Ditmar Award decisions and guidelines

This article discusses decisions and guidelines of the NatConCom regarding nomination and voting for the Ditmar Award.

Decisions and Guidelines

From the 2011 Business Meeting Minutes:

• The Ditmar subcommittee will make case-by-case decisions about the eligibility of works created in part by non-Australians
• The Ditmar subcommittee may move nominations into more appropriate categories at its discretion
• The Ditmar subcommittee will disregard nominations for Atheling Award which are for "body of work"

Other:

• The Ditmar subcommittee will disregard nominations that come from outside fandom. Being a personal friend, or the publisher, of an author does not constitute being part of fandom (though it does not rule it out).
  • In 2013, Stephanie Smith was deemed to be active in fandom, and able to nominate on behalf of her former employer.
• When assessing fiction to determine eligibility category, the Ditmar subcommittee consider chapter titles as part of the word length, but not acknowledgements, author bios and other associated editorial content.
  • In 2013, chapter titles were ruled to contribute to the word count of a work.
• The Ditmar subcommittee will merge Fan Artist nominations which mentioned different specific works (as that award is to an artist), but not Artwork or Atheling nominations (as those awards are for a specific work).
  • In 2013, nominations for Best Fan Artist which mentioned different specific works were merged, but this practice was not specifically not extended to Best Artwork or the Atheling (although, by extension, it would equally apply to Best Fan Writer).
• The Ditmar subcommittee will not count non-specific Collected Work or Fan Publication nominations for a periodical as being nominations for specific issues of that periodical.