Award - Fanlore

Award

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See also: Recommendation
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Fans have organized a variety of awards to recognize and reward outstanding fanworks and fan activities (such as infrastructure work by archivists, for example). Some awards work via open voting, and others restrict voting to the members of a particular mailing list or community. However, some kind of voting must take place, otherwise there would be no difference between awards and recommendations.

Contents

Offline Awards

Some conventions organize awards, for zines or other fanworks. The Fan Q Awards, given at MediaWest*Con, originated as Star Trek fic awards but have have expanded to all active fandoms.

Anime conventions often feature AMV competitions.

Online Awards

Online, the most common awards are for fanfic, though some awards also have categories for fanart, fanvids, or websites. Preventing vote tampering is more problematic in online awards than for those attached to cons. Online awards often provide banners or other graphics for the winners to display on their websites or journals.

Controversies

Because awards involve ranking fanworks, they often cause wank, especially if the fans who organize the award aren't sufficiently transparent in their organization to avoid allegations of bias, whether through the setup of the award's categories, the nomination and voting procedures, or outright vote tampering.

Additionally, awards may face criticism for privileging BNFs, i.e. for making the awards personal "popularity" rather than "quality" contests.

I find fanfiction awards to be skewed.
Firstly there is the fact that the fics written by generally more well known authors get more exposure (via the fan base) and more general readership. Of course, people are encouraged to read all entries...but seriously when there are over a dozen categories with half a dozen fics for each, not everyone is going to bother. So people vote for what they know and trust. It's human. But it also makes the entire competition look like a popularity contest at times.[1]

Some fans dislike awards on principle, either because they don't see the benefits of awards outweighing their potential for strife within a fandom, or because the whole enterprise of "awards" for fanworks is seen as pompous or elitist. (Links to meta about awards?) Others felt that awards served as an constant reminder that they never 'measure up'.

"Seriously, though, it’s a good thing I got two awards that year. My K/S stories continued to be nominated, but I never won again. Once I went to Starsky & Hutch fandom, I wasn’t even on the map until C Frost (Charlotte Frost) had been in the fandom for five years. Stories much loved now were bypassed completely in the nominations (in one case, not even included on the list of eligible stories, even though SH was a very small fandom at the time.) In TS (The Sentinel) fandom, I been little nominated and haven’t won. I don’t participate in awards anymore. I’ve been losing for 18 straight years and can do without the constant reminder that I don’t measure up." [2]

Examples of award controversies

(need examples)

Fan Awards by fandom

References

  1. ↑ gossymer. Let's talk about fanfiction awards. Posted 27 June 2007 (accessed 20 February 2009)
  2. ↑ Charlotte Frost. Memories and reflections on stories I’ve written Posted 2005 (accessed 22 December 2009)
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