Critics' Recommendation Award

[dr_mabeuse]

In order to call attention to stories we find to be of exceptional quality we are instituting a Critics' Recommendation Award. The judges and nominators for this award are those who have demonstrated critical ability through their participation on the Feedback and Author's Hangout boards and will change periodically to include as wide a range of critical opinion as practicable. The current board in made up of volunteers and comprises:

Dr_mabeuse (chair)
KillerMuffin
Medjay
Wildsweetone
PaulX35
TheEarl
Kristydoll
English Lady
Natural Born Eros
Wicked N Erotic
Master Vassago
Deliciously Naughty
Madame Manga
Svenska Flicka
Just John1

In order to have someone with a semblance of objective disinterest, the Chair will neither nominate nor vote and will serve only as arbiter and facilitator

NOMINATING:
This is a trial run of this concept. Therefore, each critic will nominate one of his or her own stories. Stories by other authors will not be considered. This is in order to test the system without causing injury to any innocent bystanders.
Only critics on the above list may nominate.
Nominations are limited to one story per critic
Nominations should be posted to this thread as normal posts and should include a link to the nominated story.
The Deadline for niminations will be Midnight of Christmas day.
NOTE: It is not necessary to nominate a story in order to participate in the voting.

VOTING:
Each critic will read the nominated stories and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being high score. Critics are free to use their own criteria for rating the stories, but rating should be objective and based on the story's quality, whatever you take that to mean.
We will aim at a deadline for voting of Mindnight, Jan 1m 2003, however, this will be flexible and contingent upon the volume of material we have to read.
All critics must rate all stories (except their oen. See below)
No critic may rate their own story. Self-ratings will be ignored.
Ratings should be PM'd to mw for confidentiality.
Please wait until you've rated all the stories before PMing your results to me. I am notoriously disorganized.
I will tablulate the results and calculate the arithmetical average ratings for each story and then publish the final results.
Each critic's ratings will be available to every other critic once the final tallies are in, but not to the general public. This is to test how the confidentiality of this system works.
Critics are free to discuss the stories and their opinions with one another, either privately or publicly in this thread. They may also freely discuss their ratings should they wish.
Voting is on the honor system. Vote trading is not allowed.

AWARD:
It's important to remember that this is not really an award, it's an endorsement. We're saying that, in our opinion, the story we select is especially good. It doesn't mean it's the best of anything.

That's all I can think of right now.

How this award will be shown is an open question, but for this trial run is not important.
If this trial is successful, we'll go on to selecting actual stories.
Any questions or problems, cointact me.

---dr.M.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Wildsweetone's Nomination

Before she left, WSO PM'd me to nominate her story "Lifeless".

Here's a link:

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=68572


---dr.M.

 

[Wicked-N-Erotic]

Here is my nomination.

Seduction of a Repairman


Wicked

 

[Just_John1]

Story nomination

The story I'm putting up is "Dinner and a Movie" which is a story I had alot of fun writting.

Link: http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=49105

I hope this gets you there.

JJ1

 

[Natural Born Eros]

Here is my nomination

A Perfect Gift

Eros

 

[Madame Manga]

I don't have many of my stories up here yet, alas--I've been lazy. And my favorite of the ones that are up is very long. I don't want to make anyone read it who wasn't otherwise inclined to do so. You would all kill me, I think, especially since this is only a trial run!

So I'll nominate a short, fluffy one instead. "Ball in the Rough", about a golf game with a couple of free strokes. ;-)

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=63249

MM

 

[kristydoll]

I think I will take my pick from a more general genre here - so I will put up

Tell Me About Your Wife

kristy

 

[KillerMuffin]

Since Dr. M is so down on first person, how about a second person story to make it fun? Sorry, I'm having a bad sense of humor day. Tickling my funny bone all the way to the bone. Lesbian sex, so not likely to offend everyone from the get go.

Losing Pieces of You

 

[PaulX35]

I will contribute "Kind of Blue", technically part of a longer story but it will read by itself fairly well.

Here's the link:

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=70416

Paul

 

[PaulX35]

A statistical addition

VOTING:
Each critic will read the nominated stories and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being high score. Critics are free to use their own criteria for rating the stories, but rating should be objective and based on the story's quality, whatever you take that to mean.
...
I will tablulate the results and calculate the arithmetical average ratings for each story and then publish the final results.

This looks like a practical and simple way to do the stats, but I'd have one remark nonetheless, probably because careful use of statistics is a pet-peeve of mine.

What is done in the way the dr. proposes is that all rough scores are added up and subsequently divided by the number of scores given: standard numerical average.
This works well as long as every scorer scores about the same average and spread on his/her average (so division of high, average and low scores).
As soon as these things differ a lot, scores of high-scorers tend to weigh stronger than those of low/critical-scorers.

A fairly simple way --even when it reads like complicated--to solve this problem is to not add up the rough scores, but to add up the standard deviations on scorers' own averages.

So, if someone scores three stories 6, 8 and 10, his own score-average will be 8, with a spread of 2. The correction proposed here would make his scores not 6, 8 and 10, but -1 (1 spread of 2 below average), 0 (average) and +1 (1 spread above) respectively.
For another person who scored these stories 4, 6 and 10, the scorer-average would be 6 with a spread of 3,06. Higher, but the corrected scores would also become -1, 0 and +1 in the corrected calculation.

This little correction will balance out high-scorers against low-scorers without loss of signal, i.e. the difference these critics perceived in the respective qualities of work scored.

If any help would be needed in this respect, I'd be happy to do the spreadsheet work.

Hope this didn't cause any headaches so shortly before the weekend; it wasn't meant to spoil the fun

Paul

 

[Svenskaflicka]

I had great fun coming up with all the details for this one - I even called my best friend for help, and she's the one who came up with the idea of a plumber...

And, furthermore, it's the first and only time that a story of mine has been labeled HOT!!! When I looked at the Top List for this genre, I had no. 10! I'm in the top 10! Wooo-hooo!

Anywho, here it is...

Fucking Beauty

 

[Just_John1]

Standard Deviation?

Each vote carries the weight of one vote. If a particular critic gives low votes on average their effect will be similar on each author's stories across the board. Lets just keep this simple. 1 rating per critic per story. Each votes carries the weight of... 1 vote, high or low. The basic principle of this process was that each critic has the right to use his own grading scale and reason behind giving the rating that he does. If I start thinking about standard deviation... well, let's put it this way; there ain't gonna be no lead in that pencil no how...

I am interested in knowing, however, if a brief one paragraph explanation of the rating might be worthwhile...

JJ1

 

[BJ]

I had great fun coming up with all the details for this one - I even called my best friend for help, and she's the one who came up with the idea of a plumber...

And, furthermore, it's the first and only time that a story of mine has been labeled HOT!!! When I looked at the Top List for this genre, I had no. 10! I'm in the top 10! Wooo-hooo!

Anywho, here it is...

Fucking Beauty

I just checked out your story. Very nice. I enjoyed it. I will check out more of your stories later.

 

[English Lady]

Paul......erm what? I didn't understand a word of that..and I am not suggesting you are trying to do something that will bias the votes but I wouldn't feel happy with a scoring system I don't understand. I am quite happy with the bog standard adding up the averages method ,myself.

 

[English Lady]

Ok after some deliberation I have decided that Double the Pleasure! Will be the story I nominate


http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=66388

 

[BJ]

TO EL

I just checked out your story. I liked it very much. I would like to read more.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Scorng points

OK, everyone has their own idea of how to vote - here's the suggestion from the Swedish jury!

We all get to vote on 3 stories. We give 3 points to the best one, 2 to the second, and 1 to the third. At the end, we see which story has had the highest amount of points. Logically, a story that has been given 3 points by all 15 voters win over a story that no-one has bothered giving any vote to.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Oh Lord.

I have the greatest respect for the science of statistics, even if I don't understand much of it myself. I really would not be comfortable at this point messing with SD's and sigma values and chi square tests. Maybe next round.

Paul, I will give you all the ratings and you can apply your method and we'll compare your results with the arithmetical average and see if there's anything to be gained by using a more sophisticated approach.

The idea behind the 10 scale was, in my case at least, that you might give, say, 2 points for originality, 2 points, for dialog, etc. etc. so it would help you keep a more objective score of what you've read.

John, my original idea was a straight up or down vote: vote for the best and that's it. But that leaves so little wiggle room. I kind of doubt that one story will emerge head and shoulders above the rest, so it'll come down to deciding between say 3 or 4 stories, and we'll just finally be tempted to vote based on the author's AV or something else irrelevent that we might not even be conscious of.

Svenska, I had also thought of a weighted voting system, but I do know that some weird statistical things can happen with that system as well. Maybe Paul could tell us what. I know some countries use that system for electing officials.

It might not be a bad idea to try all the different voting systems on these stories and see how they work out and which we like the best. That would also allow this chairman an easy out.

---dr.M.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

I just checked out your story. Very nice. I enjoyed it. I will check out more of your stories later.

Awww...thank you!

I really like your AV - reminds me of my ex. I think. That is, if those ARE abs and not breasts under that T-shirt..?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Okay, you guys cut that out! This is serious official thread for serious official critics!

It looks like a lot of our serious, official critics will be off having official serious fun between Xmas and New Year's, so I'm going to extend the voting deadline to Jan 5, 2003 or until all votes are in. If the votes are in before the deadline, we'll go ahead and figure the winner early.

Now. I need some volunteers. Just what will this award consist of? I mean, how will the winning story be tagged to show that it is a winner? This is something that Laurel will have to do I would think, and I remember seeing someone--Muffin?--talking about how if you want to talk to Laurel you should e-mail her. Or PM her. I forgot which, which is why I need a volunteer to talk with the great Oz herself (just kidding) and take care of this. Any taker?

Also, we need a banquet committee to put together the ceremony for the awarding of the prize. Remember we'll be beamed into millions of homes around the world, so we want this to be a good show. Unfortunately, I think the Critics' Orgy that was scheduled ot follow the awards banquet will have to be cancelled because of a shortage of female critics or gay critics or both.

---dr.M.

 

[Madame Manga]

The idea behind the 10 scale was, in my case at least, that you might give, say, 2 points for originality, 2 points, for dialog, etc. etc. so it would help you keep a more objective score of what you've read.

I have to admit that I am a little more seat-of-the-pants on scoring than that. My train of thought goes something like this: What is the story setting out to do? Is it an interesting goal? Does it achieve that goal on its own terms? Do I enjoy the story and find it a worthwhile read? Is there anything that distracts from the overall effect, such as numerous errors or infelicitous expressions or clunky storytelling?

I don't look separately at dialog, plot, characterization and so on, since unless I am trying to critique elements of a story for the author's information, those categories are too formal and smack of academia.

For instance, a couple of the nominated stories I just read are mostly narration with very little dialog, so if two points were allotted to dialog, those stories would suffer for no good reason. I'm grading with the idea that 5 is average and 10 is unsurpassedly brilliant. I.e., I go above or below the baseline of 5 for overall quality and effect and would rarely award a 10 (or a 1).

When I read a group of stories all together as we are doing here, I rank them, and that affects the score slightly. Obviously it's not a pure curve, because I certainly haven't read any nominated stories that deserved a 1! But if I felt one story was definitely better than another one I had initially graded with the same score, I will adjust scores to reflect that.

This is somewhat different from my procedure when I vote on Lit stories individually. In that case, a 5 means anything from brilliant to damn good; a 4 is enjoyable and well-crafted but not astounding; and a 3 is OK but not memorable--or sometimes, a story that would have merited a 4 if it had been better edited. 5s come along more often than I expect, which is great. I almost never vote a 1 or a 2, because if it's that bad, I probably didn't finish the story.

However, I recall voting a 2 on a story that was reasonably well written but ugly, offensive and hateful to a point that turned my stomach. Sorry; objectivity does not figure for me in a few cases. I can evaluate an incest or lesbian story without a problem even though I don't go for those categories, but vile misogyny or misanthropism on the author's part earns my wrath. ;-)

MM

 

[BJ]

Re: Scorng points

OK, everyone has their own idea of how to vote - here's the suggestion from the Swedish jury!

We all get to vote on 3 stories. We give 3 points to the best one, 2 to the second, and 1 to the third. At the end, we see which story has had the highest amount of points. Logically, a story that has been given 3 points by all 15 voters win over a story that no-one has bothered giving any vote to.

That may not be a bad idea Svenskaflicka. It could work.

It's a jungle out there and I'm tired of being Tarzan

 

[BJ]

Abs?

Awww...thank you!

I really like your AV - reminds me of my ex. I think. That is, if those ARE abs and not breasts under that T-shirt..?

Good question. I did like your story anyhow. I wish my abs could look like that Ho! Ho! Ho!

It's a jungle out there and I'm tired of being Tarzan

 

[medjay]

I have to admit I haven't been keeping up with this whole thing but it looks like I've been named as a board member.

That's cool. I guess I'll take the time to read and vote on the nominated stories (especially since I won't be working for the next couple of weeks).

Also, here's a link to one of my stories which people seem to enjoy judging by all the feedback I've gotten.

The Hunt

 

[BJ]

Good luck on your new job

It sounds as if you aren't sure if that's what you want to do. Either way good luck.