The writers of the competition
Corporate Dog
Explorer
My Rant (longish)...
Alright... here's my comprehensive rant about all things involving the contest. I'll preface this by saying that I DID enter, and my entry was NOT in the first heat.
First, when it comes to the issue of formatting and whether or not something met the criteria for the contest, I think those issues should've been ironed out BEFORE giving the entries to the voting public. One person wrote the contest rules, and I think it should've been up to that one person to apply them to the entries as well. I've seen people who think reducing the margins of a page constitutes not following the rules (and I think that's an extremely strict interpretation), while I've seen others who are willing to let blatant violations slide (if you used the wrong font size, sorry, but there really isn't any wiggle room there). I think consistency is VERY important here, but it ain't gonna happen when you have the voters interpreting the rules.
As a result (and I've said this before) I'm going for the most lax interpretation of the formatting rules possible when I make my votes. Twisted logic, perhaps, but I think the quality of an entry is far more important than whether or not they used 1 inch or .75 inches on the margins. We all worked hard, and even if that makes me a
ing Pollyanna, I think it should count for something.
As for whether or not the NPC can be used independently of the location, and vice versa? That's also a judgement call, but one I feel more comfortable making, and one which SHOULD be open to wide interpretation.
Second, a rant directed at the cheaters. That's right... cheaters. Screw this 'voting irregularity' crap. What do you hope to gain out of this? Yeah, there's loot involved, but so what? We're talking at most $50 worth of merchandise. Do you REALLY need it that bad? If so, maybe you can put your writing skills to better use, write some reviews, and get some review material for free.
If you're looking for acceptance, and maybe a few pats on the back, then that's equally sad. While I really dig EN World, and am starting to dig the forums (I'm pretty new here), it's just a sliver of a fraction of the people involved in the niche hobby we call roleplaying. Judging from the smidgeon of involvement in the one or two threads which have been about the contest, you won't even get to enjoy the standard Warholian fifteen minutes of fame from winning this thing.
I'm thinking that most of us entered this contest for fun. It was fun to write our entries, and it was fun to read the other entries. I personally entered the contest because I've been wanting to gear up to writing larger pieces of RPG content. It was fun practice for me. If I win, yay, I've proven to myself that I can write something. Frankly, the prizes don't even do it for me (no offense meant towards the forum regulars who wrote them, but I've never been a fan of psionics, and most of my gaming is done online, making my use of counters negligible).
I was eager to see how well I could do in the contest, and how my entry measured up to whatever entries ultimately win. Now even THAT small amout of gratification has been put on hold because a few of you monkeys thought SO highly of your own work that the votes of the masses couldn't POSSIBLY have been made out of any sort of informed opinion, and therefore had to be supplemented with your own. THAT is SOing WEAK.
Finally, I think some of us have proven that we're incapable of fair and unbiased judging. Whether you stuffed the ballot box yourself, or campaigned on other websites and forums, you skewed things in your favor. Even if we relocate the voting to this forum (thereby avoiding the problem of multiple votes) there's still the issue of people who entered the contest persuading their friends to vote for their entry, and their friends voting without even reading the others. This shouldn't be a popularity contest.
I think, sadly, that Morrus should appoint a committee of judges made up of people from the forum who didn't enter the contest, and who have no pre-established biases. Let them vote on each heat, and let them give reasons for why they voted the way they did (similar to the postings in this thread which 'review' each entry). That seems to be about the only fair way to do it, after the initial voting experiment failed.
That's my two cents. YMMV.
Regards,
Corporate Dog
Alright... here's my comprehensive rant about all things involving the contest. I'll preface this by saying that I DID enter, and my entry was NOT in the first heat.
First, when it comes to the issue of formatting and whether or not something met the criteria for the contest, I think those issues should've been ironed out BEFORE giving the entries to the voting public. One person wrote the contest rules, and I think it should've been up to that one person to apply them to the entries as well. I've seen people who think reducing the margins of a page constitutes not following the rules (and I think that's an extremely strict interpretation), while I've seen others who are willing to let blatant violations slide (if you used the wrong font size, sorry, but there really isn't any wiggle room there). I think consistency is VERY important here, but it ain't gonna happen when you have the voters interpreting the rules.
As a result (and I've said this before) I'm going for the most lax interpretation of the formatting rules possible when I make my votes. Twisted logic, perhaps, but I think the quality of an entry is far more important than whether or not they used 1 inch or .75 inches on the margins. We all worked hard, and even if that makes me a
ing Pollyanna, I think it should count for something.As for whether or not the NPC can be used independently of the location, and vice versa? That's also a judgement call, but one I feel more comfortable making, and one which SHOULD be open to wide interpretation.
Second, a rant directed at the cheaters. That's right... cheaters. Screw this 'voting irregularity' crap. What do you hope to gain out of this? Yeah, there's loot involved, but so what? We're talking at most $50 worth of merchandise. Do you REALLY need it that bad? If so, maybe you can put your writing skills to better use, write some reviews, and get some review material for free.
If you're looking for acceptance, and maybe a few pats on the back, then that's equally sad. While I really dig EN World, and am starting to dig the forums (I'm pretty new here), it's just a sliver of a fraction of the people involved in the niche hobby we call roleplaying. Judging from the smidgeon of involvement in the one or two threads which have been about the contest, you won't even get to enjoy the standard Warholian fifteen minutes of fame from winning this thing.
I'm thinking that most of us entered this contest for fun. It was fun to write our entries, and it was fun to read the other entries. I personally entered the contest because I've been wanting to gear up to writing larger pieces of RPG content. It was fun practice for me. If I win, yay, I've proven to myself that I can write something. Frankly, the prizes don't even do it for me (no offense meant towards the forum regulars who wrote them, but I've never been a fan of psionics, and most of my gaming is done online, making my use of counters negligible).
I was eager to see how well I could do in the contest, and how my entry measured up to whatever entries ultimately win. Now even THAT small amout of gratification has been put on hold because a few of you monkeys thought SO highly of your own work that the votes of the masses couldn't POSSIBLY have been made out of any sort of informed opinion, and therefore had to be supplemented with your own. THAT is SO
ing WEAK.Finally, I think some of us have proven that we're incapable of fair and unbiased judging. Whether you stuffed the ballot box yourself, or campaigned on other websites and forums, you skewed things in your favor. Even if we relocate the voting to this forum (thereby avoiding the problem of multiple votes) there's still the issue of people who entered the contest persuading their friends to vote for their entry, and their friends voting without even reading the others. This shouldn't be a popularity contest.
I think, sadly, that Morrus should appoint a committee of judges made up of people from the forum who didn't enter the contest, and who have no pre-established biases. Let them vote on each heat, and let them give reasons for why they voted the way they did (similar to the postings in this thread which 'review' each entry). That seems to be about the only fair way to do it, after the initial voting experiment failed.
That's my two cents. YMMV.
Regards,
Corporate Dog
UniversalMonster
First Post
Well,your'e angrier than I am (I'm not actually mad, really), but I agree on most points.
PurplePCEater
First Post
OK, I volunteer (fool that I am...)
If people are interested in taking this further, I'm prepared to volunteer some of my time and bandwidth (I'm on a 24/7 cablemodem connection at home with a dedicated mailserver) to process an email-based voting system - the only way that I can see to obtain a fair internet-based vote that is open to all.
The specific details of how to do so would have to be thrashed out, but in principle, having been thinking about this for the weekend, I don't think it would be too difficult to do. All one needs is for the rules of the voting mechanism to be agreed upon by all taking part, and that can be obtained by the simple method of the act of voting being seen to comply with said rules. Anything that doesn't comply with the rules is binned - if you can't read and understand simple instructions you probably shouldn't be qualified to vote...
My thoughts, for what they're worth, are to only process one vote per valid email address (with automatic verification upon vote submission to prevent automated voting and to counter forged email). There's not much one can do to prevent multiple votes from people with more than one legitimate email address, unless there's some means of tying that in with an ID here on the boards. I'd prefer not to have to go that route though and instead open the voting to those who read, but don't necessarily post to, the boards. A valid email address appears to be the lowest practical common denominator here.
A vote would then be processed with respect to the contents of the Subject: line - that is, the name of the encounter sent to a specific email address would count as a vote for that encounter.
Each vote-receiving email address would be valid only for the period of time that each round runs for. With a subdomain or two at my disposal this won't be much of an issue to set up. (I'm thinking along the lines of addresses such as 'vote-round1@..., vote-round2@... and so on).
A small amount of mail filter scripting should then take care of
authenticating and logging the votes, which neatly takes care of most of the grunt work. Casting an eye over the results and suchlike to ensure nothing has been missed shouldn't then take up much time.
I'm also more than willing to make logfiles, vote-taking emails or other relevant data available for auditing purposes so that a secondary vote-count can be taken or checked by another body.
If Morrus and/or any other board admins would like to proceed down this route, or to discuss options for a neutral third-party to oversee any further voting, please feel free to drop me a mail or to followup here.
All I'd like to see is the competition run fairly, so if there's anything I can contribute in terms of time/bandwidth/capabilities, I'd like to do so and help support the site in that manner.
As mentioned in an earlier comment, I am aware of the author of one of the entries in the current round, and have discussed offering to help out. If deemed necessary by others, the entry will be withdrawn from the contest to ensure no accusations of favouritism can be made, but I'd hope it wouldn't have to come down to that.
If people are interested in taking this further, I'm prepared to volunteer some of my time and bandwidth (I'm on a 24/7 cablemodem connection at home with a dedicated mailserver) to process an email-based voting system - the only way that I can see to obtain a fair internet-based vote that is open to all.
The specific details of how to do so would have to be thrashed out, but in principle, having been thinking about this for the weekend, I don't think it would be too difficult to do. All one needs is for the rules of the voting mechanism to be agreed upon by all taking part, and that can be obtained by the simple method of the act of voting being seen to comply with said rules. Anything that doesn't comply with the rules is binned - if you can't read and understand simple instructions you probably shouldn't be qualified to vote...
My thoughts, for what they're worth, are to only process one vote per valid email address (with automatic verification upon vote submission to prevent automated voting and to counter forged email). There's not much one can do to prevent multiple votes from people with more than one legitimate email address, unless there's some means of tying that in with an ID here on the boards. I'd prefer not to have to go that route though and instead open the voting to those who read, but don't necessarily post to, the boards. A valid email address appears to be the lowest practical common denominator here.
A vote would then be processed with respect to the contents of the Subject: line - that is, the name of the encounter sent to a specific email address would count as a vote for that encounter.
Each vote-receiving email address would be valid only for the period of time that each round runs for. With a subdomain or two at my disposal this won't be much of an issue to set up. (I'm thinking along the lines of addresses such as 'vote-round1@..., vote-round2@... and so on).
A small amount of mail filter scripting should then take care of
authenticating and logging the votes, which neatly takes care of most of the grunt work. Casting an eye over the results and suchlike to ensure nothing has been missed shouldn't then take up much time.
I'm also more than willing to make logfiles, vote-taking emails or other relevant data available for auditing purposes so that a secondary vote-count can be taken or checked by another body.
If Morrus and/or any other board admins would like to proceed down this route, or to discuss options for a neutral third-party to oversee any further voting, please feel free to drop me a mail or to followup here.
All I'd like to see is the competition run fairly, so if there's anything I can contribute in terms of time/bandwidth/capabilities, I'd like to do so and help support the site in that manner.
As mentioned in an earlier comment, I am aware of the author of one of the entries in the current round, and have discussed offering to help out. If deemed necessary by others, the entry will be withdrawn from the contest to ensure no accusations of favouritism can be made, but I'd hope it wouldn't have to come down to that.
I'd just like to say: I doubt it is the writers cheating and bumping up the votes on their own entries, I'm sure it is just a few people who found that they could cast multiple votes and decided to exploit the system merely because it was possible to exploit the system. I don't think we should assume that the questionable votes were cast by(or encouraged by) the authors they were applied to.
Corporate Dog
Explorer
KDLadage said:
Your guess is as good as mine. Morrus? Are you reading this?
Regards,
Corporate Dog
drnuncheon
Explorer
KDLadage said:But I ask again -- what is the status of the contest at this point. I was hoping for some feedback on my entry...
If you really want it...
I went and checked it out. First of all, the good stuff: great NPC concept. I love the idea - very original. I can't stress that enough, because it's good enough to make me want to use it despite the problems I discuss in the next three paragraphs.
Unfotunately, the location didn't look like it'd be much use without the NPC - a failing that seems to be entirely too common in this contest. They were tied too closely together. Maybe a better choice would have been to have the hermit living in an unusual area, and discussing that rather than detailing his cabin.
Also, I didn't care much for some of the rules you used - they seemed rather arbitrary. For example: Why does the fire blast not allow a reflex save if you are in the center, when a much larger fireball or even a flame strike does? (And what is the effect of making the save?) What makes the NPC's belief so strong that it can counter magic and even cause damage to characters?
I think that there are probably ways that these things could have been handled that would be within the scope of the existing rules, which is IMHO always preferable, if only for having the suport of the rules during unexpected interaction. (For example, what's the effect of an anti-magic shell on the Reality Quake? I have no idea, since it's not even listed as a specific "type" of power - Extraordinary, Spell-like, or Supernatural.)
On the whole, though, it at least inspired me to start thinking about it, which is . Now if the "belief abilities" were an aspect of the location...hmm...
(scribble)
J
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