Story Contest Ideas

DarkCloud · October 19, 2003, 19:43

Just wondering, how would people feel about a "Celebrity Story Contest" with a panel of three judges voting on the 'Best Stories of the past 20/25 Contests' or something of that matter?

They would read stories from the Best of the Best- all of which would be competing for the "Metali" (or some other appropriately titled contest award... perhaps the "'Poly" or the "Christy" or the "vovani"... Personally I prefer to call it the "'Poly"... I can even design a good logo for the thing as soon as I teach myself how to use Photoshop

So just wondering, is there any interest in this idea- and does anyone have any good idea for when we should hold it (after 20 or 25) and who should be the judges?

vovan · October 19, 2003, 20:33

I have also been toying with the idea of having some kind of special contest after the 25th official Story Contest, it being a quarter of a hundred and all.

So, in that sense, I really like the idea of having a sort of an "Ultimate Best of the Best" contest, where we would have the best stories of all time compete.

However, I am not sure about having a panel of three judges choosing the best stories. On the one hand it does seem like a pretty good idea: we haven't seen a good voter turnout in the past few BoB contests, so it might be a good idea to just pick the ones the regulars deem best and give them the crown.

On the other hand, I am not so sure about it: I believe something we feel strongly about in this forum is the sense of community. It is quite pleasing to see that the old-time authors and the newer members are on the same level. There is no kind of hierarchy based on the number of posts, or the number of stories posted, or anything, unlike a few other parts of the site, where one may be judged by the rank under his name rather than the content of his or her posts. So, something we feel strongly about is the sense of equality: stories are very welcome from new people and old-timers alike. In that sense, I, personally, wouldn't want to have a certain panel of three or however many judges pick the best stories, because that sort of artificially creates a certain sense of elitism and inequality that we have so successfully avoided here so far.

So, as I was reading your post, I was thinking, how to make it so that we could have a board of judges for such a contest, and on the other hand we wouldn't introduce the elitism associated with being in a judging position and being "one of the few". One thing that came immediately to mind is essentially to have a certain poll in order to choose the judges... But that could have the potential of quickly turning into a puplarity contest which we probably want to avoid. What we could do is basically have the same system we have with the stories:

A candidate for being a judge must be nominated and seconded.
One cannot nominate him- or herself.
The nominee must have posted at least one story at one time or another on these forums.
As soon as there are, say, twelve, nominations (I don't suppose there will be more? And if there are less, we can cut the number to nine.), the voting is held and the three authors with most votes get to be the judges.

Also, here is another idea: how about the prize for winning this ultimate contest be Civ3: Conquests. If we decide to do it that way, though, it's probably a good idea to hold the ultimate contest after the 20th regular contest. By the time we get through 25th, chances are, everyone will already have Conquests.

In addition to the judges choice of the best stories, we could also hold the "People's choice" contest or something, where we would give the people a chance to vote as well, and see if there is any turnout.

Just some ideas.

* Vovan throws two cents into the bin *

EDIT: Must have had five or six "sort of"s in the first two paragraphs of the post.

Edited them out.

ChrisiusMaximus · October 20, 2003, 02:25

Anything that helps get this forum noticed is a good thing though we must tread cautiously as Vovan points out.

I certainly dont want my status to be deemed above that of others, and please dont call the awards "Christy's", gross!!

That being said some sort of contest would be nice, I will give this idea some thought and post later if anything occurs to me

jackl · October 20, 2003, 15:53

I recon we got three judges lined up already guys

DarkCloud · October 20, 2003, 22:49

Quote:

However, I am not sure about having a panel of three judges choosing the best stories.

That's mostly because the judges need to be people who can actually dedicate the time to reading all the stories... not every voter in the community will have necessarily read all the tales.

Indeed, your nomination system for the three judges is a very good and democratic one and can allow for greater publicity in the stories forum... Hopefully Dan and the other news posters will be less busy when the election is going on... since server issues and advertising issues will be cleared up by then and Markos might be back on leave from the Greek Army.

The "People's Choice" award also seems quite good.

Quote:

Also, here is another idea: how about the prize for winning this ultimate contest be Civ3: Conquests. If we decide to do it that way, though, it's probably a good idea to hold the ultimate contest after the 20th regular contest. By the time we get through 25th, chances are, everyone will already have Conquests.

As for the prize. I agree that it is a good idea. I will discuss it with Dan [unless someone else wants to foot the bill for the game

in which case, there should be no problem on gifting a prize

]

vovan · October 21, 2003, 20:26

Well, I was thinking about having Civ3: Conquests as a prize for the Ultimate BoB contest, and I think there might be a little problem.

Namely: many of the great writers of the past are no longer visiting these forums. So, while we may choose a winner, chances are, we may never find the person to give the prize to! So, maybe it is a good idea after all to keep this contest just for pride and admiration.

But I still like the idea of having Conquests as a prize for something.

So here's another idea that might just make this forum a place bustling with writers. Maybe we could have a contest sort of separate from the Official Story Contest Anniversary thing, and have it be in celebration of Conquests. We could have it so that for a couple of weeks (or up to a month) people could submit stories that are civ-related and have some relation to conquests: like, some of the new civs play a role, or maybe some of the new units or other features. And then the winner, by popular vote (or again, by choice of a panel of judges) gets Conquests as a prize. That way, we ensure that there is actually someone to give the prize to.

I am sure such a contest would be a lot of fun, and if the admins give it a nice amount of publicity and put it up there with the other game-related contests in the Apolyton Contests section, it would bring quite a bit of attention to these forums.

The problem I see with this, too, is that the release of the game is very near: just some two and a half weeks from now. So, the people would not have a lot of time to write their stories, and then the timeframe for when we accept submissions will be very short. On the other hand, if we extend the period beyond the release date, people might not have that much of an incentive to participate: I would rather pay to get the game now, than wait a month for a chance to get it for free.

So, I don't know. If we were to go ahead with this idea, it would have to be done by the end of this week.

Metaliturtle · November 18, 2003, 19:51

METALITURTLE IS BACK!!! Actually I just stopped by, if you name the award after me I'll smack one of y'all. Unless it's an award for funniest all time story, then name it after me.

SKILORD · November 21, 2003, 00:15

Quote:

"Metali" (or some other appropriately titled contest award... perhaps the "'Poly" or the "Christy" or the "vovani"...

How about the 'Lordie!' ?

I feel so loved, its good to be included

Yeah, I like this.

Lord Zalzabad · November 21, 2003, 09:07

I'd love the "Lordie" too as the title of the award

(BTW, sorry bout the lack of posts. I have not forgotten my commitments, just been very very busy. I promise I will get round to finishing my story)

DarkCloud · November 30, 2003, 14:06

Quote:

Namely: many of the great writers of the past are no longer visiting these forums. So, while we may choose a winner, chances are, we may never find the person to give the prize to! So, maybe it is a good idea after all to keep this contest just for pride and admiration.

We could, perhaps, email them?

Quote:

But I still like the idea of having Conquests as a prize for something. So here's another idea that might just make this forum a place bustling with writers. Maybe we could have a contest sort of separate from the Official Story Contest Anniversary thing, and have it be in celebration of Conquests. We could have it so that for a couple of weeks (or up to a month) people could submit stories that are civ-related and have some relation to conquests: like, some of the new civs play a role, or maybe some of the new units or other features. And then the winner, by popular vote (or again, by choice of a panel of judges) gets Conquests as a prize. That way, we ensure that there is actually someone to give the prize to.

That's an idea... We would have to set a minimum limit of say, 4-5 submissions for there to be a prize to be awarded... so that we can drum up some real interest... Hopefully we still have enough authors that they could craft something that rapidly.

But as you mention, the deadline has already bassed for conqeusts to be a new game.

Sigh... I'll keep thinking, and when I have more time I might have the impetus to do something, but I havent' even really goetten on the internet in the last 2 weeks for more than perhaps 3 hours combined

Paddy · January 20, 2004, 02:56

I too like the idea of having a "Celebrity Story Contest" or a "25th official Story Contest"

There has been so many great stories posted on this site over the years, and with the years passing there should be enough content to get plenty of great content for such a contest.

I understand that many of these authors may have moved on, and that they even may have changed their email addresses without updating their profiles here

Yet, there are quite a lot of people who are dropping by to read the stories, without actually leaving comments or writing stories, so some of these could be the winners of yesturyear.

I would be happy to assist in emailing and / or PM'ing these previous authors.

It could also be a good time to let them know of the Guild about to open.

I am sure that we could come up with a great form letter, and that at the end of the day, the effort to contact these people will be easily offset by having even a few of them dropping back in and maybe even staying a while.

Must check the bar in the Guild Hall is well stocked

DarkCloud · January 21, 2004, 23:27

Well, good luck with your plans Paddy, I'll check back on Monday or Thursday, but I can't promise too much oragnization work since I'll be gone from now until Sunday and will have limited net access until probably the 2nd week of February

Paddy · January 21, 2004, 23:42

Hi DarkCloud,

I have offered to assist you in your suggestion from 1 December 2003.

I will await your return.

DarkCloud · January 25, 2004, 22:02

Okay, thank you paddy- well, that sounds great... Thank you for your offer.

Right now, I'm still really busy, but if we were to do the Celebrity Story Contest, I'm not certain of the ultimate reward... or the exact details whether it would be old stories by old authors or new tales (which would be ideal, but would be hard to do... for example: I have little time to write civ tales nowadays

)

But as a first organizational step, we can assemble a list of the names of all the old story authors and try to list their emails (possibly?) but remember, don't write the emails EXACTLY as they would be typed- we don't want spambots harvesting the URLs...

I'll see what I can dig up, but I would suggest searching the Story Contest History archives and the little history I wrote for the contest in the Rules thread (it's somewhere near the bottom of the 1st page and top of the second page)

Thanks!
-DC.

Paddy · January 25, 2004, 22:24

Hi DC,

I will start compiling a list.
The email addresses will be interesting to gather...?...!