Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

You're right about Tiptree being the last big award.  We have been working on it for some time but the issue with Tiptree is that the award mixes novels and short fiction.  We've had all the novels in the DB for the last year or more thanks to the work o f our Uber Users but the site is not geared for shorts.  We have made some changes to our database and have some of the updates for shorts already done but we keep running into other things that need doing so we put it off.  Right now we're working on our Award Worthy list which we think is going to be very popular.  I'll talk to the guys and see if we can move Tiptree back to the top of the pile after that.  It's about time we finished that off.

In a nutshell:

Every member will be able to tag up to 5 novels published this year that they consider "award worthy" for SF, Fantasy, and Horror genres.  Your list will be displayed on a shelf in your My World for you to track over the course of the year and for others to see who visits your profile.  We'll take the top tagged books that reach a certain threshold of votes from all members and put them into our Award Worthy Books list.  The list will grow and change as new books get voted up and some books will drop off as we adjust the threshold up to keep the list manageable.  In March of next year, just in time for the awards voting to open, we'll have a WWEnd community generated list of books for your consideration for the various genre awards you participate in.

How it will work:

So, you read a great SF book in May that you think should be in the running for the Hugo or Nebula or whatever - you tag it as award worthy on the novel page and it goes on your list where other members and friends can see it as a recommendation from you.  "Frodo_Lives thinks this book is award worthy?  Well, I'll have to check it out."  Your personal list, book review, recommendation in the forum etc. can help a worthy book get some attention from other members.

You keep adding books to your list as you read them until you reach your 5 SF books limit.  Then a new book comes out in August that you think is the bomb!  Because you already used all your slots you'll have the panful choice to remove a book to make room for this new one or leave this one off and stand pat on your previous choices. Your first 5 choices are going to be easy.  It's the sixth great book you read that's going to cause trouble  Your list will change over the course of the year as you add and remove books, especially if you read a lot of new books, and you'll end up with a personal favorites list that you can use when you go to fill out your awards ballots.  This way you've been refining your list all year and you don't have to puzzle it out all at once when you're filling in your slots.  With this list in hand you won't forget about that great book you read all the way back in May.

If enough other people agree with your picks your favorite books could end up on the Award Worthy Books list where everyone can see them.  Of course everyone else will be doing the same thing so you can check out their personal best lists and see what other books are making the Award Worthy Books list for more great books to read.  We'll be adding more and more books from 2015 as they come out and as they're requested by members so the pool of books to pick from will be constantly growing.

The threshold for inclusion on the main list will be low to start to get the ball rolling early in the year and to give everyone some choices.  When the list gets too long we'll move the threshold up and some books will fall off the bottom of the list.  When you take a book off your personal list it could even cause that book to drop off the main list.

Some notes:

 - The list is only for novels first published in 2015.

 - All eligible novels will have a checkbox in the BookTrackr section for you to add it to your list.  If you already have 5 picked the checkbox will be disabled until you take one off.

 - The list will not take into consideration any specific award requirements for eligibility.  It's simply novels published for the first time in 2015 that are award worthy and meet our standards for inclusion in the WWEnd DB.  When it come times to vote not all the books on our list will match up with the eligibility requirements for every award.

 - You do have to be a member to participate in creating the list but any visitor to the site will be able to see the list and use it as they will.

 - You may campaign for any book you think should make the final list.  We're all about spreading the work about great books.  Writing reviews and talking about the books in the forums are a great way to do that.  You can spread the word on your blogs too and encourage your friends and followers to join WWEnd and help us make a better list.  More participation will make a better list in the end.

 - We don't think it will be easy to game the list but we will be keeping an eye on things to stop it if we see it happening.  You probably understand why I would mention that.

So that's probably more info than you really wanted but I took the opportunity to work out a few ideas in detail for myself in the process.  This explanation will be the basis for the official rules that will come out with the list.  Some things may change by that time but this is essentially how it's all going to work.  We hope to have this up and running by the end of August - fingers crossed!  That will give us 7 months to build and promote the new list for the next round of awards season voting in March of next year.