Room Count or Word Count?

[End Master]

Might as well bring this up since that was what we were talking about before for future contests. Should we use one or the other, or some combination of the two?

So give your opinion and then shout down and insult anyone that disagrees with it in true democratic fashion!

Also, I temporarily channeled Apoth’s spirit to come up with these stats, but I’m sure he can do something more in depth with them. (Or correct any mistakes I made)

Word Count (WC) Room Count (RC)

IWT 1

3 Participants

Cat2000-Search: WC: 3,206 RC: 24
DEP-Reunion: WC: 11,257 RC: 20
End-Alpha Wolf: WC: 61,532 RC: 143

Total: WC: 75,995 RC: 187

IWT 2

3 Participants

DEP-Ducky Park: WC: 21,905 RC: 27
End-Geek: WC: 23,333 RC: 49
Jeff-Shemaru: WC: 13,265 RC: 23

Total: WC: 58,503 RC: 99

IWT3

5 Participants

Apoth-The Mold: WC: 7,919 RC: 58
DEP-Ultimate Battle: (Unknown)
End-Imagination: WC: 21,182 RC: 32
Katie-Lost in a Good Book- A Child’s Tale: WC: 13,388 RC: 38
Katie-The Pattern: WC: 21,010 RC: 50
Jeff-Paul’s Kingdom: WC: 8,742 RC: 24

Total: WC: 72,241 RC: 202

IWT4

6 Participants

Apoth-Infernal Gate: WC: 245 RC: 23
DEP-Youngstown Demon: WC: 7,319 RC: 23
End-Death Song: WC: 52,269 RC: 69
Katie-Odalisque Paradise: WC: 7,653 RC: 31
Usoki-Hellstone: WC: 6,099 RC: 23
Ves-The Country from Hell: WC: 24,094 RC: 40

Total: WC: 97,679 RC: 209

IWT5

4 Participants

End-Exploitation Theater: WC: 18,150 RC: 22
Usoki-The Sneeze: WC: 6,435 RC: 20
Ves-Todestrieb: WC: 22,345 RC: 27
Xnull-Serial Rapist: WC: 6,015 RC: 11

Total: WC: 53,945 RC: 80


And there you go.

[Vesnic]

Wow, End, thanks for the stats orgy. I didn't know you and Apoth were involved that way.

I don't actually think there should be a minimum for word count or room count. I still stand by the idea that any story that is too short will shoot itself in the virtual foot for its lack of plot development.

[Dragavan]

I know I have not entered any of these, so you can feel free to ignore my opinion...

I think the Room Count of 20 is a good thing, as it ties into the site's built in limit for appearing on the front page and some standard public lists. I think any contest worthy story should be something that will show up on the site as normal. I don't think it should be there for any other reason than this.

Word count is pointless, as Vesnic pointed out, because those who don't use enough to tell the story they are trying to get across will weed themselves out. Plus, adding words to get to an arbitrary word count requirement can actually end up harming otherwise good stories.

[Usoki]

I'm gonna have to agree with Ves here, though I find it depressing to see just how short The Sneeze is, given how many rooms of Hellstone are utter filler. Ah well, it's delightful fluff, and I'm oddly fond of it.

I do think a room limit is the easier of the two, though. If you meet the word limit without making twenty rooms, you've either got a linear story, or a story that's glaringly incomplete. It makes itself obvious either way. It comes down to the amount of words per page, really. My work barely broke twenty rooms, and it's pretty short. Compared to xnull's, which would be very big indeed if the pattern follows- a hell of a lot of text in a short amount of rooms. It was long, and it feels really linear, especially in the early stages, before all of the other rooms are fleshed out. I guess it's preference. A room limit encourages more options, as a heavier emphasis on the CYOA creates more rooms. But it also encourages quantity over quality, and makes it really easy to send crap into elligability. A word limit encourages quality, but it also creates a heavy, linear feel.

If we wanted a linear contest, we'd just head on over to worth or plime or whatever site it is End and DEP complain is too censored. I'm all for a room limit to encourage the CYOA.

[End Master]

I like the 20 room minimum for a few of the reasons Drag and Usoki mentioned. It shows up on the public reading list and it encourages the CYOA style.

I don't think we have a lot people excessively "abusing the system" of just creating one word filler rooms to fulfill the requirement so I think it's still a good rule to keep in place, but as I’ve mentioned before I’m flexible in allowing stories with less than 20 rooms, but taking off points for it (Like 1 point for each room less than 20 for example)

[apotheosis]

I'm partial to a 5000 word minimum. That's 20 legitimate pages worth of text and I think is pretty minimum for the contents of a real story worthy of the contest. It would stop me from creating another Infernal Gate. If people want their story to show up on the site, they should do 20 rooms worth, but I think that should not be a facet of the contest.


That is just my opinion.

[xnull]

I have to say that I was very disappointed that I got docked points for Serial Rapist not fulfilling a 20-room minimum. To be honest I wasn't even aware of the requirement until very close to the end of the competition. This is my ignorance, and so it makes sense to me that I am punished for my ignorance. Luckily I care more about the feedback and more about getting to choose the topic for the next competition (which is something I would not have been able to do even if I wasn't docked points thanks to Ves and her wonderful submission).

The 20-room requirement was instantiated by Sev through his infinite-story code. This was his insurance that the front page of the site didn't get spammed with crap. After reading many of the stories I sometimes wonder at the success of this strategy, but this is besides the point.

I see it this way: If you are going to enforce a 20-room rule, it should be a 20-non-empty-room rule. 20 empty rooms is just a promise that there are more rooms to come. I see uninstantiated branches in the same light; these branches that have links but have not been created are a promise that there is more to come. We can't look at this rule in the technical light. If you create a rule to enforce some idea on submissions, you should not use the wording of the rule to make judgement calls, but instead the spirit of the rule to make judgement calls. From my perspective allowing stories with empty rooms is contrary to the spirit of the rule and should therefore be rejected.

Here I try to categorize all ideas brought to this thread:

• No word/room minimums.
  Defense:

  • With a low word/room the story probably isn't as fulfilling and therefore will lose in the competition. There is no need for double jeopardy.
  • The implication of the above defense is that a story which is short in wordcount or roomcount that is also a great story should be accepted as being a great story.

  Counter-arguments:

  • Well, what would stop someone from entering a mudkip story?
  • We want to encourage people to expose their story to the front site.
    
    Counter-arguments to the counter-argument:

    • Mudkip stories will be rated low and since they are short (by definition) they will not really waste time.
    • This competition had MA stories which didn't show up on the front page of the site anyway.
    • It shouldn't be up to the competition to enforce the publicity of the story. It is the nature of any writer to want their story to be read.

    
    

  
  
• We should have a room minimum.
  
  Defense:

  • Anything worthy of the contest is something that should show up on the front site.
  • This is an easy way to qualify a story for competition.
  • This encourages the CYOA style of writing.

  
  Counter-argument:

  • People abuse this with empty rooms.
    Counter-arguments to the counter-argument:

    • Very few people actually abuse this with empty rooms.
    • We can simply not count empty rooms toward room count, since it may have "rooms"... but they aren't really rooms. We can have a 20-real-room-minimum.

    
    

  
  
• We should have a word minimum.
  
  Defense:

  • We want to make sure we are grading and reading a real story. Small amounts of text typically are not worthy.
  • This number is easy to quantify through the site's interfaces.

  
  Counter-arguments:

  • Like making "empty rooms" people can post "empty words". (And then the demon chanted, "Ar tah huum la targ lak ragh'hal tiuf vernalum est quent...") or use markup to artificially inflate their wordcount (i am cheating he he he).
  • Word minimums may create linear stories.
  • Word minimums may hurt legitimate stories by forcing authors to ungracefully add text they'd rather not have.

  
  
• We should have both a word and room minimum.
  
  Defense:

  • The ratio of words to rooms should be balanced. We want to avoid both too linear stories and too exponential stories.

  
  Counter-arguments:

  • The technicality of this might scare away potential participants.
  • Who are you to tell me how to write a CYOA story?!

  
  

I think the question boils down to more abstract questions:

• Is it our job as rule creators to enforce good story quality?
• Is it our job as rule creators to enforce the CYOA paradigm of writing?
• Is it our job as rule creators to prune out potential mischief-doers?
• Is it our job as rule creators to ensure that contest entries make it to the front page?

If we answer the above questions, we come to a conclusion.

I think it is not our job as rule creators to enforce good story quality. It is the job of the writers (who take pride in their writing) and scorers (who like bashing other writers' works) to determine the quality of the contestants' writings. If we take care of writing quality within a set of rules, we might just have a "Yearly Writing Session" where we share things we write on a particular topic, never declare a winner and then vote on the next topic for the next "writing session".

I think that it is our job as rule makers to enforce the CYOA paradigm of writing. The point of writing on IS is to exploit the CYOA paradigm. A contest held here should use the facilities. This also increases our potential to grow our numbers. However, I believe we should never impose CYOA philosophy over story quality.

I believe it is our job as rule makers to prune our potential mischief-makers, but that this is by far the lowest priority. We should not sacrifice anything which might slow/stop a legitimate writer to prevent a mischief entry. We should prefer freedom of the masses over the incarceration of the few. Since mischief stories are rare, easy to recognize and inexpensive to deal with, we should focus on creating a policy for how to deal with these events after they happen rather than utilize "expensive" methods (forcing writers to write some in some particular fashion) in order to prevent them.

I do not believe that it is our job as rule creators to ensure that contest entries make it to the front page. I believe it should be the writer's decision. Luckily, IS has the utilities in place where we are really unable to force an author to keep their story public. I don't believe that many writers will actually want their story to remain private. If they did, they would write CYOA stories in their personal diary instead of through IS. Why should we force an author to expose their story before they deem it ready? (well then, why are they entering it into a competition if they don't deem it ready?) All of this being said, I think it is certainly very beneficial to both the writer and this group of rule creators to have the story submissions be publicly available through the front site. It would be very utilitarian of us to keep these benefits in mind.

In my analysis, it seems fitting that there should be either a 20-real-room minimum or no minimum at all. I feel that the more rules we add which restricts the author, the more we've done to defeat the point of the contest. A 20-real-room minimum will benefit us as a group, but will really do nothing for the spirit of the competition. With this rationale, I conclude that things depend: would we like to exploit the competition for our own gain (more public stories) or would we like to let authors write for the competition their own way (and most likely have the good stories published through natural behavior)?

I have answered this question for myself. I feel as though the competition is separate from the main site but that having it can easily bring benefit to the main site. I don't think we need rules of "force". Plus if a story which lacks 20 pages makes it to a top spot, Sev will place a link to the story on the main site (as we have been discussing in another thread). If the story doesn't make it to a top spot, either the story wasn't good enough to warrant its public release or the author will likely continue working on the piece to have it published.

[apotheosis]

You should be taking all the time and energy you put into that post and post on our blog.

Edit: Though in actual response to your posts, your logic is pretty good for the most part. I don't entirely agree with your word count counter argument though, because I feel like 5000 is a small enough word count that most people won't have to try hard at all to reach that. Even if 5000 is too much, I think a figure could be reached to ensure individuals have to produce some amount of content without forcing them to try and artificially inflate word count.

[Locke]

Nice post, Xnull. I think the main purpose of the contest was, originally, to provide more high-quality stories for IS readers (which presumably involves the story showing up so they know it exists). However, your post made me think about it for awhile, and though I still personally prefer the 20-room minimum as a benefit to the community (because attracting new, productive members is hard enough around here anyway), the contest as it stands is really more of an annual event for the established members than to attract prospective ones or readers of the site.

With priorities as they are, there really isn't much reason for a room limit, particularly when the winners appear on the front page anyway. If one of you writes a non-last-minute ten-room story, I trust it to be contest-worthy. Since this contest is more or less about us, let's let quality stand absolutely and do away with any limits, and if the entry is under 20 rooms, but quality, go ahead and add some unobtrusive empty ones if you want it read.

[xnull]

I don't entirely agree with your word count counter argument though, because I feel like 5000 is a small enough word count that most people won't have to try hard at all to reach that. Even if 5000 is too much, I think a figure could be reached to ensure individuals have to produce some amount of content without forcing them to try and artificially inflate word count.

I built the argument tree based on what people had said before my post. That particular argument was not my own and included for completeness.

Gotta go to class.

P.S. I wrote that in part to boil down the argument to something we could argue about point for point (what the role of the rule makers was and what the contest actually means) rather than state opinions without a common goal in mind. But mostly I wrote it so that I could procrastinate on my homework.

[Vesnic]

With regard to the argument regarding word counts, I think it is dangerous to set any number as the minimum. That is imposing a judgment that a certain quantity of writing is necessary to produce quality. This is quite clearly not always the case, as is demonstrated by many forms of poetry and other minimalist forms. We are not qualified arbiters for such a question.

From a more utilitarian standpoint, setting a word minimum seems like a rather arbitrary exercise. Why 5000? Couldn't it then be 4000? How about 6000? There is absolutely no agreed-upon rule that could be applied here which could ever lead to the determination of any definite figure.

I am still in favor of requiring neither a word nor a room minimum. However, I do see some merit in the argument for room minimum, according to the arguments presented here in its favor.

[xnull]

Well, we never really came to any agreement here.

I suggest that everyone ask themselves the questions:

• Is it our job as rule creators to enforce good story quality?
• Is it our job as rule creators to enforce the CYOA paradigm of writing?
• Is it our job as rule creators to prune out potential mischief-doers?
• Is it our job as rule creators to ensure that contest entries make it to the front page?

For a more complete idea, see my previous post on this thread (page 1).

Ves and I seem to agree that no minimums makes plenty of sense and that word minimums do not. Logically, I can understand a 20-room-rule, but only if the 20 rooms are filled with content.

My vote is in for no minimums on competition stories.

[Vesnic]

I am creating a poll right now to resolve this issue.

[Locke]

As I said, the competition is more for us these days than to attract new participants; if that doesn't change, there's no reason to limit anything. If we do get CYS interested this time, though, or if (particularly when IS2 comes around) the contest is viewed as more of a showcase for readers and potential members, I'm for the 20 room minimum.