Myk

Ok holy crap my iPod f'ed up!!sorry...delete?

Hey!! Don't blame me for that, you wanted to. Besides, make it a new one for all of us next time Also, for future reference...what should one bring for breakfast? ; )

This study is way too over generalized and the researchers picked an unfortunate title to get more attention drawn to their work. ...don't believe everything you read

It should not be an issue at all....that being said there is still racisim out there, and many ethnic groups like to remain within those groups. Same thing with some religious beliefs. My best friend was born in the UAE, of indian ethnicity and he is marrying a Czech (white) girl. Its no big deal to any of us....except her mother, who apparantly is racist. She is at least keeping those opinions to herself right now. G

Well lets see here (in order)

We aim to please

f**king adorable! ....oh and the puppy is a cutie too Who would that 'someone else' be?

You are right!! This has actually come up before. Graeme was nice enough, and I mean EXTREMELY nice to provide a list of all the 'new' anthology authors. For the WST to create a list of all the stories/authors for every category, well that would take an impossible amount of work. Assuming you liked a story enough, you can look it up, see what category it is in and nominate it. The point is, if you read it and its good enough to stick in your head then you'll know what stories you want to nominate. All the stories have posted dates so its easy for readers to check and see if a story qualifies. To provide you with a list, it would be extremely long, and we couldn't expect you to go out and read them all anyway. So unfortunately there is no easy way to have the software tell you which stories qualify, and at this time (and likely for all time) the WST will not be putting a list together. I am sorry, it just isn't feasable for us right now. ...just don't expect the same level of service from the rest of the team haha G

You can nominate non-GA authors for King/Queen of cliffhangers....hence how Graeme was nominated. I doubt we will ever include a 'Best chiffhanging chapter' but you never know! Greg

Sounds perfect. Have fun, both of you!!! Greg

Thanks Steve!! Thanks Pheonix!! Like I was saying to Altimexis we really do appreciate the suggestions. I can tell you that we are hesitant to add a lot of categories to the voting. The reason being a few years back we did have a lot of categories and used a polling system. It ended up taking over 20 minutes to cast a vote and in the end it took way too much of Myr's time to setup the poll. That almost killed the awards until the WST volunteered to do the polling manually. Now every single vote must be counted individually by whoever manages the PM voting, same thing for the nominations (Thanks Sharon ). So we are careful about how many award categories we load ourselves down with . If things were different I think it would be great to have a lot of more 'fun' categories. As it is we just have the good old King/Queen of cliffhangers In regards to having a 'worst' story category, I see how that could be 'tongue in cheek' but I think it might be better to avoid going that direction. Some people may not find it so funny but offensive instead. It could liven things up a bit , but that is probably not the direction we would consider going with the awards. Thanks for the suggestions Pheonix Greg ps- I've started reading your story Mark's Lament, and I really like it. If you wanted to you can add your stories to the eFiction section. I know I'd read them

...Just saw this thread now....and its already dismantled... sorry you didn't get what you wanted james Greg

I'm wont be on anyone's list because no one is on my list I missed my chance in December, but I'll be meeting someone from another site in a few months...hopefully. Greg-wondering why no one wants to meet up with him hahaha

Hey Altimexis Thanks for your imput on this, we really do appreciate suggestions, especially if they can help us improove/simplify this process! I think it is important for everyone to know that we, and by we I mean mostly the WST (except for CJ, who refuses to have a conflict of interest here) and a few other team members put a lot of thought and effort into making the awards work. What we have now is a result of several years of learning and several very long discussion threads. Whereas what we have may not be perfect, it is the best we have come up with, and that has proven to work in the past. I know in some cases it does seem like we are comparing apples to oranges here, but that is way better than comparing apples to clouds, to palm trees. By reducing the awards for longer storis to 50k and under, and over 50k words, you are putting eFiction authors, up against not only promissing and shared, but hosted authors as well. It would take a really skilled writer who is just starting out to have a chance against the hosted authors. If they can...then I would imagine we would have promoted them by that point. Authors at the same hosting level are generally considered to be at or above a certain level of writing capabilities. So those that have been promoted this year are considered to be ready and at the next level, to judge their work along with those at the level they just advanced from may not be fair to those at that level. Its a situation of you're damned if you do, damned if you don't...but at least they got a promotion that year Stoires spanning multiple years.....I've thought about this one before myself. Basically to police that, would be very difficult. I've come to peace with this problem myself in that storeis that post regularily, tend to develop quite a following, unlike those that are paced out a lot. So in theory that gives frequent posters a better chance, when infrequent posters may be up for awards in more than one year. Also say a story twice as long is being posted....maybe they deserve to get a shot at 2 sets of awards? Whereas someone else could write 2 stories in that time. In regards to the author you are saying is 'about' to be promoted to promissing...I'm not sure who you are referring to there!! Anyone who is promoted to promissing, and accepts the offer is generally re-tagged within a week. I think you might have some bad info there, unless I'm out of the loop on this one. Any author being promoted to something higher where they need a site built, their promotion is announced when everything is ready to go online, before that they remain at the lower level. Anyway thanks again for your suggestions, I'm sure we will add them to this year's post awards debate. That said I hope I've given some idea of why things are run the way they are. Any further questions/suggestions (from anyone), please feel free to PM or email any WST member and we will bring it to the rest of the group. Thanks! Greg

hmmm...that works too Oh Robert!!

umm....video?!?!??!?!?!

Its a wise precaution, afterall you never know who could track you down... ....isn't that right Robert? Greg (appologies....inside joke....)

Nice!

This may sound odd.....but do you really have to quit before finding a new job?!? Surely you can look for an upgrade without giving up your backup....although maybe that isn't as fun... Anyway, I hope you can find a job you love.....or at least one that isn't so embarrasing to you :? Greg

...I thought you didn't want to get sexual on this date?!...in which case the only reaso to shave the sack would be for yourself... Greg...confused

Hey Sharon! I totally agree with everything you said. If I was allowe to vote, I'd have to write your name in! Greg

hehe, hey Krista

I am a firm believer that things happen when you least expect them to. Stop looking, live your life and good things will happen. Always be open to love, but don't chase it....its a bit shy Greg

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHARON!!!! Greg