Finished voting on the Letter Challenge

I see your point in this example, but how likely is it that a story would only have one person (the author) voting on it to skew the average, no matter how poorly received it was? You would think with enough readers here it would balance things so that there weren't huge discrepancies in votes cast (but I understand this is meant to be an extreme case).

That said, I do agree with your point that it could lead to very competitive authors trying to undermine other authors by bringing down their averages with low scoring. Although truly cut-throat authors can do the same now with the current system, I suppose.

One would certainly hope that writers here aren't that extreme in their need to "win" and can enjoy what these "challenges" were intended for: to stimulate creativity and participation among our writers and to have "a bit of fun" as Februs so wisely pointed out.

Really, the only fair way is to vote early and often. Create about 10 different screen names, then vote only for the stories you really like, and give those stories 10 votes each. Openly offer to accept bribes in exchange for your votes. Find a way to bypass Februs - granted, an almost impossible task - and give some stories (the ones written by authors who DIDN'T bribe you) negative votes. Don't leave your chads hanging (those not in the US may not get this reference, though if Al Gore is secretly on this website, he will understand). And remember this little known LSF rule: The votes of anyone over age 55 count twice as much, plus you get the 10% Senior discount on any bribes offered. Oh, and a vote for me will set you freeeee!

Only kidding about the above (there is no Senior discount). But I do think that the only fair way to vote is to read ALL the stories. I know there are a lot of them. But in a political election, you wouldn't (or at least you probably shouldn't) - vote for one candidate if you don't know who all the other candidates are, and what their views are. Similarly, for fairness sake, I don't believe you should vote for any story if you haven't read and considered them all. You don't have to vote on all of them, just on the ones you think merit it. But at least give each one a chance.

After one of the previous story challenges, I looked at the results. The top 3 stories, and the 3 honorable mention stories, all were read significantly more - in many cases, over 100 times more - than the other stories, the ones which didn't garner enough votes to finish in the top 6. While it makes all the statistical sense in the world that a story which is viewed 350 times would garner more votes than a story "only" viewed 200 times, it doesn't make sense - to me anyway - from a fairness perspective.

I know this is all supposed to be for fun, no winning or losing. Though if that were completely true, there wouldn't be votes at all, and no results of said votes posted as the top 3, or the top 6, or any "standings" at all. But even if that WERE completely true, your votes still do count for something, even if it is just for an author's sense of where he/she stands as far as his/her's story's popularity, and its value to his/her audience. While this may be less important to some authors, I think most authors do attach some significance to it, or, at the least, have an interest in knowing where they stand with their readers. I'm not saying authors will change their writings based on whether their stories are popular (though they might), but they ARE curious to know what others think. Comments are valuable for this purpose as well, but numbers/votes are more quantifiable. But only if they are cast in an equitable manner.

I think the people who run this site, and this story challenge, do everything in their power (and some things which seemingly should be beyond their power, but somehow aren't) to make it run smoothly, efficiently, and as fair as possible. The whole method of submitting the stories for the challenge, posting them anonymously, and the entire voting process, is better than many (or most?) political elections and social referendums. IMHO, they could not do a better job. However, I think we, as voters, could.

Just so you know: I do not have a dog in this race. I did not submit a story this time around. I wrote one, but didn't submit it, mostly because I wasn't completely satisfied with what I wrote by the deadline date. And to a lesser degree, because I think that in order to vote on one story, one has to read them all, and that hadn't happened with previous contest entries. I've since tidied it up, and will submit it after the contest is over, just as a regular story (I hope no one considers this a sneaky shamelss plug - I didn't mean it to be!).

Well said, smeple. There was one contest where my story, and several others were viewed by fewer readers than actually voted (even though there were undoubtedly at least a few who read without voting). I think this has improved on more recent contests. Given the number of votes this time around (we just now exceeded the previous record for total votes, with almost 4 days to go - HOORAY!), I've hopeful that the voters will have managed to wade through all of the entries.

I would note, though (as has been said many times), that the challenge is for FUN. Being a former 'last place winner,' and never having received so much as an honorable mention myself, I've still had fun writing my entries, as well as reading and voting for those from other authors.


There's no shame in that! That's why it's called a shameless plugging. (I speak from no little experience)

Februs couldn't you divide the votes by the total number of reads as opposed to the number of votes as surely this would be the fairest way to average out the votes. This would overcome the issue of people who dislike the story not voting and thereby producing a false positive for the example you described. Although I guess the problem with my suggestion is the inconsistencies created by readers who click on a single story more than once to complete or reread it.

Februs - could't you do a formula with a logarithmic function? I have no idea how that would affect results, but logarithms are way cool!

The problem about the average vote is that a story that didn't at all appeal to some readers for reasons evident in the title, but appealed well to a minority, could do very well, whereas one with a less obvious title would pick up a lot of readers, some of whom wouldn't like its orientation and would award low votes.

In any case, as njrick has stressed, this is for fun, not for fame or cash prizes!

I can understand this, but I tried not to let that particular aspect influence me. So although my preference is for M/F, I would give high marks to F/F or F/M etc, if it was a) well written and b) really was a letter, and not just a story with 'Dear So-and-so' and 'Love from Such-and-such' tagged on at the beginning and end.

I also looked for originality, humour, or emotional engagement.

And I have done my duty and voted and commented on all of them.

EXCELLENT criteria. Exactly what I used in my scoring(although I would have taken ten times as long to describe it, but, being an American, I would have omitted that second 'u' from humor; where'd you Brits learn to spell anyhow?)

An easy fix is to set a threshhold to qualify. But, I digress. The contest is what it is and it's interesting no matter how you score it.

What would really be interesting to me as a contestant is to see the voting spread on my entries, like a bar graph that charted the voting pattern. I say this because whenever I buy a book from Amazon I always read the reviews, both positive and negative and I look at the spread which is a bar graph. It gives valuable clues about the book, whether it is worth buying. I could then see how a story sat with the readers.

I found this contest format difficult. It forces 1st person POV and letters don't recite dialog ( at least I never saw any that did). So right away some choices are restricted. Then you have to fit your story within that framework.

As for this contest I'm not going to try and handicap it. I will only note that the traditional transgression/punishment scene in a Janus or MR Magazine type of letter seems very popular around here.....

And this from a nation which uses 'drug' as the past tense of 'drag', and 'snuck' as the past of 'sneak'!