Past & Future Story Challenge 2014

I read in order of most gripping title first, irrespective of length!!!!! However for those I don't get chance to read I award them my average score to be fair (that is displayed on the meter above)!!!! Most often I do read and comment them all tho!

It doesn't really matter to me whether we extend it or not. If I don't finish, I am tempted to wipe out all the scores I have assigned thus far. I don't like the idea of giving an average score to a story that deserved a 10 (or a 1) or of voting on some and not others. I think I will finish, though, although I will have to skim through some of them rather than read thoroughly and savor them as I would prefer.

As far as length, I normally save the extremely long stories (6,000+) for last. We have a minimum word count; I don't see why we can't have a maximum as well.

I always look forward to the challenges. I love both writing and reading the entries. But, I will be glad when this one is over. Many factors, some personal and some here, have sucked most of the fun out of it for me this time.

It doesn't really matter to me if there is a voting extension of not. (I don't have a horse in this race.) But if there's a vote, I say stick to the schedule.

We have decided to extend the voting period by one week, so the voting will now end on the 28th October.

The main criteria behind the challenges is to stimulate new writing and have a bit of fun in the process, rising to the challenge of writing for a specific theme even if it's not one we would normally consider. A big thank you to everyone who has entered.

If it's generally felt that the task of reading and voting fairly on the entries from the people who made the effort to participate is onerous, perhaps it's time for Februs and I to consider whether we bother running any further challenges in the future. But in the meantime, we have a week extra, so please read what's on offer and enjoy.

This is EXACTLY why members shouldn't have kept asking for extensions and making it sound like reading/voting is such a 'burden'! Do the best you can with the time allotted, and simply enjoy what you can get to. I definitely look forward to the challenges, even if not submitting an entry; in my opinion, eliminating them is the LAST thing any of us wants.

According to those on this thread who advocated for an extension, the number of entries and their length bogged them down. Perhaps limiting each participating author to a single entry, with a maximum word length, would be the best way to keep the challenges going. Why do we need 60+ entries, anyway? If an author feels so inspired by the challenge theme to write several stories, he/she can choose one for the challenge and submit the others for general loading.

This is exactly what we don't want to do. The voting, as we've previously been at pains to point out, is merely for a bit of amusement. The primary objective of the challenges is to stimulate authors to write and in the process to generate a bunch of enjoyable new stories to read. The last thing we want to do is discourage authors from writing as many entries as they want and worse still to limit the word count. The most popular entries in the last two challenges consisted of 5,787 and 7,726 words and could very well have been excluded if we'd placed a word count limit on those challenges.

We've always said that an extension to the time limit for voting was an option but in previous challenges there was no evidence to support that as by the final few days of the challenge it was clear that hardly anyone was still reading or voting on them. This time, it appears to be different and personally I'm glad to see the longer entries as I prefer them to the "handful of paragraphs" type stories which make up the bulk of the LSF.

Thank you, flopsy!

I really don't understand taking such a hard line on this. As you said, this is supposed to be fun. I, personally, didn't 'keep asking' for extensions or say that reading the entries is a 'burden'. All I said was that I would love to have an extension due to personal circumstances beyond my control, and this was after Februs mentioned the possibility. Yet, for some reason, I feel like all this is directed at me. Maybe that is because I was the first to respond after his post or maybe it is just my 'everything is all my fault' frame of mind these days.

Februs, actually they wouldn't have been excluded if there had been a maximum word count simply because the author would have stuck to that count. Just sayin'.

I enjoy the challenges. It's a wonder Flopsy and Februs aren't bald by now.

Wow, Fi. This is not directed specifically at you, and I'm sorry if you feel that way. You yourself said you don't match my description, right? I really had no idea who first suggested an extension nor paid attention to which posts were generated by whom. It was a response to the admins' concern that if the reading and voting were considered "onerous" then they might consider eliminating future challenges. No one wants that. My point is that this is supposed to be for fun so let's not get overly focused if we can't get them all read in time. It's great they have extended the deadline so more readers can finish.

Maybe the word 'Challenge' doesn't mean 'a story', but a Challenge in 'reading all the stories.'