Eddies WAWA 2024

1) You are right out, if...

For the first round I skimmed through every article of each category. Meaning I opened all of them in a tab and sorted out articles which were only an information dump like "this character has these stats and that's it". If your article is just a wall of text without even basic paragraphs, you are out as well. Same as the information dump. I know of The Humbug with Pariash Tide who is doing so much with just Freeman. I don't mean this.   This is just scratching the surface, so lets move on.

2) Second iteration

The second iteration focuses more on content and how it is appealing to the eye. This means formatting, usage of the sidebar and a good flow to the eye. Then I read through the text, admire the images and give a few points based on an internal scale I made for myself. Like selfmade art is naturally getting one point more than AI art, which is the default. You don't lose points if you have no art at all, so don't worry about this.   Sections, titles, maybe an introduction or a premise are good starting points, but no requirement. As said, appealing. Links to other articles or more child articles are always good, so I know there is a "train of thought" which I can easily follow. And last but not least if the criterias come together and the article feels good, it gets into the next stage.

3) Close to the list

To be getting closer to the shortlist the article in question has to feel like a good meal, a hug or a terror so deep that it is rattling at your core, trying to destroy the cage where your core is kept for security reasons. Which means the story about the character, the concept, the settlement or whatever was a treat. Then we go over presentation, overall flow of the article itself. And I have to say, the search for even the shortlist was hell. I mean, I had 15 articles after the second iteration and it was details, small things, nothing larger than a sandcorn, which made me put them on the shortlist or not. Which appeared to be a problem later down the line.

4) Shortlisted

It appeared that I had to do a round 3.5 since I still got too many articles and damn, it was choosing between one diamond and the other. I had two problems here: diamonds in article-form and personal bias. Of course I wanted my friends to win (EVERYONE DESERVES AN AWARD, FOR THE NAME OF THE EDDIE!), but it felt unfair to all the others, so I threw in something I call "Author Diversity". Which means if Anvilitie ABC already has one or sometimes two articles in my shortlists, I considered the gem from Anvilitie XYZ and swapped places.