I agree completely, both with FC4 and our good friend Rohugh. I don't quite have everything sorted out yet...Anyone have any ideas as to the problem of tiering? What do you suggest, Frank?


And could those of you that vote for the latter option concerning seperating writers, can you please explain your thoughts so that we can reach a compromise? This isn't me saying "I'm doing this this way, and there's nothin' you can do about it! Hahaha!", I'm asking for advice on how to improve it and what to do. Thanks.


EDIT: I'm not entirely sure, Evil Pigeon. I know that judging by poll would be flawed by bias and what you mentioned, but I'd hope each story recieves the same amount of attention. For example, if a story was the first on the thread, everyone would read it, but by voting time, the more recent would probably do better. The only way to get over that obstacle is make everyone promise to read them all before voting, or have everyone release at the same time. Neither of which are entirely viable options.

As to judges, there exists a whole new slew of problems. Who will the judges be? How do we select the judges? How are we sure that the judges won't have the same problem as the popular vote?

One thought of mine, we could do it like American Idol and have judges look at every story to see if it even gets to the voting, then after we have three, five, ten, or whatever number of stories, start the poll? Anyone else have thoughts? Thanks.

I thin you might need a set of judges rather than letting everyone do it, if only so that each stroys gets the same amount of attention, It'd defeat the point somewhat if a story lost because more people read the others. Obviously everyone should be able to read them but I think a panel of judges would be the fairest way to do the awards

EDIT also for the short stories, what kind of length are we looking at? A page long passage (which would be easier for the judges) or something a bit more substantial?

Edit 2 in response to Darkom; Maybe a shortlist of the best stories to be voted upon by everyone could work best then? To eliminate favouritism you could have the stories pm'd to you and then you could post them without revealing the author. As for judges; whoever volunteered for the job (I have plenty of time ) and again, if we used my above idea you could go a long way towards eliminating favouritism

Yes, I'm pretty sure I would participate (I say 'pretty sure' because I love to write, but have a problem with short stories, as I tend to drag things on a bit, and all of a sudden they're not "short stories" anymore ).

Also, are we going to have a word limit, or is it up to us to be reasonable? I ask not because I'm planning to be unreasonable ( ), but because I would like to know at least a general idea of the length you had in mind...maybe, if not a limit, a recommendation?

Edit: Oh, I see Evil Pigeon asked the same thing.

Why would you leave a story out? Why not just judge all stories and use a point system to decide the best?

Indeed, good idea Evil. Only tell people who wrote what after the voting...That might work.

As far as word limit, I'll set the reccomendation, then the max. We would prefer you stay around so and so, but you can go as far as X.

Alright, so we still have the issue of skill. If someone that is a good deal better than everyone else writes, then few else have a chance for an award. I just wanted everyone to have an equal chance to win, because even if in a perfect world people would be willing to compete without hope of sucess, it would be nice to have tiers, I think. I for one would want to write with people at or close to my ability, rather than be compared to some of you guys And it makes the competetion in the "varsity" contest even more challenging. Who doesn't want that?


And no, all stories would be put on the thread, regardless of how good they are. You are posting them, after all. Unless we go with Evil's idea. The voting itself though is the problem; in order to achieve a more perfect system, we would eliminate some choices that we feel could not win anyway. All the judges vote, and the top several for each category get put up for the general election. No matter what, people will read and hopefully critique your work, which is the main goal anyway.

I am hesitant to do a point system, as it would be needlessly complicated. Perhaps the judges screening would give each a score and what exceeds a certain number would get in. However, I am still against scoring by points. I would prefer a collective yay and nay, you need so many yays to pass to general election. Which technically is still a point system, of sorts.

I see the most important issues have already been raised.

Anonymity is essential, to stop it turning into a popularity contest. A word limit is crucial, so it's a level playing field. Both have been mentioned already of course, but I felt it was worth repeating

As for your two tier idea...

I can't see how that could be implemented. The stories will have to stand on their own, no-one will know (if the above is done) who wrote what. When personalities and reputations are set aside, the results can be surprising. Thos who you think will do best don't always. And truthfully, does it matter? This is for practice and fun, right? Everyone should achieve both of those goals just by entering. The placement is less important than the feedback.

Hopefully.

At first I thought that ranking people according to skill would be unfair to non-native English speakers. Then I looked at some of the people I know to be native English-speakers on here and it made me think otherwise

Nah, I'm joking. But I don't think that people should be put into categories according to their skill. Otherwise there's no reason for them to put in any effort and we'll end up with a few pages of 'Bob pwned a new player. Bob ate breakfast. Bob got his longsword. Bob pwned a new player.'

EDIT: Fine, I'll just spell new player a little differently to stop it being censored...

i think this is a wonderful idea

for voting, how about having each story be voted on by the general populus, from 1-5. then the averages could be compared fairly easily, and it should be accurate enough even if one story receives fewer votes.

i'd just start up a small free forum for these stories instead of hosting them here. then each story could have its own poll thread, posted by a single member to keep it anonymous.

how would you grade ability though? i may think that im the bestest writer in the history of writing, but that certainly doesnt make it so. would the judge(s) decide who belongs in what category? this can lead to people being upset that at where they were ranked. i'd prefer it to be done either by length or genre - contests are not intended to be fair. if it is divided by genre, certain stories (such as "Mary Sue's Oblivion Crisis Story" or "My Life as an Uber Assassin") would get more entries than some other categories, which may potentially result in wins by default.

i suppose it depends on how many stories are entered. if its only 10 then there is no need for categories to begin with.

just my 2 cents

Well, I'd be really interested in judging. So if you need a judge, just hit me up.

Ok well I have an idea how about lets get the moderators together and have them be judges instead of everyone judgeing. being moderators they should be the most unbiased than anyone else on the forum. so how about we get three moderators to be judges?

They have other things to take care of rather than judging this.

Having stories sent to a person (judge) to have them posted with anonimity is the best way to do it.

If they choose not to put in effort, that's their loss.


I'll think about the rating system for stories. The point is that all the stories are on one thread, but okay; I can't make a forum myself, so if anyone else would like to, that's a fine idea. The judges don't decide; as I said, the categories are chosen by the writers, they choose which they find themself to be appropriately skilled for. Therefore no one can feel bad about their "rank". The only genres would be length and ability, and ability seems to be having a negative response.

I would want to have two or three threads for this, seperated by length or skill, it depends on whether the tier idea goes through. Each thread can have as many stories as it wants, but I would prefer stories to be in one to two posts for convenience. Finish your story on a text editor before you post it.

I'll say it again: The skill tiering would be of their own choice, no judges decide that. And if we have everyone together, the voting is pointless, as only a select few would have any chance of winning. Even without putting people's names on it, which I am slowly supporting, you can still tell the difference between a story like mine and a story by one of our better authors. And most problems with the voting can be solved by one simple fact: the voters are you and you alone; you know not to try and cheat. Who among us would mess with the voting for any reason?

Thank you both for the ideas

And yeah, the mods aren't even necessarily writers, redmer. I think we can be pretty unbiased if we put our minds to it Oh, and redsrock, if you want to be a judge we'd be happy to have you.

ok so what would the stories be judged on? I'm thinking of something like a score sheet. stuff liek lore accuracy, entertainment and other stuff.

I put forth three categories for scoring, on a 1-5 system which you take the average of.

- Story (Plot/Originality)
- Correctness (Grammar and Spelling)
- Readers Choice

The first two are scored by the judges, then the story is given the chance to get a score from the readers. Since ALL stories should be anonymous, favoritism would be reduced immensely

I'd say having different categories for ability is a bad idea, there could however be awards that less skilled writers would have a reasonable chance of winning (most original idea springs to mind) I'm getting worried about this word limit too, I lack the staying power to write anything over about 1500 words and it'll get to the point where it'd just be impossible to read all the submissions, I mean it takes me about a week to read a book of 12 short stories (I'm assuming a length of around 20 pages A5 each which = 5000(ish) words) If everyone has to do so before voting then we won't have a very fair set of results because a lot of people just won't want to read that much, either that or very few people will vote.

Edit to respond to Verlox:
Maybe add a writing quality category?

Point systems for writing strike me as terribly flawed. I particularly hate the point system that the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test uses for the Writing section. Scratch it.


And to do a complete 180... Darkom, you WANT Redsrock as one of your judges. I can't COUNT the number of story contests I have seen this man participate in over several writing forums. He's a good writer too, so that's another plus for him being a good judge.

Now, I HIGHLY ADVISE the anonymity idea. I've seen it done before in contests and feel it works best. Have each story be submitted to you, you present it to the judges, and they select their award winners amongst those stories, unknown as to who wrote what.

THEN, if you wish, post all the stories up in a single thread, and ask for the community to choose THEIR favorites. The stories that win over both the judges and the people, win. Plain and simple. No need for a tier system, as that will just erase the anonymity by hinting at who the writers may be. And if you are worried about making someone feel bad if they lose against a favorite on the boards... tbh I see more insult coming from being arbitrarily thrown into a lower tier. Scraqe the idea.

D'awwww. Thanks, Frank.

"Quality writing" is a bit hard to judge imo. While there are obvious things (correct spelling/grammar, not using internet shorthand) a lot of it comes down to a writer's style. i know when reading Reds' stories (not to pick on you or anything there mang) some of his stylistic choices striker me as off. its perfectly correct as far as the english language is concerned, but it may not be to everyone's liking. same thing can be said for any author. things that can be easily judged, such as the aforementioned spelling, should be a given. presumably everyone is using something other than Notepad to write, and hence everyone has a spellchecker. if you dont, then get someone to proofread. no excuse.

i have one concern with judges: people tend to have a problem with them. anyone remember the fallout after the Chorrol competition? making a popular vote should make it harder to object, though i definitely see the issue with having all the stories read.

Dark: if you decide to do it on a separate board i'd be more than happy to set one up as i said i think its preferable for organization. having all the stories in one thread here on the BSF will make it really cluttered.

I'd love to do this, but I really don't have enough time to do it. Oh well

No need, you're probably right anyway.

Ehh, I could submit my idea on how the end of Morrowind would be I guess.

I know some people consider my writing occasionally oddly done, sometimes. Like in over describing! I agree with Lady Nerevar, Writing Quality is too subjective.

here are my ideas for grading subcategories:

1) Creativity (is it unique and original? is it a retelling of OB's main quest?)
2) Story (Does it make sense? how is it developed during writing?)
3) Characters (are they round? are they believable? how do they interact?)
4) Feel (does it fit into the ES universe? does it invoke a clear mood/tone?)
5) General Impressions (judge's thoughts over all. Great plot twist? horrible English?)

overall score is the sum of subscores divided by 5. each story's final score is then added and divided by number of judges. the resulting over all score determines the overall winner, the subscores determine the "runners up," or winners in each category.

heh, i just realized how horribly ive been writing in a thread about a writing competition i swear i capitalize when it really matters :poke:

Yeah, that's the sort of system I was talking about.

Ok, I'll try to respond to each comment so no one feels left out. This leads to a big post, sorry

Correctness is a given. If their grammar or spelling is really bad (a few mistakes can slide, but if they become noticeable...)


Alrighty then, concensus on the tiering is a no, solved by animosity and categories like plot. As to word limit, I'll try to keep it reasonable. Remember, the short story can either conclude the plot quickly, or just be a kind of teaser. That was going to be the next issue I bring to the table.



Exactly, I dislike point systems as well. I feel that if we did points, one might find themselves grading the stories differently, but if we just did "which was the best" then we end up with both bias and multiple other flaws.



I know very well of redsrock status and ability, I was just trying to be polite I think I might even keep the authors secret from judges anonymity is such a good idea. I wanted this to be a by the people thing from the get go, so I think it would be fun to have a judge vote and a popular vote for each category, to compare the two. What do you all think?



Indeed, that's why we need a wide variety of judges. There will be no overall quality vote, but their will be a favorite award. And thanks, I would love to keep it here, but I see how that would be a problem.



My thoughts on the categories exactly, Lady Nerevar. The scoring system seems to be a good idea, but I'm still debating on that. Don't let me make all the calls though

Alright, so the tiering is out. The judges and anonymity is in, and we are still deciding the ranking system and just how much voting we'll leave to the people. I myself am in favor a judge screening every story, at least two per story but prefferably more, then the judges vote for each category, and then we have the people's vote. Our next issues are length, and whether we want the whole plot in one short, or just a small teaser plot.

Poll editted, sorry, you can't vote for the new things, just know that the first question was 1. 4 and 2. 16 and the second was 1. 6 and 2. 14. So real results are to be taken after that, even if you nineteen (not including myself) can't vote again. Sorry :shrug: