Shocker wrote: Fri Jul 25, 2025 11:36 am@LtBroccoli those are some interesting ideas. The most ambitious one concerning NaNoWriMo, has a couple of drawbacks. Writing a novel of 50000 words takes a huge commitment, if we’d challenge our writers too something like that, the forum will be largely dead. There is already an impact caused by the two contests, in which people are working on those and don’t post anything else. The format also doesn’t really work as a contest, as reading multiple novel length entries in a given time to rate them would be a strain on the readers as well. I do love to read, but reading a whole novel on a screen is not for me, my eyes refuse to cooperate there. It’s the main reason I own a dedicated ebook reader.
It might be working as an open challenge, just for the fun of showing off ones finished novel, but not as a contests. Also this might be a me thing, I can’t write 50,000 words of smut, so any novel I would write would thematically not fit this site.
I see your point about taking effort away from the board. Also, it takes a while to read something that long, so any judging would take a month at least. What if instead of a full-blown contest, it's more like a challenge. This is the writing equivalent of running a marathon. We're not writing to beat each other, we're writing to beat ourselves. Pun intended for a porn site. . I wouldn't say it even has to have porn. Would be nice to have a scene or two, but if it doesn't fit the story, it doesn't fit. And I'm thinking that the stories should be mostly original content. Like, I'm working on a short story for the Femdom contest about Bubbles. This small story could be a section in a novel about her with some tweaking. Or I write an adventure about our favorite telepaths not working for PsiCorp, expanding on their story but might include sections from the original posts. Maybe a flair or something for those that complete the challenge.
Shocker wrote: Fri Jul 25, 2025 11:36 am@LtBroccoli those are some interesting ideas. The most ambitious one concerning NaNoWriMo, has a couple of drawbacks. Writing a novel of 50000 words takes a huge commitment, if we’d challenge our writers too something like that, the forum will be largely dead. There is already an impact caused by the two contests, in which people are working on those and don’t post anything else. The format also doesn’t really work as a contest, as reading multiple novel length entries in a given time to rate them would be a strain on the readers as well. I do love to read, but reading a whole novel on a screen is not for me, my eyes refuse to cooperate there. It’s the main reason I own a dedicated ebook reader.
It might be working as an open challenge, just for the fun of showing off ones finished novel, but not as a contests. Also this might be a me thing, I can’t write 50,000 words of smut, so any novel I would write would thematically not fit this site.
I see your point about taking effort away from the board. Also, it takes a while to read something that long, so any judging would take a month at least. What if instead of a full-blown contest, it's more like a challenge. This is the writing equivalent of running a marathon. We're not writing to beat each other, we're writing to beat ourselves. Pun intended for a porn site. . I wouldn't say it even has to have porn. Would be nice to have a scene or two, but if it doesn't fit the story, it doesn't fit. And I'm thinking that the stories should be mostly original content. Like, I'm working on a short story for the Femdom contest about Bubbles. This small story could be a section in a novel about her with some tweaking. Or I write an adventure about our favorite telepaths not working for PsiCorp, expanding on their story but might include sections from the original posts. Maybe a flair or something for those that complete the challenge.
I agree with @shocker that a 50,000-word NaNoWriMo certainly wouldn't work as a competition.
For one thing, there would probably be only a few members who would dare to take on something like that. But the more important argument, in my opinion, is that there would be very few readers who would read such a novel in its entirety, let alone read and rate multiple stories.
The current competition alone shows that there is very little interest in voting for the stories in the competition. Especially since 5 out of 8 competitors will advance without any opponents.
If something like a NaNoWriMo were to be organized, I wouldn't introduce it as a competition, but rather as a separate category in the forum, without any time limit.
In general, anybody who wants to run a contest can do so and can of course make their own rules regarding the word limit. Personally, I'm not a big fan of having stories of vastly different length compete against each other. Imagine the extreme case of a flash fiction story competing against a short novel. If the time commitment to read the stories competing against each other is so vastly different, then the shorter story will likely have an advantage simply because more people will read it in the first place. Personally, I think any meaningful competition needs a degree of comparibility among the entries: Similar length, genre, theme. And how an author deals with those restrictions is also a way to assess their ability as a writer. But I'm generally open to experimenting with the contest format.
My stories: Claire's Cesspool of Sin. I'm always happy to receive a comment on my stories, even more so on an older one!
I actually want to try to test one thing, if we add time as something we race against too, if the theory that stories get more rep the longer they are visible is true, and so we make a contest stories have to be published during a month with simultaneous voting via rep, at end of month we tally the rep at that point, and the top story wins, or something like that, if there is a tie we let it continue till it resolves (and maybe we let all stories stay in then and the other stories readers have a chance to race to the finish line). Just an idea there, sure it also does not benefit long stories as they take longer to read and give rep to, I suppose.
@Vela Nanashi
The idea is fundamentally good. Being able to vote while the contest is running can increase its appeal.
However, in my opinion, it disadvantages authors who submit their stories late.
Suggestion: Voting is possible as soon as the contest begins. However, voting ends one month after the deadline for submitting your own story. This means members have a maximum of two months to vote.
Yes, it will take a little longer to determine the winner. But making the contest prominently displayed on the homepage could increase the incentive to rate the stories.
I agree that giving people longer to vote for stories makes sense. The German contest voting period was quite a while. LaLia's story was posted 3 weeks before the voting period ended. In that time it passed the 30 rep threshold. Yes the actual voting part was within a week, but it was possible to do it via the reputation system earlier.
For Used and Abused round 1, there's only a week period of voting using the reputation system. It didn't matter who posted when (except for Werewolf) since stories were hidden at first. We're nearly 24 hours out from the end of the voting period and the highest rated story is 13. LaLia's story didn't pass the 30 rep threshold within a week. It passed it just before the contest ended.
Maybe engagement will improve at the last minute, but if it doesn't I think we do need to look at the time to rate stories.
Also, we should consider experimenting with a contest that depends on both total votes by members and the rating system. Theoretically both methods should yield the same results. But we don't live in Shouldland (a magical land where everything that should happen does happen.) I suspect that the rating system isn't as reliable as the total number of votes system. Hence the need to experiment just to see if that does make a difference or not.
RapeU wrote: Sat Jul 26, 2025 3:05 pm
Theoretically both methods should yield the same results.
That is actually not true. The voting mechanism you choose to decide the winner plays a tremendous role. Classical voting like "pick your favorite out of these 7 options" definitely favors stories that polarize. A story which a lot of people like but which is nobody's favorite would never win against another story that is liked a lot by some and disliked a lot by others. Choosing the overall rating gives stories which appeal to a lot of readers but are nobody's favorite a great chance.
After the Ravished in a Flash tournament was over, I created a poll which of the stories that had won their match was the readers' favorite. You can see the results of that poll here: viewtopic.php?t=319
Only 1 story got 0 votes: The chastity belt. This story was ironically for a long time the story with the highest rating on the forum. It i still the 4th highest rated story in the Public Stories board and by far the highest rated story of the entire flash fiction tournament.
I don't want to go into great detail here, but the voting mechanism absolutely does matter a lot, not just practically but theoretically. Why do we choose the rating as a mechanism to determine the winner in the tournament? Simply to advertize that the rating feature exists and to get people used to using it.
My stories: Claire's Cesspool of Sin. I'm always happy to receive a comment on my stories, even more so on an older one!
RapeU wrote: Sat Jul 26, 2025 3:05 pm
Theoretically both methods should yield the same results.
Why do we choose the rating as a mechanism to determine the winner in the tournament? Simply to advertize that the rating feature exists and to get people used to using it.
Oh! That makes sense then. Because people may not know they can vote higher than 1. Ok.
. I wouldn't say it even has to have porn. Would be nice to have a scene or two, but if it doesn't fit the story, it doesn't fit. And I'm thinking that the stories should be mostly original content. Like, I'm working on a short story for the Femdom contest about Bubbles. This small story could be a section in a novel about her with some tweaking. Or I write an adventure about our favorite telepaths not working for PsiCorp, expanding on their story but might include sections from the original posts. Maybe a flair or something for those that complete the challenge.
