#The PBA committee is open to everyone. Join us! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tuttle-4077 · 1 month

Note

Greetings! So....the PBAs seemed a little off this year. I find it strange how Abracadabra managed to pull in TEN of them while several other authors whom entered multiple pieces won nothing whatsoever. I find that rather odd, especially when half of the awards were gold. Never seen that before in my many years in this fandom. A few of my friends (all of whom won multiple awards) agree with me that the contest seemed a bit...shall we say, rigged....in her favor. I have nothing against her personally, of course. This isn't an attack. And I don't write or draw, myself, so I have no skin in this game. And I have nothing against her personally either. Yet I thought it would be best to bring this matter to the comittee's attention, in the hopes that the contest remain fair for everyone.

Hi. Thanks for reaching out with your concerns.

First, let me explain a little about how the PBAs work in general, and then I'll address your more specific concerns about Abracadebra's wins.

Over the years, several committees have hosted the PBAs. I have been on the committee since 2018 (with a break in 2019 because I just had a baby!) . The rules for the Awards have evolved over the years for many reasons: the number and types of stories written, the voice of the people (ie, slash being included in the main story categories), ideas brought forward by new members of the committee, etc. And changes have come simply as a result of the committee learning how to run such a big project. (The PBAs aren't necessarily difficult to host, but it is a big undertaking!) Categories have also been added or dropped based on the number of stories that were eligible, as well as the amount of work a particular committee wanted to put it (I, personally, hated gathering and tallying all the quotes and asked to end the category.)

One of the rules that was implemented several years ago was that a story had to receive at least two nominations in order to move forward to the voting round. The reason for that was to whittle down the amount of stories a voter had to read. This rule is especially important for years when there is a big crop of stories. A lot of people skip the nomination round simply because there are so many stories and it's daunting! Usually 70-90% (sometimes even 100%) of stories receive at least 1 nomination. When there are 200 stories in a year that's still 140-180 stories in the voting round. With the 2+ nomination rule, the percentage of stories that make it through to the voting round is between 50-60% (although in some categories, it can be higher). This makes it a lot easier on the voters to read the stories and cast their ballots.

Another rule (which I believe has held for many, many years) is that, in order to nominate a story for THE BEST STORY OF THE YEAR, it also had to appear elsewhere in the story category nominations. The reasoning behind this is that, if it truly is the best story, then it should, logically, at least appear in one other category. The rule also applies to the voting round. I've voice my opinion on the subject here (tl;dr I like the rule for nomination round, but not particularly the voting round.)

One other thing we changed (although it is not necessarily a rule), is that we no longer automatically include stories from AO3. That platform is not as straightforward with when a story is complete, or whether it's complete at all! It was too much work for the committee to comb through the whole site, trying to pick out completed stories for the year and determine whether they were crossovers, slash, responses to challenges, etc. So, this year (and I believe last) we asked that AO3 writers submit their own stories for consideration in the PBAs.

Now, as to your specific concern about Abracadebra's wins.

First, consider the nomination round. The nomination round determines which stories make it through to the voting round. We advertise the nomination round on FFN, tumblr, and AO3, but the majority of the nominators are from FFN (remember, the PBAs were FFN specific until a few years ago, so our stalwart participants are there). Why would this affect who gets nominated? A couple of reasons:

A lot of folks on FFN are pretty loyal to the platform, particularly in the HH fandom. AO3 is a little more wild. And even though the stories on AO3 are posted as competitors, we cannot provide convenient links on the FFN forums. It's one thing to post one link on the FFN forums, with the weird spacing and parenthesis, like we do in order to direct people to the PBA website (where all the stories are linked), it's another to do it for each participating AO3 story (it's frustrating to the person posting it, and the person who has to copy it). So, a lot of people just don't visit those stories. Is that fair? Maybe not, but it's just the way it is. So why does this matter? Well, FFNers reluctance to venture to AO3 mean that a lot of the stories on that platform don't receive even 1 nomination, let alone the 2 needed to advance to the voting round.

FFNers tend to have their favourite authors and will read pretty much anything that author puts out the moment it's put out. So, if a nominator is short on time, they may just refer back to a story they've previously read when it first came out, rather than scramble to read everything that is eligible.

So that's why an author from FFN in general may receive more nominations, as opposed to an author from AO3. As to Abracadebra specifically, well,

Abracadebra is very active on the forums. She posts general items, but she also hosts Reviewathons and other events for the fandom to participate in.

Abracadebra is an avid reviewer. The kind of reviewer who is encouraging, but also honest.

Abracadebra is a beta reader for many new HH authors as well as the seasoned ones.

Why does that matter? Well, fair or not, sometimes the PBAs boil down to a popularity contest. All elections do. If you have a connection with someone, or have developed a friendship or warm feelings towards someone, you're more likely to view their work favourably. If you have two equally good works and you can only choose one, how are you going to decide which one to choose? For me, personally, I tend to go with the work created by a person I am more familiar with. Again, is that fair? Maybe not, but, again, that's just human nature. We're not objective creatures.

But, there are reasons why someone (even not an FFN denizen) may nominate (and vote for) one of Abracadebra's works.

Abracadebra is just a good writer. She is, after all, a journalist in real life. A seasoned journalist. You don't last long in that game if you can't write.

Abracadebra's stories tend to focus on the more popular characters. Let's face it, Newkirk is, by far, the most popular character for a lot of people. Some readers just aren't interested in reading a story that doesn't feature Newkirk. Or, again, if they're in a time crunch, they'll focus their reading energies on a Newkirk story, rather than a story that focuses on someone else.

So, there are some reasons why Abracadebra's works moved on to the nomination round and perhaps why some other works didn't.

The same reasonings above apply to the voting round, but to be more specific on that round,

This year, 60 stories made it through to the voting round. 5 were Abracadebra's (8.33% of the total stories in the voting round.) That doesn't seem like a big percentage, but it is more than any other author had in the voting round, so automatically that increases her chances of winning.

Two of her stories were nominated as THE BEST STORY OF 2023. If someone wanted to vote for her story as THE BEST OF, they also had to vote for it elsewhere on their ballot. This isn't usually a problem- most people just do that automatically because, again, if a story is good enough to be on THE BEST OF list, it's probably good enough to earn their vote in another category even without the rule. I think only two people had to correct their ballot because they voted for a BEST OF story that didn't appear elsewhere. One favoured Abracadebra's story, and the other dropped her story from their THE BEST OF vote entirely because they didn't want to change their other votes. (Again, I have my own thoughts on this rule for the voting round, but it is what it is).

As to the high number of gold wins, remember, three of those five wins were ties. And, the other gold wins (where there were no ties) were won by a tiny sliver. It was a tight race, but the chips fall where they fall.

Now, you said you had never seen one person win so many gold awards before. Well, because I am a crazy person who likes data and numbers, I went through all the PBA gold winners for all the years the PBAs have been running. First I tallied how many gold awards each person won. Then I counted how many theoretical golds there were supposed to be (basically assumed that each category would have 1 gold award) and then I counted how many actual gold awards there were (considering ties within categories). Here is what I found:

In 2003 EJ McFall won 30% of the 'theoretical' gold awards, and 18.5% of the actual gold awards

In 2004 Patti and Marg won 33% of the gold awards (there were no ties)

In 2004 EM Siefert also won 33% of the gold awards

In 2005 Patti and Marg won 36% of the theoretical and 31% of the actual gold awards

In 2006 Jeff Evans won 33% of the gold awards

In 2007 Jeff Evans won 41% of the theoretical and 29 of the actual gold awards

In 2008 Tuttle4077 (yours truly) won 54% of the theoretical and 50% of the actual gold awards (note, this was my first year in the fandom and I didn't even nominate or vote in the PBAs, never mind being on the committee!)

In 2009 Jennaya won 28% of the theoretical and 26% of the actual gold awards

In 2010 snooky won 33% of the theoretical and 31% of the actual gold awards

In 2011 dust on the wind won 30% of the theoretical and 26% of the actual gold awards

In 2012 Sgt. Moffit won 30% of the theoretical and 28% of the actual gold awards

In 2013 Sgt. Moffit won 38% of the theoretical and 32% of the actual gold awards

In 2019 Abracadebra won 38% of the theoretical and 33% of the actual gold awards

In 2020 Abracadebra won 32% of the theoretical and 24% of the actual gold awards

In 2021 Abracadebra won 36% of the theoretical and 25% of the actual awards

And in 2024 (the year you have misgivings over) Abracadebra won 35% of the theoretical and 28% of the actual awards

(Omitted years didn't have great disparities between gold winners)

Note, I don't think Abracadebra was on the committee the first year she won an award and that was her highest win percentage.

So, what do all these numbers tell me? Well, it tells me that it's not unusual for a gold winner to receive ~30% of the the gold awards, like Abracadebra did this year. When a story is popular, it's popular. When an author is popular, they're popular.

I want to add that Abracadebra is an amazing person to have in our fandom. She never votes for her own works. She always tries to encourage new writers and is amazing at leaving reviews. People like her. People like her stories. And, all added up, it doesn't strike me as odd that she wins plenty of Papa Bear Awards, gold or otherwise.

I hope all this has helped clear up your concerns and misgivings. As long as I have been on the PBA committee, I have observed a stellar effort to be impartial and objective. We often bend over backwards to make things as fair (but also as manageable for the committee and the voters) as possible. It feels great to win an award, but I have never seen anyone on the committee try to rig things in their favour. We rejoice over any and all of the winners, whether we personally voted for their stories or not. We love that our fandom is robust and diverse. The PBAs is a great fandom tradition and I, personally, would never do anything to jeopardize it; so if I saw something sketchy, I would say something. I think you only have to look towards the efforts that Abracadebra and I have put towards the fandom in general to know that's true.

One more thing to wrap this up:

The committee is open to everyone. We extend invitations to everyone to get involved. However, it usually falls on The Same 'Ten' People to keep it going. If someone were to pop up and say "hey, I want to run the PBAs this year!" before PBA season started, any of the current committee members would say "Great! We'll stay on board if you'd like, but if you want to be the lead, go for it and we're happy to just offer advice and guidance!" But that never happens. When the year is fast approaching its close, no one new takes up the baton. Perhaps one day the STP may decide they don't want to go through the effort and the PBAs will fade away.

If my explanations here have done nothing to quell your suspicions, perhaps you, Anonymous, would like to join the committee next year. Post on the FFN forum (FFN still being the home of the PBAs) that you would like to join/lead the charge. We'd love to have you.

Cheers to you, Anonymous. And if anyone else has any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to ask. I'll try to address them the best I can.

#hogan's heroes #papa bear awards #ask away #The PBA committee is open to everyone. Join us!#Or you can always create your own awards if you're unhappy with the PBAs and don't want to join #I hear there is another competition called the Bronx Cheers Awards but it is by invitation only #And I haven't found any proof it actually exists

3 notes · View notes