If we're going to ask for names of Merriweather judges to be revealed, then we need to have the names of Kerth judges revealed, don't we? But since the point of Kerth voting is that the judges (i.e. the voters, not the K-Comm) remain anonymous, I don't see why people are upset about Merriweather judges remaining anonymous.
I'm not sure I see the connection between the two, Sheila. For me, they are two quite distinctly different processes, which really can't be compared in this way.
With the Kerths, even though the individual names of each and every voter and who they voted for aren't given, generally speaking we all know who's voting in the Kerths. Readers. FoLCs. And we all know precisely what their qualifications and reasons for voting are. They vote for the stories they believe were well written to a higher than average standard and which they enjoyed most in a given year.
By contrast, the Merriweather judges are setting themselves up as 'experts' in the field of writing, who are therefore able and have the qualifications to judge another's writing skills. But we know nothing of who they are, their writing/judging backgrounds or their qualifications for being judges.
If we know nothing of the judges, how can authors tell what those qualifications are based on? We know nothing either about the criteria on which these judges were chosen by the Merriweather committee. I don't recall ever seeing a post on either mbs asking for candidates to apply to be judges, stating why they believed they were qualified. The process seems to have been entirely private and limited to certain candidates, hand-picked by the committee alone.
Which is fine, of course. No quibble there. The Merriweather committee are perfectly entitled to set up the awards exactly as they wish. And choose the judges they wish as well.
But realistically, having chosen that method, I don't think anyone should be surprised that what I would consider quite reasonable and logical questions are being asked because of the set up chosen.
It doesn't seem surprising to me that authors are asking who are the judges and what makes them qualified to judge. At the very least, it might be a good thing to set out the judges background and qualifications that have won them a place on the judging panel. That might offset some of those questions. Although, realistically, I can't see how that could be done. We don't have that large a fandom here and it would be fairly easy, I'd suspect, to tell who was who even if names weren't given.
But the fact that logistically there may be problems answering those questions, doesn't mean that people will stop wondering. Or asking.
It's not a question of being upset - I don't think I've seen anyone say they were upset. It's just a matter of being human. Who wouldn't wonder who the person behind the mask is? Seems a perfectly natural thing to do to me.
Perhaps the main factor that wasn't considered by the Merriweather committee here is that most of the people the awards are aimed at won't be familiar with the romance novel judging process. The Merriweather Committee, it seems, are collectively steeped in that world. Perhaps the judges are too. But lots of us aren't. We have no experience of that system. So perhaps it's less than surprising that we don't understand it. Or that we'd have questions and concerns about how it works, as applied to FoLCdom and fanfic - two elements which the system wasn't designed for, as I understand it. And whereas there will undoubtedly be plenty of common factors between the two worlds, it's a given that there will be plenty of differences too that will make the transition awkward at best.
Having said all that <g>, I think, regarding the question of anonimity, it's been the committee, the organisers behind the awards, that some have been suggesting should be transparent. Not the judges themselves. Even if there's good reason for the judges to stay anonymous - and I have little opinion on that one way or the other myself - there seems little reason for the committee to be.
I've heard that the given reason is that they didn't want to polarise the awards by revealing who they were - because no matter who they were they might have enemies on either side of the fandom. If this was the reason, it seems to me to have backfired pretty badly and ended up producing just the effect they intended to avoid.
It also speaks to distrusting FoLCs to be unbiased about the awards and not relate to them based on their possible prejudices of who is organising them.
I make the statement above, not as a criticism, but simply to point out that you can't have it both ways. If the committee didn't have trust in FoLCs to embrace the awards without bias, can they
really be surprised that there was a lack of blind trust in the committee's impartiality in return?
Perhaps now, transparency might be the only way to salvage the distrust that's arisen as a result. It certainly couldn't make things any worse imo. And couldn't hurt. Perhaps it might be a good gesture towards restoring trust in the awards, as the reasons for it would appear now to be moot. Assuming, of course, that I've understood the reasons correctly.
And beyond all of that, as I've said previously, given the history of conflict in this fandom, blind trust does not come easy to most FoLCs. It's perfectly human, as I say, to ask the questions that have been asked, but it's even more normal in this fandom, unfortunately. Trust was something that was lost years ago and that's a hard thing to return to. Which is really why it's a good thing for anyone organising anything to be as upfront and transparent as they can possibly be right from the getgo. It solves a lot of this kind of debate right from the start. It may be awkward and perhaps it's not the route you'd like to take - but unfortunately it's just a part and parcel of FoLCdom that you'd be wise to take account of before embarking on your project. If you don't take that into account...well, I think we've seen where it leads.
All of which is a rather long way around to say that I, for one, wasn't in the least bit suprised to see these questions being asked, didn't find them in any way unusual, unreasonable or abnormal in the circumstances, and my only surprise is that others found it...surprising. <G>
LabRat
