In my opinion it is only logical to have every one vote the same way. So if you are an entrant, you can rank your own entry first. It will make people really compare how their entries fare against the others. No one is going to blindly rank their own entry first, because the voters are revealed at the end, and those who do that will just look like dumbasses. This is the reason why it will be the logical voting system. Nothing wrong with those who don't vote, and nothing wrong with those who do. It is naive to assume that all entrants will just rank their entries first. People will (have to) vote with integrity.

If you feel uncomfortable voting for yourself then its tells you that maybe you shouldn't. You need to know why your entry isn't as good. Instead of hidding in the avoiding your own judgement against your own entry. It is not a game judging others entries. You need to learn how to judge your own entry too. When you get used to it, it is not difficult. And it will give you some real sense of confidence and understanding, instead of the fake confidence that you don't deserve when you avoid judging your own entry.

(Only entrant votes need to be non-anonymous, for the rest of the votes it doesn't matter. The point is to make the entrants accountable for their votes.)

[Edited by - Estok on October 4, 2005 6:56:02 AM]

Entry 8.Chinu-a can be disqualified for being 4 pages long.

I personally don't think anyone should be accountable for how they vote unless they choose to reveal how they vote and why. Perhaps in round three it could be interesting to have people instead of ranking entries to give them a score out 100 and maybe a short paragraph on the high and low points of each entry. It means a lot more work for the voters but might be interesting and informative. In my mind the popular is one of the most important aspects of this competition since ultimatly it is the audiences impressions of the games writing that determine whether or not it improves the game or hinders it. But sadly what is really need is more votes, many more. Currently we are at 4 I'd like to see at least as many as last time if not more.

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Original post by Estok Entry 8.Chinu-a can be disqualified for being 4 pages long.

It is longer then I asked for, but I'll have to read it first before determining whether or not to disqualify it.

Entry 8 - Since the actual size of a page was never determined, I don't see how you could determine exactly how many pages it is, or whether to disqualify it.

Estok - I don't believe it's fair to assume that Technogoth doesn't want to vote for his own entries because he doesn't want to admit to himself 'why his entry isn't as good'. I don't want to have to vote on my entries either. And it's not because I don't evaluate my own stuff because I always do, I evaluate my own pieces and how they compare to each other. It's because the author of a piece always reads it differently than everyone else does. The author bareley sees their own actual words - they are too busy seeing the vision they developed to go with the words, not to mention hearing echoes of all the words they thought of but didn't write, and other related things they wrote in the past and are thinking about writing in the future... it's a totally different experience reading your own work than someone else's and completely impossible to fairly and objectively compare the two.

You paste it on word and see how long it is. It was 1866 words.
You guys are making the rules meaningless just. The rules simply said, "don't write too long" and it was too long. It is just common sense. The person who submitted it probably knew that it was too long, but was gambling that it would be accepted. That is not the right kind of mentality.

The ability to judge objectively is a skill. Note that it comparative, it is not the question of "How well did I write?" but "is there any other entry that is better than mine."

Your comment was nonsense, because it simply said, "There is no way that an author would ever think that the writing is worse than someone else's."

This tells you why some entrants are seeing this contest as some game of chance, of luck. They submit and pray that they would win. That is pretty pathetic if you understand the situation.

Yes, it is a different experience when you read yours. Does that mean that there is no chance for you to see someone else's piece as better? You should see that your argument is irrelevant. It was an excuse. I am not saying that just because you rank your entry first, everyone will accuse you as being selfish. It is understandable that you may see more into your own stuff. But denying the evaluation is a bad decision. It breeds cowards. If you don't have the mentality to be ready to compare your work and justify your own achievements, then maybe you should enter a contest.

1866 words, sure, but the requirement was pages. How many words make a page? It wasn't defined, so it can't be used as a rule for this round. This is exactly why I wanted the requirements for the first round to be in number of words rather than pages. (If nothing else, we are learning a lot about how to run a contest. If after a few rounds we get a method everyone is happy with I will ask gamedev about providing some prizes, probably books or book gift certificates, for future rounds.)

Quote:

Original post by Estok Your comment was nonsense, because it simply said, "There is no way that an author would ever think that the writing is worse than someone else's."

That is an oversimplification. What I am saying is more like, because I have extra information about my own piece, and because my own piece is perfectly adjusted to my own tastes and biases because its writing was guided by them, probably I evaluate my own piece to be 10-20% better than some random person would. So when comparing my own entry, and my favorite among the other entries, if they are at all similar in quality I can't tell which is actually better. There is no nonsense or excuses here - I believe that there is no chance to fairly compare a piece you wrote with a piece you didn't write. It is apples and oranges, an impossible comparison.

In point of fact, I think the difference between our own judgement of our work and others' judgement of our work is exactly why contests like this and critique groups are so important. We only have access to our own judgement while creating a piece, so if we want to write something that pleases an audience we have to learn what the average difference between our own opinion and the audience's opinion is. Maybe I thought I clearly made some point, but if more than half the audience didn't get it I must be wrong. One of the major purposes of this forum is for all of us to learn to improve our own writing by considering others' comments on it. The purpose is _not_ to practice arguing why we think our own pieces are the best.

BTW Estok here's something I would like your opinion on. I though all the entries in this second round were pretty cliche. Every single one, including my own. Why do you suppose that is? Are they actually all cliche, or is it just my own bias against sword and sorcery settings, or against the theme of revenge, or even against the underlying implication that the game will be all about combat?

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post by TechnoGoth Currently we are at 4 I'd like to see at least as many as last time if not more.

Wouldn't putting a thread in the lounge, asking for votes, be a good idea at all?...just a thought :)

Well, Apparently if you mess with the formating of Entry 8 and get ride of all the margins, header/footer, and condense it to single spaced without a new line between paragraphs and keeping size 12 font you can get it to be less than a full 2 pages long. So all the content is kept but spacings are taken out. Thus it does not violate the rules since the rules are 2 pages and I guess if you wanted you could change the font size to be 8 and write a whole hell of a lot since there was no requirement on what is considered a page. I was hoping that TechnoGoth would add something like (where a page is an MS Word default Page). Or you could go for the high school or research paper standard which is 1.5 inch or 3.81 centimeter margins double spaced and size 12 "Times New Roman" font. Or at least in my part of the world that is what we used. There was more leeway in college but pretty much the same.

So in order to keep a number of page limitation one would have to adopt a more specific definition of page since the general definition does not quantify in anyway it's contents. So I would suppose in this case it is a decision that is purely in the hands of the one who determines whether Entry 8 violates the size limitation rule of the contest.

As far as the voting is concerned I was more in favor of a ranking system out of 5 or perhaps 100% the guidelines of evaluation are purely at the voters discretion and should not be known. I would support an anonymous voting system. Therefore you can vote on your own entry but it is not assumed that you will find your own entry better than the others. I myself do not hold my writing in high esteem as to leave much room for improvement. It is a sad thing if both Estok and S&S think that a majority of people would assume theirs is the best simply because they wrote it. Such shallow egotistical thinking makes those that vote incapable of progress.

I do believe that Estok was right in this case where being required to rank or evaluate your own work compared to others in some cases prompts you to critically analysis your work thus helping to improve your writing in the future. I think to improve your writing in the future one must be able to have a sense of what is lacking and what needs improvement. Though the ability to vote your own work may add an unconclusive tally in the end it is something that might be best to explore in another round.