TCS Writing Contest Poll

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Would you be interested in reading/participating in a writing competition?

Poll ended at Sun Aug 30, 2015 11:42 am

No
1
3%
I would be interested in reading such a contest
9
29%
I would be interested in reading and/or particpating
21
68%
 
Total votes : 31

TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Marcuse » Sun Aug 23, 2015 11:42 am

Hi everyone!

There's been some ideas floating around since Jacopo publicised his writing competition he's judging that we might hold something similar for TCS. I decided this sounds like a good idea, and so here's a poll to judge if that enthusiasm would be replicated across the site broadly.

I've included two options to express interest, because people being interested in reading said work is very desirable over and above having participants. If you don't feel confident enough or have enough time to say you might participate, please consider reading the submissions as an option too. The system I have in mind would rely on people being prepared to read the stuff people would send in, so spectators are valuable measures of how successful the works are.

The system I have in mind is: a short story competition for stories of fixed length (say 2000-4000 words depending on feedback) and potentially of a set genre (horror, sci fi, fantasy, crime etc). Submission would need to be sent to me, via PM by a specific date, and all qualifying submissions (nothing against the rules or over the word limit) would then be posted in a specific thread in The Fridge for people to read. The winner would be the piece that gained the most thumbs (which is why spectators are to be encouraged). We could potentially post the winning submission to the front page, and/or add the winner to the champion group for a while.

I can see this being either infrequent, or common, depending on interest. If you are interested please vote, and if you have any suggestions please feel free to note them in a reply to this thread. Nothing is yet set in stone, so we can work things out as we go.

Disclaimer, in order to see the results of the poll without faffing around with the poll every time, I have voted that I would read and participate.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Jack Road » Sun Aug 23, 2015 11:47 am

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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Marcuse » Sun Aug 23, 2015 11:57 am

Okay, one amending suggestion is to have voting on pieces be by poll, as it's anonymous and means that people can vote for as many or as few as they like in the same way. This would make it easier to express preferences on the pieces.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:10 pm

Two remaining problems I see are that the poll wouldn't be in random order, and the stories wouldn't be in random order. This means that, because people might not read all the stories, those appearing last wouldn't get as many votes just because they were posted last. Furthermore, in elections, poll results near the top tend to get more votes. It's possible that I can mod the polling and maybe a media site page in order to display everything randomized.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby sunglasses » Sun Aug 23, 2015 3:36 pm

Jack, that gif gives me the heebie jeebies. I do not know why.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby DamianaRaven » Sun Aug 23, 2015 5:38 pm

sunglasses wrote:Jack, that gif gives me the heebie jeebies. I do not know why.


I can't quite articulate why myself, but I wholeheartedly agree. Just the heebiest.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby DamianaRaven » Sun Aug 23, 2015 6:12 pm

aviel wrote:Two remaining problems I see are that the poll wouldn't be in random order, and the stories wouldn't be in random order. This means that, because people might not read all the stories, those appearing last wouldn't get as many votes just because they were posted last. Furthermore, in elections, poll results near the top tend to get more votes. It's possible that I can mod the polling and maybe a media site page in order to display everything randomized.


I approve of making Avi a part of the sorting process, in order to make it a true contest of skill and not a popularity contest. I think that he's easily one of the most unbiased people here.

EDIT: He's also one of the few people with the coding knowledge to make randomization possible without being obvious and/or cumbersome.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Aug 23, 2015 6:32 pm

There'd be no sorting, you'd just use something that randomizes order. It wouldn't be up to anybody's judgment, so biases don't matter.
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OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby DamianaRaven » Sun Aug 23, 2015 6:47 pm

aviel wrote:There'd be no sorting, you'd just use something that randomizes order.


So, it'd be more of an unsorting. Anyway, one can easily observe your point by looking at the time stamps on Cracked's top-voted comments. Thank you for offering to remedy that anomaly.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Matt the Czar » Sun Aug 23, 2015 7:08 pm

I would be happy to participate. What would be the themes?
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby gisambards » Sun Aug 23, 2015 7:59 pm

I would definitely participate, but looking at that poll I get the impression that a danger is simply that we get too many stories. 15 people so far have said they would be interested in participating, and even if not all of them do that still leaves a lot of stories for each person voting to read, which leads to the possibility that actually some stories might just not get read.
Perhaps a solution would be - when it comes time to decide theme or whatever - to run a poll only among those who want to send a story in to see which theme would be most popular, and then (provided two themes get a fairly equal amount of support) to do two competitions at once, in two different themes, and only let people participate in one?
I don't know if I've explained that well enough, and it definitely has flaws, but is that a possibility?
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Marcuse » Sun Aug 23, 2015 9:02 pm

I do intend to set themes for stories, rather than just leaving it as an open competition. My hope is that we might receive enough support to do this more than just the once, as a regular thing, so people don't feel they need to participate in the only competition we have, which should mean people submit when they're on their favoured topics and most comfortable writing them.

I do like the idea of concurrent competitions if we have sufficient interest, but I'd like to see how the first one goes before we can properly judge participation.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Jack Road » Mon Aug 24, 2015 8:23 am

sunglasses wrote:Jack, that gif gives me the heebie jeebies. I do not know why.


That's because that is Christoph Waltz playing the absolute fuck out of the overwhelmingly creepy Hans Landa, seen here being creepy.



Following is Spoilers For Inglorious Basterds

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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby sunglasses » Mon Aug 24, 2015 2:08 pm

I picked the wrong poll option.

As much as I enjoy writing, I only meant to do my TRUE passion and read the shit out of all the stories.

All of them.
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Re: TCS Writing Contest Poll

Postby Marcuse » Mon Aug 24, 2015 2:10 pm

sunglasses wrote:I picked the wrong poll option.

As much as I enjoy writing, I only meant to do my TRUE passion and read the shit out of all the stories.

All of them.


I've enabled revoting so you can change it. I thought I had already -.-
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