The Challenges

There is without a doubt unfairness, bias, and even "cheating" within the existing system, with much that people complain about, which is to say that it's no different from life in general. Any other system would also have... unfairness, bias, and yes, "cheating," and would draw complaints. I can't see how a change improves anything. Despite the faults of the existing system (and I could cite them as well as anyone), people seem to LIKE the challenges - authors submit stories, people read them, cast votes, respond with comments at a far greater rate than on other stories, and then applaud the winners on the Forum. From the posts ahead of mine here on this thread, members report that they enjoy it. So, despite the faults we all recognize, this appears to me like SUCCESS. Why mess with it?

Wow. We do love these debates. How many angels can you spank on the point of a pin?

It would be preferable if everyone read all the stories, at least to the point of concluding it wasn't their kind of story or it was rubbish, but it's impractical to try to enforce that. I don't go with canadianspankee's suggestion as I can't see why a story read by ten people who didn't like it should score better than a story those people didn't get round to reading, but might have liked.

Why change a winning formula would be my thought. The Challenges are a great idea and do stimulate authors into writing (although I missed the deadline this time!!) I must confess I didn't get round to reading them all but I thought there were some excellent stories. I don't see the point in having catagories as I always have two criteria when judging, did I enjoy reading it and was it well written!? FM,MF, MM, Mmmf doesn't really have as much importance as something amusing and well written. Congratulations to all those who didn't miss the deadline and took part!

I find myself in agreement with Blimp, on two counts. I think that the Challenge system works about as well as one can expect given the foibles of human nature and I, also, procrastinated too long and missed the deadline.

I did, however, read and vote on all of the entries and commented on all but two of them (and that was due to being called away from the computer before having a chance to write a comment and then forgetting to go back; so, my apologies to those two authors).

Whether it's a "Challenge" or a "Competition" may be largely a matter of semantics but I have to agree with those who pointed out that as long as you're keeping score most entrants will tend to view the exercise as competitive in nature.

That is not necessarily a bad thing as it may encourage the entrants to make an extra effort to produce top quality writing. IMHO (as CK would put it), the vast majority of the stories in this round seem to support that thesis. (There were a few exceptions. Stories, which I will not name, in which grammar, sentence structure and coherence of thought seemed to be largely absent. Proof reading would have helped in those cases!)

For those who do enter, some additional data (re: voting results), as mentioned by others before me, would probably be of interest but, in fairness to Februs who is vastly underpaid for the quantity and quality of his work, we may have to content ourselves with what we have which, I believe most would agree, is pretty darn good!

IC- Simply click on the 'Challenges' tab, like you did when you were reading the anonymous entries. You will now find the list with all the stories and their respective authors.

It is a dilemma Barrett, but folks have a right to read or not read. Vote or not vote and I think the more complicated the system becomes, the fewer users we will realize. I still don't have a real understanding of the ins and outs of the system. But, I enjoyed doing it and can't complain. There really can't be common standards when it comes to pieces that have little in common. Personal taste enters and no matter how strict or well considered, quantifying taste is damn near unmanageable This unpleasant element- humanity is almost impossible to control

Well, once a reader has awarded at least one point to one story, he/she has effectively voted for all of the stories--the rest of them then receiving a "zero" vote unless he/she later awards more points to some (or all) of them.

AFAIC the voting is basically a 'popularity contest' based on whatever factor(s) a particular voter wishes to employ, but IMHO there's nothing wrong with that.

I do try to read and award points to every Challenge entry, and to comment on at least the majority of them--literary merit, at least as I perceive the concept, is one factor I attempt to employ in my voting but it's hardly the only one... --C.K.

barrethunter

My response is this. There must be some reason the 10 people opened the story in the first place vs they did not open the the others. Perhaps it was the "catchy title" or perhaps it was because the others were extensively long and scared off the 10 viewers. What ever the reason, be that reason sound or not, the fact is that 10 people did decide to open it and did not open the others.

We may ask "why should just views be awarded points" I suppose, but this is 1/10 of a point, which means 200 view is going to result in 20 whole points. Yes, those 20 points would have made a big difference in the results of the last challenge but why should that "title" or whatever reason not be granted some recognition? As viewers on this site we all go through the latest story listing, and the first stories we read are the ones with the best titles. It takes skill to come with a good title (which I lack by the way) and such skill should reap its own minor rewards.

It is clear on this track most people agree to leave the Challenges as they are, and as I stated before it is likely the best option or else one could argue forever and get exactly nowhere. I only suggested the scoring changes in a "out-of-mind" moment which most people on here ignored, and I think we should all do the same.

If you have no good title you could help yourself by clicking on your story repeatedly for a few hours per day.

Canadianspankee: it's still strange in your proposal that if a number of people read the thing because they fancy from the title they might like it, but it turns out so unattractive to them that they may be inclined to give it no points, it should thereby accumulate points denied to a story they didn't read and so couldn't judge, which would be very unlikely if they'd read it to have got less than a 1. That's a precise reversal of what one would expect and think to be fair. One consequence might be for those who really strive to win this thing, that they might devise misleading titles.