How To Fairly Judge 32 Stories?

The only thing I can think of is that a number of people made 2 passes through the stories, the first time perhaps to simply make a note of the ones they liked in general and then having narrowed it down re-read the 'short-listed' stories prior to deciding how to vote? Pure speculation of course but it's all I can come up with at the moment.

Doesn't your algorithm filter that out???

It might be because some people think, that story is read by loads of people, so let's read that one.
Or because less generic titles make that some people won't read them.
Also just guessing though

First my thanks and congrats for those involved in both setting up this board, and this competition.
I would have very great difficulties in writing a very short story, its just not my style.
As SSC have a tribute to Alex as a category I've written an entry, but even cheating and using an intro to explain the tribute, after cutting the story to the absolute bone its about 600 words.
I'll prob post it as a tribute, but I could have done a better job with 2K.

No because two views is still two views even if by the same reader ..


Yes, that's possible too I guess.

Short-short stories are also not in my skill set. I have never entered the SSC because there is no way I could ever write a meaningful story that short. If you simply average the number of words for the stories submitted to the Summer Vacation contest, I think you will find that our writers have told us what word count they prefer (not that the readers don't deserve a say too) .

To the Contest Management: Given the amazing number of stories, and the goal of giving encouragement to the largest number of writers, I suggest you retain your "3 winner" plan, but also consider giving "honorable mention" for the next few highest scoring stories without divulging their actual scores.

Thst could certainly be done if the majority are in favour ... I'll need to know before the 4th though as I'll need to program it.

I think it would be fabulous to give "honorable mention" for the next three highest scores. Although, awards are secondary really. I think it's just been kinda fun just having something different on the site!! And I look forward to reading the comments left by the readers once all is said and done! I've looked at all the stories myself and I think everyone did a wonderful job depicting summer vacation! It was very difficult to award points!!!

Katie B.

Since they're not giving out cash prizes for this contest, in fact they're not even giving out blue, red and yellow ribbons AFAIK, it wouldn't hurt to name a few "honorable mentions" as well and that might encourage participation in the future. The real fun is just in writing and reading the stories, the challenge of putting together the concepts of summer vacation and spanking in some sort of plot line and seeing how others approached that same circumstance.

I'm figuring that if the upper limit of the stories had been around 3,000 words, many of the entries would've gone with about that many--like gas expanding to fill a particular volume. As I stated earlier, to me around 1,500 would be a decent compromise length in making it easier for people to read more stories for voting purposes but still allowing a decent degree of characterization and plot development.

Writing to a 500-word limit (the SSS newsgroup's Short Story Contest) can be somewhat frustrating, I give it a try every summer but it does tend to require limitations RE story aspects and usually requires more effort and imagination by the readers... --C.K.

If we are talking about future contests, how about the following themes?
Labour Day weekend / First day of school
Halloween
Christmas
Valentine Day

That would give us one every few months.

Goodgulf

If you are limited to 500 words I suppose it has to be a slice of life rather than a story with a beginning and ending. Like an Eric Rohmer film perhaps. Maybe you could focus on one particular aspect of the spanking. For example the waiting or the aftermath. It might be harder than producing 2500 words. Mind you don't take my word for it as I am still writing my summer vacation story!

I like the idea of the first day at school as a story title, Goodgulf