InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "No wai!"

snarrymod (snarrymod) wrote in snarry_games,
@ 2008-05-02 22:12:00

Entry tags:

faqs, mod post, rules

IMPORTANT REMINDER FOR JUDGES!
A large portion of the readers are new to the Games, and some previous judges may require a friendly reminder or refresher, so we are reposting some important information about the RULES FOR VOTING IN THE SNARRY GAMES.

You can find these Rules in our FAQS.

SPECTATOR/JUDGES POLL/Rules & Regulations

WHO CAN VOTE: Everyone who is a spectator and has an insanejournal or OpenID.

You can only vote once, but you can go in and change your original vote right up until the polls are locked for the final tally (just click on the poll, then click again on "Fill Out Poll", which will give you your previous numbers). Other than seeing your own numbers, the poll results will be visible only to Mods.

WHO CANNOT VOTE:

CURRENT Team Dragon and Phoenix Members and Alternates, Snarry Games Mods, and those who do NOT have a Insanejournal account or OPenID (IJ does not support anonymous voting). However, anyone can review and comment! And pimp. Pimp your favourites and your teammates' entries far and wide!

Please vote responsibly. The mods work very hard counting all the polls up manually, and we do not appreciate the extra time it takes to delete Null votes and Troll votes. Thank you.

**IMPORTANT NOTE** The first two questions must be judged impartially. You can find an entry not to your personal tastes, but still appreciate that it was well representing of its genre(s) and/or prompt(s). Be fair when you consider these criteria, and judge responsibly. The last question is subjective; How much did YOU like this entry overall?. Here, and only here, is where your personal tastes and preferences should be part of the judging process. For more info, please see below: WARNINGS.

The Snarry Games always warns for character death*, Under 18, and extreme content. We simply use a format where the warning is invisible, like this:

Warnings: Drag mouse over space if you wish to know: * Major character death. Torture. Extreme violence. Harry is 17 in this Fic, Infidelity, MPREG, etc etc etc *

This way prevents anyone from seeing anything that they do not want to see, be it spoilers or the content in the story in question. PLEASE do not force yourself to read and vote on an entry you would normally not want to read. Please HEED these warnings.

If you cannot vote fairly on a story because of the content that you've been warned against, you should not be reading or judging that story. It is not fair to the author, the team, or the mods, who work very hard to count the polls.

Thank you!

The Mod Squad.

*Character death warned for is untimely, or other than: natural, old age, or having already happened in canon.

(Post a new comment)

	aeryun 2008-05-03 06:20 am UTC (link)
	The Snarry Games warns for character death, Under 18, and extreme content. Is this the only warnings stories will give, or was that just an example? (Reply to this) (Thread)

snarrymod
2008-05-03 06:30 am UTC (link)

No, only that we *always* warn for those particular ones, even if the author doesn't.

However, we let the authors warn for as much as they want. Some warn for small things, like AU, or EWE, others, content related such as HET, MPREG, and the like.

If you come across a story that is missing an 'extreme' content warning, just let us know. We try to catch them all, naturally.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	aeryun 2008-05-03 06:48 am UTC (link)
	I haven't come across any story missing an extreme content warning. I was just wondering if maybe you could add 'Non-Snarry Pairing' to the list? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	djin7 2008-05-03 07:35 am UTC (link)
	If the author wants to warn for that, they are welcome to do so. We only 'police' extreme content, for the safety of our watchers. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	aeryun 2008-05-03 07:38 am UTC (link)
	lol, I don't know, but being shown that there are other "pairings" out there could be harmful to Snarry-a-holics, world shattering even. :D (please take this for the playfulness it was written in ^.^) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	snarrymod 2008-05-03 06:16 pm UTC (link)
	ahaha, you're right of course, some do! However, usually incidental happenings aren't warned for. As I said, if the author wants a warning, we add it. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mimiheart 2008-05-03 01:53 pm UTC (link)
	Could you define extreme content? I think different people may have different ideas about that. He painted his toes! FOOT FETISH! EXTREME CONTENT!!!!! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	snarrymod 2008-05-03 05:51 pm UTC (link)
	hahahahah! Well, you know - extreme; Non Con, Extreme Violence, Gore, Spousal Abuse, torture, things of that nature. We aren't here to police kink preference. g (Reply to this) (Parent)

auctasinistra
2008-05-03 04:51 pm UTC (link)

I don't mean to be argumentative, but even the first two questions are subjective - one reader might think a story hews closely to, for instance, Romance and Horcrux (to take genre and prompt examples out of thin air) while another reader might find the story wasn't very romantic at all, and the horcrux issue came across as a subplot rather than a major issue in the story.

Just sayin' - they're all actually subjective to the reader's interpretation.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

snarrymod
2008-05-03 05:54 pm UTC (link)

Well that is of course, true. But you are meant to try hard judge it as fairly as possible, EG the first two questions are "TECHNICAL", the last one "STYLE", in terms of say, Olympic figure skating. This post is meant for those who maybe aren't sure what they are doing, and it's clear by some of the polls this year that there is some of that going on. *sigh* No one ever reads the rules first, I sometimes feel.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	felaine 2008-05-03 08:14 pm UTC (link)
	What exactly are Null votes and Troll votes? I'd hate to think I'm a null or a troll. Thanks. Great job on the games BTW. Some marvelous stuff. Does anyone but me think it's funny that, considering the politics and violence with the Other Games occurring this August in C-i-a, they were worried WE might embarrass THEM? Felaine (Reply to this) (Thread)

djin7
2008-05-03 09:05 pm UTC (link)

What exactly are Null votes and Troll votes?

Well, that can vary.

If we catch someone consistently voting low for one team, and high for another, which used to happen a lot when the teams were Romance and Angst, we may null every one of their votes. Or, if someone votes only intermittently and always votes extremely low - we assume that they have some kind of agenda, and may null those. Sometimes, it's clear a person voted with a bias - 99% of the voters judged one way, and this one voter skewed the opposite, it's clear they are not voting fairly, and we consider that, too.

That sort of thing. Because of the sheer number of votes, it is really impossible for one voter to skew the system. But we are constantly vigilant, anyways. The Champions (and mods) work hard for their Team Votes, so we think it's only fair that we keep an eye out.

And yeah, IRONY, EH? Bastard IOC.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	felaine 2008-05-03 09:14 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for the Null/Troll explanation. "Bastard IOC." Yeah, I'd hate for us to give violence and prejudice a bad name. Felaine (Reply to this) (Parent)

gaycrow
2008-06-05 10:07 pm UTC (link)

Sometimes, it's clear a person voted with a bias - 99% of the voters judged one way, and this one voter skewed the opposite, it's clear they are not voting fairly, and we consider that, too.

Goodness, I find that a little scary. I often find myself thinking completely opposite to fandom on occasions, and that could apply to my thoughts about a story! I'd hate to think a vote I might cast would be cancelled because of that. :-(

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

djin7
2008-06-05 10:45 pm UTC (link)

Gay, trust me when I tell you that your votes have never been called onto the carpet.

It's really obvious when someone is not being reasonable or responsible. Also, many of us look at them, and we all discuss the nulls, in the even of a disagreement.

Yanno, I hate to have to waste my goddam time with them, the counting process takes so long already, but it's only fair to protect the authors from people who think it's funny to vote a 1 on an entry because they don't like that author, or whatever.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	djin7 2008-06-06 02:45 am UTC (link)
	Also, as an ETA, you will notice I say 'we consider it', because it's not a foregone conclusion. We have many regular voters that are more discerning, and vote really carefully, it would seem you must do a lot to earn a "9" from them. We understand that, and again, it's quite obvious, because they do it with everyone. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	gaycrow 2008-06-06 09:59 am UTC (link)
	Fair enough. I was worried that anyone who'd voted very low for any particular story, against a backdrop of a large majority of higher votes, may have had their vote disqualified. Sounds like you're on top of the situation, though, and are being very thorough. A time consuimg job, I'd imagine. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	lost_stray_cat 2008-05-07 10:27 am UTC (link)
	What makes for a "good representation of prompt/s"? (Reply to this) (Thread)

snarrymod
2008-05-07 10:37 am UTC (link)

This is a good question, because often the authors are figurative with their prompts, not literal.

EG: If an author chooses "learning to dance" but has no actual dancing (or 'sex'- as dancing is often referred to as) in the fic, the figurative meaning could be anything from a journey to know yourself, to know another, to learn a skill such as being social, accepting someone into your life.

If you aren't sure, you can skip the question.
Enjoy!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

accioslash
2008-05-14 04:03 am UTC (link)

Hm. I'm really curious about the troll/null votes. On average, what percentage of votes fall into those categories? I can imagine it could be potentially very time consuming to weed through them and wonder how much it would affect the voting just to leave them as is and not spend the time eliminating them. You all seem to have so much work to do that it seems like anything to help lighten the load would be worth considering. Though, I imagine you've already done that. Hm.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

djin7
2008-05-15 12:53 am UTC (link)

The Null votes are *usually* spotted well in advance of the polls coming down. We make a list. The average is not high, normally - less than 5%.

Each poll is usually counted by three different people, but not the same three for all the polls - they are staggered. If there is a tie-breaker required, we also count with and without the null votes, or discuss and look more closely at them.

I hope that satisfies?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	accioslash 2008-05-15 12:59 am UTC (link)
	I figured it must be a pretty complex process. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there would be some problematic voters, but I am anyway. (Reply to this) (Parent)

ex_krichards253
2008-06-11 12:15 am UTC (link)

I finally catching up with reading posts (I'm not even close with reading half the stories), even though I missed the deadline. I'm such an idiot sometimes and don't realize and consider these things, lost in my world of real life. The point of all of this is I just got to this post and was wondering how my scattered voting is, and would how it has been judged. I read the comment about how skewed the voting was for Romance and Angst Games. I can't exactly remember what I voted but I with my random voting and reading I do think that I may have voted harshly against one side more so than the other; mostly I think I just didn't read a lot of stories therefore only crediting one side (for the most part) with my votes(Therefore, do you count the votes and find the average score to judge wins?). Would you notify the people who you made there voting null or suspecting them as potential trolls? Or whould you let bygones be bygones? I hope I haven't done any irresponsible voting but I don't know if I can remember. ^_^' Sigh.

It has been a wonderful Games. I'm not even close to being done with reading what I've marked as "Interesting- Read when you have Time" but I know I have some new favorites and classic re-reads. The quality of the writing has been amazing. Thanks.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

snarrymod
2008-06-11 12:33 am UTC (link)

Thank you for your support! And yes, there was bias on the Romance Vs. Angst. It was, in most cases, an unintentional bias. We figured by changing the teams (Wartime and Postwar last year) and generic teams this year would help to ease that, and it really has.

We are counting now, and there isn't nearly as many troublesome votes as there has been in the past. No worries! Thanks again, and enjoy the stories - the polls may be closed, but the stories aren't going anywhere, and the authors probably appreciate the comments more than the numbers, anyways.
Cheers!

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