I'm cool with it- as if I recall right you won for your Politics entry back in January, so you can definitely do the entry-theme justice.

edit: Just read it, Perspicacity. Good stuff.

 

If anyone is interested and wants something to read in the interim, I posted mine to my anthology on fanfiction.net. (I think I'll just withdraw from the July thing and will look forward to the September thing instead. This should free up time for the judges to read the other stories).

Edit (since I'm getting messages on this): I withdrew not to dis DLP, but because there's a good chance I may have to leave on travel for a couple weeks (I'm still waiting on approval--should find out in the next day or so) and if I do go, I probably won't have a chance to post this for a couple of weeks. I like getting all my stories submitted/posted before leaving, if only to avoid the chaos of trying to return and remember what I was up to.

 

In order to get things going, I randomised a set of judges and will PM them in a moment. The wish for actual reviews along with score numbers has been noted. August theme coming up.

 

For the August writing deadline, are we talking the thirty-first, as usual? Or is the delayed release of the theme being taken into account?

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but finally. Another seven days for them per the usual period to judge and will you be accepting Sesc's late-entry due to the lateness/reselecting of the judges?

 

I know this is beating a dead (or at least severely beaten) horse a bit, but... what's going on in regards to the July contest? Even if the entries never get judged, will they be posted? Hardly seems fair to the people that put the time in to write things that their stories are effectively being held hostage.

Bad analogy perhaps, but whatever. Point stands. I'm slowly working on an entry for the August/September contest, but after looking at the mess that was July...

 

There's been recent activity in the subforum - 4 new posts. One for each story? Hopefully we'll get them soon.

 

Indeed.

https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showpost.php?p=483121&postcount=54

There are 5 ratings for each story now, even if one of the guys isn't an actual judge. I guess we are all just waiting for mods to do something, either give their ratings or just release the stories already. I don't get why that is so hard, it only takes 2 hours to read them all and they've been up there for 6 weeks or more, or just click a few buttons so everyone can see them.

 

That reminds me. I think we asked some time back for the judges commentary to remain with the users themselves who commented being omitted, so we could have an idea of why the ratings fell as they did and such, and IIRC World said Maybe leaning toward yeah.

Given the general level of... disinterest there has been in anything regarding the contest lately, I doubt that would be implemented this time and might not next, but would it be possible for you or another judge to copy/paste that stuff to a file or something and post it up after the fact? It definitely helped back in March when I could still view my thread and therefore got a proper critique on what worked and what needed improvement, and would be definitely appreciated this time around.

 

I don't know how it was handled previously. In the old contests, we just see Xiph0 giving the final score followed by the rest of DLP giving their own reviews. I don't know if previous judges just left numbers or actually explained why they gave them. In the July Contest, the judges all explained their reasoning behind their scores, and again, I don't know if that was done previously. I do know know when I submitted my two contest entries, I think the feedback left in the thread was from random DLPers unless it was the judges posting what they thought of the story after it became public.

 

I judged the April contest, and I can confirm my thoughts on it were deleted when it went public.

 

Same as iLost, only for February's Dark Arts entries, so it's good to get confirmation on July. Thanks.

 

All analogies about being unable to organise a fuck in a brothel aside, this is pretty embarrassing for DLP as a whole, the supposed last bastion of decent HP fic, made up of supposedly non-stupid people who apparently, on this occasion, just couldn't give a fuck.

To think that the contest, in its original form, was actually a pretty good idea.

 

Oh, how true. And to think it was irritating when we had to wait an additional ten days in April for results :facepalm

On another note: I still think the contests are a great idea. I don't want to see them cancelled(which could happen, given our level of bitchiness regarding things lately), but you guys not only dropped the ball you more or less threw it down a ravine and went on your merry way so far.

I fully intend to submit an entry for A+S once I get past the intros of the first year(hovering around 12-13k words at the moment, oi), and will contribute something for October and November(derp, forgot the eleventh month earlier) and December as well if we get to that point.

 

What gets me about it, is the fact that there hasn't actually been any response as to why exactly this is happening.

I mean, in the end it's not something I care that much about, but I would be interested in knowing just WHY it is taking so long.

 

I asked around on irc yesterday, and none of the mods know what the hell is going on either.

 

Perhaps everyone thinks that they are just waiting on someone else...

 

Can we just appoint an interested member to take charge of the contests from now on? They can get the necessary moderator powers to do so.

This way we'll know exactly whose in charge and things should be running much more smoothly.