The Official Authors' Hangout National Nude Day 2015 Contest Support Thread

[HeyAll]

Why not increase the minimum to 500 or 600? Wouldn't that be even more fair?

to the most popular categories and authors...

This post reminds me of the gay marriage debate:

"We should allow same-sex marriage."

"If that's legal, why not allow a guy to marry an animal?"



Or the debate on speed limits:

"We should increase the speed limit to 70mph."

"If that's the case, why not increase the speed limit to 250mph?"


There's no need for a counter-argument to blow things out of proportion.

 

[ScouriesWorld]

this is why a.i.r. was formed!!!!

long stories (surprise, surprise) that received few votes, comments or views!


https://sosbusinessdevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/same-ol.jpeg

Congratulations to the 2015 Nude Day Contest Winners!
________________________________________
We've tallied the reader's votes... and are happy...

First Place:
Nudity is For The Birds by Kethandra
First time – 5 pages long 33,000 views 4.90 rating 576 votes 31 comments

Second Place:
Filled with Joy by BuckyDuckman
Fetish - 7 pages long 15,000 views 4.85 rating 80 votes 15 comments

Third Place:
Heart Like a Lion by CyranoJ
Non-Consent - 14 pages long 11,000 views 4,88 rating 24 votes 6 comments​

 

[oggbashan]

Laurel,

If you're reading this, can you increase the minimum number of votes to 100, or even 150? It would make for a fairer contest.

thanks for reading.

It isn't as simple as that. The problem is that stories with a low vote total change their rating significantly after a sweep and those with a high vote total have a minimal change. If, like me, you get fewer votes, a couple of 1 bombs can wreck the rating. A single 1 vote can change the rating from H to well below 4.50. Equally, those 1s being swept improves the rating.

Most stories with more than 500 votes tend to slowly drop their rating over time. Many stories reach 10 votes with a perfect 5.00 until reality takes over.

At 150 votes minimum, two of my three entries would just qualify. The third wouldn't at 65 votes after sweeps.

Substantially increasing the required number of votes would mean it would be pointless to enter stories in some low-voting categories.

We don't want all the contests to be 'incest' stories.

If the minimum was set at 500 votes as suggested by RejectReality, only one of my contest stories has EVER reached that number during the contest - Christmas Truce. All of the others came more than a 100 short of that 500 total.

At a 500 minimum I could only write a contest entry for the exposure. I would never be a contender.

I don't write to manipulate the contest by choosing low voting categories. My stories are an acquired taste for some, and a definite No for others. My Ws, except Christmas Truce, are for essays, not stories.

 

[CyranoJ]

I had no final sweep either. Nothing after Thursday. I don't think Cyrano did or he wouldn't have made the 25 cutoff. Cy, please correct me if I'm off base.

No, you're exactly right. And that twenty-fifth vote must have come in very, very late in the game indeed. The last time I'd checked in before the announcement I was dead sure I wasn't making the cut. Quite a surprise.

Cheers everyone.

 

[sr71plt]

If the minimum was set at 500 votes as suggested by RejectReality, only one of my contest stories has EVER reached that number during the contest - Christmas Truce. All of the others came more than a 100 short of that 500 total.

I don't think RR was suggesting that would be done. I think RR was pointing out the "freezing out" effect of raising the minimum to even 100 votes.

What's obvious to me (although I don't expect anything will be done) is that the contests should be split between short story and novella/novel, because they aren't the same form, and readers seem to have "longer is ipso facto better" stars in their eyes. This isn't sour grapes, because my entry this time would be in the novella category and it's in the same category as one of the winners, so obviously murder mysteries just don't play all that well on Lit.

 

[oggbashan]

Purpose of themed contests?

What is the purpose of the themed contests?

The prize money isn't life-changing.

I think the purpose is to provide more new stories for the site, to keep the momentum of Literotica going.

For me, the contests provide a theme and incentive to write a story or stories. If I submit a story that isn't a contest entry it can disappear off the New list front page within hours and remain in obscurity. If the same story is a contest entry it will attract far more attention for much longer.

Without the themed contests, my list of stories would be what? A quarter of the current total?

For the Authors' Hangout, the contests provide an interest in actually writing. Winning or placing in a themed contest on Literotica isn't something most people could put on your CV (resume). For some of us, admitting that we are on Literotica at all could jeopardise our employment.

Yes, the contests are flawed.

I've been thinking about the parameters of non-Lit contests I have entered. They seem to have several differences:

1. The theme is much narrower.
2. The length is specified, sometimes precisely e.g. 1,500 words, or within a range e.g. 1,500 to 2,500 words.
3. There is a minimal fee to enter, typically £5.
4. Once submitted in a set format, the text cannot be altered at all.
5. The result is normally decided by a panel of judges, not by popular vote.
6. The judges aren't necessarily independent. They can be committee members of the local writing group who tend to favour their own members over outside entries.
7. The financial prize is minimal. The kudos of winning is more important.

Literotica themed contests are decided by popular vote. Whether the populace knows what they are doing when they vote? Some certainly don't. They see a scale of one to five and think a three is 'average'; a four is 'good' and a five is 'excellent', so will rarely vote a five. Some also don't appreciate the impact of a one or a two vote.

While I can, I will still write contest entries. I don't expect to win or be placed. That doesn't matter to me. What matters is that a few people like some of my stories, and more people read my contest entries than my others.

 

[Tx Tall Tales]

Congratulations to the winners. I thought Kethandra's sweet story was a well deserved win, and Bucky's was nearly as good.

CyranoJ, I have to confess I didn't read yours yet. I intend to remedy that shortly. Congratulations on pulling off a difficult feat, with a non-con win. Impressive.

Some of the highest final scores I can recall in a contest. Outstanding work.

 

[sr71plt]

Well, some obviously are more competitive and cutthroat than you are about winning in these contests, Ogg, and spend a lot of time analyzing the angles and doing whatever they can do to win. And apparently some do put winning on their CVs. We have a group here that blurbs (without specifying Lit.) in the marketplace that winning contests here identifies them as the best writers of erotica.

The money may, indeed, not be a determining factor, but I'd like to see what hyper competitiveness gets weeded out by doing away with the cash awards.

 

[oggbashan]

One thing that would change the whole feel of the contest would be more people entering.

Given the number of people who regularly visit Literotica, and the number of new stories every week, the themed contests ought to have hundreds of entries.

In the past I advertised a contest or two on the General Board and received the usual abuse but if each contest was a sticky on every Lit board they might get more entries.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

[We don't want all the contests to be 'incest' stories.]

Raising the minimum to 100 wouldn't mean that at all. Why? Because Incest voters are a bunch of finicky pissants. 4.80 for a standalone in Incest is rare. A 4.90? Never. 4.84 is pushing it, 4.85 at the limit, anything above is going to be a chapter where, you guessed it, readership has dropped way off.

It isn't as simple as that. The problem is that stories with a low vote total change their rating significantly after a sweep and those with a high vote total have a minimal change. If, like me, you get fewer votes, a couple of 1 bombs can wreck the rating. A single 1 vote can change the rating from H to well below 4.50. Equally, those 1s being swept improves the rating.

Most stories with more than 500 votes tend to slowly drop their rating over time. Many stories reach 10 votes with a perfect 5.00 until reality takes over.

At 150 votes minimum, two of my three entries would just qualify. The third wouldn't at 65 votes after sweeps.

Substantially increasing the required number of votes would mean it would be pointless to enter stories in some low-voting categories.

We don't want all the contests to be 'incest' stories.

If the minimum was set at 500 votes as suggested by RejectReality, only one of my contest stories has EVER reached that number during the contest - Christmas Truce. All of the others came more than a 100 short of that 500 total.

At a 500 minimum I could only write a contest entry for the exposure. I would never be a contender.

I don't write to manipulate the contest by choosing low voting categories. My stories are an acquired taste for some, and a definite No for others. My Ws, except Christmas Truce, are for essays, not stories.

 

[sr71plt]

One thing that would change the whole feel of the contest would be more people entering.

I don't think, given what is run about the contests on the forum and not excluding the interest shown in every-which-way statistics on what wins and what doesn't, that more people entering is the direction this is going in.

 

[RejectReality]

My point is, what is so much better about a 100-150 vote minimum?

Other than coincidentally excluding two of the winners in this contest immediately after the winner's announcement is made, of course.

What happens when you have 1500 votes in the next contest and the winner has 100 or 150? Has anything really changed? Do you feel any better about it?

It's still a tenth of your vote total. Even the exaggerated numbers I suggested are barely over a third.

When is it going to feel fair to people who regularly pull in 1000+ votes because they have large fanbases or write in high-traffic categories?

It's nothing more than telling the winners they didn't deserve to win ( Unread, I suspect ) for no real change. Sorry, but that sticks in my craw.

 

[Seanathon]

Congratulations to Kethandra, BuckyDuckman, and CyranoJ for their winning stories! And also to all of the other authors who took the time and effort to enter the contest.

 

[HuckPilgrim]

Yes, exactly! Congrats to the winners and kudos to all the participants. It's not much of a contest if there isn't competition and the writers here are always stiff (heh) competition!

 

[tomlitilia]

The issue of 25 votes being an appropriate cut-off clearly depends on what the purpose of the competition is. If "we" want the scores to reflect voters' opinions such that the winner actually is the best story as given, 25 is really not enough because the random element is too big. I am sad to say I couldn't refrain from analyzing it...

I think it's fair to say that the winner generally has a score around 4.9, whereas a score at or lower than 4.85 doesn't qualify a story to be in the top three. For simplicity, I assumed that top-stories get exclusively 4s or 5s as votes. This isn't quite true, and therefore my analysis underestimates the "problem". The random element becomes even bigger if outliers are considered.

Anyhow... With 25 votes, a story that has a true mean of 4.85 has a 25% chance to get a score of 4.9 or higher. In other words, one in four winners shouldn't even be in the top three.
The problem however is that to get representative scores, a lot of votes are quired. At 50 votes it drops down to 11%, for 100 votes it's 5.5% and for 150 votes it's 2.8%.

To actually separate between the top three is even harder because it's really tight at the top. A winner often has as little as 0.01 better score than the runner up, i.e. 4.89 needs to be separated from 4.90. Even with 1000 votes for each story, we can only be about 78% sure that a story with a true mean of 4.90 gets a better score than a story with a true mean of 4.89.

I know this little analysis has many problems and I just did it to illustrate the issue of randomness in a competition like this. My take-home message is that (A) 25 votes isn't enough to reflect what voters consider a good story from a winner and (B) it isn't realistic to set minimum voting numbers at a cut-off where results actually are representative. If it was up to me, I'd set it at somewhere between 50 and 100 votes but it's just a matter of taste really.

And no... this wasn't inspired by sour grapes. My own story finished at 4.79 and with 163 votes, the chance that this reflects a true mean of 4.90 (i.e. a likely winning score) is less than one in 100000.

Congratulations to the winners!

 

[RejectReality]

It always comes back to one thing to me -- reading the stories.

It has been very rare that I've read a winning story -- regardless of the numbers it had -- and didn't feel good about it placing. The few times it has happened, it's always been because I didn't think the story did more than pay lip service to the theme.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

This may surprise, as I have won a contest with a 75 vote story, but I am actually supportive of raising the bar to 100. 150 seems a little much, and any above that would create something of an imbalance, I fear.

But I must admit to feeling somewhat guilty about winning with a lower voted story. Do I think my story was worthy? I don't know. I don't get into that. Hard to judge your own work, I think. I never really thought it would win. Too niche, too weird. Which does have a place here. We are a gathering place for deviants, by nature.

But I think authors who are getting hundreds--even thousands--of votes, deserve some consideration for that.

I don't think 100 votes is an unreasonable number. If you can't gather that many, I think it can be said that the mandate on your story is not sufficient to support a victory. Is 100 just as arbitrary as 25? Maybe. But it feels more balanced to me. It feels like a more representative number.

But the rules are the rules, and until they are changed, a 25 vote winner is just as legitimate as any other.

No sense in entering the 200 meter medley and then bitching because you think the breaststroke is a dumb way to swim.

And don't base too much of your ego on a colored letter.

 

[CyranoJ]

Honestly I'm not particularly arsed one way or the other. I'm happy to have won -- and I'm confident that what I entered was worthy or I wouldn't have entered it -- but I completely understand someone being bummed at having potentially been edged out by a barely-25 vote story in a category that normally doesn't place. Positions reversed, who knows, I might well be bummed too. Leastways when I've been writing here long enough for the "I'm just happy to be here" glow to have worn off.

I do think RejectReality's point that it might not really change some of the feelings of unfairness has some merit, but on the other hand tomlitilia has a valid point that there is some statistical significance to adopting a higher threshold. If it stays the same, fine, who knows but I'll have the shoe on the other foot next time out. If the threshold goes up, that's fine too.

It's really no big. Having a little extra dosh to spend at the Amazon store on my niece's birthday is all very nice but I'm really just in it for the stories at the end of the day.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

I don't think anyone should feel guilty for winning with a low vote story! The rules are the rules. You didn't make them up.

I write in a high volume category and I don't think its unfair under the current system. It is what it is. Honestly, I've been "edged out" by low voted stories and I shrug. (But, being totally honest, I think it's such a joke that only four Incest stories have won I take it all with a grain of salt.)

The thing that sticks in my craw is people saying a Win is only about the writing and the literary quality, Mr. Tx Tall Tales aside. Not exactly. Not completely. When you get down to haggling over .01 point between a behemoth category and a tiny one at the 11th hour, not to mention mysterious sweeps, can you say its purely the "writing" that makes one "Win" over another? No, there's a gamesmanship dimension without a doubt, because of the nature of the contest. At the 11th hour, there is luck, placement, and other factors involved than "writing skill." This isn't to say fantastic stories don't win, or aren't well written, or didn't earn it on their skill. Or that you shouldn't be proud. But it'd be different if you only had, say Authors voting, and the scoring was a bit more transparent. Plus audiences are so different. People don't vote and read for the same thing. Maybe the writing wasn't that great, but it was massively hot to its unique audience and you managed to capture a Fetish in a way no one had before, literary or not, well-written or not. Who knows! It's a Lit Themed Contest. It means what YOU want it to mean.

Maybe you "won" because you wrote a great story AND you figured out how to play the game better than the next guy. What's wrong with that? It is a competition and a game, after all. But I don't think those who are all invested in the "quality writing" angle care to admit that.

Its not being decided by NY Times Lit Critics. It's not a Nobel Prize. But maybe if you've been writing porn too long, you're desperate to believe you're doing something else. Maybe you are, certainly, but does a Themed Contest Win prove that? Only in your own mind.

Honestly I'm not particularly arsed one way or the other. I'm happy to have won -- and I'm confident that what I entered was worthy or I wouldn't have entered it -- but I completely understand someone being bummed at having potentially been edged out by a barely-25 vote story in a category that normally doesn't place. Positions reversed, who knows, I might well be bummed too. Leastways when I've been writing here long enough for the "I'm just happy to be here" glow to have worn off.

I do think RejectReality's point that it might not really change some of the feelings of unfairness has some merit, but on the other hand tomlitilia has a valid point that there is some statistical significance to adopting a higher threshold. If it stays the same, fine, who knows but I'll have the shoe on the other foot next time out. If the threshold goes up, that's fine too.

It's really no big. Having a little extra dosh to spend at the Amazon store on my niece's birthday is all very nice but I'm really just in it for the stories at the end of the day.

 

[sheablue]

Congrats to all the winners and those who entered the contest.

I didn't get my story, or my several other ideas finished and I bow to those who did.

I unfortunately was too busy with life and preparing for an epic vacation to even read or vote on any of the stories, but I hope to remedy that in the future. I'm especially keen to read Cyrano J's, as I enjoy his comments on the boards, and non-consent, when done well, is one of my favorite categories. Obviously, he did it well.

For very personal reasons, I'm against raising the vote minimum. I don't think any of my stories have gotten more than 100 votes, even the few I've entered into contests. I write in lower voting categories, and I don't have a fan base, I'm relatively unknown. I like to think I'm a pretty good writer, but with a 100 vote minimum I fear I'd never have a chance, on the rare occasion I get my act together enough to enter a contest. And I mean a chance to officially be a part of the contest, not a chance to win. I don't have aspirations of winning or placing in a contest, just increasing my readership. Is that even a word?

I'm not going to even try to understand all the numbers and statistics you all have been throwing around, but isn't it better if someone gets 75 4's and 5's than hundreds of 3's and 4's?

 

[Swilly]

This may surprise, as I have won a contest with a 75 vote story, but I am actually supportive of raising the bar to 100. 150 seems a little much, and any above that would create something of an imbalance, I fear.

But I must admit to feeling somewhat guilty about winning with a lower voted story. Do I think my story was worthy? I don't know. I don't get into that. Hard to judge your own work, I think. I never really thought it would win. Too niche, too weird. Which does have a place here. We are a gathering place for deviants, by nature.

But I think authors who are getting hundreds--even thousands--of votes, deserve some consideration for that.

I don't think 100 votes is an unreasonable number. If you can't gather that many, I think it can be said that the mandate on your story is not sufficient to support a victory. Is 100 just as arbitrary as 25? Maybe. But it feels more balanced to me. It feels like a more representative number.

But the rules are the rules, and until they are changed, a 25 vote winner is just as legitimate as any other.

No sense in entering the 200 meter medley and then bitching because you think the breaststroke is a dumb way to swim.

And don't base too much of your ego on a colored letter.

I think any number is arbitrary, be it 25, 50, 100 or more. In truth, writers that have been on here for a long time will have an edge if the required number of votes is too high, because they have a following already.

New writers, especially if they aren't writing in a hot button category, will likely not have much of a chance of hitting a higher vote requirement. That would be a shame, as some new writers really deserve the praise they get. The number of votes one gets might not really be indicative of how good a story is.

I admit 25 seems low, but 100 seems a little high to me too.

One thing I will say is that I've not really seen many winners that weren't deserving. We can all split hairs about which stories are better than others, but all of the winners I've read have been quality stories. After that, it comes down to personal opinions and tastes.

I'd say your 75 vote win was a pretty damned good story, beast. You have no reason to feel guilty about it.

 

[CyranoJ]

(But, being totally honest, I think it's such a joke that only four Incest stories have won I take it all with a grain of salt.)

Being the biggest category on the site would seem to be both a blessing and a curse, it's true.

I agree with the rest of what you say there, as well.

 

[Kethandra]

There's validity to contests with stories under X number of words, and ones limited to more than Y hundred votes. There's room for annual or seasonal such contests here. But ones with a higher vote minimum wouldn't be the theme-based contests open to all categories. Some categories would not make the cut unless, possibly, a hugely popular author's fan base braved the less-read zones. Newer, less known authors, most authors, would be limited to a few choice categories if they wanted any reasonable chance of being in consideration.
Friday night there were six stories with a reasonable shot at the podium. All six were from different categories:
First Time, Exhibitionist & Voyeur, NonConsent/Reluctance, Romance, Humor & Satire, and Fetish.
That would not happen with higher vote requirements, and probably not with short word limits. I know I wouldn't have attempted a First Time entry; I have a Valentine's Day Contest entry in Incest that still has under 150 votes months later. And that's Incest.
Reasonably, the same 50 vote minimum that is used for the monthly contests could be argued for, if a change at all was deemed needed. The increased exposure on the contest page brings more views than extra days on some of the less-traveled category pages. If one needs 50 to win the monthly contest in category Z, one might say, why couldn't a Theme entrant in that category gather at least that many? The flip side is that, in some low-voted categories, the 'best' stories of the month aren't winning every month.
Upping the vote total would likely mean less entrants and less categories entered and there is not a numerical vote total that would leave a general feeling of 'fairness' to all or most, so I would favor rules that encourage a broad range of stories, of diverse length, by a large number of writers of varying experience.
I like your swimming analogy. The one that came to my mind was a football team who only ran the ball complaining about their opponents using the forward pass. Damn Alonzo Stagg.

This may surprise, as I have won a contest with a 75 vote story, but I am actually supportive of raising the bar to 100. 150 seems a little much, and any above that would create something of an imbalance, I fear.

But I must admit to feeling somewhat guilty about winning with a lower voted story. Do I think my story was worthy? I don't know. I don't get into that. Hard to judge your own work, I think. I never really thought it would win. Too niche, too weird. Which does have a place here. We are a gathering place for deviants, by nature.

But I think authors who are getting hundreds--even thousands--of votes, deserve some consideration for that.

I don't think 100 votes is an unreasonable number. If you can't gather that many, I think it can be said that the mandate on your story is not sufficient to support a victory. Is 100 just as arbitrary as 25? Maybe. But it feels more balanced to me. It feels like a more representative number.

But the rules are the rules, and until they are changed, a 25 vote winner is just as legitimate as any other.

No sense in entering the 200 meter medley and then bitching because you think the breaststroke is a dumb way to swim.

And don't base too much of your ego on a colored letter.

 

[LadyVer]

Congratulations to the winners!

 

[CyranoJ]

I'm especially keen to read Cyrano J's, as I enjoy his comments on the boards, and non-consent, when done well, is one of my favorite categories. Obviously, he did it well.

Cheers, by the way. Hope you do like it when you get round to it. I'm checking out your Morgana story at the mome and quite enjoying.