.moon - the living fandom

The unthinkable has happened! [UFOs]

March 01, 2010, 09:49:14 PM by Dejana

Voting for the 2009 Best of Fandom round of the UFO Awards has actually started ON TIME! Yes! It's shocking, but true! Miracles do happen, trufax.

For 2009 we had a total of 377 entries, of which 277 were seconded and accepted and became official contest entries. Categories have to have at least three entries to be voted on, which gives us 24 categories on the ballot this year. They are:

Avatar: The Last Airbender
Bleach
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
D.Gray-Man
Death Note
Doctor Who
Fruits Basket
Full Metal Panic
Fullmetal Alchemist
Gundam Wing
Harry Potter
Hikaru no Go
iCarly
Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Kim Possible
Naruto
One Piece
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Prince of Tennis
Sailormoon
Torchwood
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Veronica Mars
xxxHOLiC
Works in Progress

We have a wide variety of categories this year, some new, some old. Big thanks to everyone who nominated and seconded stories! Now get over there and vote! Cheesy

You can jump directly to the voting page via this URL:
http://www.dotmoon.net/awards/awards_vote.php

*Be aware that there is a Members' Choice tally running in addition to the regular tally. Members of .moon should make sure to login to the site before voting.*

The ballot will allow you to vote in as many or as few categories as you want, so don't worry if you're not familiar with them all. You can even go back later to vote in any category you didn't vote in the first time. You can only vote in a category one time, though, so make sure you're really set on your choices before submitting your ballots!

This is the first round of voting, to determine the top three stories of each fandom and the top ten stories of the WIPs. This voting stage will run through April 30th.

In addition, nominations for 2010 are now open. I've decided to give the UFOs one more year for a total of five rounds, but unless a whole squad armed with Photoshop mysteriously appears to help, 2010 will probably be the last year for the awards. Be sure to get your nominations in.

0 comments | Write Comment

[UFO Awards] Status

February 14, 2010, 01:41:00 AM by Dejana

Quick status update.

Nominations for the 2009 UFO Awards are now closed. Seconding is still open, and there are many nominations still waiting to be seconded, so please take one more look at the list within the next week. I'm going to do my best to get everyone notified and accepted by the end of the month so we can start voting on schedule March 1st.

I haven't decided yet if the awards will continue in 2010.

2 comments | Write Comment

[UFO Awards] Nominations ending soon!

January 18, 2010, 07:05:11 PM by Dejana

Just a quick reminder, nominations for the 2009 UFO Awards will close January 31st. The queue is still pretty backed up, but I've processed all the ones I'm able to access at this time and I know Yumeko is doing the best she can as well. I hope to be all caught up on the pending nominations by the end of this week.

There are a number of new fandom categories this year and a lot of nominations waiting to be seconded; be sure to show your support before the deadline!

0 comments | Write Comment

Help needed with the UFOs.

January 05, 2010, 12:16:07 AM by Dejana

It's time to face facts; the UFO Awards have gotten too big for one person to handle alone. It was easy enough when we started out with only a few fandom categories, but with over twenty now, I'm facing starting the next round when I still haven't finished the work associated with the last one. I don't want to shut the awards down, because I enjoy being able to recognize talented writers, but if I can't get some help with them 2010 will be the last year. Undecided

So, I'd like to add some staff positions for the UFOs. There are two basic tasks I need help with.

Nomination processing. When someone nominates a story, it goes to a holding queue for verification. This task is as simple as checking that all the story details are correct and the story fits the criteria for the awards (word count, date of completion). This is definitely the easiest task, easier even than our in-house Story Moderator job, but there are a lot of nominations to process (and many of them are on FFN, which I don't have access to very often), so they tend to pile up on me.
Award graphics. This is the hefty one. Nominee badges are easy enough, since they all have the same design with different text, but all the winner graphics are unique with images tailored to the content of the story. There are three or four winners per fandom category, and with twenty fandoms and ten WIP honorable mentions that adds up to a lot. Making one of these means reading enough of the story to get a feel for its characters and content, tracking down images that fit that content, and editing them into the standard template. Ideally, volunteers to help with this task should have access to Photoshop, but in a pinch I'll be happy enough with a few people to read the winning stories and collect source images for the graphics.

Creating the award graphics is the most time-consuming part of running the UFOs. It may seem excessive, but the individualized graphics are what makes the UFOs something special. When the award is a graphic that fits the story, it stands as proof that the content of the story matters to us, and the recipient is a lot more likely to display it than a standard cookie-cutter image. I've gotten a lot of delighted comments from authors who have received these, and frankly, I don't see a purpose in continuing the UFOs without giving out awards that matter. This is both the most time-consuming task and the most important one, as well as the key to the whole question. If I can't find some helpers for this job, this year will be the last one. I hate to be dramatic about it, but I can't handle the UFOs on my own anymore.

If you are interested in joining staff in either of these roles please post or PM me.

7 comments | Write Comment

Downtime/Errors

October 13, 2009, 10:47:54 PM by Dejana

Well, wasn't that fun? Roll Eyes

My apologies for the weirdness and downtime today. Our host moved our account to a different server, and since all the custom pages here were hard-coded to point to directories on the old one, I had to go through and fix them all. The hosting company did send out a warning email about this some months ago, but I didn't take it seriously enough. My mistake. Embarrassed

On the bright side, the coding now uses a neutral address that will be the same no matter what server we're on, so this shouldn't happen again.

I had to reset everyone to the default theme after fixing the theme settings. There appears to be a problem with the page that lets you change themes, so you may be stuck with the default for a bit while I try to sort that out. Please let me know ASAP if you run into errors on any other pages.

EDIT: Problem with the themes area is fixed.

6 comments | Write Comment