Flash competitions would be a good place to experiment with different types of prompts, or no prompts, or whatever other structures people dream up. Instead of gambling our 4p/y competition on something that might not generate many entries. We can try them for 48hrs. If something doesn't work it matters less.

 

How about we write something and the best story wins. I thought the prompts were there just to give someone something to write for? I mean, its a throw back to the old best in category that we used to do. So how about we go back to that? Vote on the category, and then you write whatever you want, within that category. I feel like this is being made more complicated than it should be.

Option 2 is the path of least resistance and is the closest approximation of best in category.

 

Alright - who all hangs out on r/hpff and r/fanfiction? Anyone with a decent, non-asshole reputation want to plug the competition there? Here's the thread in announcements that anyone should be able to view if you wanted to link something.

I don't want to over-advertise get a giant influx of people coming to DLP and creating drama, so don't go wild, but I think we have a good format for our competition that would interest authors. With the competition going into the second year there's enough past threads that new entrants can see what they're getting into. I think it's a good time to gently poke the wider community.

Anyone interested? I don't frequent Reddit so it's not going to be me to advertise.

 

Nothing official. I'm only thinking of some lightweight advertising in case there are interested parties. I just want to avoid annoying people and generating negative sentiment.

 

The rules for the current competition are listed in the current competition thread and won't change but this is a good idea that merits discussion.

Currently nothing has been said about it either way and so it's technically not against the rules. Which means it's technically allowed.

I'm all for making it a standard rule that we allow up to two entries per person. But I also don't want to encourage it - I'd prefer everyone just submit a single entry unless both are very short. Having more entries from a single person isn't likely to bring in more interest or reviewers/judges.

 

Sh

She said decent and non-asshole.

 

@Microwave is taking care of it. I will personally shit in anyone's bed that is needlessly rude just because they're not used to DLP. This is our time to be accommodating and put all that shit everyone cried about in @Sauce Bauss thread to work.

If they earn it they earn it, but not when they walk in the door. Aye?

 

^What he said.

And on another note - if you've got concerns about the competition being rigged or unfair just PM me to discuss. Been some discussion of that in other areas lately (don't revive it here) but seriously. I don't bite.

 

Fleshing out the details of the bracket idea for feasibility's sake.

We can have anywhere from 4 - 7 stories per bracket.

Reviewers must review all stories in a bracket they vote in. They are allowed to vote in more than 1 or all brackets as long as they fulfill above.

Any reviewer may recommend more than 1 story to move to the final bracket if they feel it merits such, esp in cases where stories are near ties. I do not recommend a hard upper limit as the idea is to get as many good stories circulated as possible. Do not abuse this trust.

Corollary to this, in the event that we (God forbid) have a bunch of really bad stories in one bracket, reviewers may recommend none of these advance in cases where no one story can be found of merit (or greater merit than the others).

In a theoretical 4 bracket 20 story comp, reviewers would on average have to review 8 stories (5 from their initial bracket, plus three other winners from the other brackets. Obv would not have to re review the winner format he bracket they voted on).

 

@enembee - Fixed, unambiguous time. Sure thing, to a point. Midnight in Xiph0's time zone (or whoever is posting the stories) at the END of the date listed. Up to his discretion if he lets people sneak in a few minutes late.

As for extra submissions. I do feel strongly that a large draw to the competition (and a mark for fairness) is that everyone is required to read and review all of the stories. BUT we can have a caveat that if we have more than X number of stories the minimum review length goes down to 100 words instead of 200 if everyone feels that would help.

Further thoughts?

@Silirt I don't know how to make reviewing a more attractive prospect. I'd personally be frustrated in some kind of extra competition - I read, I review, I move on. Sometimes there are gems that make reading all the mediocre (sorry, true) ones worthwhile. Sometimes I can really hit on feedback that I feel good about because I think it's useful and that's satisfying.

I'm up for ideas that people think will work.

@Halt - I'm willing to try the bracket idea next time we get a larger number of stories. Split them up into smaller groups, have a set of reviewers review each set, then the reviewers recommend which ones move to the final bracket where the other reviewers from other brackets then read those.

Question - how do get the initial list of 'reviewers' to assign to stories?

Question - what do you think the limit should be here, if we have 15+ entries? Fewer? More?

 

@Ched
Re reader list - admittedly I thought we'd just let readers self-sort themselves. However if it becomes a problem, introducing something as simple as a randomizer app readers can click on to assign them a number ought to do the trick.

I think 12 is a good limit.
--- Post automerged ---

You mean indy Harry or Fleur

 

I dislike reducing the review requirement because, let's face it, 200 words is not a lot as it is. It's questionable whether we can create reviews of substance using such short formats (and make no mistake, reviews of substance ARE the point). If most of us end up writing longer than 100 words to review (and I suspect we will save for those fics that are too short to review really), this will end up at best being ineffective and at worst reducing the quality of feedback.