How can we best improve the writing contests?

Okay, it HAS been 40 years since I looked this up, but I was under the impression that to be "Published" it has to be offered for sale.

 

So good to have you back, @Tenderiser . Now I'm off the hook, yay!

 

IKR? Sorry for the hijack but welcome back gurl!

 

Have you ever done such a monthly? (ETA: Meaning with a volunteer workforce.) I've done it and it's more work than meets the eye, with tight deadlines a lot of people ignore because they're not getting paid so they let it slide. If just getting the contests done is difficult at times, I truly don't think the volunteer workforce exists here to pull off a monthly e-zine. A quarterly might be a doable goal due to longer deadlines, though.

 

Agreed, for all the reasons you state. It always sounds good at first, but...frankly I've found being part of a team for a monthly e-zine more difficult than a daily newspaper because people don't take the e-zine seriously and miss their deadlines.

Back on topic, I would like for the monthly contest entries to be easier to find and read after the end of the contest. On a few occasions, I've found it difficult to find friends' entries when they've told me they had stories in the contest "a few months ago" or "last summer" or similar vague timeline.

If there's a way to have a master archive of all the contest entries from the beginning of time by username, that would be fantastic. It would save having to do individual searches by username name and would boost those author's readerships.

 

Thirding or fifthing or whatever the put the contest behind the password. I didn't really think about it at the time, but I've written several flash pieces for contests that not only haven't won any medals, but haven't even gotten a single vote. That is wasted effort. This last time around, I clicked the "hide from non-members" button, but I have reason to believe that that may have cost me some eyes from people who may not have been logged in when they were considering which story to vote for.

Also add my voice to the "make the contest more visible" chorus. The writing contests are buried in the middle of the main page, with nothing to set them off and nothing really to let people, especially newer members, know what's going on. I know I've scrolled past the relevant section while looking for it on a number of occasions and had to head back up to get back to it.

I am, however, opposed to the idea of offering anything other than recognition as prizes for a number of reasons. First, we've got members from all over the globe. If you offer something physical, then somebody is going to have to pay postage from wherever it is the prize resides to wherever the winner does. Off the top of my head, I can think of members in the USA, Australia, the UK, Japan, Finland, and Iran. Want to deal with filling out the customs forms every time someone wins? Non-physical things have issues as well. If you want to offer, say, an Amazon gift card, you have to be prepared to go to Amazon.com, .co.uk, .co.jp, is there even an Iranian Amazon site? And how much is that prize? 5.00 USD? GBP? AUD? Don't forget the fees when you use a US-based credit card to make an international transaction to buy that 500JPY (and where's the rest of my money? It's 113 yen to the dollar today, and you said it was a $5 prize!)

Finally, sock-puppetry has been mentioned above. I suppose someone might risk a ban to create a bunch of fake accounts and earn themselves a shiny little virtual badge, but I think it's pretty unlikely. However, if there was a tangible, negotiable thing of value on the prize table, the temptation to rent a Belorussian botnet to suddenly deluge your story with 50,000 new member votes might be a bit harder to resist. Silly, but still somewhat greater odds of it happening.

My 2yen (per xe.com, at today's exchange rate, 1.78128 US cents, not counting commission or buy/sell differential)

 

Say, that sounds like a good idea at first thought but... no, it sounds like a good idea on second thought too.

 

The voting-for-multiple-stories thing ALWAYS comes up and I think pretty much everybody wants it to happen. The issue is that the forum software doesn't allow it to happen, and any way I can think of to get around it makes the process awfully complicated. Somebody mentioned all votes being PMed to me, for example. I'd be fine with that but there are many voters who wouldn't, because they want to be completely anonymous. The only way to do it completely anonymously is to have multiple polls - one for your first choice, one for second, one for third - but those would have to be in three separate threads (there can only be one poll per thread) and just too complicated, with a strong likelihood of people voting incorrectly.

Any other ideas? I would love to be able to do this and for more stories to get the recognition they deserve, but I just can't think how to make it work.

 

Or keep it low key on the unsaid understanding that the comps are a ‘little’ more swayed toward the writing than the reading...thus remaining accessible/encouraging the flow of new writers + ‘fun writes’ from noted experts such as myself.

 

Website software capabilities aside, we all want feedback on our stories.

So if you submit a story, you should have to write an analysis on all submitted stories for that month in order to qualify for a medal.

This analysis would occur during the voting process. Some WF members are already doing this, but hopefully by enforcing the analysis we increase the amount of feedback given.

 

I think that might be problematic with the ‘hit n run’ type entries - a writer forced to return to scene of crime for crit duties

 

With all due respect...No. That wouldn't be healthy for the Forum, because turning the contests into another form of critique would be a means of removing some positive reinforcement and would tilt the Forum more toward the negative. It would also send a bad message about the atmosphere of the Forum. I can see it now: "Ohhhh, yeah, That forum. That's the one where the members even tear contest entries to shreds." Who would enter a contest for that? That's what the existing critique threads are for.

Some writers enter contests because they need assurance that they can do this, or to test the waters with their craft without the probability of receiving rejection slip. For those writers, contests are probably a relief from critique, which for that type of writer is probably a harsh process. Give those members something positive to shoot for.

One of best things this Forum has going for it is a balance between the harshness of the real world of writing and a supportive atmosphere. If you're a writer like me who needs harsher nitpicking to whip their writing into shape, that can be found here. For a writer who needs positive encouragement to keep going, that can be found here too. Adding mandatory critique to the contest would erode that tremendously.

edited a sentence for clarity.

 

Unfortunately, there's a limit of 25 answers in a poll, which means we could only accept eight entries per contest if we did it like that. We do quite often get more entries than that.

 

What if we just allowed two non-ranked votes per voter per contest. "Choose your two favorite stories." There'd be more of a scatter of votes, with fewer end results like the most recent flash contest which was 6-5-2-0-0-0-0, IIRC.