Impact of contest placing

[alohadave]

I've never figured out how or why this board gets so divisive sometimes. Creative minds in overdrive? Kind of like when great bands break up because the members' egos collide?

It's how forums get. It's always been this way, all the way back to BBSs.

The lack of face-to-face communication and general anonymity encourages people to dig in and defend their points.

This is mild though, any politics board will be far worse.

 

[Actingup]

I've never figured out how or why this board gets so divisive sometimes. Creative minds in overdrive? Kind of like when great bands break up because the members' egos collide?

Let’s be grateful that there are no Lit court case threads!

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Those boards are a collections of rectal body parts spewing stuff.

This is supposed to be a group of like minded people supporting, mentoring and learning from each other.

 

[TheLobster]

I've never figured out how or why this board gets so divisive sometimes. Creative minds in overdrive? Kind of like when great bands break up because the members' egos collide?

 

[Voboy]

Those boards are a collections of rectal body parts spewing stuff.

This is supposed to be a group of like minded people supporting, mentoring and learning from each other.

I'm old enough to remember when people talked about the Information Superhighway and how it would be a wonderful panacea that would unite humanity.

At that point, I'd already been on a BBS for a couple of years. I found such naivete funny. Never, fundamentally, has the good of the Internet outweighed the vitriol some like to spew when they get just a smidgen of anonymity.

 

[lovecraft68]

(I was teasing, yes it's from Banshees of Inisherin, and it might be apropos of something in this thread )

Yeah, it's fitting.

Not my style of movie, watched it because a You tuber who reviews horror movies did a vid on it. I felt bad for the Donkey.

 

[Actingup]

Those boards are a collections of rectal body parts spewing stuff.

This is supposed to be a group of like minded people supporting, mentoring and learning from each other.

I know that experiences vary and that there have been some amazing flame wars over the years, but I’ve found it an extremely positive experience overall. Even when people are calling each other donkeyholes, it’s usually over a point they’re trying to make rather than because of visceral hatred.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

No, I can't type worth a crap either.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm old enough to remember when people talked about the Information Superhighway and how it would be a wonderful panacea that would unite humanity.

At that point, I'd already been on a BBS for a couple of years. I found such naivete funny. Never, fundamentally, has the good of the Internet outweighed the vitriol some like to spew when they get just a smidgen of anonymity.

I have a tendency to incline toward naive techno-optimism, and I can remember thinking this way in the 90s. "Oh my goodness. Truth will be universally available to all at no cost." It ended up a little different.

I'm still an optimist, though.

 

[MelissaBaby]

and the (to me) new discovery of contest snobbery (Nude Day isn’t a top tier contest?).

Whoa. Hold up. If you are putting that on me, all I said was that it was my impression that some contests, like Christmas and Halloween, draw more interest than others. If someone wants to enter contests for the purpose of drawing new readers, it seems reasonable that they would take that into consideration. That's snobbery?

 

[Voboy]

Whoa. Hold up. If you are putting that on me, all I said was that it was my impression that some contests, like Christmas and Halloween, draw more interest than others. If someone wants to enter contests for the purpose of drawing new readers, it seems reasonable that they would take that into consideration. That's snobbery?

I've entered almost all the contests for the past several years (because I find them fun), and FWIW you're right: Christmas and Halloween are without doubt the two heaviest contests, in terms of entries and views. My impression is that April Fools' is probably the lightest.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

So, I got lucky with a 3rd place in a contest a few weeks ago, which was obviously a nice thing to happen. The over-analyst in me decided to look at two questions:
1) does the infamous score-bombing after a win happen (and how bad is it)?
2) is the extra attention on the story reflected in extra readership overall?

After entering a lot of contests and placing in the top 5 or 10 a number of times, I was lucky enough to place 3rd in the April Fool's contest.

1. Yes, definitely.

As Melissa said, the interest for the AF contest was lower than on my stories in a lot of other contests but my story's score (and interest in it) climbed throughout the week it was posted before the sweep(s) got rid of some initial bombing and subsequent bombing every time it came close to the top. Immediately after the winners were announced, I checked my score and within about twenty minutes, I'd received multiple hits to knock it down about three or four hundredths and result in at least one complaint on the AH boards about it placing at all. I understood the complaint since I've been in the exact same position several times but only Laurel has the final numbers at the exact moment she calls the contest.

2. Again, yes.

The AF contest story has had a lot more views and a lot more votes since then (pushing it to be my second most viewed story to date). I've seen quite a bit of new activity on a number of my early stories, too, though some of the new favorites, follows, and comments since the contest may have been as a result of readers checking out other new stories.

Voboy and some others have mentioned followers. My AF story was in Romance and I gained some new followers during the week it was posted before the contest ended. I don't have exact statistics but I believe I gained about the same number in the weeks following the announcement that it had placed as during the initial week. However, since it was in Romance instead of I/T or whatever, those numbers were in the tens, not in the hundreds.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Makes you wonder if it might not be wise to freeze voting on winning stories for a week after the announcement.

 

[Bamagan]

I have a tendency to incline toward naive techno-optimism, and I can remember thinking this way in the 90s. "Oh my goodness. Truth will be universally available to all at no cost." It ended up a little different.

I'm still an optimist, though.

Yeah. Sad that truth is usually just kale, but lies are chicken nuggets.

 

[iwatchus]

Makes you wonder if it might not be wise to freeze voting on winning stories for a week after the announcement.

I would argue not. I got a lot of votes, mostly positive in that week. As you get closer to a five rating, it takes more 5's to offer that one 1. (At 4.9, it takes thirty-nine 5's to offset a single 1.)

I am hopeful that the next sweep will clean up sone of the damage from the trolls.

 

[Voboy]

Makes you wonder if it might not be wise to freeze voting on winning stories for a week after the announcement.

It happens with nauseating speed.

I distinctly remember my first win: I found out about it the following morning, maybe five hours after the "announcement." The support thread held a number of congratulations, but buried in there was a comment posted about twenty minutes after the winners had been posted. Politely, but awkwardly, the poster asked the board why the three winners had scores so much lower than the rest of the field.

Twenty minutes, and the bombing had already driven all three stories about .2 into the red.

This is why I advise first-time contest entrants not to worry about scores. You'll never truly know what the winning scores were, unless you happen to be refreshing your browser all night when you expect the announcement. And who's got time for THAT, especially when it's all essentially meaningless because we don't know how the sweeps work?

My impression, as a guy who's been lucky enough to win some of these, is that the winning scores are inflated (like everyone else) by the sweeps at the end. The bombing usually just returns them close to where they'd been the day or two before, but doesn't affect the rest of the field because who'd bother bombing those?

 

[iwatchus]

My impression, as a guy who's been lucky enough to win some of these, is that the winning scores are inflated by the sweeps at the end. The bombing usually just returns them close to where they'd been the day or two before.

At least for me, the post bombing did not take me down quite as far as the pre-bombing did. And it took them a few hours to start at it. But it seemed to be a weird slot roll out of the winners. I noticed the W first before I had any idea I had placed.

 

[Actingup]

Whoa. Hold up. If you are putting that on me, all I said was that it was my impression that some contests, like Christmas and Halloween, draw more interest than others. If someone wants to enter contests for the purpose of drawing new readers, it seems reasonable that they would take that into consideration. That's snobbery?

That's entirely reasonable - apologies, I was going for a tone of mock outrage, but I got the tag wrong.

Here are the numbers of entries for the last 12 months. "Winter Holidays" and Halloween are indeed the biggest. More interest in the competition, and of course less chance of winning for the largest ones (ie the chance of getting a place in April Fools is more than double that of getting a place at Halloween). Swings and roundabouts.

 

[Voboy]

At least for me, the post bombing did not take me down quite as far as the pre-bombing did. And it took them a few hours to start at it. But it seemed to be a weird slot roll out of the winners. I noticed the W first before I had any idea I had placed.

There was a contest a couple years ago that I won without even remembering the contest was still going on. I did not expect that story to place. I didn't find out about the blue W for like three or four days, because I hadn't bothered logging on to Lit.

 

[iwatchus]

So you are saying I chose wisely (called sheer luck) for my only context to enter.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I'm going to make the board a promise, right here and now.


If I ever win a contest (which I know I won't), I promise to never talk about it here, or even mention it.

 

[SimonDoom]

Makes you wonder if it might not be wise to freeze voting on winning stories for a week after the announcement.

I wouldn't recommend that. It's artificial to do that.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Makes you wonder if it might not be wise to freeze voting on winning stories for a week after the announcement.

I don't think it would be worth the trouble. Once you've got the W, the score doesn't matter all that much.

 

[MelissaBaby]

That's entirely reasonable - apologies, I was going for a tone of mock outrage, but I got the tag wrong.

We're good.

 

[Actingup]

So you are saying I chose wisely (called sheer luck) for my only context to enter.

Well, I guess if you were just playing the numbers, you'd have chosen April Fools' Day.

Honestly, I know experiences vary, but I've had a ball entering every contest in the last 12 months, despite the NH-centric themes. Particularly in terms of 'doing the research'. I've learnt about the incidence of mirrored characteristics in identical twins, the intricacies of Samoan tattoos (and the associated pain), the different types of semi-detached housing in the UK, and I've slightly expanded my musical tastes through the heroic efforts of my beta readers. The whole scoring thing is just a sideshow.