On the scoring of challenge entries

Since I've been so incredibly fortunate to win the past two challenges, maybe I should keep my mouth shut and keep smiling, but the scoring has been bugging me. I know that it has changed a bit over the years, but still I don't feel entirely comfortable with the current system. I've noticed that shorter stories and those with catchy titles tend to attract more views and thereby also more votes. Or pure luck, but it's evident that some stories have multiple views compared to others. Thereby a story with an average of 5 among twenty-five voters will beat a story awarded 10 by ten voters. Wouldn't it be more fair and reflect the quality of the story if they were rated according to the average vote given?

There are literally dozens of ways the Challenge could be judged, however no matter which one is picked there is always going to be ways in which it is not fair to some. I suggest we leave it as is. I never win in the scoring, but I usually get a large number of comments and reads. That to me is winning. Besides that, I just might pick up one or two regular readers who also comment on my regular stories. That is a real prize.

CS

There have been many previous posts with different suggestions re: "fairer" scoring, particularly when the challenge was a new feature here... but it always ends up stirring more debate and taking away from the fun of participating. So we have all agreed to leave it as is and just enjoy the challenge of writing to a particular theme/prompt and reading our fellow members' submissions.

P.S. You seem to have been doing something right, Glagla, if you've won twice already! Congrats

As others have pointed out this particular subject has been debated many times but in summary, here are the reasons we should leave it as it is:

- it's impossible to specify a set of objective scoring criteria that could be applied equally by all voters.

- even if it was possible to create such a set of criteria not everyone would be capable of applying them. And even if they were we've no guarantee they would do so.

- not everyone who participates bothers to vote on all the stories. We know from past disclosures that some entrants only vote for their own story and no-one else's.

Those are, let's say rational, reasons for leaving things as they are but perhaps more importantly the challenges were introduced primarily for entertainment purposes, to stimulate authors to write, to enable authors to get new readers and a healthy number of comments and to give the readers a chance to 'have a say' in things by voting. My advice, as always in regards to these challenges, is don't get hung up on the scoring.

Lastly, just to respond to Glagla's suggestion in regards to using the average vote: this simply doesn't work and to illustrate this with an extreme example: let's say author A's story gets voted on 20 times and averages 8.2; author B's story only gets voted on by himself/herself and they award themselves 10.

Good point, I stand corrected and quite egoistically hope for many future wins for me in the current version of the voting system

I wasn't in the running the first challenge I entered, but I picked up 28 comments on the story which definitely made it worth the effort of entering.

I think that if one can't score all the entries one should drop out of the vote. Alternatively, if a scorer doesn't score all entries none of his votes should be included.

This suggestion also has been discussed many times before, and I always disagree. If you do that, we will have far fewer scorers.

Remember that this isn't really a contest. It's a way to have fun while we generate new stories and create interest. So we should encourage participation by as many members as possible, even those who don't have the time or desire or devotion to read every story. As long as random readers read and score random stories; even if they don't vote on them all, the law of averages will even things out.

Some folks assign an "average" score to stories that they don't read to help even things out. If that makes you feel better, then do it!

Hello Guy, I have dropped out once, maybe twice because I could not finish scoring. I see your points, but somehow it doesn't seem right to me to not give as accurate a score as possible. I recognize that my position makes no sense. We are from all over the world and have different backgrounds and tastes which make objective evaluation almost impossible. When I have taken part I have tried to see the stories as stories, as pieces of writing and also evaluated them according to my own tastes.

Yes, it's pretty much a crap shoot when not all stories get read and judged the same number of times but there's no need to change the current system. It's supposed to be a challenge to the writers more than a cut-throat competition (although things apparently got a bit snippy on another thread about it).

I entered 3 stories in the latest challenge, all between 4,800-5,800 words. One got read 232 times, the second 212, and the last 142 times. Not surprisingly, the one that was read the most often scored the highest (essentially 5th place overall). So why didn't people read the 3rd story? Maybe the title wasn't catchy enough or the concept didn't appeal to people. So even though I thought it was the best of the stories I submitted it never had a prayer of winning because it just didn't attract enough viewer interest. So it's a bit of a mixed bag trying to guess what's going to appeal to the readers, but that won't stop me from trying again (unless I'm totally flummoxed by whatever they come up with for the next challenge).

BTW wanted to say thanks for organizing the Challenge but the thread got closed before I had the chance.