How can we best improve the writing contests?

I suggest having a slider for the number of votes in the various competitions on the front page to show voting progress to encourage members on the home page (welcome page) to click into it to see the entries in the competition(s).

The trouble is, at the moment, the links to the competitions are static and there's nothing to say, unless you're on the competition page itself, that there's a vote going on or that a competition is currently open for new entries. I suggest making that information in-your-face up-front on the homepage with an easy link to the relevant current competition (one click, not the 3 or 4 with scrolling it currently takes).

 

The next 12 months should see the exciting evolution of the 'app facility,' and this [finally] genuine and fair assessment of past contest entries, finally analysing raw data, and put to rest the issue of who among us has voted for themselves in any previous contest. I [for one] have nothing to hide and welcome the shaming of those who have tainted the integrity of the majority, the sincere contest entrants. Transgressors could be literally anyone asides from @Iain Aschendale for reasons stated. With a level playing field we might allow air to clear, a re-commencement of contests for, I suggest 2020? Only then will the awards system recover from this 'fake valour' conspiracy that has damaged us all.

I suggest the same spearhead party that organised the much heralded cut/paste to bin operation of 2017?

 

Yes! It is a heavy burden of guilt that I am proud to cast off! I voted for myself, assuming that everyone else would as well and seeing no rule (and I looked) prohibiting it. I just re-read the forum rules and still didn't see it. Shame me, banish me, put me to the lash! I can stand the guilt no longer. On the other hand, I wrote the only story that was started after the prompt and was actually ABOUT terrestrial tumbleweeds. Further, although I did not vote for myself in this contest because it said "don't vote for yourself"' on the prompt page I wrote the only poem to the "chess" prompt that had anything to do with playing chess. It was a poor excuse for a poem and I am no poet, but I did spend a lot of time playin' with them funny lookin' checkers in my youth. I here-by surrender my shiny gold dot and throw myself of the mercy of the mob.

 

With a heavy heart I shall request the necessary sanctions. A quite shocking confession. Happy Christmas @exweedfarmer & God have mercy on your twisted nib.

Sicko.

 

Well, one very basic way to improve the contests is to conduct them on time. The end of voting for the chess-themed poetry contest was Dec. 15. Apparently voting is still open. The deadline for submissions to the latest poetry contest, the theme the color green, was also Dec. 15. Apparently it is still open to submissions. Yet today is Dec. 26.

 

STORIES! There are stories in the contest this month, and they seem to be breeding like rats in the sewer! YEAH!

 

Standards. Accepting a 221 word story in the Short Story Contest (1200-5000 words) shouldn't happen. Letting members judge if a story fits the prompt is fine, and I don't expect that the contest admins check each and every story, but when something comes in at less than 20% of the required length, admins should have the ability to simply boot it.

December 2018 Short Story Contest

 

I think if writing contests were in a separate category on their own with a more prominent formatting rather than being just another bullet point in a long list it may have more success attracting traffic.
You can also add links to each category of contest in the other pages addressing those topics. Ie general fiction short story page will have a link or banner on the top of the page for the contests. The pages y at naturally attract the most attention should have links or reminders to the contests.

 

I'd be 100% more likely to vote in a contest if I got an alert telling me to do so.

 

The contests are pretty hard to find. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/march-2019-short-story-contest.161722/ There is a lot more interest in the short story contest than in months past. Encourage early READING. No one wants to slog through 50000 words all in one sitting no matter how good the stories are. We had one voting member vote for a story last time because it was the only one he read. Aggregate voting. The winner of the February contest would have won in the first round because it was not only many people's first choice but most people's second. We could have skipped the tie breaker.

 

Once again: Enforce the prompt or get rid of it. The leader this month is not going to tie (thank heavens) but it has nothing to do with the prompt. It certainly is an (unfair?) advantage to just ignore the prompt and post your best work.

 

Also to reiterate @Excrackdealer's points the readers need a clue if somebody likable has written a contribution, possibly an asterisk, as in 'this writer is somebody I trust with my vote.' Too often 'loser types' win the competitions, the people who appreciate their victories in a smug and solo fashion and think they are better than everybody else. People like that live in wood cabins I believe in Washington state, USA. Thy contribute little to the general caucus [thank you] of well-being, including moderators.

 

The location of the contests in general is in an awkward and inconvenient location. If you want greater frequency, it needs to have greater prominence.

 

Must be a busy time in people's lives. Are they trying to reset the weeks for the poetry contest or something? I hate to be the one complaining, but a note of "hey I'm busy, come back to this section in a couple weeks when I can update it" is always welcome. Otherwise we all just sit here in limbo as dates float on by...

 

But if you look at someone like this Marine sergeant major, every one of those little rectangles of ribbon marks a medal for something or other. If they were all large devices like in your picture, he'd look the same.

I'm crap at reading ribbons, in my time nobody had any that mattered, but this man does have an unusual number of decorations even for someone of his rank. However, all of the ones below the red and yellow one with the little star in it fifth from the top are for deployments and such, not individual achievements.

 

Hi, I'm completely new to this platform and I really enjoyed reading through some short stories last night from this months short story contest. Have you thought about making compilations of the stories and publishing them in e-book format? I prefer reading on my kindle, as it doesn't strain my eyes as much as the screen does and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It might help you keep this great forum going if you publish say a monthly or even yearly compilation on Amazon.

 

Even if an anthology isn't possible, how about a section that acts as an index to contest winning entries?