Nomination Process- Frequently Asked Questions

1. Nomination Selection

All awards will strive to have up to 5 nominations if possible. There are times however, when it is not possible to have 5 nominations. Some situations may include things like not enough entries within the awards time interval. Another reason is that people may often only vote for categories they have an interest in thereby decreasing the possible number of nominations in a category. If we have more than five nominations in a category, where writers have received 2 or more votes, categories can be increased to six or whatever is needed to represent the writers. Our goal is to strive to be as fair as possible while following the guidelines set forth for the STF Awards.

ALL CHARACTERS MUST BE FULLY ROSTERED DURING THE AWARD PERIOD which means they must have a posting limit assigned to them. No exceptions to this rule.

1. Why are the same people nominated every year?

• Every year people wonder why the same people win over and over. This is due to the simple fact that we do not get as many nominations every year as we need. Many times individuals nominate only a few writers. They nominate 3-5 categories on their nomination form and stop selecting choices for other categories. Last year on average only 40% of each nomination ballot was filled out to completion. This leads us to not reaching the 5 nominations per category we strive for many of the categories

So please take your time and read your ships. Read your fellow players and nominate them based on their writing merits. Also, don’t be afraid to put your own name down. You never know who might also nominate you giving a wider range of voting options. Every nomination counts.

1. Can unrostered Characters be nominated?
   - No. Unrostered characters are not held to the same posting requirements as main characters. As such it is often the case people post less with them or they have much less effect on a sim. We want to reward characters that are written often and are the backbone of STF.

2. Can X-fleet characters be nominated?
   - Yes, they have their very own unique categories to give the X-fleet writers a chance to shine. We have included two awards:

   1. Best X-fleet ship
   2. Best X-fleet JO
   3. Best X-fleet Senior Crew
      X-Fleet ships and characters cannot be nominated outside these awards, due to the nature of X-Fleet being experimental. Despite this, if you have a ship/character you love please nominate them. They can’t win if you don’t nominate.

3. Can anyone be nominated?
   - Yes anyone can be nominated for an award who has had an active character from June 2020 to March 2021. In the past a JO could not be nominated if they had a DH role in the same department, but this is no longer the case. The only exclusions to a nomination is if the character was unrostered or a member of x-fleet (more details on how x-fleet nominations work is found in section 4.)

4. Who can vote in the STF awards?
   - Anyone can vote.

5. What happens if I get two of my characters nominated for the same category?
   -If you are up for the same position for two separate characters where each character has received at least two votes (ex two science JO’s, two medical DH’s, two swing positions, etc), we will allow you to choose which one you want to use or if you want to use both the characters. We offer this in case you wish to avoid splitting your votes between yourself so that your best character you feel has a chance to win. In the past, there have been times someone has lost the award because while they had the largest percentage of votes as a writer, the split in the vote gave their character, not enough individual votes to win overall. If this situation, while rare at times, does occur, we will contact the writer and let them make the final decision in how they want to be represented. If you do not wish to do this, you are allowed to keep both nominations in.

6. What happens if I get nominated?
   - If you make the ballot for the awards in a category that is allowed to have an excerpt, an email will be sent to notify you before hand letting you know of this.We want people to be able to show off their skills more than ever and this will give everyone a chance to let people see just how amazing you truly are.

As a reminder, all excerpts MUST be from the current awards interval.

1. How is a nomination validated?
   The awards team uses the main roster to find characters and writers in the nomination process. This is because at times people will nominate the author Mary Sue in a category. If Mary Sue had three Jo’s in the same department over several ships, she would still get into the awards but we would contact Mary Sue to select the character she wishes to place in the awards.

ALL CHARACTERS MUST BE FULLY ROSTERED DURING THE AWARD PERIOD which means they must have a posting limit assigned to them. No exceptions to this rule. See the reason for not permitting characters without a posting limit (ie: unrostered characters) in question #3.

1. Can I nominate a character that is no longer active on the roster?
   Yes you can nominate a character that is no longer active BUT was active during the award interval. If you do this please provide as much information as possible for us to validate the writer/character nomination. For example, if Ensign Sally Smith is nominated as a medical JO during the award period but is now deactivated, they will NOT show up on the main roster. Since the main roster is our first step in validating a nomination, if we do not see EnsignSally Smith we will have no way to find out who the writer of Ensign Sally Smith is so that vote will not count. So please for all nominations, please let us know both the name of the player and the character and this ship if possible for those you wish to nominate for an award, as it can be quite hard to track people down especially in cases if they removed character at some point. If the character/player has not been played or involved in the club during that period, they are not eligible.

2. Nominating Best Ships
   Any ship, regardless of whether it is alt-RPG or not, is eligible to be nominated for in the Best ship category. In the past, the awards did separate groups for ships based on whether they were a space station, Alt-RPG area, Alt-RPG ship, etc. This was seen as a way to spotlight more ships and the writers on them; however as the number of ships and the number of fleets have decreased we have decided to allow more entries, at times, in categories in order to focus on what is important: Writers and the writing on a ship.

3. Can someone be nominated as both a JO and DH in the same department?
   Any rostered character, that is eligible per the awards guidelines, can be nominated for this award even if they hold a DH role in the same department.

If you have not found a satisfactory answer for you nomination simply ask the Awards Co-ordinators Steven Sigle, Kate O’Neill, Ben Z or Myself failing that reply to this thread. No question is a stupid question if you’re unsure just ask.

Jake
CMM