Last years categories were good, though I can think of a couple more...

Best Obscure Story
This could be a way to recognise stories and authors that aren't so well known, so that well-deserving candidates can win recognition that they might not have won normally, especially considering that there are certain stories and authors with huge fanbases (Shezza, jbern, nonjon etc).

Best "TGYH: DLP Version" Short
Just a fun little award that's DLP specific.

Thinking of DLP specificness, we could have a "best resident author" award too, for the best author on the forums.

And yes, I think limiting stories/characters to one award is a good idea. I wouldn't say limit authors to one award though. But I do think that stories and characters that would have done well in a specific catagory but couldn't due to the limits should get an "honourable mention".

 

I agree with Taure. I particularly like the idea of adding a best TGYH DLP award, for reasons already stated. I like the idea of the Best Obscure Story but that's going to be a squicky one for setting parameters around. I'm sure it's possible, but putting a quantitative qualifier for obscurity...

I think that the Best Hero should simply be best Harry. I know that the other way it leaves open the opportunity for a character other than Harry to be nominated from a story, but I believe the chance of that happening is pretty small.

Finally I think Best Newcomer needs to be clearly defined this time and unfortunately it will always be an award that will require policing by the admins.

Still, I think the changes from 06 to 07 were really good and only a little, if any, tweaking should be done.

EDIT: I could go either way with limiting an author to 1 or 2 awards. I don't think the Oscars or People's Choice awards do this but I can't say that for sure. Then again, due to established fanbases the awards can boil down to popularity contests. Still, let not forget there's a reason that those stories/authors are popular...

Omagic

 

No, Just no. I don't feel like getting the awards jizzed on by a 1001 Jbern fans spewing "Bestest arthor1!1!!!11"

I second the motion

In addition, don't make it mandatory to vote for every category.We all know what bullshit results that caused last year. Best romance to Jbern? and Kwriter got jack shit? C'mon people.

We also have the problem that no good fanfiction has been made since last year so basically all nominations will be for the same fics as last year, with some exceptions

madeyemoody.

 

I'm not sure there are enough good stories around to be picky about how many categories one can compete in. It'd be silly to, for example, rule out 'best villain', if a story already has 'best hero' nomination - after all, we're talking about completely different characters here. And besides, who would make the chose which of these two nominations to keep and which to rule out? This rule would be almost impossible to uphold.

The only place where this might make sense is the genre categories - Indy, dark, AU... A choice here wouldn't hurt the story much and it doesn't seem too strenuous on the staff either.

One rule I'd like to see added are precise word-count and post-date limits on the nominated stories.

For example, what is exactly a one-shot? There are one-chapter stories that are longer and more serious than many multi-chaptered fics. IMO, there should be a clear split between 'short stories', that have their own award and 'novel-length stories' that compete for all the others. And as for this limit, we can use the official one, which is somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 words (need to check this).

Also, I think we need some way to rule out inactive stories from general awards. Last year, a few stories that weren't really active (including my own) took away awards from authors who had really put in some effort during the past year. So, how about only those stories that had grown by a certain number of words or chapters during the past year can compete. Let's say 40K words or 3 chapters? Or any other combination. (this might be a bit difficult to uphold, though).

Same goes for the best newcomer - a few excellent authors were ruled out for posting their first chapters days before the new year, or had some crappy non-HP oneshots posted ages ago. Perhaps there's a way around this? Prolong the period to two or more years, but add other constraints - word count and number of posted chapters during 2007? I don't know, but I wouldn't like to again see only four applicants in this category, like last year.

As for genres, the ones from last year were decent enough, with two objections.

Noir needs a better explanation, since few people really understood what this category entailed. Perhaps just rename it to Dark Arts or something similar.

AU needs to be split. Ever since HBP, most of the new fics were AU in some way, which really bloats this category and creates too much competition. Perhaps split it into "AU", where the author just cuts in somewhere during Harry's childhood and goes through his life again, and "Time/dimension travel", which would include time travel, redo-s and travel to other dimension/parallel universes (Harry meets his female self and similar).

Oh, and it might be nice to have a technical category or two. Something like "best writing style" or "best writer".

 

And don't forget the oddball awards too, have a little fun with it. What about a "Least Likely To Finish A Story In '08" award for all those authors with great ideas but who never seem to finish them off? I'm not talking about some no-name who writes "what if Harry were actually a girl but no one knew it SSHPDM" and abandons it, I mean authors of well written stories that just don't know when to quit like LouisXIII or JackofDiamonds (not that I'm nominating them because I don't think either of them have actually updated in the last year, but dear god those stories are way too long).

 

Well, I don't think we need to limit the whole thing to just two awards, but perhaps the idea of limiting the possible choices to only two per author isn't a bad idea (at least for the external stories). I always like the idea of awarding some of the forum folk for their internal (but greatly fun) stories. Maybe a Best Silly/Stupid Story or something similar.

Even a Most Inventive Internal DLP Nonsense would at least make ME a bit amused. But on the same vein as IP - what exactly is a "newcomer"? Someone who just posted at all for the first time in 07, or just was first nominated then? We need some sort of consensus on that.

I don't really agree either that "no good fanfiction has been made since last year", but whatever - if we need to, we can just limit everything to just one award The Only Story We Didn't Completely Despise. But only as a last resort.

Like I said, not sure about the author limit. However, bandwagoning is a real problem - the problem where a fan of one or two authors votes for them in every category (sometimes because they never even read the story in question).

Say, that gives a bit of an idea - perhaps for each nominee, we can include a little excerpt or summary of the story in question, so people actually know what the story is (and in my case, remember what it was when you first read it). Just some thoughts.

-J

 

I remember the problems last year with the voting while I was a lurker. I think there was complaints about people joining DLP, voting, and disappearing, correct (I think this mostly happened with Jbern)? Maybe this year we should make it that only people with a certain post count can vote. At least this way you are getting people who are active on the forum to vote rather than someone who just shows up to vote for his/her favorite author.

I was wondering if there is a chance of adding a couple Worst categories, kind of like the Golden Raspberry Awards (Razzie) Awards for actors.

 

Post count won't cut it,they could've joined for a day and just do sporadic posting around the board to get certain amount of posts to qualify. Needs at least a half year of membership plus 25-35 posts to be able to vote.

 

Perhaps another way to limit the one-author, multiple awards problems is to require the author to choose which categories he or she wants there story to remain in competition for after the nomination period finishes.

So if a story (not an author me thinks) is nominated for every category that there is, some limitations will have to be made. Perhaps a story shouldn't be able to compete for Romance, Noir, Innovative, Comedy, and Alternate all at once. Therefore if an author receives nominations in all of those categories he/she is faced with a choice of picking the one they think best represents their story.

Regardless I think that it is only right that one story can be awarded Best OC, Best Hero, Best Villian, Story of the Year, and Best Category Specific (ie Noir, Romance, etc) at the same time. And at the very least an author shouldn't be limited from winning SotY as a result of winning (or being nominated for several others).

I don't think that a character from the same story should be able to recieve best hero and best anti-hero at the same time. Shouldn't even be allowed to maintain nominations for both.

EDIT: Also if we're going to just vomit up all kind of category ideas there's always things like Best Dialogue, Best Plot Device, Best Plot Twist, Best Action Scenes, Best Description. Things start to get terribly diluted if you wander into all these different areas though.

Omagic

 

That's a good idea. There was a lot of controversy about that last year, especially concerning Jbern. Cell's idea sounds promising and might be a good step to take.

 

Ive already given my opinion to Raven, but I'll add one last one.

To prevent people from registering just to vote, close registration once Nominations begin.

 

I think it would be a good idea if nominations had to have a reason behind them. Not just fanboys and the sort going "OMG, GR8 STORY!!!! UBER KEWL!" but a few dot points at least, saying why they think it is a great story

 

STORY EVERYONE LIKES TO HATE BUT READS ANYWAY

BEST OVERALL WRITING STYLE

MOST LIKELY TO GO ON AND BECOME A REAL AUTHOR

And another - past stories can't win in the same category.

 

So basically you're looking for an excuse to give JBern another award? If anyone who admits to liking his stories can be dismissed as just another fanboy, it seems he's a shoe in for this award from the remaining "intelligent" posters...

 

No. I don't know about you, but I don't read Jbern anymore. I was actually thinking of PaleLittleGirl's Thicker Than Blood.

 

This might be counterproductive since it may turn away prospective new members. Alternatively, you could just close off voting to those who (like me) have memberships that are too new. To avoid people with mummified accounts voting, a postcount minimum could be enacted too. The combination should ensure an appropriate measure of groupthink.

 

The post count and account age combo will cut out a lot of the trouble. If someone says they should have a right to vote even if they have only posted 30 times over the last year... tuff shit. This is a HP fanfiction community and if you only post once in a blue moon you dont really contribute to that community. This is supposed to represent the opinions of DLP and DLP is made up of those members who contribute to it.

The catagorys are fine. I ahree with limiting it to one catagory per story, after all when did you ever see a movie win a oscar for comedy and drama?

But there should be no limit on other part areas. A story could very well have the best villain and hero. Again look at the Oscars, movies often win under several catagorys.

Storys that can be nominated also need to be limited to storys that had major work done in 07. If an author cant spit out 30k words minimum in 365 days of writting time they really dont deserve to be in the awards no matter how good the story is.