@ BSD-IES et al - Suggestion, if I may, for future possible contests. While the rules for entering and judging read quite clearly to me, I;'ve noticed that at least one other time entrants have become confused or unclear on the hows of the judging. Perhaps a description of HOW things will be judged could be put out to prevent possible future misunderstndings.

****
As for the way things were judged, I think we all need to remember that none of these people are professional writers and that judging is/was subjective (ie- uindividual opinions and how the words moved them). They also all have thier own personal lives and having them go through thier groups of stories in just one month is a feat I certainly would not want to have to do. They did a damn good job with what time they had I think

I was wondering, for word count, were words such as a an, & the counted? I know they aren't when selling one's news story to papers and such. As for grammar and spelling, well it wasn't in the rules that those things would or wouldn't be looked at or taken into consideration.

If the judges are willing, they could probably PM those who ask about their rankings so that those people might see where they ended up. Personally, I don't care where I ended up as it's enough to know that a few others at least glanced at my story. I'm considering putting it up in the regular story area for potential constructive criticism. (btw, I ignore "it sucked because it sucked" commentary )


@ 0rimus - Keep writing!!!!! Post your work on the forums that have areas for fan-fic. You'll get better each time you put pen to paper. The way you went about with the research for your story was fantastic. Keep it up and you'll go far. (uhm, no I haven't read your story yet. still working on the smaller ones)


Still hoping that a poetry contest is next cause I suck at poetry
Now, no more quibbling pretty please? Or they'll lock this thread sooner rather than later.

*bows* Thank you Chiglet. I'm working on slow-moving sequel, so I might post it here.

P.S, It's soooooooo nice to have infinite time to write.

Well, that sucks...I wasn't bothered I didn't win...AT ALL.

That list bums the hell out of me, though...

This post has been edited by LeTren Thundakk: May 26 2008, 04:12 AM

Ok, but I'm going to ask you something I also asked Redsrock, would you have felt better about it if your story had been listed as 8th place? Would you have felt better about it if we had used a grading scale and your story had only gotten a 2/10 for example? I'm not saying it would have scored as low, but please ask yourself this, if your story had ended higher, would you have perceived the system still to be as flawed and unfair as you do now?




Are you speaking here about the fact that the list was posted? Or about the system again? While I'm always in favor of free speech, and always allow criticism, and against what you apparently think, would not ban anyone from this forum for it, I hope in time you'll be able to accept this as it is, and move on.



As you probably figured by now, I too judged the long story category, and if you're interested I'll tell you my thoughts on your story, though perhaps that would be better left to a pm.




Well, apart from the actual point giving system, we had, or BSD had, mentioned earlier in this thread what we would be looking at. To be honest, I think that's far more important to know when you're entering in a competition then knowing how the judges judge amongst themselves. Though that's just my opinion.



Thank you



I'm the one who judges all the stories on word count, and to be honest, I let Microsoft word (do I get a fee for mentioning it's name or do I have to pay Microsoft for it? ) do all the work for me here. That's the standard; Microsoft's standard word count. If that either includes or excludes & and the likes, I'm not entirely certain, I used it simply to make sure there was one standard, and of course so I wouldn't have to count all the words myself



Well, if any writers for the long story category would want it, I wouldn't have a problem with sharing what I thought about the story. I'll pm them it of course. So if anyone's interested, drop me a pm or mention it in this thread, and I'll pm it.


Lastly, reading over this thread I'd like to apologize, I made the call to post the entire lists of results on the forums here without consulting any of the other judges, and in hindsight, I don't think I would do it again. Not because I'm afraid of criticism or for "covering something up" but more because I think some of the things that have been discussed in this thread, might have been a lot better off discussed in private.

I'd like to know Alex. I don't care if it's in this thread or PM, (in fact I'd prefer the thread, that way others besides me can learn from my mistakes). I'd also like to know where I placed in your set. You can just tell me my number, in case the others don't want their ranking known or whatever.

There is an open Competition thread in Fan Fiction intended for people to comment on the stories in the Competition unofficially. Maybe now that the results are in I will bump it and maybe more people would like to comment there?

Really there were so many fascinating stories in the compatition that I do not mind who won it (especially as there are not any big cash prizes [admitted it would be fine to have a signed copy] ) so long as they were good reads.

I do hope there will be another competition and that even more people will enter.

It would be decent to see how each individual story did and what the judges were thinking of them (as happened last time) ... it is only courteous to those who have also put their reputations on the line by entering this Competition. If anyone is shy about this then they are not suitable as judges though they may be fine people otherwise.

Chiglet seems to have some fair points, but since literary appreciation is such a personal thing I prefer the rules to be relaxed and the opinions of the judges to be displayed. I am not so happy with trying to define 'requirements' too closely in a modder's environment as that interferes with a writer's natural development in a way that is too impersonal. And I do not want the rules to become more important than the writing.

Kudos to all the winners!!!!

I'd like to respond to these 2 points. Second one first. I agreed to judge the long story category, so I'm prepared to post my thoughts for those 8 stories. This will not be an in depth analysis, but will basically show what I thought to be the pro's and cons for each of them. That isn't a problem. However... as I mentioned earlier in this thread, one of the judges for the medium section had to drop out at the last minute, so I ended up being one of the judges for that as well. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to write my thoughts on all 27 medium entries as well, I just don't have the time. I stepped in there to help out, so that the results wouldn't be delayed, pure and simple.

Which leads me to the first point you made. There is a thread by Raggidman for people who'd like to comment on the entries, or you could post your entries up bit by bit in the fanfic section and get feedback from people there. I know people have spent a lot of time and effort on these, and it's only natural to want to get feedback, so why not offer each other feedback? If you read a story and feel it should have done better, say so. The results only reflect the judges opinions, you could each offer your own opinions as well. If they don't match ours, that's fine. All opinions (judges or otherwise) are subjective.

Yeah, I think BSD summed it up nicely. It's not too much work writing up a small thing about 8 stories, but it's quite another thing to do it about 25+ stories, especially when you're only combining it with work, school, kids, a wife, girlfriend and whatnot.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will be possible to get such detailed reviews about each story.

I have to make my opinion here about the spelling mistakes!

Of course they shouldn't metter if it wasn't said they would. And of course I belive they didn't as long as it was a mistake like spelling letter with just one t and similar. But,


Of course that would matter! Because put it the other way. In the rules it was clearly said you have to write about the world in the TES universe not about the leet game 1337, OMG! And writing about the universe which is thousands of years before computers in a geek language just doesn't feel all right!


Exact the same point! Mentioning the deadra through out the whole story doesn't make you feel you are in the TES universe. Although everybody knows what was ment.

You said you feel like judges didn't even read your story. And what if the judges think that you have never played or seen a TES game? Not that for entering the competition you should, but it surely helps. Or they can even say you posess a cracked version of all titles in which daedra is actually spelled deadra.

I think that for every mature person the rules and everything done about the competition wass as it was supposed to be.

Take me for example, I finished second although as I roughly went through the entries am the only one makig the visual look of the story as well. Even if it was not said it was going to be rated, I did it and realy hope it didn't cause trouble to judges or gave me any extra points. It was just the way I felt that other day I started writing my entry ...

This post has been edited by MstrOfPppts: May 26 2008, 01:23 PM

To BSD-IES and Alexander - Fair enough - courtesy gives way to practicality as required - and I will not have a go at you for stepping in at the last moment to save the day - that was very kind BSD-IES It won't change my mind generally about wanting to read what the judges were thinking though

For Orimus, I think you are very lucky to have got feedback. But I will say this: this is a writing competition and most of the terms thereof were open. If you couldn't be bothered or failed to take the time to go through your entry and correct every tiny little mistake then YOU are to blame. Really you have failed on the basis of one of the most elementary criteria to respect the competition. As in the other writers and the efforts they have made.

I suggest you read my story and tell me if you can find 1 single spelling or other gramatical error or weakness. There are a couple there, but hard to spot I think. I had not finished polishing when the deadline arrived = my bad.

Waaaiiit a minute, you think your story was better than mine Orimus, so you deserve special consideration? I assure you it was not Mine was hastily, but most carefully and purposefully thought through and written. I have have very strong and all positive feedback from some very hard to please, highly respected and professional people. So I know for a fact that my story was most excellent rofl. And two of the poems in my story are masterpieces - as in world class. But so what? If one or all of these judges had different taste what does world class actually mean? Not much use to me if the rest of the world takes 90 years to recognise the fact. Really, who cares?

Take the words of the late great Sir Stanley Matthews to heart. He was a great footballer when English football really meant something. During one match at half time he was approached by a journalist who asked how he felt about a brutal and scything foul that had taken him down just before the end of the half.

Sir Stanley replied: It doesn't really bother me, because I know that next time I will stroll past him.

Heh - now the guys at TR can say they were justified in calling me a big head, maybe I am, so what? But I hope I am not going to get into the habit of complaining - because that takes too much time, I don't have that much left and I have things to do. What you could do is write another story, write it brighter, darker, bigger, better and prove you are the best, and not me. One thing is for sure, this competition is all over and done with bar the yakking and shouting. Take care - raggidman

This post has been edited by raggidman: May 26 2008, 03:36 PM

You may not have been talking to me specifically, but it's an open thread, so since you raise the subject...

There are a few things I would have picked up on, had I been proofing your story. Smooth for example is misspelt twice, and there's one instance of use of it's rather than its (for the possessive) I also noticed a few punctuation mistakes, and several complex sentences which I think should have been broken up by commas rather than just running on.

Picky? You betcha. All in all these are very minor things that barely affect the overall piece (which is very good, although not exactly the kind of story I personally would favour - we all have our own tastes, after all.)

Although there's nothing wrong in taking pride in a job well done, I just think you're coming over a bit cocky in your last post

Well gee I'm sorry. Sorry that no one's taken into consideration that I was UNABLE to have enough time to repair my story. I'm not illiterate, I've had above a college reading level since the fourth grade. I wasn't able to fix some of those problems for one big reason: I had to use my sisters computer. Right now, I'm on a Mac, which has Textedit (which sucks) but it won't let me save anything for some reason, it crashes my crappy Macintosh. So in order to type I had to get my sister to enter the password on her PC, and had to get off if she wanted to use her computer, which was all the time. I also couldn't type when she wasn't here, and since she's a college student, that's most of the time. I have a mild form of OCD, I caught all those mistakes and then some, but was unable to do anything. As with earlier on, with the judges, it seems like some of you haven't read my story, and are making MONSTEROUSLY PRETENCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS based solely on what has transpired in this thread. I wasn't lyinjg when I said I put more than 90+ hours of work in, but as far as acctually typing the story, I did that in about 3 hours. Most of you I'm sure, have your own PC, but alas, I have a Mac. And as for the whole, "You're lucky to have gotten feedback...", perhaps, but I wouldn't have gotten any if I hadn't made the previous posts

Explain that comment please. What do you mean, the judges didn't read your story?

Yeah, I've been travelling the past two days, and I've just returned and seen a lot has happened...

I'll be honest with all of you - my first reaction was total surprise and a bit of disappointment too since I wasn't expecting the results to be published till the 1st of June. Should this contest ever be organised again in the future I would strongly recommend picking a date and time that the results would be announced and sticking with it. Why? BECAUSE I'M READING THE STORIES STILL AND YOU'VE GONE AND SPOILED PART OF MY FUN! If it had been stated from the beginning "winners will be announced on the 25th of May" then I would have made it a point of reading more quickly, and I would have made sure that I had read all of the stories myself by that time. Now I'm too late.

My second reaction was even more surprise when I read the actual results of the category in which I had read the most stories (medium length). Before I go any further, please allow me to congratulate the winner. Now that's over, I regret I must share with you all that I SERIOUSLY disagree with the results. There were stories in this category that did not receive any points (not even in the post by Alexander that contained the extended rankings) that deserve at the very least some feedback. I am bewildered that "The Cursed
Sewers" received actual points and that the story with the gunpowder was not disqualified for its glaring anachronisms and many resemblance to the television series "Sharpe". It does not do justice to stories such as "Ripples in the Stream", "The Unsung", and "Dagothlivion" where an enormous effort obviously went in to creating an imaginative storyline (plusses to Dagothlivion), lore, and even creating stories around details in the game that would appeal to a true fan (plusses to The Unsung and to Ripples in the Stream).

Instead I see that "Tales of a Scaled Knight" with its imbalanced antagonists and zipping-into-space plot comes in sixth? The plot is so out there, even the protangonist forgets it by the end of the story. "Fall of the West" with its tiresome parade of unfamiliar proper nouns comes in second? "The Last Dance" which has no plot at all and hardly transcends the description of a duel comes in fourth? "Eyes of the Heavens" which has unbelievably incompetent assassins characters comes in fifth? And there is not even mention of "Ripples in the Stream", "Dagothlivion", "The Unsung" or "The King of Daenia"? Not even a single point? BOO I say. Again, I say BOOO!



I feel too strongly that things are not right to be polite at this point. I challenge the results and it is obvious to me one of the two following must be true: Either #1 there was no objective scoring process that was applied consistently for everyone or #2 there are criteria that have not been communicated (and should have been communicated) from the beginning in the form of guidelines to submitters.

"Dagothlivion" is a damn good story that succeeds in painting a human side to Ascended Sleepers and Ash Zombies. And has people using Cliff Racers for transportation! And barrels of water on the planes of Oblivion! For chrissake, how ingenious is that? To not award it even a single point is simply incorrect. One hundred times BOOOO to the judges.

No no, I believe I'm detecting three flaws in your post there.
First off, no one forced you to rush through a story in order for you to participate, you were welcome not to enter, or to enter in for instance the short story category where you only had to type 2500 or fewer words. No one forced you into the long story category. If the reviews you got there were less positive then you had hoped for, well that's unfortunate, but you choose to enter yourself. You say it took you 3 hours to type out the story and 90+ to think of it, well comparing that to some of the other stories which were likely typed out over weeks and thought out over many months or years even. Again, that did give the others a lot more time to type it out, and to create it, but again that was all your choice.

Two, if you're trying to imply that some of the judges who judged your category haven't read our story and were just guessing, then I'd like to ask you to stop with that reasoning while you're ahead. All of the judges are people who have been active in the Elder Scrolls community for a very long time in one form or another, some of them I've known for years, some I've known about for years. To even imply even one of them did not do this to the best of their ability, went in biased, or judges stories with any way of prejudice in any way shape or form, is as I see it questioning their integrity, and that is going too far.
If you disagree with the results, that's fine, not everyone has to like it, not everyone can like it, but to even imply your story was not read through, and thus questioning the integrity of the judges is a step over the line. And if you did imply that, then I believe you should apologize for that.

Number three, if you had asked for feedback, even without the whole disagreeing bit and the rest, you still would have gotten it. Like we've mentioned before in this thread, long story judges already posted bits and comments in the judges section, easy step from there to giving it to the author, so there would not have been any logic to not giving it.




Actually, I did post this in the guidelines page of the competition;
"6. The final results of the competition will be published before June 1st, but if possible, sooner."

I'd actually wanted to give the results even earlier, but as mentioned, due to a judge dropping out and a tie in a category, it took a while longer.



You know, I find it hard not to become sarcastic here, but I think I'll indulge myself for a single sentence here; "Wow, imagine that, two people read something and they have a different opinion of it, who would have guessed."

Even with a clear and objective scoring process, you'll likely never get the same results in any competition from all of the judges. Why? Because when it comes to judging something on "how much did you like the story" there's a very large window there for difference.

If a famous book is read by book critics, why do you think some would praise it into heaven and others might not like it too much, or might even give it a bad review? I mean they're all doing the same job aren't they? All supposed to look for exactly the same things shouldn't they? It's the same here. 3 judges per category, who read all the stories and then made a list of their top ten, taking into account things that were mentioned in several posts in this thread, and of course how much they personally liked the story. All of that combined led to the scores you've seen. I'm sure if I'd read the short or medium sized stories, I might have come up with a list very different from the lists of the judges who did it now. And I'm sure had you or Redsrock or Orimus been a judge, you might have chosen lists also very different from ours. That is to be expected.




On a general note, a few of you have already expressed issues you have with the system used for judging, or have expressed feelings that you think your story or other stories should have been ranked higher. I have no problem with such expressions, if you'd care to voice something, please do so, be it good or bad.
However, as you can read earlier in this thread, I will not allow personal attacks on either specific judges or judges in general. Questioning their integrity is NOT an option in this thread. I can honestly say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I know for certain each judge has judged to the best of their ability, in complete fairness and without any prejudice in any form whatsoever. Posts expressing views otherwise will not be tolerated. Voice protests all you want to, but do not claim someone was biased against you as it's both improper and completely incorrect.

Now, carry on.

I acctually agree with the long catagory placement, (though I really think We are merely shadows should have gotten higher). Also, I've been working on this story in my mind for well over seven years now, and the 90+hours was physical (swordfighting, smoking old pipe tobacco, hiking) and informational reasearch for the sole purpose of the story. And yes, it was my choice to write, and to chose the long catagory despite my handicap. But I could no more shorten this story than sever my own leg. This is also the only TES story I'm fully intersted in; I easily could've put some POS in the short catagory, but why would I do that if I don't even care what I'm writing about? I cared about Heraldry and Heretics, so I wasn't going to let the story suffer, even if the grammar did. I also don't question the jugdes intergrity, it's just that I realize when you are required to read something you tend to just read it, as opposed to READING it. If that makes any sence. I don't blame them thought. It seems like the judges were short on time is all. I'm not questioning thier end results, just saying that, maybe, it'd have been easier/more conclusive if they had more time. And I congradulate you on doing as well as you did with the time you gave yourselves... now if only someone would say the same of me.

Ok, Orimus, I've agreed with most of everything you've said, except that last thing there. Alexander and BSD I know have congratulated everything and have thanked everyone for particpating and writing stories, more than once. And that's besides the point, you shouldn't have to be congratulated to feel good. You should feel good because you wrote the story, not because someone left feedback, said "thank you", or whatever.

@ BSD and Alexander: I'd like to go ahead and apolgize for my actions over the past day and a half. Though I still stand by EVERYTHING I've said, I could have said it more professionally, and not as rude. My apologies...

I'm not so much as asking for a congradulation or anything. I just would like people to understand my constraints, and factor this in when they blatantly insult me with no real constructive purpose. I don't need any special notation, I know my story was good, as i've been saying lately: "I've made a diamond in 3 hours, no matter how flawed it is, it is still a diamond."

But you keep reffering to that. That's what I'm saying...

I'm afraid, looking over this thread, I don't see anyone "insulting" you. Perhaps you'd care to point out who did so and where? Offer constructive criticism, criticize, perhaps, but insulting is something very different