LMFA: Rules

Any questions regarding these Rules should be directed to:
LMFAwards@yahoogroups.com

Eligibility | Nomination | Voting

Story Eligibility

• Any person who enjoys reading Sentinel fanfiction online is eligible to nominate and vote in the LMFA.
• Nominated stories must contain characters and concepts from The Sentinel.
• Nominated stories must be readily available to be read on the Internet, and must remain online throughout the period from the opening of nomination to the announcement of the awards. All stories are eligible regardless of when they were first posted or published.
• Nominated authors (for author categories) must have written at least one eligible story.
• Nominations must be made according to criteria set forth in the current Divisions and Categories.
• The length of a story is its size in kilobytes (K) when converted into a text file. Nominations for stories in the wrong length category will be shifted to the proper category.

Artwork Eligibility

• All Sentinel-related artwork that is made available online, in its entirety, is eligible under this section.
• Thumbnails and watermarked art will not be eligible. Thumbnails are defined as reduced version of a picture, often (though not always) of poorer resolution.
• Art that is only available offline in its entirety is not considered eligible due to the nature of the LMFA being an internet-based award. If there is sufficient demand for including offline art, the Committee will consider including this for next year.

Website Eligibility

• From 2009, this category has been dropped from the Awards. Previously, the conditions were:
  All websites made by a fan(s) of The Sentinel, and are significantly dedicated to The Sentinel or its characters or actors, are eligible under this section of the Awards.
• Websites may contain fanfiction, artwork, or information.
• There is no restriction on the rating of the website content.
• The major Sentinel archives (852 Prospect and Cascade Library) are not eligible for this section of the Awards.

Previous Winners

• A story that has won an LMFA may not be nominated again for the same award. It may be nominated in any other category that the story qualifies for.
• An author who has previously been awarded the LMFA for "Outstanding Author" may not be nominated again for that award.

Eligibility | Nomination | Voting

Nominations

• All nominations must be submitted during the nominating period as specified in the Awards Schedule.
• Any nominations submitted after the close of the nominating period will be discarded and not included in the final nomination tally.
• All nominations must be made through the LMFA Online Nominations Forms.
• Participants may choose to nominate only in the divisions and categories of their choice.
• You may nominate as many different stories as you like in each category.

Tallying Nominations

• After the close of the nominating period, nominations will be tallied by LMFA Committee members and by additional volunteers, if needed.
• No one will tally nominations for divisions they may qualify for. Alternately, those involved in tallying nominations will not accept any nominations in the divisions they tally.
• For each division, there will be two tallying teams working independently of each other. Once both teams complete their tallies, the results will be compared against each other to check for accuracy.
• If a category does not receive enough nominations to result in at least three clear nominees for the ballot, that category will be dropped from the awards for that year.
• The top five (5) nominated stories or authors in each category will qualify for placement on the LMFA Ballot. In cases of ties that lead to more than five entries qualifying for placement on the ballot, all qualifying entries will be placed on the ballot.
• After compiling the list of nominees qualifying for the ballot, the Committee will attempt to contact the nominated authors and notify them of their nomination in the LMFA.
• Should an author notify the Committee that they do not wish to participate, the nomination objected to will be withdrawn from consideration and not appear on the ballot.
• Authors who accept an LMFA nomination will be presented with a graphics icon representing their nomination, which may be displayed on their websites.
• In the event that a nomination is removed from consideration, the next highest nominated entry in that category will replace it on the ballot.
• In the event that an author or artist retracts their permission to appear on the ballot once voting has begun, the Committee will remove the author or artist as requested, but will not replace that entry with the next highest nominated one. Note that although the Committee will honour all such requests, the Committee strongly discourages this behaviour, due to its unfairness to other potential nominees.

Limits on Number of Nominations on Ballot

• A story may be nominated (placed on the ballot) in a maximum of three (3) categories. If a story is nominated in more than three categories, the Committee will ask the author to specify which three nominations they choose to accept.
• Authors are allowed a maximum of ten (10) nominations (including both story/art and author nominations) placed on the ballot per year. In addition to those ten, an author or artist is allowed up to two (2) nominations in the website division. If an author receives more than ten nominations (plus two website nominations), the Committee will ask the author to specify which nominations they choose to accept.
• An individual author may not be nominated (placed on the ballot) for more than half of the stories in any specific category. If an author receives more than half of the nominations in any one category, the Committee will ask the author to specify which nominations they choose to accept.

Announcement of Nominees

• The finalized list of nominations will be posted in the LMFA Voting Ballot, with links to the nominated stories or the author's website.

Eligibility | Nomination | Voting

Voting

• All votes must be submitted during the voting period as specified in the Awards Schedule.
• Any votes submitted after the close of the voting period will be discarded and not included in the final votes count.
• All votes must be submitted through the LMFA Online Ballots.
• Each voter may submit one vote per category in each division.
• A voter may choose to vote only in the divisions and categories of their choice.
• Anyone submitting more than one (1) vote per category in each division will be disqualified from participating in the awards. All their votes will be discarded without being counted towards the final vote count.
• Any nominated author submitting more than one (1) vote per category in each division will be disqualified from participation in the awards. In addition to having their votes discarded without being counted, any and all nominations that the offending author has listed on the Ballot will be voided and removed from consideration in the awards.

Tallying Votes

• After the close of the voting period, the votes will be tallied by LMFA Committee members and by additional volunteers, if needed.
• No one will tally votes for divisions in which they are a nominee.
• For each division, there will be two tallying teams working independently of each other. Once both teams complete their tallies, the results will be compared against each other to check for accuracy.
• At the discretion of the Committee, Honorable Mentions are awarded in categories where voting was particularly close and the Committee wishes to recognize that fact.

Award Announcement

• The LMFA Committee will notify the authors of the winning entries in each category and present them with a graphics icon representing their award, which may be displayed on their websites.
• The LMFA winners will be posted on the website on the date specified in the Awards Schedule. Announcement of the posting will also be made on various Sentinel mailing lists and LiveJournal communities.

Eligibility | Nomination | Voting