I didn't write mine for votes. I wrote my tale simply in an attempt to "get back in the water". Because I enjoyed the concept of the tale itself and putting it to word. If I worried about votes and or personal ego I would never finish writing anything because it would never be good enough.

For others the vote means more. Which is great. It shows what others think of the story, subject and writing skills. But if that is all that is worried about, then people are writing for all the wrong reasons.

Just saying.

 

Very true. Of course it is flattering to one's ego if one receives votes, but for me there is a thrill in competing, in reading the comments (good and bad), such that every time I log on during a compy I eagerly look to see if my entry has had any new comments.

I was fortunate to win one of the early CAWs, and have had a few 'podium finishes' since, but I have also finished last on occasion as well, it makes little difference to my enjoyment of competing. To me it's fun to join in with a community activity, and it has been a great help to my writing, both as good practice and by the comments and advice I have received.

 

Honestly, and though considering the outcome of this writing challenge it sounds insincere, I would have been much happier "not winning" in that I find it extremely embarrassing and uncomfortable. Frankly with the initial responses to my story being so generous, I debated strongly yanking my little work out of the contest for the very reason that happened. Then I thought again at how unfair it was to those that took the time to read it to do so. So essentially I felt trapped.

I just want to be read...Hell, feedback like "I blew four loads" is fine with me, that's a response I'm comfortable with. Even chopping it to pieces is easier than praise frankly. Yet competing? Naw. But I do want to be read. In everything I write though they're hard to find I have morals I've learned and experiences from my life....So in a way I guess I just want to be known as having ever existed.

That said, I also realize without the competition aspect, most stuff never gets read....But I keep hoping. Why I have those stories in my signature, and once I edit the others and repost (out of the competition) I'll be posting them. Sans contest results.

Hush....an alias

 

No, no, PP is right. The obvious next logical conclusion is to delete both the sex stories board and the sex stories site. People would still be free to write and pm stories to each other, but since stories don't get a lot of reads or comments (even worse if they're not competition based) we should just get rid of them.

 

I for one am glad that the comp is public !

I hate to think of the absolutely fantastic stories I'd miss if the writers just sent them to each other !

I personally know lots of members that read the stories however not all people feel qualified or have the heart to judge and vote on people's work . I however love it !

Though it can be time consuming , it's always well worth that time .

We have some extremely talented writers here and I am grateful they give their time for free , putting themselves under pressure

Giving my time and a few words to them is the meast I can do for them giving their time to me , a great symbiotic relationship that benefits us both .

Members who don't visit are missing a treat , .

To the writers I say and thanks . To the naysayers

 

Always a

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Never a

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Thank you all for the kind reviews.

Congratulations Miss Hush ! I told you in my comment I thought you should be looking for a theme.

Thank you once again Miss Annie . It was a good theme, and a great competition.

 

This obsession with fairness to the entrants has been going on for a long time. I recall Horse insisting that we all put a comment on each story if we wanted the privilege of casting a vote. It has got progressively worse since then with this Rate the story out of ten beggaring belief.

Look, the writers are happy as sand boys; they have the buzz of having thought up a story in response to the challenge, they share a camaraderie with their fellow writers on the thread-unless its an anonymous challenge and they can't share with anyone- they have their stories on top of page one and if it slips some one bumps it back up again, thy have a certain celebrity they might not have had before plus some degree of credibility, they also get comments and they get noticed.

So that's something, isn't it?

But the pressure is now all on the readers to jump through the hoops in order to be allowed to vote.

Excuse me.

It's hard enough to get votes at the best of times but this jumping through hoops gets totals down to insignificant.

One thing you might like to consider is how do guys (and it's mostly guys here) decide things. I can tell you we are not strong on quantifying and weighing pros and cons we just bloody decide and if you ask why we tell you Because and that's an end to that.

Instinctive decision making should not be underestimated.

 

I happen to agree with Prurient Purveyer on voting. I think the voting process was ... challenging. I complied because that's what the KAW host required, but I'm all in favor of a more simplistic approach, like pick your top three stories and be done with it. I understand the idea of trying to give everyone some quantifiable praise, but if the results aren't published, then that approach is defeated. Unless, of course, the host PMs all the contestants with their respective totals.

Hey, I like non-public voting. Wanna' know why? Early on, I guess I wrote some stinkers. I didn't think so, but some got zero votes. ZERO! I was crushed. I never said anything, but I thought, damn, what's it take to make people happy around here. And not only that...but EVERYONE saw that my story didn't get a vote. That sucked too! That's why I like anonymous voting. When I host, if someone asks, I'll tell them how many votes they got...via PM.

As KAW host (and the same applies to CAW hosts), Annie chose the method of voting that she best liked. That was her choice and honor, and I respect that. My idea of making it a requirement to write a comment on every story if you wanted to enter and/or making it a requirement to have a comment on every story to cast a vote was indeed draconic. The premise was good...get comments for the authors, because that's our lifeblood. The Edsel was probably a pretty good idea too, to the guy who came up with it. And if you're unfamiliar with the premise, you can Wikipedia Edsel. (Not all good ideas are good ideas.) Rest assured, I'll never make that mistake again.

I think we can let this rest. The competition is over. A new one has started. I encourage those of you who read this to move over to CAW 27, sharpen your pencils (metaphorically speaking), and begin your research and writing.

::: hugs :::

--Horse

 

I dont feel like I've jumped through or been asked to jump through any hoops to vote save reading the stories , and I wouldn't expect to vote if I hadn't read the stories .

The writers have said they want critiques to help them improve, which is fair enough . No one has to comment nor is there a minimum required length of review .

The style of scoring is at the discretion ot the host myself I prefer a 1st , 2nd , 3rd , or top 2 or 3 etc but as long as it ends with a winner /s then I'm happy .

Talking of wanting to get noticed .

And if people dont like what goes on , how they are run , scored or anything else to do with these comps , then why dont they just stay away , and let all us readers , writers , egotistical narcissists , praise junkies and hoop jumpers get on with it .

 

There's at least two competing sites that when you hit the end of the story that you can rate it from 1-5 or 1-10. It just happens that the story side here is either up/down for voting (1 or 0). It's entirely true that even if 10,000 people read a story, maybe 100 will actually take the time to vote. I was kinda bothered by the idea that you seemed to equate my asking you to rate each story with the same level that one might consider nobel nominees. I mean each story is judged independent of the others--I didn't ask you to rank them--I just said on a scale of 1-10, how did you like each story. I think unless there's a runaway obvious story, it's was more agonizing to pick just 1 story like many CAWs have been in the past. Have you never seen a movie and thought "I'd give that 4 out of 5"? No IMDB, Amazon, Metacritic, anything. I never even defined what your criteria had to be for a rating, that's up to you as the voter. Some people gave multiple 10s because they really enjoyed the story--some people gave no 10s because they didn't feel a story hit that level. By the half points you can see that some voters didn't even stick to an integer scale. Some didn't even rate every story.

Your original complaint about the idea made it sound as though I was asking you to create some sort of irrevocable covenant between you and whatever it is you believe in--I simply asked you to rate stories on their own merit. If you feel that it's too agonizing to even do that, I suggest you never vote in competitions again, because actually picking a favorite or top 3 is significantly more challenging.

 

Seems I started or pushed people's buttons here. Didn't mean to cause all this static.

The voting as done was fine I believe. Yea I had a time wrapping my head around choosing what I thought was good or better. But this was also my first time in the pool.

I think @LOAnnie2 ran it well. No complaints at all.

The only story I didn't vote on was mine. Didn't think that would be right. So move on to the CAW and call it a day.

 

I wouldn't take any notice of anything PP says, Horse on the other hand, ...

I don't understand the resistance to the scoring method of voting, I agree with LoAnnie that its much the simplest method. But then I invented it. It was the method I used to decide on my votes, I'd assign the stories a score out of 10 as I read them. So to me it involves no extra work. Deciding on an ordering on the other hand, does require extra work, I have to mentally break all the ties to decide that.

Now different people have different perceptions, so its fair comment, but I still don't understand the objections.

I did the complicated analysis in part to see if different methods of voting made any difference to the outcome of the vote. You could derive most other methods of votes from the data you have, or at least a close approximation of it. What surprised me was the method of voting didn't have any effect on the voting, nearly anyway I cut it, LoAnnie was the winner.

I had thought it might show up a well written piece which was unpopular due to its subject matter. LoAnnie's entry was a perfect example of one I might think to suffer. Or as Tony pointed out, his was inoffensive, he got third place by offending no one.

So my take away is arguing about voting methods is pointless. About the only thing you can argue is does it affect participation or not. I got 17 people to vote, that was a bit thin, especially compared to the number of entries. The previous KAW had 34 I think. My guess is that LoAnnie got 10-12, she hasn't said.

So I might conclude that the scoring method isn't any fairer, and lowers the voting participation. So I might not recommend it.

One thing though, I would recommend that if the scoring system were to be used in future, then it should be declared up front before people get to read the stories. That way they can be thinking of a score as they vote. In both mine and LoAnnie's cases, we sprung the voting method on the voters a surprise at the end.

One thing to bear in mind is what the voting is trying to achieve. You really want to find out what the best story is. That's not measurable. What you can measure is what the readers think is the best story.

 

The above paragraph should be copied and pasted in every writing contest thread somewhere. Each reader has a different set of criteria for choosing his/her favorites. Voting method notwithstanding, if it's fair (as it has been recently) the result shows which entry voters thought was best in that particular collection.

 

So my take away is arguing about voting methods is pointless. About the only thing you can argue is does it affect participation or not. I got 17 people to vote, that was a bit thin, especially compared to the number of entries. The previous KAW had 34 I think. My guess is that LoAnnie got 10-12, she hasn't said.

So I might conclude that the scoring method isn't any fairer, and lowers the voting participation. So I might not recommend it.

You really do spend a lot of time marveling over your own sublime brilliance, don't you?

The extract above, you got 17 people to vote and you think Annie got 10 to 12 voters. so if that is true and 7 of those were contestants then 3 to 5 weren't. Horse, luvasuck, Jayney, naughty norton, WSF I assume you guys voted-any others?

Any way it's over and I just thank God you're here to state the obvious Stex -you do it so well.

 

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On the other hand...As I imagine anyone and everyone would say WHEN they are actually in the situation, unless you participated in this particular KAW, why does it matter to you?

Hush....an alias