Finished voting on the Letter Challenge

I entirely agree with you as far your theory about this contests goes, but I have to ask "why" would you be prouder of another site contest?

If it is too personal that is fine, but I have to wonder. I would think anyone could be proud of a win here on this site, regardless of the reason for winning, but you have made me curious.

Some of the controversy on voting is because there are 2 different ways of judging the contest. The first is to judge it as a professional unbiased judge would do it; read all the stories regardless if they are something you like or not and then judge them based on writing skill, character development, etc. The second is to read only those stories that are the genre that you like and rate them subjectively according to whether they turn you on or not. The first is a skill contest, the second is a popularity contest.

I think that most readers and some authors, including me, use the second method while other authors prefer the first method. I think that the Library administrators intended it as fun contest and the second method would be closer to that intent.

Wow, so you've actually visited Texas, huh? Of course, it hasn't been an independent country since 1845.

It is a pretty crazed and dazed place, that's for certain. My favorite Lone Star State saying is ironically about politics in Texas: "A fool and his money are soon elected."

AFAIC there's plenty of proof RE that here in the runner-up state... --C.K.

tiptopper - a number of people who've posted in the past about scoring contests rate partly on personal liking and partly on the skill of writing. They aren't miles apart: the pleasure I get from reading a story is not purely a matter of sexual excitement. I may find it funny, percipient, vivid or clever in deploying a surprise ending I hadn't anticipated. Conversely, it may be clumsily written or incredible while not aiming at being the wilder sort of fantasy. No doubt it says something about me, but if there are several spelling or grammatical mistakes, that will put me off a bit, and I'll be more seriously put off by a careless mistake of fact - for example, importing aspects of the English legal system into the USA where they don't apply, or vice versa - or a gross chronological impossibility.

I can't agree that readers who want to vote should restrict themselves to the genre they like. I can enjoy a story in a genre I don't personally favour.

Because I view the contests on this site as "beauty competitions" and 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'.
I doubt that there are many readers who judge on other parameters.

I for one, as soon as I realise a story concerns children under about 15 stop reading immediately, even though that story may well be beautifully written and composed I am unlikely to find out as it has absolutely no appeal to me.

Tiptopper has put it correctly and very succintly in his reply.

I remain perfectly happy to continue to enter if I can think of an idea I like, for instance I like two of my unsuccessful enties more than my winner!
My comments re child stories are only a reflection of my views and I have no wish to impose my views on others.

Well my earlier post was addressed to Canadianspankee who suggested that a reader should read all stories and give at least one point. I answered that I look at all stories, but don't read every story up to the end and in this cases I don't judge the story. I agree with Guy that this means "zero", but I still think it's fairer towards an author to give rather no vote than one point. My argument was, that an author who asks himself why his story was so poorly - or so well - received, could see on basis of the average points, how the actual voters liked the story.

I agree with you that there are stories who are enjoyable even if they are not in the favourite genre. But these stories have to be much better than others, if they are able to keep my attention up to the end and than I will vote for them accordingly. This happened a few times in the past. And for me "well written" and "enjoyable" stories are highly correlated too.

I don't think the voting system should be changed, but I think if there is a public voting system, readers should also be allowed to use the system however they think it's appropriate. If it is more appreciated by the authors, when only persons vote, who read all stories and give points to every story, I wouldn't participate in the voting process as this would really take too much efforts. There are 56 stories in a format (letters) I normally ignore completely and more than half about orientations I don't mind. I thought it was anyway quite an effort to go through all the entries.

But I think we have so many different preferences and so many different voting approaches that these differences are outweighing each other anyway and therefore are not really important. At the end the voting WILL tell, which stories the readers liked mostly, for whatever reasons.

So, not to seem discouraging to some, this is what I gather many of you are saying. Looking at stats in the type of stories on this site, unless I write M/F stories, with no one under the age of 18, then and only then do I stand a chance of coming anywhere near the top.

All the rest of us who write different then M/F might as well not enter the challenges as many people shut them down when they are not in their preferred genre, and there are not enough "different" writers here to vote and make a difference anyway.

If this is the case then I question why I would even bother, besides the fact that I hope there are some viewers and writers out there who will chance upon my type and other type of "different" stories and realize life is not only doing the things we like the best but also exploring the things that are different.

I will continue to enter the challenges because I think it is fun to do so, but I must admit I am saddened at what I understand to be an attitude of "if it is not my preference who gives a hoot." I read and comment on many different stories on this site over the year, a lot of them M/F and it is not my preferred genre, but I still comment and enjoy the effort made to produce the story. I would hate to think many of you carry the attitude of "my preference only please" onto the general story site but I suspect you do. If what I say is true, then i have to wonder who the real winners and losers are.

I realise that I am very new to these challenges, and pretty ignorant of the niceties of writing in the different orientations.
But I genuinely enjoy writing (or trying to write) a story and - to my surprise - came up this time with a couple of entries which developed in a manner quite opposed to what I might have hitherto expected.
But they are only stories, I enjoyed writing them and hope people might like to read them. Is 'a bit of fun' not what this 'challenge' is all about? I hope so, as that is the spirit in which I read them? Happy reading, everyone!

canadianspankee
I didn't check the stories properly, but my impression in this challenge is that the orientations are approx. 1/3 M/F, 1/3 FM and 1/3 FF. For the stats on this site I have in mind that there are not so many F/M-stories, but therefore in average a F/M-story gets more total views than a M/F story. So the different orientations are balanced.

I try to judge this as a literary contest and feel an obligation to read all stories to the end and give them all a fair chance. By now I have read so many spanking stories that I no longer get automatically turned on by stories that fit my version of the fetish, and I much prefer good stories of an alternative orientation to dull and uninspired stories of the kinds I am expected to like. But I realize, of course, that taste plays an important part in assessing stories and that my sexual preferences are going to be of some importance.

One of the things that continue to surprise me about this site is that there are so many stories that are not primarily intended to turn people on, but which are of a more literary, serious or humoristic kind. For this reason alone it seems a bit strange to me to use sexual turn-on as a yardstick to measure quality (there are better uses of a yardstick!).