Posted by Fleet Captain Russell Watt (Public Nuisance for Life / AEDir) in STF March 2021 Awards

Posted by Commander Jake Ridgley (CMM) in STF March 2021 Awards

Posted by James Sinclair in STF March 2021 Awards
Posted by… suppressed (7) by the Post Ghost! 👻
I hope everyone is having a fantastic year. As per tradition, it is time once more to roll the red carpets and strike up the band cause the STF Awards are beginning. For those of you who are new, or just need a refresher, the STF Awards is our annual tradition where we try to go out of the way to have our best and brightest chance to shine. You will have one week of nominations before we will close up that part of the awards. From there we will go through and tally up the nominations, the ones with the most will get on our ballots as we then begin to email everyone who was nominated in a roleplaying category for a chance to provide us with excerpts in order to let you shine the loudest and brightest. All nominations must be related to the current awards period, which is from June 2020 to March 2021. If the character/player has not been played or involved in the club during that period, they are not eligible.

To begin nominating, please click the following link. https://www.star-fleet.com/awards/nominations/

For additional questions and answers, please see the FAQ here https://docs.google.com/document/d/16l9NE5PcrCYsJrKPycAHQmQM_MA8l0XOaFSfeSCtgrs/edit?usp=sharing

STF Awards Road Map:

March 22nd, 2021 - Nominations Open.
March 29th, 2021 - Nominations Close.
March 31st, 2021 - All emails for nominees that are eligible for excerpts will be sent out.
April 4th, 2021 - Excerpts due.
April 5th, 2021 - Voting begins.
April 12th, 2021 - Voting closes.
April 13th -16th - Awards tallied and Award certificates created for winners.
April 17th & 18th, 2021 - Awards ceremony TBD.

As always, any questions or concerns you may reach out to Kate O’Neil, myself, or our newest member of the Award Squad, Ben Z. All of us can be found in Discord, or emailed via our contact pages.

~STF Awards Coordinators
Steven Sigle, Kate O’Neill, Ben Z

Hi,

I have a question please. It’s been a few years since I participated in an awards ceremony at STF, but I feel like I remember a lot more rules back then around who was eligible for certain categories. Like, one that sticks in my mind was, if a player held a DH spot anywhere in the club then they couldn’t be nominated for a JO character in that same department. Or that an alt-RP area could not be nominated for Best Ship. But I don’t see anything on the google doc FAQ around this (or criteria for any of the individual awards beyond the X-Fleet ones).

Have we simplified the awards now and those rules no longer exist?
Do they still exist but are not being referenced anywhere currently (I feel like the criteria used to be stated against each award on the actual nomination form itself)?
Or is my memory horrible (I already know this is a yes, lol) and I’m simply misremembering the entire thing?

Thanks.

You are correct that we have in time since removed those restrictions. Anyone can be up as long as they have a rostered with posting limits in the time of the awards season which for this year will be June 2020 to March 2021. We did this as the excerpts added the goal is to highlight role-playing and showcase the skills. As for Alt RPG (except for X-Fleet ships), all of them are eligible for the best ship. A lot of this information will be added shortly into our FAQ to clear things up.

So please really think of who has done the role the best, on all your ships, and who you truly support. Every nomination helps to give someone a chance and we do encourage nominating every field to really widen up the options and give as many people chances as possible.

~Steven Sigle

Thank you for the clarification. I just wanted to be sure.

• Sharon

Thank you for the insightful question, Sharon.

It seems like there are some detailed rules to ensuring eligibility for these awards that needs to be publicized on the actual nomination form before nominations can be accepted. I would hate to see club members work to fill out a long nomination form only to have their nominees be ineligible for some reason because they didn’t think they had a question about it. I know that it wouldn’t occur to me to read all of these details for something that’s supposed to be a fun recognition.

Please discontinue collecting nominations until a clear definition of eligibility for each award is presented on the award page and adjust the calendar appropriately. The new calendar needs to be posted with at least three days of notice before the events begin so that questions like this can come up and be addressed beforehand, ensuring this is a transparent and accessible process.

Thank you,

• Sarah, Prez

I’m not quite sure I understand the issue here. We have in our FAQ this information, and as the nominations is a static form that I cannot change on a whim like this. We do not eliminate people for ineligible nominations, instead, we reach out and help the person who nominated when this comes up if there is any problem. This is why there is a week in between nominations and award voting to properly help members. I am more than willing to answer any and all questions people have but our goal is to allow as many people as humanly possible in, which again is explained in our FAQ.

I do feel this could have all been fixed up with a quick email/DM that didn’t need to slow or stop players from nominating. We are not in the business to make this harder for players, in fact, we spend a great large portion of our time making certain everyone who can get in has a chance to get in.

~Steven Sigle

There are important rules that people need to follow in order to produce valid nominations in a document that is not called “The Rules” or anything like that; it’s called “Frequently Asked Questions.” What if the person doesn’t think to “ask a question”? What if they just fill it out because it seems obvious? What if they don’t like using Gmail? What if they don’t want to ask a question about it because this is supposed to be an accessible and easy process to recognize fellow club members and instead there is a several hundred word document you need to read in order to know how to do it “right”? We’re all exhausted and burned out and dealing with pandemic stress. Let’s make this as easy as possible for people by at least giving them some guidance if there’s a chance their nomination could be thrown out.

If you’d like, I’d be happy to summarize things into short snippets of explanatory text, but I’m not following why you can’t change text on a form. It might not be something “you-as-in-Steven” can change, but this is not a big ask. As I previously stated, nominations need to be paused until it is resolved. I’m sorry that I wasn’t more involved in this to begin with to catch it before it became confusing for the membership.

• Sarah, President

This is a ridiculous fight to be having over something that is supposed to be, as previously stated, lighthearted and fun. In answer to all of the ‘what if’ questions presented, there is ample time if the nominations are not suspended for the awards coordinators to address any problematic nominations by contacting the appropriate person via discord or email. That’s how guidance has been given to those that haven’t read the FAQ in the past. Why is this now an issue?

This is how these things have been done every time I have seen them, and I honestly don’t see why there are issues now doing it the same way. It seemed, at least from my perspective, to work fine.

James

You’re absolutely right James this whole point is just bizarre and to just highlight the one thing that has been said.

“Let’s make this as easy as possible for people” - You are making this difficult nobody else.

There is nothing to be fixed here, a problem is being created where non exists and you’re only alienating the people who want to ask questions by making the originally asked question into something bigger than it ever needed to be.

Unless a reasonable issue is brought to light with sufficient evidence not circumstantial ‘what ifs’ then there will be no pause.

Jake
CMM

Steve and Kate, thank you for agreeing to run the awards again and thank you Ben for joining the team. Please be assured I appreciate your efforts to bring some enjoyment and fun to the club. After an election period which has lots of rules by its nature, I do enjoy this event that doesn’t have the rules.

I am sad each time that I cannot join in due to sleeping when the awards are held, but if it wasn’t for the fact I need my beauty sleep, I would be present in my finest formal tribkini with very strategically placed combadge ready to give out awards and celebrate the great role playing and non role playing contributions of the club members since the last awards ceremony.

I did have a question regarding the awards/nominations form.

Would it be possible to have some kind of list of the X-Fleet areas that have been around since the last awards? I know that there’s the Leviathan (but am not sure when it moved into a mainstream ship). I found it difficult to know what to put in there. When I completed my nomination.

Russell

Hi Russell,

hopefully Tech can provide exact dates, but just going back through my emails/PM’s as both the Levi CO and also the current SOX I can give you the approximate dates (only approximate because things didn’t always get moved on the same day they were discussed).

USS Leviathan created in X Fleet = 3rd July 2020
USS Leviathan announced as Main Fleet ship = 18th August 2020
USS Leviathan board actually moved to Fleet 1 = 28th August 2020

ISS Cerberus created in X Fleet = Unknown (happened before I took over)
ISS Cerberus decommissioned from X Fleet = approx 14th October 2020 (I can only say approx because the Tech ticket was completed some days later but I can’t recall exactly when)

USS Dauntless = again before my time as SOX but I did have a character on there. I believe she was only up for a few weeks but it was around 5th August 2020

Sorry that’s all a little vague but hopefully it gives you a ballpark until someone else can come back with more concrete dates.
Thanks

• Sharon