Infinite Writing Tournament = IWT ?

[Vesnic]

maybe a big IWT5 WINNER: INSERT STORY HERE banner/link would be cool, as well as a link to a non-forum article on it.... Don't know where you'd find a decent writer for the article though, good luck.

These are excellent ideas.

My adoring fans will have to fight over the article privileges.

I would also like one of those flying blimp banners in addition to my blinking neon front page advertisement.

Thanks.

[Dragavan]

As I stated in the other thread, I think there should be a room minimum rule but not a word count rule.

I also happen to think that a story must have at least two branches that are at least three rooms long each (and hopefully more than this) to fit into the concept of the site being a Branching story site. I think it should be made a rule even though voting will most likely weed out those that don't anyway, just to keep things clear. This will also help weed out people who would simply have a linear story with fake choice that only lead to "continue story" or "you fail, try again" choices.

Stories should be STARTED and FINISHED within the time allowed for the contest. Any dates found on the story outside this range during the voting period should disqualify it. Again this should go without saying, but it's best to make sure all these things are posted so there is no arguments. After the contest is over you can go in and make corrections, additions, or whatever you want, but not until then.

I think 3 months is too short, unless activity really picks up. So 6 month sounds reasonable, although I would break this down into phases. Something like: Day 1 is the announcement of the theme. 4-5 Months until deadline and then 2-4 weeks for reading and voting (these should depend on number of expected participants, as more participants would require more time to read them all and vote). Then about 2 weeks before the next contest starts for the new theme to be determined and prepared.

Having the winner's story spotlighted on the front page in some kind of award section or banner or something would be great. Perhaps even leave it up there until it it is replaced by the next contests winner. It should also get some kind of badge or special marking on the lists (perhaps making the title a different color and/or putting a symbol next to it that you can click on to get information about what the honor means). Perhaps even a special page that lists all the winners and has a small bit of details about it.

I also think the whole thing we've had going here of the winner getting to choose the topic for the next contest is a good one. But if this is going to be a more organized and official thing there should be some rules to regulate this too. The winner should have to submit their new subject to the contest organizer (most likely Severenz since it's his site) by a certain date (like at least 2 days before the new contest starts or something) or the Organizer gets to use one of their own choosing. I also think they Organizer should be able to reject some topics if they repeat or are too close to a previous one, but give the winner time to submit a new one if the deadline hasn't been reached yet.

I would also have some rules in here about how topics can't be too specific or tied to copyrighted material, characters, or settings. So this would mean you can't make the topic "Pokemon" or "Middle Earth", or overly specific things like "a civil war story about the battle of Bentonville". Again I think it's better to err on the side of being clear about the rules, rather than run into possible problems later.

Plus all the obvious things already mentioned by xnull:
Must be a completely original story.
Must be completely written by one author.
Must be primarily in English.

Once a set of rules are agreed upon and "ratified" they should be clearly posted on some permanent Contest Rules page on the site that is linked to upon the announcement of each new contest. Such as if we have a contest page and in forum threads that announce official contest information, like when they start or when the new theme is announced.


but feel free to ignore any of this since I have yet to actually enter one of these contests.

[Locke]

I actually meant there should just be a link or blurb announcing the contest on the main page, whether the mechanics of the contest itself are taken care of on the main site or the forums. "Your name in lights" for six months or so is a nice little bonus, though.

[Vesnic]

I also happen to think that a story must have at least two branches that are at least three rooms long each (and hopefully more than this) to fit into the concept of the site being a Branching story site.

This is good in theory, but I'm afraid the technicality of it might scare some people away. Don't we already mark down for stories that are too linear?

Stories should be STARTED and FINISHED within the time allowed for the contest. Any dates found on the story outside this range during the voting period should disqualify it.

This is still no guarantee that the story wasn't already worked on before the contest started. This year, both End and I made use of old stories that we had deleted. Although the text was completely new, we would both have been disqualified under this rule. Since there is no real way to tell, I think this should remain an honor system, but certainly stated in the rules that the work should be a new one.

[End Master]

I agree with Ves on these two points.

There were several CYOA type books that were rather linear in nature in that there was only "one correct" path. (One continued the story, the other choice lead to death/imprisionment/etc) As I remember the Zork series of books were like that.

I'm alright with the author at least making the attempt at giving two choices even if one always leads to death/imprisionment/etc.

"One choice rooms" should be avoided unless you're writing A LOT for a room (Like 4 pages worth of stuff. You should sort of break it up at that point) or in the rare cases of wanting to make an important change to the story flow and doing it in the middle of a room just doesn't feel right.

It'll be obvious though if someone isn't putting the effort into making a CYOA and they're just making a linear story, so I think the voting will take care of it. No need for a rule.

As for the start/stop date. We haven't really had a problem with either of those yet, mainly because it takes near the deadline for people to finally get motivated to begin and then when they finish they post it and don't work on it anymore.

I used a deleted story, but I also deleted all the rooms in that story since I'm obsessive like that, so all the dates "within" the story do match the contest timeframe, but some people might not be as obsessive about such things, and just delete the text of an old discarded story and the dates wouldn't be within the timeframe. Even if you delete all the rooms, the story still shows the old date of when it was first "created" so it still doesn't match when you look at it at first glance.

[Usoki]

Any sort of date regulation would have to be solely based on honor system- it's way too easy to mess with time stamps. I mean, all of End's stories are created in less than an hour because of how he pastes them from Word.

And I agree with Locke in that there should be a link from the site to the forums- IWT is, to me anyway, one of the perks of actually bothering to check out the forums. Half the fun is seeing what the people you know are capable of when they're forced to write outside their normal realms. I never would've written anything like my IWT pieces if they didn't have to follow the contest theme.

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

I like the banner recognition on the main site idea. That would be very cool.

I also think however that we need to discuss the rating system for next year. Apoth ran some numbers the other day, and our system is definitely broken. We don't have enough people reading and rating. The judges have to read every story submitted, and every branch available. As we get more notice we may get more participation, but the judges are going to be overwhelmed.

Perhaps we could instead of requiring 20 rooms, require that two branches be completed from beginning to end. Additional choices could be made available, however the primary story lines could be signified with little *s. This would make things easier for judges and might even encourage more people to weigh in.

I don't see any need for there to be word limits.

Another nice touch might be for names to be removed from works until after the stories have been judged. That would cut down on any favoritism as individuals who are not forum junkies come out to play. Plus, it would add a little touch of mystery.

I LOVE the idea of doing the contest twice a year. I feel like a total bum for not participating this year.

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

Any sort of date regulation would have to be solely based on honor system- it's way too easy to mess with time stamps. I mean, all of End's stories are created in less than an hour because of how he pastes them from Word.

End is sitting on the floor performing an operation on our vacuum cleaner. He contradicts your last statement and maintains that he is really just a very fast writer.

But yes, we do have to rely on honesty for the date rule.

Also, perhaps there should be an official rule against plagiarism.

[Vesnic]

I also think however that we need to discuss the rating system for next year. Apoth ran some numbers the other day, and our system is definitely broken. We don't have enough people reading and rating. The judges have to read every story submitted, and every branch available. As we get more notice we may get more participation, but the judges are going to be overwhelmed.

I think this is a little premature. There has never been an "overwhelming" number of stories, and even with the increase in participation that we are aiming for, I think the quantity of reading would still be more than manageable. If necessary, we can always extend the amount of time allowed for the rating/commentary process. Starring things with asterisks will lead to unnecessary work for the authors and it creates an odd situation of valuing certain branches of a story over others. Aren't they all supposed to be essential?

I'd also like to know what you mean when you say that "Apoth ran some numbers the other day, and our system is definitely broken."

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

Basically, from a statistical standpoint, we do not have enough people voting to really determine which story is actually the best. Also, because we don't have enough people voting, the competitors are casting votes. While they do not vote for their own stories, some people vote differently than others.

Suppose for example I submit a story along with five other people. I tend to be generous with my scores because I see the good in various submissions. I rate every story 9 or 10, excluding my own. Joe Schmo also has a story, and he has a different rating scale, he comes along and rates the stories including mine with 6's and 7's. Then all the stories I rated get a boost, and my own story which got a low rating gets knocked down a bit. Which is fine if my story sucks, but what if my story doesn't suck, the person just didn't want to give high scores, or sees the rating scale differently than me? The point is in an official experiment, the ratings would not stand up to testing. I can't really explain how Apoth came to the verdict with numbers. However, I can say that in my statistics class having 6 people weigh in on anything would not float as being fair and balanced. The results just come out skewed. People are always going to have their own scales for rating things, but if you get enough people it all tends to come out balanced.

Don't fret though Ves... I'm not implying that your win was a result of a flawed system. Most likely you still would have won, I don't mean to suggest otherwise.

If we are going to fix this competition to be all that it can be, then we need to take all these different points for improvement into account. I don't mean for this to be premature, or to add in another burden, but it would be almost cruel of me to wait until AFTER everything is settled to point out my concerns.

[xnull]

We could add the median scores that a scorer gives out back to the scorer.

For example, Katie gives a score of 10-10-10 to EndMaster (because he wrote a neat story and gives her the warm and fuzzies) and she gives everyone else something very similar. She should be given back (we are of course pretending she submitted something) the median value of her scores.

Yes, I agree that there is some bias in the scoring system. The person who rates the lowest across the board is given the best advantage.

(The reason I chose median above is that mean values can be manipulated with outliers so that a person voting could give themselves a slight advantage. The median is exactly the 50th percentile. I think this value would work, but its up for some debate.)

Thank you Katie for pointing that out.

[Vesnic]

This is all true enough, however none of this has actually caused any problems.

There have been no instances of unfair or skewed scoring. Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill. Likewise with the number of evaluators not reaching a point of statistical significance. Again, true enough, but a.) does anyone really believe that the outcomes would have been different if more people had voted? and b.) Is it really likely that we would ever get enough people doing ratings to satisfy this question?

[Usoki]

It is true that it's never caused problems, yet, but xnull does provide a good solution, and so it might as well get thrown in. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean we should ignore the possibility of it happening. What's the harm in owning snow boots in a desert?

That, and, the fact that we don't have a high number of evaluators? That's why we are at a point of statistical significance- small changes wreck large amounts of havok in small groups. Look at what one random '1' rating will do to a story's overall rating. Though if one of the stories actually does suck, that median addition won't work nearly as well. In some ways, we just have to accept a certain inherent bias in the ratings, no matter how we work it out.

[Vesnic]

In some ways, we just have to accept a certain inherent bias in the ratings, no matter how we work it out.

Yeah, bingo.

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

I'm ok with xnull's solution unless someone can come up with another suggestion. Thanks for considering solutions for this. Now that I know there is a way to play the system, I would feel extremely uncomfortable judging for future contests. As one of the most lenient judges, my participation would only hurt me if I submitted ratings for others. And I'm not comfortable trying to adjust my rating scale. I tried this year to be tough and brutal... it didn't take.