story challenge

57 stories and 20 days to read them. Don't you think it's a bit of a challenge in itself, considering we're in July, some of us are about to leave for the holidays (not me ) or receive family and/or friends?

No matter when we hold the challenge, it is always a busy time for someone. Sept is back to school and many parents are busy with that, Nov and Dec a lot of people get wrapped up in Christmas stuff, etc etc. Most take their laptops on vacation now and can find an hour here or there if they are interested in voting, and many want time by themselves away from visitors so they seek out a quiet spot and can do reading then.

For myself, I can hardly wait to read the comments on the stories and see which story managed to come out with the most votes. IF I enter a story I never expect to win or be a runner up, but it is fun to see what others thought about all the stories.

It is a daunting task, but reading three stories per day will get it done. To that end, I've been maintaining a regiment of reading two stories while I eat my breakfast (usually one long one and one short one) and then reading another one or two before I go to bed.

Good plan! I have been doing the same - alternating long ones with short ones .. 27 left to go!!!! My goal is to hopefully read and vote on every single one!

As we've said in the past, if a substantial number of people are having problems reading all the stories we'll extend the voting deadline. Having said that, on each of the previous 7 challenges hardly anyone at all was voting during the last few days which suggests that the period allowed for voting is about right.

Februs, since there is a huge number of entrants, and a much larger number of individual authors contributing now, is there any chance of listing the top 10 rather than the top six this time?

Getting through all the stories and judging them fairly will be a daunting task. If I read too many at one time, I'll start to get 'burned out' on them, and I won't be able to judge the last ones the same as when I started and my mind was fresh. Just in case I don't manage to get through the list in the allotted time, I am not voting on any until I finish. I'm keeping a record of how I would vote on each story and will enter all the votes at once if/when I finish. It wouldn't be fair to vote on some, but not on others because I didn't get to them.

The challenge software, like a lot of the main library software, is written in such a way that most of what it does is automated. In other words, I don't write separate code for each challenge, the voting process, the results, the challenge submissions having the author's name hidden and then later made visible, the stories being marked with a little icon to show they were entered in the challenge, the trophy icons on the author pages, the whole standalone Challenge webpage etc etc, are all determined automatically. So, varying the number of submissions that get displayed as the "Top X" at the end of each challenge isn't really practical.

as having accrued the most votes

I vote as I go along, but I shall erase all my votes if I see that I won't be able to get through all the stories. To keep track of which stories I have read, I always give at least one point. If I have time, I shall go through my favorites once more toward the end for consistency.

I'd suggest entering your votes as you go along and if you find that you don't manage to vote on them all i can very easily delete them all in one go for you. Hopefully, though, that won't be necessary.