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Finally the time has arrived and voting begins. Everyone who registered to vote should receive their ballot e-mail today (2nd October), this thread lists all eligible writers and stories in each category. Please claim your vote in this thread and remember that votes need to be sent by midnight (GMT) on October 15th. You must vote in at least eight of the following seventeen awards to be eligible to vote in the final round, and you cannot vote for yourself.
MAIN OVERALL AWARDS
FMSer of the Year
Formerly known as User of the Year, this award goes to the person judged to have made the biggest contribution to the FMS community over the course of the year. That means nominations will be based on a mix of story writing, helping/encouraging others, participation in the story ideas and off topic threads, sorting out meetups or other community-enhancing efforts. As a consequence, this is NOT the same as writer of the year. While moderators and helpers are as much FMSers as the rest of the forum, actual moderating-related community work MUST be ignored when nominating people in this category. This award is far too prestigious to create anything but a level playing field.
Eligible Users: *See List at End
Writer of the Year The author of your pick for Story of the Year is not necessarily the same as your nomination for Writer of the Year. Someone experimenting with different styles, writing a few good stories which aren't considered good enough for Story of the Year, may yet be a better writer. Then, it's equally conceivable the author of Story of the Year is simply the best in your opinion. Using the FMS Index by author shows the broad range of writers on FMS.
Eligible Writers: *See List at End
Story of the Year
As the title suggests, this award is for the overall best story of the year.
Eligible Stories: All stories eligible in other categories are eligible for Story of the Year
Funniest Writer of the Year
Probably one of the most difficult awards to win, because different people have different ideas on what's funny. Judging by its roll of honour, you'll do well in this category once you master harsh jokes and black humour.
Eligible Writers: *See List at End
Funniest Story
Introduced in 2006, Funniest Story is a rather self-explanatory title. A chance for the one-off funny writers who aren't cynical/sarcastic ALL the time.
Eligible Stories: All stories eligible in other categories are eligible, determined by what people think is funny.
Best Newcomer With it being increasingly difficult for new writers to attract an audience, winning this award usually goes a long way in establishing yourself as a recognised writer. The charme of this award is that you can only ever win it once. No second chances.
Best Story Character
As the forum moved away from "match report stories", off-the-field storylines develop in many stories. Not aided by a definitive list of story characters, people will have to decide which character "came alive" enough to win this award. It's a category that continued to gain standing to the point that it became one of the Main Overall Awards. The winner of the first two awards almost went professional with his character!
Eligible Stories: Open for any nominations
MISCELLANIOUS OVERALL AWARDS
Most Missed FMSer
On FMS, people come and go, and the harsh reality is that to the general public, few people are actually sorely missed when they're gone, simply because new people take their place. There are exceptions though, and those always feature in this category, for which one becomes eligible by not posting a story all year after being an active writer the (awards) year before. Not a position you want to be in then, and we've not seen any winner of this award return to FMS.
Best Challenge *NO VOTE NECCESSARY*
Periodically, FMS picks an Official Challenge (see Challenge section at www.zelenazvezda.com) to keep the forum busy. For the FMS Awards, all winners of these challenge elections play off for the Best Challenge Award.
Eligible Challenges:
The Islands Challenge
The Freedom Fighter Challenge
The Uncle Scrooge Challenge
The Bobby Robson Challenge (BobBev)
Pole to Pole Challenge (Peacemaker7)
Best Story Idea
Every now and then, someone starts a story with an original twist to it, be it a heavily edited database to create some form of Superleague, or just a story told from a different prespective. This award is about which story had the best idea behind it. You may interpret this as "best scenario idea", or as "most original story angle", whatever "Best Story Idea" covers in your opinion.
Eligible Ideas: Open for any nominations
Spirit of FMS
Up until 2004, annual awards for Most Underrated Writer and a Perseverance Award were presented to the unsung heroes of the storywriting community. The former went to those who, despite writing several good stories, wasn't well-known or well-supported enough to win one of the big awards. The list of winners made it look a bit weird though, for every single one of them was an established community member at the time. Thus, "underrated" was hardly a fitting tag. Eligibility criteria were tightened up, and even being listed on the final shortlists for any other award disqualified one from being up for the Underrated award. This backfired spectacularly, as in 2005, it disqualified ALL nominees from a place on the final shortlist.
At the same time, the Perseverance Award was described as: "Another one in the unsung heroes category. Who deserves credit for sticking at their story, even it's for a small audience? For those who realise what FMS really is about: writing stories because you want to/like it. This one is different from the Most Underrated Writer award in that the other one is for the best writer not to be spotted by the masses, whereas this award can be won by simply sticking at something, at all cost.".
Effectively, the same people were in the running for those two awards, probably because readers saw writers sticking to the same story for 2-3 years, without it being rewarded with an award, which was undoubtedly seen as "underrating". It therefore made sense to merge the two categories, and from 2006 forward describe it as "The Spirit of FMS Award", with much the same description as the old Perseverance Award (a name never popular with many community regulars).
Eligible Writers: *See List at End
GEOGRAPHICAL AWARDS
Best English Story
For 2005 and 2006, there weren’t enough nominees for either Best English or Best Scottish stories to exist separately and they were folded into Best British Story. Fortunately, this year we are able to award them separately once more. This award celebrates those stories based entirely in the English leagues.
Best Scottish Story *NO VOTE NECESSARY*
For 2005 and 2006, there weren’t enough nominees for either Best English or Best Scottish stories to exist separately and they were folded into Best British Story. Fortunately, this year we are able to award them separately once more. However, with Best Scottish Stories, the low number of entrants means that all five are given a bye into the final voting round.
Best Rest of the World Story
As the title suggests, this is where every other non-British based story goes. With the addition of several Asian and even an African league to FM, this category can only grow in the future. This used to be awarded as “Rest of Europe” and “Rest of the World” but the low number of stories taking place outside Europe means the two are folded together.
Best International Management Story *NO VOTE NECESSARY*
And still that isn't the end of the sub-categories. There are two more we class under the "Geographical Awards" banner, even though strictly spoken, they are not. The first of these is the award for international management stories. Any story based exclusively on international management is eligible for this one. Once again, due to lack on entrants, all eligible stories are given a bye into to the second round of voting.
Best Fantasy/Super League Story *NOT AWARDED*
Finally, on a regular basis, we see the emergence of a story based in a fantasy league or a super league (like a European League, a British Super League etc...). In the event of the leagues merged for these stories not fitting into one and the same geographical award, the story is entered into this Fantasy/Super League category. Unfortunately, there have not been enough entrants this year for it to be awarded, but the one eligible story is listed here as it remains eligible for overall Story of the Year.
Best Short Story
A story qualifies as a "short story" if it's a complete story in its own right consisting of a maximum of five story posts, each limited in size (the semi-official limit at this time is 1,000 words per post). Generally, writers use this style to describe a crucial month in a season, a very important cup final (introduction-build up-game-post match-closing post), or similar events. In 2002, the award for this type of stories was fiercely contested, and from time to time, a wave of short stories hit FMS.
Best Challenge Story *NO VOTE NECESSARY*
Challenges are very popular with FMS, and have resulted in countless attempts to get a story going. While they have a higher attrition rate than "normal" stories, they also have their fair share of successful ones. Despite this, the fact that an official FMS challenge only lasts for a few months means there's little time to achieve (and thus write on) a lot. As a result, challenge stories are often less detailed. Nevertheless, a good challenge story can be quite enjoyable to read, as the author gets closer and closer to the elusive task of completing an FMS challenge. This is another award where lack of entrants mean that all those eligible are given a bye into the second round of voting.
*Writer; FMSer; Funniest Writer; Spirit of FMS Eligibility List
The addition this year of the need to register to vote in the awards process also meant that anybody who didn’t register lost their potential eligibility for the Writer, FMSer, Funniest Writer and Spirit of FMS awards. Below is a list of those eligible to win these awards, now it’s up to you to chose the most deserving.
Eligible Writers:
Amaroq
Attjen
BenArsenal
Bobbev
Chonner
Donners
Faramir
Flipsix3
gandycoleuk
HD
irishregan
mark wilson27
markyt
Nathan Pike
Panpardus
Peacemaker7
Raptor
Terk
Originally posted by Peacemaker7:
<BLOCKQUOTE>Originally posted by Wegason:
What's the criteria for best newcomer? (Sounds obvious but wondering if there was a cut-off date)
Must have started writing since the last awards ceremony. If you think someone is missing, let us know </BLOCKQUOTE>
Given that your story's not eligible, you therefore haven't written an awards eligible story. So you're not up for newcomer. But you are in the list that can be voted for FMSer.
FMS Awards 2007 *First Voting Round* 
anpardus 
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