About the story challenge

In my opinion, there are far too many stories this time. It's impossible for me to read them all in due time, never mind compare and judge them!
Wouldn't it be better to limit the bulk next time?

There are a lot but they're only a maximum of 500 words each .. so reading each one only takes a couple of minutes.

Plus with the new voting system you don't need to compare them and choose a favourite, you can mark each one on its own merits...

And WHO are you going to LIMIT ??? We could I suppose form an ORDALIE queue ??? lol. Actually I do sympathise and as I ploughed through them all I was thinking thank goodness only 500 words. Having said that they are of course all brilliant. Oh dear, typical switch.

I say we limit it to:

1) mine; and
2) ten or twelve or so not-quite-so-good-as-the-other stories

Thats way I'd have maybe a 50/50 chance of winning or at least getting an honorable mention (and one of those neat badge icons Februs came up with).

Of course, to do this, we'd need a volunteer reader (ordalie???) to cull out the better stories.

Sound like a plan?

Only a 50/50 chance of winning!!!? I have rarely encountered such modesty on these pages, nj!

Aw, shucks. Surely everyone knows that the REAL me is modest - the epitome of modesty, the MOST modest-est person of all, in fact, and that everything else is just an act. That, and my concern that the judges just may not be as good at judging as I am at writing leads me to a lower estimate of my chances. (There - better?)

I don't know what the problem is. Because they're all very short, I read them all in much less time than I read the stories for the last picture contest.

Neither do I. I read everything in one sitting. But some people may either read slower, or have less time at one pop, or whatever. Actually, I thought that (for the 500-word contest, at least), the 2 1/3 weeks was almost TOO long. After the first week, until the past couple days, there was very little voting (and presumably reading) going on. I'd suggest shortening the window, BUT a longer time=frame is likely to be needed when the stories are longer. Of course, if other people think there is a problem, then I've already offered my (very sensible) solution.

You are right about there not being much voting. Last time I looked there were, in round numbers about 16,000 votes cast. Theoretically each person has 10 votes times 65 or 650 potential votes. Assuming conservatively that each person uses only half their votes (325) then by my math only about 49 people, out of the hundreds of members that we have, have voted. If people are awarding higher scores, say using 500 votes per, then we only have 32 voters.