This is a topic we've discussed in the distant past, but I wanted to revisit it. It was recently brought to my attention that the short story contest explicitly states that you can't vote for your own entry. I don't have such a rule for the flash fiction contest because, as far as I know, there's no way to enforce this. So it seems to be based on the honor system. Is there a way to enforce this that I'm just not aware of? If not, is it still worth having this as a rule since it's not enforceable in any way? I also wanted to get everyone's general thoughts on this rule.
I think participants should recuse themselves, although I don't think you can see the vote totals without voting (and I understand why that is). Surely there's got to to be a simple way to track which account has placed a vote?
Not speaking as a moderator, just as a participant who's entered a couple times . . . I wish voting for your own piece were required. Everyone would start with one vote, the idea of one person having an advantage would be negated, and all contestants could see the tally. There'd be no bad guys plus you gain a bonus. It's very valuable seeing what the audience likes. It helps you for the next go-around, and not seeing what's going on while the contest is underway is kind of a bummer. I suppose someone could post the final score and that would let you know too, but that's more work and you'd miss out on the live results. Everyone self-voting, sort of an "I'm present!", fixes itself and does no harm. Just my opinion.
Oh, actually you just solved the problem haha. If it's explicitly stated that this is not only permitted, but expected, then like you said, no one is "bad," and likewise no one might feel guilty. Far simpler than trying to police a rule against it.
I agree it's mildly annoying if someone can get around the rules and vote for themselves, but with the numbers involved it seems the votes are coming from this close community. I have faith in the folks who post on this forum. There are some folks who can't resist the temptation to do something a little wrong if nobody is looking, but then you just have to submit something worthy of winning an extra vote, extra incentive. As far as requiring self vote, a while back I entered a contest and voted for someone else's entry. It wasn't because I didn't like my stuff, I just really liked the other one too. I'd like to keep that option.
There are ways to track who voted for what, but its not easy and its not something i do routinely (and I'm the only one who can - aside from daniel).. i'd have to go into the individual user logs which track all activity and then unpick which number refers to which entry, and then also work out whose entry is whose, again there's ways but its not often worth it...we really we only worry about it when someone is taking the piss, like creating sock puppet accounts to vote for themselves multiple times,(which dishonest conduct will result in a perma ban because no one likes a cheater) other than that its left to honour and integrity there is an option to show who votes for what in a poll, but we do that everyone will see who voted for who...which might be problematic as to requiring a a self vote, that's been discussed numerous times, there are usually those who vehemently say that they won't do it. From a staff point of view we'd prefer this to be consistent across all three contests, because otherwise people will get confused, but i don't have a strong opinion about what it should be other than consistent. Personally if i'm entered in a contest i generally either don't vote or vote for the best of my competitors... that does lead to occasions like the time Mingo and I both entered the short story contest, and i voted for him, and he beat me by one vote but like they say honour requires difficulty
Imagine how great it would feel to win a contest by one vote: your own. Having that little collection of pixels following you around forever, reminding you that no, the membership didn't think you were that much better than your competition, only you did. Might as well print out a sticker that says "I'm a grate* writer" and put it on your monitor to boost your ego. *sic And I'm with Moose on the standardization. That's probably my one lasting contribution from my time as a mod. The contests used to be on all kinds of different schedules and plans and were run as personal fiefdoms by some of the mini-mod contest admins. There was an opportunity for a shift to a more uniform organization and I spent a bit of time getting it set up, so while I'm biased I think it should stay that way.
Honour does require difficulty, and no one would want to win anything because they voted for themselves when someone else didn't. But then one would likewise not want to lose by a single vote to someone else who did vote for themselves. Fairness is key. That's why there should be an absolute rule for the matter. Either all do or all don't. No one wants that grey area stuff to think about and deal with. If the best choice is no self-voting, then I would say that in the event of decisions coming down to a single vote, those should be audited, like a recount of sorts. But that sounds like a pain in the ass. My own position is still that participants should not vote at all. I like the idea of voting for your favourite of the others, but then there's the potential for the scenario the soft moose mentioned above.
The problem with participants not voting is that a lot of the time that might lead to hardly any votes... that of course feeds into a bigger convo about the visibility of the contests but lets not hijack this thread into that discussion because its always a mess
I know we have experimented with two votes - if everyone had two votes, but competitors had to vote, and had to use one of their votes for their own entry, they could vote meaningfully in the contest without disadvantaging themselves?
I'm against everyone getting an automatic vote for their own. Most of the contest seem to have a number of votes just a few higher than the number of entrants, so I suspect most contest participants do vote and maybe 2-3 additional forum members. So forcing competitors to vote for their own would put the voting power in a very small group of people in some contests. I think the idea of entrants abstaining from voting (which is basically what 1 automatic vote does) and letting non entrants decide has a lot of merit, but there doesn't seem to be enough members voting in the contests to support that. Also, wasn't there a way at one time to prevent users from voting for their own story? There must have been, because one of the contests rules said so, and I remember a forum member apologizing for doing so. So either it was possible at one time, or it was sort of a 'bluff' and that forum member confessed.
As i said above Admin can check who voted for what, but it's a faff and i don't often do it unless there are other indicators of foul play... you got to have a pretty sad life to cheat in a contest where the only prize is a virtual medal and bragging rights... but we have had people who do... one guy made three sock puppets purposefully to vote for himself four times , he even posted from one of the sock puppets saying how great his entry was... that spells disqualified and banned. Its not possible for us to actually stop people voting for their own entry in native XF..it would be if we had one of the competitions plug ins, but that would require us to upgrade to XF2 and a bunch of other stuff not worth going into here. Because we're just using a poll the forum software doesn't have the requisite info to say this user owns the story that equates to this option, and therefore they may not select it. Pretty much the rules for short story and poetry say 'don't vote for yourself, but we leave it up to the integrity of members to obey said rules, unless something otherwise twangs our radar
That is possible - you can have as many votes as the person setting the poll wants - so even if we wanted everyone to have two meaningful votes we could give everyone three and say please vote for yourself with one of these votes. The problem in the past was very vocal members going on at great length about how they wouldn't vote for themselves because it was dishonest and that this would put them as a disadvantage and yada yadda yahoo... admittedly a lot of these vocal members have left so we could look at it again if there an appetite
I always assumed it was easily evident to the mods whether an entrant voted for their own entry. Seems not, but that was never the prominent motivation to play clean. Hell, I've voted in tiebreaks in which I was involved because the other story merited the vote, especially if it had my vote in the first round. None of us are so naive as to assume people won't cheat, but surely there are very few who'd put themselves into a situation where that medal ceases to signify an achievement, however modest, and instead stands as a constant reminder of how pathetic they allowed themselves become? Regardless, it will out in the wash, eventually. I'm not averse to permitting contestants vote for their own stories, though don't think that self-love should be compulsory. Still, if it's permitted, it would most likely be the natural outcome, making new starting point of 1 instead of 0. The bigger issue that needs attention, to my mind, is the sparse interest shown by membership in general. It is a writing forum after all, yet usually there's at most 14 out of hundreds of members bothering to register a vote in the writing competitions. This is not so easy to comprehend. So, maybe, offer inducements for people to register a vote: workshop credits? a banner title under the username? a special cheerleader emoji? Nothing like pandering to vanity and self-interest to promote change.
Now that would be cool. "Contest Voter" banner status if you cast votes in at least...2/3 of the contests in a year? (I don't usually "get" poetry so that's a dead zone for me). Probably not possible with the current software though.
Reading stories takes time, which many casual members may not be willing to put in. Look at the number of crits people do. Many people just post the 2 required crits to post their story then never again (yes, I know I've been very lax on this lately). This isn't a failing of this forum in particular - on every forum I've participated in, getting members to do anything beyond posting is hugely difficult without any kind of incentive. I also wonder, how many people are put off from participating in the competitions because they think "Oh, I can't write that well, I'd have no chance". There are a lot of people who are reluctant to show their work off in public. It really doesn't do one's confidence any good if one enters a competition and gets nul points.
Its doable, the banners are usergroup driven... the only thing is that i'd have to add people to it manually, and we'd have to rely on them saying they'd voted The alternative would be a banner type medal (if we can get the bloody medal engine to work.. currently it works sometimes, if it feels like it) On the wider point i think people are or were put off entering by the toxic culture we used to have around harsh (read nasty) crit of contest entries, that cultures done, we banned one person and two others left on their own, but the fear of it takes time to change
It's an interesting concept. It might be hard to track which contributors voted twice for themselves. It's going to be imperfect. I'd rather assume everyone follows the "Don't Vote for Yourself" rule then I don't have to worry about it. At worst it might make me think my submission will need an extra vote to win. Not a bad downside.
Fortunately that's not a concern, the way our polls are set up you can only vote for each option once
Making everyone vote for their own entry is the same as everyone starting from zero. It seems a bit Nigel Tufnell.
I am well aware of quite what a numbskull this will make me sound, but... ... It was months before I even saw the contests, and only in the last two months that I remembered to pay attention. And I still forgot to vote. Why, besides me being a numbskull? My guess is a lot of members are like me and come to the forum as and when the writing-critiquing mood strikes, which might be three times in one week, then six weeks later, then three months later, then every four hours for a while... That really doesn't fit with being around at the right time with the right writing-critiquing energy to read all the entries and vote for them, reliably, end of each month, or even end of a month. That's no criticism of the system. Its a good system. But that might be why so few people engage. Maybe promoting the contests on the right side of the boards, right at the top, above the 'Member publications' box, with a big brassy, celebratory box about the latest three winning stories, which stay there for the whole month. Make it seem much more central the the boards.
Whether an entrant to a competition has one or else two votes, how does s/he vote when s/he truly thinks his or her entry is the best? I am total newbe here, but this is a serious question.
Easy. Vote for the story you think is second-best. From the moderator above: "Pretty much the rules for short story and poetry say 'don't vote for yourself, but we leave it up to the integrity of members to obey said rules ..."
or don't vote at all...if you can't bring yourself to vote for an opponent, not voting at all is valid, voting for yourself is cheating and will result in a ban so don't do that. another point to bear in mind is that you can't objectively judge your own work, so your perception that it is best may be biased or flawed
