New awards, huh? Cool! Looks interesting.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I, too, am uncomfortable with a panel of anonymous judges chosen by an anonymous committee.

I'd also be interested to know more about how the judges were selected and what their qualifications are. The Kerths are based on how well stories strike the readers in general, but since the Merriweathers are based on judges' scores, the judges' credentials are important.

Speaking of the Kerths, I feel I should point out something from the front page of the Merriweather site:

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Created as a judged alternative to the Kerths, the Merriweather Awards are based on good writing, not popular opinion. Our mission statement: "Truth and justice sound like good things to stand for."
I'm not sure if you realize this, but the wording, (to me, at least) seems to be insulting. For example, having those two sentences so closely together makes it look like you're claiming the Kerths are unjust.

Moving on... I wonder if you can clarify the submissions process. So far, it looks like only web-accessible stories can be submitted (the form requires the story URL). Is that correct? Does that mean, then, that if an author has a new story, but does not have or know how to use webspace, then the story cannot be submitted?

... Oh, never mind. Looking more closely, I see that you can email submissions, too. That note is a relatively small part of the page. Did anyone else miss it?

I do still have a minor technical concern about the webform. It currently says "Nominate" and there doesn't appear to be any ID verification method. So, a confused FoLC could send in a "nomination" with the author's public email address (required on every archive submission), without the author knowing. Or is that allowed? If not, it might be easier and safer to just have all submissions be by email. Either that, or require an email confirmation of all submissions. Just a thought.

Speaking of things to clarify, I've been reading the rules for short story scoring. A few of them seemed confusing to me.

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2. Does each character have a distinct voice without too frequent resort to misspelled words and other annoyances?
I didn't understand this one at all. It seemed like two seperate items to me. Does each character have a distinct voice, and are there a lot of misspellings and other errors? I didn't see the connection.

A kind FoLC explained that it refers to the use of colloquialisms in dialogue to help distinguish characters. "I ain't gots no dough," for example. Is that correct?

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3. Do the dialogue passages effectively use paragraph length, word choice, placement and type of quote tags, punctuation, vocal idiosyncrasies (like sentence fragments, etc), action, and introspection to create a conversation experience both inside and outside the quotation marks?
I think I understand this one, but it took me a long time to sort out all the clauses.

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3. Do the choices of particular pov characters (rather than another character's pov) for each passage or scene enhance the story, such as by creating suspense, giving a unique perspective on an event, or increasing the level of emotion?
Again, this one took me a little while to sort out. I think I understand it now, but the language was confusing to me.

I realize you're just starting out and still getting things organized, but I think it would help if you could clarify these items.

Back to more weighty matters, I'm concerned about the timeframe. As I understand it, any individual judge will have to read an unknown number (possibly hundreds) of stories, grade each individual one on multiple levels, and return the scores within a single month. Depending on the number of judges and the way things are set up, one or more judges may have to do this with different stories in different categories every month! It seems like an awful lot of work, especially considering that the judges are FoLCs -- volunteers who likely have jobs, schoolwork, families, or other commitments. Am I understanding this correctly? Are you sure it's feasible?

Another question... Why anonymous submissions? I understand that anonymity is part of the format of this type of competition, but these competitions, as far as I know, don't generally deal with works which have already been published. Given that the judges are regular readers and that the archive is easily accessible and searchable, is there really a point to submitting anonymously?

Sorry if I'm asking a lot of questions, but, well, this is all new. I'd like to understand it better, and I'd like to help you work out the kinks before they become glitches. "An ounce of prevention..." and all that.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how this all comes out! I've already started looking over possible submissions. I'm very interested to see how they'll be scored and how they'll measure up against the rest.

Thanks for your work in putting this together so far, whoever you are!

Paul

When in doubt, think about penguins. It probably won't help, but at least it'll be fun.