Suggestion Increasing contest visibility and participation

I suggest that the site do more to promote the writing contests -- all 3 of them -- to get more members-at-large to vote. Maybe some sort of site announcement urging people to read and vote. As it is now, most voters are obviously also contestants. But there are so few that the results are not necessarily the results of a larger population with more varied interests and no dog in the fight.

 

As a help in this direction, when I do my 'welcome to the forum' in the New Member Introduction section, I nearly always suggest they visit the contests to vote and maybe to enter. It would be great if new people were encouraged to go there.

 

I'll say this to any of the membership at large - if you're here to improve your writing, you could do a lot worse than to read the entries in these contests.

You won't like all of them, and some may not be to your taste, and you may feel you can do better - that's all fine, but you can learn a lot by reading what other people have done, and taking away what you like about them.

So c'mon folks, there should be no reason not to participate, either by voting or taking part in the next one.

There may be cookies.

 

Problem is, most of the members at large are not reading this page.

 

I think this contest is growing organically just fine. Over recent months it has gathered momentum. I do not see that is in peril at the moment, far from it.

It does serve a purpose apart from seeing which story gets votes and whatnot. It gives writers the opportunity to publish stories in a small way. Maybe comparisons are made and many other basically harmless curiosities explored. It allows members to experiment, work to deadlines and prompts. Share their work and enthusiasm for writing. Plus a great deal more.

Lets us all appreciate what the contests do well and continue to support it passionately as always.

 

All true and I appreciate what we have. I certainly didn't mean to suggest it's "in peril." Still, on a site of this size it seems a shame not to have more robust contests, more entries and especially more voters.

 

Would it be possible to add a banner across the top that you can see no matter what screen your on giving the next two or three prompts and a link to follow to the rules? Make it easy and obvious for people so they don't have to go looking for them.

 

As with all these things, they're all possible but only Daniel, the owner can do them, and he's not very active. So we can make suggestions but the mods and @Komposten are limited in what they can actually implement.

 

I think that's a perfect idea. Let's hope Daniel gets on board. It would be a plus for the site, which, overall, is the best one I've come across.

 

There have been a lot of discussion about how to make the contests more visible and accessible in general.
Improving the contest forums themselves haven't been discussed as much, but I like the idea of making them a bit more unique and show information related to the current and upcoming contests in an accessible way. However, I think a custom banner at the top, visible only in the correct sub-forums, to display prompts and links would require a custom-coded plugin. That's doable, but puts the bar a bit higher than simple forum customisation.

 

I think the main issue has to be making the contests more visible to the membership at large. Some members aren't even aware that there are any contests.

 

Seems to me it could be general to all forums.

 

Really?
They have their own sub-forum on the forum home page. Though admittedly if you asked me to list all of those sub-forums I would not be able to. But it didn't take me long to find out about the contests.

I think more of the issue might be not knowing when it'd be appropriate to enter. I was thinking about entering, but didn't know if I should since I was so new here. It also can be intimidating since most newcomers probably don't have as much experience as the long-time members. So it raises the question whether to bother entering, if you know you don't have a chance of winning.

I don't know, I can only speak to my own experience. But I don't think there was anything the site could do to make me more inclined to participate, it all came down to my own decision.

 

We have three contests. Adding a banner that shows the current contests, upcoming prompts, and possibly links to contest rules would add a lot of clutter. A more detailed banner could be added to each contest sub-forum.

We could also have a more general banner or sidebar widget which just mentions the currently active contests to the main board. In my opinion we definitely don't want to put the contests in the face of everyone by putting a banner on every page. If I'm reading a thread in Plot Dev or browsing the Workshop, a banner promoting the contests will just be in the way.

Regardless, even if we were to add a global banner we would still need a custom add-on for it. I think just adding a static banner is doable with the pure forum software, but the contests are not static. The contest admins would need the ability to edit the banner to keep it up to date with links to the current contests and upcoming prompts, and that would require a custom interface for them to work with. Even if we automated it we would still need custom code.


Edit: Something I'd love to see is a cleaner interface for the contest sub-forums. Right now you are greeted by this:

It is messy, in my opinion. It would be nice if we could move the current contest and current voting up above the thread listings, with some kind of highlight or other design that draws attention and tells people that "this, this right here, is what you should care about on this page".

Something like a second "Sticky Threads" section, so that announcement threads and important discussions can still be stickied as well.

 

Every time I have a reason to go to one of the contest sub-forums I just go to the main page and Ctrl+F to search for "contest". Otherwise I'll sit there scrolling back and forth like an idiot before I finally find them after 5 minutes.

The contests are open to any and all members, but maybe we need to make that more clear to new members that we currently do. We could bring it up in the New Member Quick Start, for example (assuming people actually read it).

 

I dont know what tools the moderators have at their disposal. But the most obvious idea to highlight the competitions is to simply have a bright, flashy banner at the top of the forum listings, or on the right side panel.

 

As far as moderator tools apply to the discussion here, they can edit, move and close threads, sticky them, and give them prefixes ("Current Contest", "Open Voting", etc.). They cannot directly edit other site content (sidebars, banners, etc.), unless the content is provided by an add-on that provides edit options for moderators.

 

Well, to assist, I went for the quick and dirty method of just adding it to my signature line. Doesn't require any reworking of the site and if people keep seeing it they might go check it out.

PS: I wonder if there is some confusion among the new members thinking who aren't differentiating between the contests, and the submissions for review and maybe think they need to complete critiques before they can submit?

 

A sidebar widget showing the latest threads in the competitions subforum would be the way to go I think, but there are three subforums and we can't have three widgets.

Except, of course, I don't know how many people use the forum on an tablet or similar device. I believe the widgets are right at the bottom on a small screen, and some people may not scroll that far down.

 

A member, @Bijed, was new to the site and had very little writing experience, by his own admission. He won both the Short and Flash competitions on his first try.

You don't know that you don't have a chance. Give it a try - there really is no reason not to.

 

I am confused! Let me know when you have figured it out.

 

I'm aware of that. Most of these suggestions would need Daniel to action them.

I can't see much else that the mods can do beyond what is already being done at the moment.