I just wanted to get a feel for what people wanted to do with the challenges. Though I don't know how hard it will be to monitor the votes on a poll... I'm afraid of people getting unfair multiple votes, but then again, I'd like everyone be able to enter. What do you guys think?

I voted to have judges. I agree with you on the whole getting multiple votes thing and it not really being fair. Although if there was a way to make it so it was one vote per IP or something like that, that might work. I just think it would suck to not be able to submit something if you were a judge. But would judges change every month? Cause then I guess it wouldn't be so bad.

No, the judges would change every month, so you'd have a choice for each month whether you wanted to enter the challenge, or judge, or not participate at all.

Well, I dunno how doable it would be on a MB, but I know when I had my fan fic yahoo group for challanges I had everyone e-mail me the submissions and I annomonyusly sent them to the group and had the group decide on what they liked best. In a way you could kind of guess who wrote what just by their tone, but it was good cuz only one person couldn't participate. Maybe we could do sumthin like that here?

And what if we make kind of an ''board head'' judging,too? Like in every challenge will be at least one of the moderating team or the admin, who doesn't participate and thus making more ''official judgemeòts'' this is, reasoned reviews about the work, thus helping the other judges? Of course, the mod/admin POV would not be binding to the other judges.

Poll can be asily cheated. Even I know how to make endless Ips if I need to, so everyone with moderate PC skills could that way make his/her work extremely popular.

Anonymus judgement...this is hard....You can differ one writer from another by writing style. And as far as our community is not so big yet, it would be quite obvious who wrote the particular work....

Any comments on this?

Well, even with anonymous judging, we would still have to set up some sort of poll, I suppose, unless people e-mailed their answers to me, the admin, or something. But then we'd have to go through the hassle of making sure who's e-mail address is which to avoid multiple votes that way as well. Though I'm not saying anyone here would do something like that... but you know, for the future, when this community gets much bigger (because that's what I'm hoping for).

But of course, at least me or one of the mods would participate in the judging. We will probably have other contests once in a while where it'll be just the admin or mods judging, but with the challenges, I don't want to get TOO serious about it, since the main point of them is just for people to keep writing and keep things flowing.

Is there anyway people could just PM you? Would that get rid of the whole checking peoples e-mail addresses thing?

If all votes would be sent by PM to her she would have a really hard time to count the votes. I mean, when every member has something to say about why this work is the best...
It would be unfair to let Laura do all the work while we enjoy the contest, right? :)

Maybe to make easier to understand the judges' verdicts, we could have a system to let the people know the general opinion about the work. I suggest that a judge could write a one word verdict after the brief opinion about the work. Like indications...

Like...
RECOMMEND- the work has fullfilled all given objectives of the challenge, there are almost no flaws...

PASS-has some lacks, but allover has potential. Maybe failed at some objective or some other criteria

DECLINE-has major flaws, not fullfilled the objectives, the author is certainly unsure about what was asked in this challenge

The poll could be made for voting about the works which gained most judges RECOMMENDs ...so it would be easier for the public to vote out the best of the best. Although there could be an additional end category-public's favourite and judge's favourite....

Each author could ask for a review about their work from their favourite judge(s) to see a in-depth review....

::slaps forehead:: arg. duh. that makes sense. It's too late for me to think straight...XP But I guess I just thought it would be a simple naming of the one they liked best thing. i wasn't thinking >_< sorry

No, I think the PM thing could work. And it wouldn't be necessarily me that people would send their votes to. We could rotate who keeps track of them.

But I don't think I really want to get that in depth with the judging. Just a simple matter of what people thought was best. Because like I said, the main point of these challenges is just to keep people going with writing, and if they're worried about whether or not their submission is going to be good enough, then that kind of puts a dent in the whole thing. So I just want to keep it simple.

But we will have more "serious" contests once in a while. Those will probably just happen a little less often.

Yea we should call take turns keeping track of them and posting the stories. As for cheating on polls... Well, hopefully we're all honest people here. I mean really based on those we have now in the group I seriously doubt anyone will be that sad that they have to CHEAT on a message board writing challenge. Like Laura said they are just writing excercises. It's not THAT serious.

I like the judges, but I think everyone shoudl be allowed to submit too. .... Hmmm...

I don't know. I think that a more serious contest every now and again is good. :)

But, I'll offer my help for submissions or something. I'm pretty free for the next few weeks because there aren't many swim meets. :)

Hmm... I'm starting to think that I want to do the PM idea. Just one person, who couldn't enter the challenge, would be in charge of the voting (but the person would change each month), and everyone would send their submissions to that person. Then that person would post the submissions with anonymous authors, and then everyone would cast their vote by sending a PM to that person.

How does this sound to you guys?

And then, of course, I'll try and start thinking of more serious contests as well. :)

I like it. ^_^

I'll do it first, if you want. ^_^

Well, I think just to get things started and make sure things go right, I'll do it first, but you can be in line for the next one if you want. :)

Yea that could work. It seems like the safest and easiest way to go about it

Okie dokie. ^_^

i think anyone should be allowed to vote... so everyone can express their opinion...