THE RULES - THE SHORT VERSION
(A.K.A. MAKE IT SNAPPY!)
During the nomination period, you can vote for as many or as few stories as you like.
During the voting period, you can only vote for one listed story - this list will be determined by the outcome of the nomination period.
You can only submit a valid nomination through the form provided, unless you contact us letting us know you can't access it for some reason. Please enter it in the right format as well.
Yes, you can nominate yourself.
No, you cannot campaign for a large group of people to 'bulk vote' for you. Please make these awards fair.
THE RULES - THE LONG VERSION
(A.K.A. GIVE ME THE FULL DETAILS!)
The submission of nominations for each category is under the condition that it falls under appropriate category definitions. The definitions for each category are here. We have tried to make the categories as broad as possible, but not all fans are going to be happy with our definitions. The controlling definitions for the awards are those found in the previous link.
If there is a particular story you would dearly love to nominate, but you cannot find an appropriate category for it, please contact us with the story's URL and your proposal for a new category. If we agree, we will include it during the nomination period.
Unfinished stories are accepted but can ONLY be nominated in their specific category: Best Work-In-Progress. Any nominations in other categories will be discounted.
Categories for specific pairings have not been included for the sole reason that a predominant amount of stories are in the John/Paul 'ship - this would imbalance the amount of nominations in other pairing-specific categories, thus they have all been excluded.
The Best Overall Story and Best Author categories are not publicly open for nomination during this specific period; nominations in these categories will be determined by the nominations received in all of the other categories, and the award will be given by public vote during the voting period.
Nominations will only be accepted via the online forms provided. The forms will be available on this site when nominations open.
During the nomination period, a maximum of THREE (3) nominations of seperate stories may be submitted by an individual in each category - eg. you can nominate three different stories in the 'Best Angst' category. You can nominate a story in more than one category if you wish.
For your nomination to be accepted, you must include all information on the form, including your E-Mail address. This information will be kept confidential and all contact details will be used for identification purposes only, unless an author is nominating their own work, in which case it will be used to correspond with the author if they win an award.
All stories/sites nominated must be available online and you must provide the exact URL of the page where the story can be found. This must be a URL that can be accessed by everyone - if it is part of a members-only community such as Yahoo! and is not available elsewhere, or if it is hidden behind a Friends Only lock on a LiveJournal entry, then these stories will be deemed as invalid. (If you want your story to be nominated and it falls under these circumstances, I recommend getting it hosted at a Beatles slash archive such as Abbeyway or Oh, Darling!.)
If a story is available in several locations online, then we prefer that you submit the URL to the largest archive or most direct location, eg. the author's own website. We don't have time to chase down stories. If you do not provide a valid URL, then your nomination will not count.
All stories nominated must be written in English - the staff does not have the time nor the resources to translate this material. We apologize for any inconvenience this rule may cause to non-English speaking writers, but this does not, however, mean that you cannot translate your story/have somebody translate it for you in order to be a valid nomination.
If less than three nominations are received in any category, that category will be dropped from the awards.
If we receive a very high number of nominations in any certain categories, then we may have to select only the most nominated.
Authors can nominate their own work, but they must state on the nomination form that they are the author. This information will be kept confidential.
Site staff are allowed to nominate, and you can nominate the work of staff members. Staff, however, are not permitted to vote in the awards, and no staff member counts votes in an area where he or she is nominated. The same rules apply for staff as well as the general public. Some members of the staff prefer not to be considered for awards, but this is an individual decision. We have no motivation to cheat in any way - what would be the point of the awards if not to appreciate the works of others?
Nominations must be received by the staff within the specified time period on the schedule - no submissions will be accepted before or after this time period.
Nominations will be posted publicly, for a brief period of one to two weeks (at the staff's discretion) before voting begins. During this time, if you are a nominated author and you feel your story has been placed in the wrong category, please notify us and we will consider any changes that you wish to make. Non-authors can also suggest reasonable changes. We will consider changes to nominations during this time only if the category is clearly and obviously incorrect.
If you do not wish for your work to be included in the awards for any reason, please notify us - we will remove any or all of your stories at your request. However, you must provide adequate evidence to support your claim as the author of any or all of the stories nominated under that author's name. We will not remove co-authored stories without the consent of all authors.
The maximum amount of stories in each category that will be included in final nomination (the voting period) will be ten.
During the voting period, only ONE (1) vote can be submitted in each category.
The votes will be tallied by a small committee of volunteers. During this time, no inappropriate correspondence will be entered into between the committee members and the authors - by 'inappropriate', we mean any E-Mails that try to persuade the committee to sway the votes a certain way. The committee is fair and impartial.
We cannot make changes to the ballot after voting begins, and votes will be considered final.
Once the votes have been tallied and the winners have been announced, the winners will be notified via this website and E-Mail. From there, the staff will send the authors their awards for display on the authors' individual pages. If they do not have their own website and their story is included in an archive, their win will still be displayed here along with a link to the corresponding fic.
We will not tolerate any instances of campaigning. Campaigning means asking or even bribing people to nominate or vote for you in the awards. You may promote the awards and post links to the website; you may thank your readers for their support; you may tell people that you have been nominated. But you may NOT beg, "please vote for me", even in the context of promoting your nomination. Send your readers to this website so they can make up their own mind. Do not try to unfairly influence voters. This will be considered campaigning, an interference in the fair and impartial nomination/voting process, and the story and author will automatically be disqualified along with the banning of your IP address.
This cannot be stressed strongly enough - you get one vote per person. Not one vote per day, and certainly not one vote per address you invent. We're not stupid. This will be considered interference and your votes will not be counted. Your IP addresses will also be banned.