The Official Author's Hangout Winter Holidays 2012 Contest Support Thread

The whole notion of Romance makes me go "squick" so I don't read them or vote, except by accident, or if it is a Lit friend's story.

...

Perhaps that explains the relatively low number of votes on my entry in Romance. I'm not complaining. It received more votes than almost any of my contest stories ever.

Should I write an Incest story for Valentine's? If so, the story I have already part completed would not fit. It has been 'in progress' since early 2010 and I have outlined the rest of the plot. Finishing it wouldn't be difficult but it would be another one in the Romance category.
 
Far too friendly for me to believe a story with about 500 votes would have well over a 100 swept.

I'm not quite sure what you refer to here.

The Romance story which had 174 votes swept was Spot's Milk and Cookies, and that had 787 votes (after the sweep) not 500.

The winning Romance story D_Lynn's Differently Visioned had 64 votes swept and 396 left. Admittedly that was a fairly high number of swept votes, seeing as only 6 other stories had more than 50 votes swept, and all of those except one was lower than no 85 on the final score list.

Your 3rd place story had 23 votes swept (472 left), and the 2nd place winner had only 7 votes swept (690 left).

But yes, I see what you mean about Spot being surprised about losing the 2nd place due to such a massive sweep - after all this story lost more than DOUBLE the number of votes than any other contest story. And the explanation about overzealous fans seems rather farfetched to me too - I mean we all know that it is no use voting more than once.

The thing that confuses me is what the purpose of such manipulations would be. I would think that the site would LOVE to have a newbie contest participant win or place in top3 - because that would encourage more people to enter contests for the first time. And the story was even in Romance, so they could get their favorite category, if that was an issue.

Oh well the ways of Literotica are mysterious.

For the record I've read both Differently Visioned and Milk and Cookies, I liked both of them.

Edit: just for the record the numbers cited above are all from Sun's statistics on the bottom of page 35 - you can see the number of votes swept in the second to last column, if you push the sidebar across.
 
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Can anyone comment on how often the winners even get the money? I placed in the Earth Day contest last spring and never got anything. (I did get my W, though, which is nice of course.)


I received mine. But as Dark said, you have to contact Laurel to claim the win.

I found this on the contest pages listing winners after following links given. Winners must contact Literotica to claim their prizes
 
question

ok,

so now that the contest is over- do the stories get re-posted in their respective categories? Can they still be voted on like non-contest stories?
 
ok,

so now that the contest is over- do the stories get re-posted in their respective categories? Can they still be voted on like non-contest stories?

The stories have always been posted in their respective categories; you just wouldn't see the category listed if you looked at the contest entry page. And yes, you can still vote on them. They have essentially been just like any other story, just marked for the contest.
 
Well, I think I'm even more confused now, lol.

I don't have any official stats, and I don't know how people are accessing them. I don't know when the cutoff points are, or how they determine sweeps. Here's what I do know.

I was at a peak of somewhere around 970 votes last week. I remember that because I was thinking it'd be cool to get to 1,000 before the winners were announced. At that point, I was rated a 4.86. My fiancee and editor and a couple other fans were asking me, so I took about an hour and went through every contest entry, looking at their ratings from the author page. At that point, the only story that was rated higher was Silver Angels, a Non-Erotic entry (and damn good). The second place winner, Rocky Mountain Christmas, was at 4.80 at that point (which surprised me, because I read it and thought it was better than mine, so I thought 4.80 was low). I didn't read the other two winners until later, but they weren't rated higher than mine.

The day before winners were announced, I had somewhere around 750 votes, and was down to 4.84. I hadn't been checking every day, so it's possible I slipped to 4.85 before the sweep. I'm currently at 780, so if Timothy's statement that I had 787 after the sweep is correct (and I assume it is to the best of his knowledge), another sweep has occurred since then. I do know that my score has steadily declined, and if I'd posted later so as to only have 450-some odd votes at deadline, I'd have had a 4.87 or 4.88 (not counting sweeps).

As for having fans boost you.. I don't really have that many fans that I know of. My fiancee voted twice by accident.. she voted while logged in, and then after logging out and removing cookies so the kid could use the computer, she went back to read again later and didn't see her vote, so she voted again. I explained it to her, and that was that. I certainly know of no one who would spam vote for me, and if anyone was to 1- or 2-bomb others' stories to help me, I would be angry about that. What I don't get is how they deem that almost 200 of my votes were spam votes, while others had between 30-40 votes swept.

If all this makes it seem like I'm obsessed or upset about not winning.. seriously, I'm not. I'm a very analytical, Type A personality, so I like to know how things work, and when they don't work the way I think they will, I question it. Of course I wanted to win (does anyone enter any contest ever not wanting to win?) but as I said, I didn't expect to win. I'm bad at forcing myself to write, so I decided to enter this contest to force myself to do so. I'm satisfied that I accomplished that. I doubt I'll enter another one, but that would have been true whether I'd won or not. I want to focus on my series and some other ideas I have that are too long to be single chapters, and I don't like forcing myself to write to a deadline.

To all three winners, congrats. BenLong, I don't normally read much incest, but that was a great story with authentic non-sex details that made it that much better. D_Lynn, I enjoyed yours as well -- one of my best friends is blind, so it was fascinating to see such an accurate description of a blind man in a relationship. And LC, I just read yours this morning. It, too, was well-written and very enjoyable, and award worthy.

Thanks for the lively conversation, everyone.
 
Every time :confused:

Did you contact Laurel when you won? It's not passive. You have to contact her and claim the win.

Yes, I did contact her. As I live overseas, I expected it to take a long time, so I wasn't surprised when it didn't turn up right away. To tell you the truth, I eventually forgot all about it.
 
tumblr_mb98k5D4V81qgl5swo1_400.gif

Just One Night Brother tells his jilted sister a Thanksgiving story.
4.68 2050 65581 Incest/Taboo (English) 12/09/12
Public Comments: 45

Ok, if I’m reading the aussie-dbALT and the danishALT correctly, this means that besides my story being the

- 21st highest rated
- 4th most favorited
- 1st most comments
- 13th most views
- 1st most votes

It also had the 7th highest vote to view percentage! WOW!!!! Which again was better than the three winners… I see…

BTW on the other site my story got a 7.95 view to vote number! (but that site has always delivered significantly different numbers than LIT for this statistic)

1 Silver Angels Non-Erotic qhml1 4.86 20.38
2 The Mall Santa Romance DG Hear 4.76 20.04
3 A Christmas Huldra Sci-Fi & Fanta… ShyChiWriter 4.56 25.29
4 Angels: Bruises on a Broken Heart Romance calibeachgirl 4.59 26.94
5 The Pinion Pine Tree Loving Wives sophist801 3.99 29.45
6 Green Groweth the Holly Romance GirlintheMoon 4.80 31.20
7 Just One Night Incest/Taboo scouries 4.68 31.74
8 Differently Visioned Romance D_Lynn 4.87 33.04
9 Milk and Cookies Romance SpotInTheSand 4.84 33.41
10 12 Days Gay Male dagan732 4.82 35.42
 
Since you're new to this, I though I'd share some info about the sweeps.

It happens. Sometimes very ugly. I don't know why. This one wasn't that bad.

Check out the thread on the summer lovin' contest:

I had two entries. One had a massive number of view and votes. 2200 votes, and was only swept about 100 for the entire contest. Just out of contention for a prize. My other one was leading for a while. Got swept 600 votes (1/2 of all) in two days and was knocked out of contention. The scores crept back up again, and I was still able to win 2nd place. A few days after the contest it was back to its original score, which would have won. Six months later, the score is still high enough to win. I'd had big sweeps before, but that one was ridiculous. This one was bad enough that I contacted Laurel, and she's now watching my stories to see what's happening.

This contest I had a little fluff entry with no chance of winning, (anywhere from 5th to 7th place most of the contest). I didn't get hit bad at all.

Nobody knows how the sweeps work. Nobody understands how they're gamed. It's possible that my fans caused difficulty (3000 of them now) but it's odd they'd do it for one story and not the other.

Don't let it bother you, it'll just drive you crazy. Write for yourself, and your readers, and if you occasionally win a contest, enjoy. Understand, though, that normally whoever's leading does not win, so don't even bother tracking your results or anyone else's.

Well, I think I'm even more confused now, lol.

I don't have any official stats, and I don't know how people are accessing them. I don't know when the cutoff points are, or how they determine sweeps. Here's what I do know.

I was at a peak of somewhere around 970 votes last week. I remember that because I was thinking it'd be cool to get to 1,000 before the winners were announced. At that point, I was rated a 4.86. My fiancee and editor and a couple other fans were asking me, so I took about an hour and went through every contest entry, looking at their ratings from the author page. At that point, the only story that was rated higher was Silver Angels, a Non-Erotic entry (and damn good). The second place winner, Rocky Mountain Christmas, was at 4.80 at that point (which surprised me, because I read it and thought it was better than mine, so I thought 4.80 was low). I didn't read the other two winners until later, but they weren't rated higher than mine.

The day before winners were announced, I had somewhere around 750 votes, and was down to 4.84. I hadn't been checking every day, so it's possible I slipped to 4.85 before the sweep. I'm currently at 780, so if Timothy's statement that I had 787 after the sweep is correct (and I assume it is to the best of his knowledge), another sweep has occurred since then. I do know that my score has steadily declined, and if I'd posted later so as to only have 450-some odd votes at deadline, I'd have had a 4.87 or 4.88 (not counting sweeps).

As for having fans boost you.. I don't really have that many fans that I know of. My fiancee voted twice by accident.. she voted while logged in, and then after logging out and removing cookies so the kid could use the computer, she went back to read again later and didn't see her vote, so she voted again. I explained it to her, and that was that. I certainly know of no one who would spam vote for me, and if anyone was to 1- or 2-bomb others' stories to help me, I would be angry about that. What I don't get is how they deem that almost 200 of my votes were spam votes, while others had between 30-40 votes swept.

If all this makes it seem like I'm obsessed or upset about not winning.. seriously, I'm not. I'm a very analytical, Type A personality, so I like to know how things work, and when they don't work the way I think they will, I question it. Of course I wanted to win (does anyone enter any contest ever not wanting to win?) but as I said, I didn't expect to win. I'm bad at forcing myself to write, so I decided to enter this contest to force myself to do so. I'm satisfied that I accomplished that. I doubt I'll enter another one, but that would have been true whether I'd won or not. I want to focus on my series and some other ideas I have that are too long to be single chapters, and I don't like forcing myself to write to a deadline.

To all three winners, congrats. BenLong, I don't normally read much incest, but that was a great story with authentic non-sex details that made it that much better. D_Lynn, I enjoyed yours as well -- one of my best friends is blind, so it was fascinating to see such an accurate description of a blind man in a relationship. And LC, I just read yours this morning. It, too, was well-written and very enjoyable, and award worthy.

Thanks for the lively conversation, everyone.
 
Nobody knows how the sweeps work. Nobody understands how they're gamed.
Don't let it bother you, it'll just drive you crazy.

I think that's probably the best summary of how to consider this matter that I've seen so far ;)
 
Yes, I did contact her. As I live overseas, I expected it to take a long time, so I wasn't surprised when it didn't turn up right away. To tell you the truth, I eventually forgot all about it.

It's also a very plain envelope that can look like junk mail if you just glance at it. That's what happened with my first one. It was already past the 90-day period to cash it before I went through the junk pile and realized what it was, so I still have it sitting around.
 
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