The official Authors' Hangout Halloween 2020 contest Support Thread
- Thread starter oggbashan
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Rustyoznail
Aussie smartarse
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Laurel goes through and sweeps out the troll droppings... Your score may or may not be improved.
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Well, Laurel swept 15 troll votes from one of my entries and its rating jumped 0.3 - still nowhere near winning, but respectable.
Update - it's sliding down slightly. We shall see...
HarryHill - if you haven't been trolled or one-bombed yet, it's only a matter of time. Some trolls seem to give every contestant a one-star rating. Others seem to watch for certain writers and devote themselves to those. It warps the rating, obviously .
The site's owner, Laurel. runs periodic sweeps to cull those one-bombs, plus any suspicious five-bombs. The number of sweeps goes up near the end of each contest. If you think you've been one-bombed, you can use the report-a-story icon to report it and the site will (within a day or three) run a sweep on just your stories.
Update - it's sliding down slightly. We shall see...
HarryHill - if you haven't been trolled or one-bombed yet, it's only a matter of time. Some trolls seem to give every contestant a one-star rating. Others seem to watch for certain writers and devote themselves to those. It warps the rating, obviously .
The site's owner, Laurel. runs periodic sweeps to cull those one-bombs, plus any suspicious five-bombs. The number of sweeps goes up near the end of each contest. If you think you've been one-bombed, you can use the report-a-story icon to report it and the site will (within a day or three) run a sweep on just your stories.
MelissaBaby
Wordy Bitch
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What is really crazy is when they persist even after the contest is over. I won the Readers Choice for September with a score of 4.94. It’s down to 4.85 now.
MelissaBaby
Wordy Bitch
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Hmm. My sweep is still going on. My score is up to 4.81 now.
BuckyDuckman
Literotica Guru
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It's fun and interesting when people share how their scores shift during the end-of-contest sweeps, but please don't lose sight of the real reasons for participating in a contest:
What were your reasons for dropping a story into the contest?
Good luck to everyone!
- The fun writing challenge of writing for a theme.
- The increased views your story gets when it's part of a contest.
- Not just your contest entry, but your entire catalog seems to benefit from the increased visibility of being on the contest page.
- For the readers, many seem to enjoy reading different takes on the same theme.
- The camaraderie of visiting with other authors as we work through the process of generating a contest entry.
What were your reasons for dropping a story into the contest?
Good luck to everyone!
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I know, right? I was shocked at seeing that after my first win.
Must be all that stale air in Mom’s basement.
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Just noticed another sweep - 10 troll bombs off one of my entries. Happy-happy.
BD - you are quite right. We're here to have fun. On the other hand, even in kindergarten, there were kids whose sole love in life was ruining other people's fun. I enjoy watching the sweeps - a little long-delayed justice, maybe?
BD - you are quite right. We're here to have fun. On the other hand, even in kindergarten, there were kids whose sole love in life was ruining other people's fun. I enjoy watching the sweeps - a little long-delayed justice, maybe?
jaF0
Moderator
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So, I see a thread up announcing the Winners, but all I see is a list of entrants.
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1534145
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1534145
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
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* 2020 Halloween Contest Winners *
First Place ($150 Cash Prize Winner):
The Halloween Skits
by spyralout
Second Place ($100 Cash Prize Winner):
The Verse
by gabthewriter
Third Place ($75 Cash Prize Winner):
The Hunt
by BrokenSpokes
Congratulations to them and to all those who entered.
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
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BuckyDuckman
Literotica Guru
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Congratulations to the winners!
Also, it's important to remember the scores we can see are NOT the official ones. As I write this, my story actually shows a higher score than of the winners show on their story list. On my personal page, I'm showing a current score of 4.86.
Personally, I've never had a story receive as many kind and positive comments as this one did. That felt darn good.
More importantly, this was a story I really wanted to finish and publish for a Lit person I barely know, but they have always been a kind voice. Thanks!
Also, it's important to remember the scores we can see are NOT the official ones. As I write this, my story actually shows a higher score than of the winners show on their story list. On my personal page, I'm showing a current score of 4.86.
Personally, I've never had a story receive as many kind and positive comments as this one did. That felt darn good.
More importantly, this was a story I really wanted to finish and publish for a Lit person I barely know, but they have always been a kind voice. Thanks!
0thesecretslut0
Virgin
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What really hurts me and makes me not want to enter another contest is starting out the first couple of days I have a 4.91 score with over 80 votes and then suddenly it starts dropping like a rock to 4.66 at 229. All of that work for trolls and haters to ruin my chances of winning and I don't even get halloween candy for all my effort
BuckyDuckman
Literotica Guru
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What really hurts me and makes me not want to enter another contest is starting out the first couple of days I have a 4.91 score with over 80 votes and then suddenly it starts dropping like a rock to 4.66 at 229. All of that work for trolls and haters to ruin my chances of winning and I don't even get halloween candy for all my effort
When your story first goes up - it shows up in two places. Obviously, on the contest page, but it also shows up on the listing of new stories inside that category. Over time, your story will drop off the "new" list for that category, but it remains prominently on the contest page.
The point being, your initial readers may have been fans of that category where the extra readers you picked up through the contest aren't fans of that category. Fair or not, that will affect your score.
Participating in contests always have the advantage of attracting more readers than not participating. I would suggest finding a different reason for celebrating success than a contest score.
0thesecretslut0
Virgin
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Should I celebrate by hours and hours of writing that all it got me was an unfair score and hate mail from trolls along with an excuse and lecture rather than I hey, yeah some of the readers here are immature and dicks but you wrote a really great story and you have talent...nothing to celebrate here but time and energy I won't get back.
BuckyDuckman
Literotica Guru
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Lots of my stories have picked up negative comments through the years, some that were so trolling and over-the-top that I deleted them as soon as I saw them. But if there's no joy to be found in displaying your work, then yeah, maybe you shouldn't?
Alternatively, the site allows turning off voting and comments before posting a story. (However, contests do require those functions to be turned on for obvious reasons.) I've seen plenty of writers who have turned off one or the other or both.
SimonDoom
Kink Lord
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What really hurts me and makes me not want to enter another contest is starting out the first couple of days I have a 4.91 score with over 80 votes and then suddenly it starts dropping like a rock to 4.66 at 229. All of that work for trolls and haters to ruin my chances of winning and I don't even get halloween candy for all my effort
I think you need to reset your expectations. If you have a 4.66 with 229 votes, after sweeps have happened, then it's probably not a result of trolling. It means that score probably is a fair representation of how readers as a whole feel about your story. That's a good score. I feel like I've done pretty well here, and the mean score for all my 33 stories is 4.58. My highest is 4.82. 4.91 is extremely high, and it's not realistic to expect after 80 votes that it will stay that high. It's reasonable to expect some reversion to the mean.
Don't get hung up on scores, and in particular do not get discouraged because your score drops from a very, very high score to a merely high score. That's not a sound, sustainable basis for being motivated as a writer here.
I completely agree with what Bucky wrote: contests are fine and dandy and it's great to win (I haven't yet, but I'd like to), but you should think of them primarily as a way to get more exposure and as a way of learning about other authors, too.
jaF0
Moderator
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Maggie's Cursed Costume
Maggie's Halloween Adventure
Doesn't show the 0 at the beginning or end of the author name.
JuanSeiszFitzHall
yet another
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Congrats to the winners, bravo to all contributors, thanks to the readers.
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