The Official Authors' Hangout Summer Lovin' 2024 Contest Support Thread

[Agent0069]

Congrats to the winners, which is all of us, because we’re all winners!

I have my most read story with 40k views, and that’s without the red “H” even. I/T seems strangely popular around here.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

Congratulations to the winners!

 

[gordo12]

Thanks! And congrats to those at the top.

But now I'm really confused, my entry doesn't seem to have the Summer Lovin tag?? But neither does the winner...

Mime is https://literotica.com/s/a-bad-rep

No, kinda confused me too. But it's in the contest and I don't waste tag space on something obvious. Although in retrospect people searching the stories for that tag...!

 

[Infernalcock]

No, kinda confused me too. But it's in the contest and I don't waste tag space on something obvious. Although in retrospect people searching the stories for that tag...!

Well done and congrats! But still really confused as I can't see my story anywhere in that ranking...

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Well done and congrats! But still really confused as I can't see my story anywhere in that ranking...

A story only has the "Summer Lovin" tag if you added those words as a tag when you submitted your story. Everyone had to add "Summer Lovin" to the "Notes to Admin" field for their story to be entered into the contest. It was optional whether authors also wanted to use "Summer Lovin" as one of their story tags. Some did. Some did not.

That ranking isn't really a ranking of stories entered into the contest. It's only a snapshot in time of stories that include the "Summer Lovin" tag, sorted in descending order by vote score (again, at the time that you are conducting the search).

I didn't submit to this contest, but I could submit a story tomorrow with the tag "Summer Lovin" just for funsies and it would show up in that ranked list because all you are doing is searching for stories that happen to include that tag.

Hope that's helpful and didn't muddy the water further!

 

[Infernalcock]

A story only has the "Summer Lovin" tag if you added those words as a tag when you submitted your story. Everyone had to add "Summer Lovin" to the "Notes to Admin" field for their story to be entered into the contest. It was optional whether authors also wanted to use "Summer Lovin" as one of their story tags. Some did. Some did not.

That ranking isn't really a ranking of stories entered into the contest. It's only a snapshot in time of stories that include the "Summer Lovin" tag, sorted in descending order by vote score (again, at the time that you are conducting the search).

I didn't submit to this contest, but I could submit a story tomorrow with the tag "Summer Lovin" just for funsies and it would show up in that ranked list because all you are doing is searching for stories that happen to include that tag.

Hope that's helpful and didn't muddy the water further!

Thanks for replying. I did do the tag and my story was (and still is) listed in the competition, so presumably was entered correctly?

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Thanks for replying. I did do the tag and my story was (and still is) listed in the competition, so presumably was entered correctly?

Yes, your story was entered correctly. It appears on https://www.literotica.com/stories/contest.php/summer-lovin-2024, which means you entered "Summer Lovin" in the Notes to Admin field when you submitted your story. That Note to Admin was Laurel's cue to enter your story into the contest.

When I view your story, "Summer Lovin" is not listed as one of your story tags (click the gray "tag" icon directly below your story title to view tags on the first page of your story).

My guess is that you did not include it as a tag and maybe are thinking of the "Notes to Admin" field. Tags and Notes to Admin are two different things. It's certainly also possible that you did include it as a story tag and it somehow got stripped out, but I don't know that I've heard of that happening before.

 

[Infernalcock]

Yes, your story was entered correctly. It appears on https://www.literotica.com/stories/contest.php/summer-lovin-2024, which means you entered "Summer Lovin" in the Notes to Admin field when you submitted your story. That Note to Admin was Laurel's cue to enter your story into the contest.

When I view your story, "Summer Lovin" is not listed as one of your story tags (click the gray "tag" icon directly below your story title to view tags on the first page of your story).

My guess is that you did not include it as a tag and maybe are thinking of the "Notes to Admin" field. Tags and Notes to Admin are two different things. It's certainly also possible that you did include it as a story tag and it somehow got stripped out, but I don't know that I've heard of that happening before.

Thanks! That's correct, I didn't add it as a tag, but I did enter it as per the rules. Have I messed it up?

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Thanks! That's correct, I didn't add it as a tag, but I did enter it as per the rules. Have I messed it up?

Nope! You did everything correctly. You're all good!

 

[SimonDoom]

Congratulations to the winners! Great job. You had tons of competition.

 

[Infernalcock]

Nope! You did everything correctly. You're all good!

OK thanks! So where did I place!?

 

[ThatNewGuy]

OK thanks! So where did I place!?

There is no official ranking outside the top 3.

My unsolicited advice: don't worry about how you did compared to anyone else! Your story's worth is not determined by its score or its place on a contest list.

FreyaGersemi's steps will only give you a partial list of stories from the contest (i.e., only those stories that used the Summer Lovin tag). Further, the scores for stories in those search results are not current and won't match the actual, real-time score for each story (visible only to each author in his or her dashboard). The scores in those search results will also continue to move up and down as readers continue to vote. So there is no way to know how your story fared at the exact time the contest ended.

If you want to get an idea of how you did relative to others, I suppose you could view each story in the contest list and check the score on the story page, but those scores are also outdated and do not reflect the current score each author sees in his or her dashboard.

TL;DR: It's a mystery.

 

[Infernalcock]

There is no official ranking outside the top 3.

My unsolicited advice: don't worry about how you did compared to anyone else! Your story's worth is not determined by its score or its place on a contest list.

FreyaGersemi's steps will only give you a partial list of stories from the contest (i.e., only those stories that used the Summer Lovin tag). Further, the scores for stories in those search results are not current and won't match the actual, real-time score for each story (visible only to each author in his or her dashboard). The scores in those search results will also continue to move up and down as readers continue to vote. So there is no way to know how your story fared at the exact time the contest ended.

If you want to get an idea of how you did relative to others, I suppose you could view each story in the contest list and check the score on the story page, but those scores are also outdated and do not reflect the current score each author sees in his or her dashboard.

TL;DR: It's a mystery.

Right. Kind of defeats the object for me though, if I have no idea how I did. My own dashboard says my story is on 4.9, the competiton says 4.86, which should have been quite competitive. I'm sure there's factors I'm not aware of, just wondering what they are!

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Right. Kind of defeats the object for me though, if I have no idea how I did. My own dashboard says my story is on 4.9, the competiton says 4.86, which should have been quite competitive. I'm sure there's factors I'm not aware of, just wondering what they are!

Most likely it was the timing of the 'final' vote count.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Right. Kind of defeats the object for me though, if I have no idea how I did. My own dashboard says my story is on 4.9, the competiton says 4.86, which should have been quite competitive.

Congrats! That's a great score. Sounds like you might have just missed the podium. You could always ask Laurel via private message if she can tell you where you finished in the final standings.

I don't mean to sound dismissive of your desire to see a final ranking of all stories. I bet most contest participants would like to see that too.

I suspect that the site admins don't provide a final ranking of all stories because they don't want to have to field a ton of questions from people with close/tied scores (or questions from people wondering how their story was leapfrogged at the last minute).

 

[Infernalcock]

Most likely it was the timing of the 'final' vote count.

Sure, not suggesting I've been slighted. But would be nice to get some idea of how I did!

 

[MelissaBaby]

Right. Kind of defeats the object for me though, if I have no idea how I did. My own dashboard says my story is on 4.9, the competiton says 4.86, which should have been quite competitive. I'm sure there's factors I'm not aware of, just wondering what they are!

Think of it like a horse race. There is a distinct finish line, a point at which a winner is declared. The horse in front at that point is the winner. If another horse passes it a second or two later, it does not win.

If the contest ends at Zero Hour, the story with the highest score at that time wins. If it gets one bombed five minutes later, and loses that lead, they still won. If another story gets a flurry of fives and their score surpasses the Zero Hour winner, oh well, no prize for them.

 

[nicksouth]

Click on a story. Click on the story tags. Click on the "summer lovin' 2024" tag. Click on the "rank by rating" (or whatever it is).

Thank you!

I did not know to tag mine but came in a similar position. I'll know better next time.

 

[nicksouth]

Well done everyone..
Gordo12 summed it up.
I think it's been well repeated here but the main benefit to all is that it attracts readers to authors, and genres that they may otherwise avoided or think they didn't care for.
I think it's tremendous that at each competition I enter there are numerous new writers dipping their toe in the waters.
all kudos to them .
cheers one and all.

Yup. I want from 1 to 70 followers and I think it drove a lot of traffic to my other works.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

Well done to everyone who entered and congratulations to the winners.

In hindsight, this was a successful showing for me with 28 new followers, over 14K views, and almost 750 votes before the sweeps. I lost a net of 23 votes over the past couple of days and the story went up by 0.05 points, putting its score very close to where I expected. I was very pleased with most of the feedback (special thanks to Juan and Anonymous for PMs with detailed concrit), the number of Favorites, and the number of nice comments, but was disappointed by the last two comments received; the last commenter obviously didn't read or didn't listen to the disclaimer in the brief intro!

Now it's back to work on the next one!

 

[MelissaBaby]

Twinsies!

It was a good event for Lesbian stories!

 

[Voboy]

Congrats, winners! Very deserving.

See youse next year!

 

[Rustyoznail]

Congrats all!

I thought my story was good for a 4.5-4.6. I'm very happy it got cleaned to a shiny 4.68.

There's always a lot of speculation about sweeps and how they work. Suffice to say, the general consensus is it's not perfect, but it's better than allowing trolls free rein.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The link leads me to a place where they give the monthly winners for 2022. For 2023, only January is given. Or Am I misinterpreting the information?

It would appear that the site owners have either decided to let those slide or else have been too busy.

 

[TheLobster]

Congrats all!

I thought my story was good for a 4.5-4.6. I'm very happy it got cleaned to a shiny 4.68.

There's always a lot of speculation about sweeps and how they work. Suffice to say, the general consensus is it's not perfect, but it's better than allowing trolls free rein.

Yeah, the swing upward is crazy. Mine is just barely above the H mark for most of the contests, but at the end it got cleaned all the way to 4.72. Not bad at all, considering that was my first attempt writing in Mature.

Congratulations to the winners and everyone who participated!