I have a couple of thoughts for next year.
My first thought is a concern I had when I saw a couple of topics during the voting session of members asking either for reviews for their own stories, or which stories they should review. I love it when people actually review stories, but I dont think it's wise to ask for reviews for the vote only because it may not be technically legal, according to the award rules.
Here is the relevant rule:
- We VERY STRONGLY DISAPPROVE AND DISCOURAGE any kind of activity that deems as cheating, vote fixing, conspiring, bribing or any general misconduct of ensuring that any one GOF member will be guaranteed an award.
In my interpretation, asking someone to review could possibly be interpreted as conspiring to make sure someone got an award, since it took only one review to get an award. I know that if someone asked for the same thing in the other catergories, it would probably at least disqualify them from voting.
Hopefully, I'm just being a little too paranoid. If the admins are okay with people asking for reviews, than I don't see a problem with it. If an admin reads this, could you please give your thoughts?
The second thought I had was with the publication date for stories to qualify for the award. I know this year that we could use all our old stories, but for the following years, should it be any stories published in the prior calendar year, or stories published since the end of the previous awards? I think that it should be since the prior year awards, simply since the awards occur in the middle of the year. If they occured near year's end, I'd go for calendar year.
All in all, this was a good fanfiction award vote, and I can't wait for next year.