expect to see proper news about it soon.
- And while it is still new that Caitlin and Soulmaster have left, we are delighted to announce that @AetherX has joined the team as our new moderator. Many of you will have seen him about as he is a regular in the Written Word, and he has impressed us many times from his help judging the Awards to his brilliant reviewing guide that we highly recommend everyone reads, and I look forward to seeing what he brings to the forum.

So let us congratulate and warmly welcome Aether!
 
I think two a year is probably a good call, even if it's not quite as exciting. You've got to work with the resources you've got, and two will still be plenty of fun, I have no doubt.

But man, it's great to hear AetherX has joined the moderation team! An excellent choice in every respect. Many congratulations to Aether!
 
A worthy decision! Congrats @AetherX!
 
Twice-yearly Awards certainly make sense given how much work is required of them nowadays (remember when we were able to do them quarterly? Now THAT'S a blast from the past!). Quality should take priority over quantity, after all.
 
Best of wishes to @Caitlin; and @Soulmaster; along with lots of hugs and well wishes and all that. Because I am a dork like that. XD

Twice a year for the awards does make a lot of sense and I look forward to the new format. You know what they say: The challenge is in the change! (Oh wait, that's Transformers, not Pokemon. My bad.)
 
I am also on board with twice a year. Gives more meaning to winning an award.

I remember the Quarterly era as well. I like where we are at though with the evolution of the awards.
 
So, is the twice a year going to be summer/winter or spring/fall? Though I guess it doesn't really matter, I do think it's better than before, and like many have mentioned, the competition will be a lot better since there'll be a longer time period to prepare, and it'll also give the judges more time to decide the best out of the nominees.

I am wondering what you plan on doing with the categories, because I've always thought there should be a One-shot/Short story category, since the difference in format between the short and long story makes judging the two a little unfair.
 
@Lance: The competitions will be held around June and December, and there will still be an Awards in two months. And we are going to be looking into potentially revising the categories, but most of the old categories were dropped because there were never enough submissions into them, and One Shots have just as much of a chance as any other story; That Guy won Best Non-Pokemon two Awards ago with a One Shot, I believe, and one story won Best Story with only three chapters. Length does not mean it has a better chance of winning; my Galactic is about 400,000 words and has never won anything :P
 
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