Keep the existing categories – it’s more than enough

Re: Genres

It’s too easy to go overboard and easily leads to countless genres needing representation. If you’ve got an award for best “furry” story, why not best incest story? Threesome story? Group sex story?

Besides, it can be hard enough to know where a given story should be nominated when many stories belong to multiple genres.

Griezz

Lastly, thank you Lazeez for taking this on!
–
Sam

Flash: up to 1,000 words
Short: 1,000 – 7,500 words
Medium: 7,500 – 20,000 words
Long: 20,000 – 50,000 words
Very long: 50,000+ words

If possible it would be good for the site to know how long a story is and move it to the right category. So if FooStory is 19,750 words long and submitted to the “Best long story” category the site would say “FooStory is not eligible for the “Best long story” category so it has been nominated for “Best medium-length story” instead. If you would like to withdraw this nomination click here”. If submissions are done by email, then provide a link to the website or an email link to withdraw.

This brings me on to another idea – users should be able to see which stories they have nominated and be given the option to withdraw any of them.

I agree also with whoever (it might have been Gary Jordan) said that every story nominated (or perhaps every story that receives at least 2 nominations) should go through to the vote. Have a second round of voting for the 5 highest scoring if needed.

The Silver Clits are awarded for best story of the month, and when they were active one of them was voted best story of the year. If they are not active, it would be good to continue to give this award. Perhaps every story that receives at least 2 nominations in any category should be automatically entered into this category (author opt-out notwithstanding).

I agree that it involves very different skills planning, and talent to writing flash, short stories, novelettes, and novels. Thus it’s reasonable to separate into some broadly recognizable categories, but should never be over-done.

I’m especially reserved about those beyond novelette level. I don’t really see a difference in excellency or craftsmanship that leads to different level of works there.

And for Lazeez, if you haven’t already put my name on your volunteer’s list. I’m in.

Micro-Fiction: up to 100 words
Flash Fiction: 100 – 1,000 words
Short Story: 1,000 – 7,500 words
Novellette: 7,500 – 20,000 words
Novella: 20,000 – 50,000 words
Novel: 50,000 -120,000 words
Epics: Over 120,000 words

With regard to the Monthly Silver Clitorides: If you wish to make a quarterly award, by all means do so. But PLEASE choose another name. Platinum, Mithril, Bronze, Brass, even Aluminium. While they were active, the Silver Clitorides were associated with being monthly, and were listed so at Jane’s.

I don’t have any connection to other story sites, so I guess it’s not a close community at all. It’s up to authors to encourage the other sites to participate. I’m open to all participation. I’m planning to create a banner for the awards as well as a system for authors to register their own stories on the awards site and create a direct link to nominate their stories, something like digg’s links. However, this will give the advantage to authors who participate and make the effort to promote their stories.

@Garry Jordan:

That was my real motivation. Whatever the reason for your stop or souvie’s, the awards suffered. So a site with multiple moderators is more stable. And stability is good for this kind of thing.

“One person, One vote” is impossible without sacrificing personal privacy. So it’s impossible to do. The best that I can do is ‘One email, one vote’.

Once I’m done with the golden awards, I will do the silver awards, however, from previous experience, monthly awards may not get enough nominees all months, so I would suggest changing the silver awards to Quarterly awards instead.

@Wizard:

Every author sees their own stories in a different light. From my experience with storiesonline when I implemented the story genres, there could never be enough genres to satisfy everybody. However, if the request gets seconded, I’ll add the category.

@DB_Story:

Currently we have flash story, short story and long story. Flash can’t be considered with ‘under 5000 words’ it’s already defined as under 300 words.

So we need to expand the length considerably. If we consider your suggestion, we’ll need 5 categories:

* Flash
* Very short
* Short
* Long
* Very long

Any suggestions? additional support?

For everybody that volunteered, thank you very much.

I’m still working on the moderation side. I’m having hard time finding the time to do it, so it will be a little while at least. When it’s done, I’ll make an announcement on SOL and on the clits site. Meanwhile, the way to do it is to register a user account on the Clits site and email me and give me your user name there; I’ll upgrade your account and when the system is up and running, you should see the difference.

Best Story under 5000 words.
Best Story 5000 – 25000 words
Best Story 25K – 100K words
Best Story Over 100K words

Different length make for very different kinds of stories, and it’s not fair in my mind to make them all compete in just one or two categories.

–DB_Story