Story of the Week Contest!

[marcuspeddle]

After reading many of the fine stories here in the Apolyton Forums I thought it would be a great idea to start a weekly story contest where Apolytoners can show off their writing skills to the rest of the community.
It is difficult to choose only one story to be the winner each week and I didn't want to do it myself so I asked two other people whose writing skills I respect to help me out. Along with myself, Yin26 and Steve Clark will be the judges for this contest.

Rules and Guidelines

-The contest runs from Sunday midnight (GMT) to the same time the following week. The contest is held every week.

-The winner will be decided by the three judges and the winner's name will be posted by me every Monday or Tuesday. I will edit the first post in the contest thread (not this thread) every week so people can easily find the contest results.

-The administration has agreed to give discounts in the Apolyton Store as prizes. Stay tuned for details.

-Both native and non-native speakers of English are welcome to join the contest.

-The stories will be judged based on criteria such as use of imagination, interest, and so on. Because many of the people here are not native speakers we will not be judging based on use of grammar (unless it's really bad).

-Don't post your stories in this thread. Start a new thread so we can easily find your stories. You don't have to do anything to enter the contest -- the judges will read all the stories posted in a week so everyone who posts a story in this forum is automatically a participant.

-I may edit these rules at a later time if there is need

[Footie Mad]

What if you all disagree, who makes the final decision?

[Steve Clark]

Willie, as one of the judges, we are going on a tabulated scoring system. We'll read EVERY story and give it a score based on a 1-10(??) scale. Anatolia will then compile the scores from the three of us and whoever received the most number of points, wins. Is this correct, Anatolia?

[Pisthetaerus]

. . .must . . . ask . . . another stupid question--what about stories that have already been posted before?

[Footie Mad]

Do you get to hand out one 10-pointer, one 9-pointer and so on. Or do you get to hand out the points any way you like?

[marcuspeddle]

some answers

Each judge will grade the stories posted during the week on a scale from 1-10. 10 is the best possible score. We can hand out scores as we please. There are no limits on the number of 10s, 9s and so on. The judges will then send their scores to me and I will add them up. The story with the highest score wins. Since it would be impossible for us to go back and look at every story that's been posted since the opening of this forum we're only going back to midnight of last Sunday.

[jdd2007]

a panel of judges?

i thought the idea was to have a poll. this would "best represent the wishes of the apolyton community." i think that people wont be as interested if 3 people judge a few stories. i certainly wont. i propose we have a weekly poll for the best story that week.

[vovan]

I just looked at the "panel of judges vs. vote" poll. Seems like it is 50% vs. 50%. So how about this:
The jundges choose 5 stories they think are the best. Then they make a poll and the users choose the best story. This takes care of these problems:

• The polls are not too long - not all stories are included.
• Easier to read.
• Faster to grade.

Tell me what you think.

[Gaius Marius]

Great compromise - I like it.

[jdd2007]

good idea, vovansim. that would be excellent.

[Steve Clark]

That's not a bad idea. Anatolia? The three of us could submit a list of the best 10 in order (if there are that many) and you can find the best 5 from our lists. We know that there will be at least 3 votes for the each of the five finalists, so we would still have a winner even if the public is not interested in voting.

[marcuspeddle]

Sounds okay

That sounds like a good idea. I won't have access to a computer this weekend so I'll post the new rules on Monday when I come back. Thanks to everyone for helping suggest a compromise.

[jdd2007]

thats ok, anatolia, we can wait. thanks for the compromise again

[GodSpawn]

Democracy in action. Gotta just love it