The Challenges

Now that the dust has settled on the last challenge I thought it might be a good time to explore some of the issues with them that seem to be causing a degree of controversy and to do so starting with a blank page as it were rather than by responding specifically to previous comments on the forum.

There seem to be two main areas to look at, the first being in regards to what we intended to achieve with the challenges and the second being a discussion of why we think the current way of doing them is the best way to go about it.

Once the voting has completed on the challenges the details can be seen on a separate standalone web page (http://www.spankinglibrary.tk/challenges/) which is visible to both site members and guests alike, although you need to be logged in to read the actual stories. The main page of the standalone site explains that:

"The purpose of the challenges is to stimulate existing, and potential, authors into creating new works of spanking fiction, to provide a means whereby readers can participate by being able to cast votes on the entries, and most importantly, simply to have a bit of fun."

So, our intention was to "challenge" authors to write works based on something that was presented to them and that's how we hoped it would be perceived. I noted numerous references on the forum to the "competition" and of course it's natural that some will see it in that light irrespective of whatever alternative spin we try and put on it. I'll explain later why I believe that viewing it in that light is something of a pointless exercise.

On the other side of the fence we thought that it would be good to let the readers participate by letting them cast their votes on what they'd read. From conversing with users of the site the impression I get in general is that most people do seem to enjoy being able to place their votes. The alternative, which I'm personally very much not in favour of, is to appoint some panel of 'experts' and let them decide on the outcome.


OK, so the above outlines our intentions and now I'd like to look at why I believe the alternatives, at least in terms of the voting process, are not worth pursuing. There's been a great deal of debate about how the votes should be counted, the whole premise of which is based on ignoring our stated intention for the challenges, but as I've already noted that's the nature of things and we might as well consider what's being said. I've already explained why an "average" vote is no improvement over a total vote count but really all the arguments about how to score the voting are irrelevant as there are a large number of other variables which have a MUCH greater effect on the outcome:

1. Criteria
No criteria are actually specified for how the entries should be judged so one assumes that many will be voting purely on how much they personally 'enjoyed' what they read. I see nothing wrong with that but at the same time we need to recognise it's a totally subjective measure. Others may be voting based on what they perceive to be the literary merit of the entry and yet others may be using a combination of the two. Even if we were to try and get people to vote solely on literary merit, I'm sure there would be little, if any, agreement as to how that should be determined. It doesn't need saying that critics are very often not in agreement and there are rarely any 'absolutes' to be found. The bottom line is that we have no set criteria for judging nor do I think we want any as it's not in keeping with our intentions for the challenges not to mention impractical.

2. Ability to judge
Even if a carefully defined set of criteria for judging each challenge was outlined, you then have to consider how capable everyone is at being able to put those into practice. And the reality is that it's going to vary enormously to the extent that it will soon become apparent that trying to go down this route, where potentially the whole readership is involved, is pointless.

3. Preferred content
It's well known that certain entries will be favoured based on the spanking orientation, gender, age etc that they feature. For example, writers of F/M fiction are going to be at a huge disadvantage. We could try and tackle this by having a whole range of sub-divisions within the challenges for the various categories but that seems messy, fragmented and fraught with difficulties.

4. All or none
Another huge problem is that, as shown by the statistics I've produced in the past, not everyone who votes bothers to do so on all the entries. In addition, I'm sure some authors share the details of their entry with others who then vote only for those and ignore the rest. Other entrants may decide to only vote on their own submissions or give low marks to those they regard as competition. Without turning the whole thing into something incredibly tedious I think you simply have to accept that the majority of voters are not going to vote on every submission, whether it's because some of them simply aren't their cup of tea, are too long, don't have a whizzy title, or they don't have enough time to read them all, or any number of other reasons. Trying to impose a system whereby only the votes from voters who have voted on EVERY entry get to count will be largely unwelcome not to mention pointless as someone could simply vote for the few stories they wanted to vote on and blanket vote 1 for the rest or something equally unhelpful.


There are a number of other factors involved but the four above have a FAR greater impact then whatever convoluted algorithm we might come up with in regards to how the votes should be counted. The only conclusion that can be drawn, assuming one ignores the intent behind the challenges in the first place, is that there is no way of implementing some objective, totally fair, method of voting and once you arrive at that conclusion then I would assume you have to accept that the original intentions are sound.

Putting the voting to one side, I think there are several positive reasons for entering and enjoying the challenges, including the focus of attention on what you've written, the comments you receive (it's clear that challenge entries pick up more comments than routine story submissions), the possibility of finding new readers who hadn't read your work before, and so forth.

Lastly, despite all the debate, my understanding is that the challenges as they are, are enjoyed by the majority, provide something to talk about, result in some of us getting to read things we wouldn't have otherwise, produce a batch of new spanking fiction and allow us to celebrate the diverse styles of the various authors. Hopefully, we'll have another one or two later in the year.

After having thought this over several times I've come to the belated opinion that what Februs says above is mostly right. This isn't a competition in any realistic sense. The judging criteria of the voters is too diverse, the number of voters varies with each story, the appeal of each story is keyed to the preferences of the reader, and to factors that are completely random. So, it's not a good idea to view it as a true "contest". But, if you won, good for you---a lot of people really liked your story. And if you didn't win, good for you too---because a lot of people really liked your story.
The only thing I'd like to know, and this is just me---the average vote score. Was it 6.5? 7.2? Even better would be a spread showing all numbers from high to low. I mentioned in a thread earlier that in looking for books on Amazon, I always look at the little bar graph that shows the spread of the reviewers' scores of the book. A 4-star book can have several 5 star votes but it can have some 2 and 1 star votes too. I'd sort of like to know what my spread was. Maybe each author could get this info sent privately if he/she wanted? Can this be done without a lot of effort? If it's cumbersome or complicated, forget it, but I thought I'd ask.

What I particularly liked was the anonymity. No prejudice about what I expected from previous reading of an author's work. Of course, you're in the hands of authors there, because they might choose a title that deliberately gives it away, but that is called cheating, girls and boys.

There is no formula that produces a perfect result and human nature would ensure that people would take advantage of it if they knew the algorithm. Heck,it's only a bit of fun. None of my favourites came anywhere near the top but the best thing is that I commented simply based on what I liked.

I read all but only voted on about half. Giving someone one vote seemed arbitrary and insulting so I only gave five or more, or gave nothing at all (that doesn't mean I did not enjoy it).

Hi Februs,
first I want to let you know, that I like the challenges very much. It's always great fun, especially guessing who wrote what and how other persons perceive the stories. As far as I understand is the main problem:


All other factors you listed above doesn't seem to be so important as factors like title, length, literary skills or authors/readers -attitudes are all the same for everybody and could be taken into account by the authors. But changing the orientation would obviously be counterproductive. Without creating a whole range of sub-divisions or make extra challenges for all and everything, couldn't it be possible to create just one more award and mention the highest ranked F/M-story in a challenge? Than nothing else needs to be changed, but the F/M-authors would have an adjustment of the disadvantage.

I think things have to remain the same, as much as I am a F/M writer and know I am at a disadvantage. I did change one of my stories to M/F before I entered it, (simple by changing she to he etc etc) but after thinking about it I decided it was just not me and I would lose something by doing such a thing to myself.

I do not like top categories in different sections as we have way too many sections to consider, M/F, F/F, F/M. F/c, M/c and on and on it goes.

My only thought is, and i realise the work for Februs here is asking a lot, is to put 3 scoring boxes at the end of each entry. The boxes worth say 1 point, 3 points and say 6 points. There could be explanations, such as 1 point if I did't like it, not my genre, 3 points if nice but too long or lacked dialogue and 6 points if I really liked it and thought it was great. Also I would suggest every 10 reads of any story be worth 1 point, so if a F/c story got 200 reads but no one finished it because they hated it at least the writer would get 20 points. One has to realize a point spread based on number of reads in this challenge may well have made the rankings different for every spot except for First place.

The advantage of the boxes below the story would mean never having to go to a second page for scoring, a limited scoring ability now down to three choices but still fair as the total points allowed. You will notice 1+3+6 = 10. I also put forth the premise that more people would vote as they would not have to look for the title again on a second page plus no need to do anything except check a box. Disadvantage is there is fewer options to give assorted points like a 2 or 4 or 8 etc.

In conclusion I suggest every thing remain as they are unless a scoring system could be worked out that is not a lot of work for Februs. I complain some times about the Challenge and know as a F/M writer I likely stand no chance in hell of winning or runner up, but I love the opportunity to participate. I got over 700 views from the current challenge and 39 comments and 5 favourites, where else would I get such an opportunity. The other thing is maybe there is a viewer out there who thinks they don't like F/M or whatever genre besides M/F and on the Challenges finds they like something different as well, that is worth entering the Challenge for all by itself.

Ahhhh, with all due respect to my Teutonic colleague, IMHO (using an old expression) "That's a can of worms that you don't want to open"--because it's the first step toward categorization of Challenge stories, which I'm assuming isn't desired in this Library.

If there's an exception made for F/M stories, then what about child-spanking ones? Certainly there are some active Library members who don't especially care for those, and therefore wouldn't give them very many points in voting. Since M/M stories constitute a considerably smaller minority than F/M ones, it could be argued that they should have a separate tabulating category as well. (IIRC there were only a couple stories with M/M elements involved in the recent Challenge.)

I've entered stories in the SSS newsgroup's summer Short Story Contest, which does have various categories (beyond gender orientation) for authors to enter their stories in, for over a decade, so I have no problem with the concept, but AFAIC it would complicate what's currently a relatively straightforward process in Challenge voting.

There were enough F/M stories in the recent Challenge so that primarily F/M readers could at least occasionally run into their story preference while reading the 56 entries--which to me was the most important aspect of entering an F/M story... --C.K.

I really don't think that there is any need to change these writing contests. People can vote for any story they like based on whatever criteria that they would like to use. The present system does encourage authors to write stories that they otherwise may not have done.

I noticed that with 19961 votes cast for 56 stories the average was 356 votes per story. The six top vote getters didn't get many more votes than the average. The stories that got the lowest number of votes were probably not much lower than the average, which means that quite a few people read them and enjoyed them which is the whole purpose of the contest, so everybody wins.

The only thing that I object to is the euphemism of calling these writing contests "challengers". That is like calling beauty contests "pageants" which I always thought was silly. If there is voting and score keeping then it is a contest or a competition. Calling it something else makes no sense.

There is nothing wrong with friendly competition. How many people here play tennis or cards or beach volleyball and don't keep score? Score keeping is part of the fun. So keep the "contests" going, they are also a lot of fun. Just don't take them too seriously, that sounds too much like work. Algorithms? Yawn.

I enjoyed the challenge and care not how many readers like my submission or voted on it. There were quite a few comments, more than any I ever received on an episode entry in a series, but I just started writing here a few months ago.
Make the voting tally system manageable for you Februs. Your idea, your system.
I would love to see a list of titles and authors. I 'm really curious regarding who wrote what, I thought I could identify some of the styles, but can not be sure. I commented on all of them and heard from a few authors, but I'd like to know them all.

I have to agree with Februs as well. I enjoyed the challenge. There is no need to change the way it's calculated. 1 plus 1 equals 2 works fine. Also, I would think it a disaster to put any type of orientation in any of the entries just for the reason stated about disadvantages re: F/M - v - M/F. I can name a few authors including myself who would go right into that pitfall.

As far as the word challenge, I can see the point to that, too. How about just competition? That's what it is, right? Then again. . . apples and oranges. ;)

They are quite popular. "Miscarriage of Justice" is about a spanked child and some other winning titles like "Dad's strap", "Daddys little girl" imply child-spanking. But F/M-stories also have a chance to enter the ranks like Blimps "Quality of Merci".