Competition » Site Posts for Community Writing Contests and Events · 1:08am Dec 11th, 2019
Hello Everyone!
Writing contests and collaborations are a fun and creative way for authors to challenge themselves with new ideas or opportunities to flex the writing skills they may have already developed. We definitely love to see the community enjoying the variety of interesting contest submissions, and anyone winning the contests are sure to love basking in the glory, or prizes, as the fruits of their labor. Even if it’s just a casual writing event with everyone sharing their take on a central theme or shared universe, there are plenty of opportunities for fun both as a reader and writer.
So to encourage this, we want to offer up Social Site Posts for writing contests and collaborative events. Just like the episode discussions, review groups, or interviews, we want to start signal boosting all of your contests. We know it takes a lot of effort to pull off a great event, so the least we can do is help connect everyone who may want to participate. The goal is for everyone to have fun and give the community even more interesting stories without a lot of headaches.
In order to receive a site post for any event, the you must meet the following criteria:
- Successfully have completed at least one other contest with winners or a large collaboration (case-by-case)
- Have clearly stated rules/guidelines with a fully planned sequence of events
Stories must be submitted to Fimfiction at some point during the contest and follow all global site rules
- Using outside tools to help with judging in addition to submitting to Fimfiction is ok
Must have at least 24 hours before submissions officially open
- Any contests currently running this month may still apply if there is sufficient time remaining for new entries
- Contests and events featuring mature stories may not endorse or feature any specific sexual theme beyond the existing categories and tags on Fimfiction.
- Prepare a draft for what you want in your proposed site post
Edit: All E/T/M stories are permitted
Edit 12/22: Collabs and events are all fine, this is not just for contests
Edit 12/31: Rule for Mature contests added
We want this to be open to as much of the community as possible, so the basic requirements are just to have a proven track record for running an event. We aren’t looking to moderate what the themes or content are, but we will still reserve final judgement for what we will make a site post for if need be. If there is something you are missing in your proposal that can be easily fixed, we will try to help point it out.
Anyone interested in requesting a site post for their contest, please message any moderator or story approver. Include your proposed draft of the site post (in the PM or a Google Doc url) and any relevant information to show us you meet all of the necessary criteria above.
This is such a great idea! I've been waiting to see if any site updates recently would be more than aesthetic/technical related and help with reading, writing, and aiding the former (since it is a fiction site). It's always been a bit tricky to track down contests and their original posts, so the chance to promote them site wide really would make things a lot easier. Would this also boost announcements about the results of contests, or just information about the details and start of contests?
This is a great idea. Much better way to get the word out than just stumbling onto a referential blogpost.
What a good time to pick up writing again.
While I agree with the reasoning for this, this feels a tad restrictive; if I'm reading this right, the only contests that're eligible are things like Imposing Sovereigns and Oroboro's Sunset one, which were both done multiple times, but a number of contests are one-offs, so they can't be promoted like this, even if they're organized by someone reputable?
Still, this seems like a really nice feature, and I'm glad to see it being implemented.
Seems like a good idea to me!
Unfortunately, those rules do look like they'd exclude the contest I personally participate in the most often, due to the requirement of all entries being submitted to fimfiction (all entries are 150- word stories, which can't be submitted to fimfiction!).
I'm glad to see things encouraging contests, though, because they get lost in the shuffle a lot.
--Sweetie Belle
Thank you site mods for continuing to support this community!
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That's a fair point. I've updated the criteria to better reflect that we just want whoever is requesting a site post to have prior contest experience, not necessarily the same one twice.
Thank you for doing this.
About having to submit the stories to Fimfiction, does that mean we can't have a contest that lists the stories anonymously for public voting? I've used this method in previous contests to help prevent bias towards or against certain authors. Would it be possible to just have the authors post them after the contest has concluded?
I have a similar question to a few below. I'd love to have all the advantages of anonymous stories during the judging, and require the authors post them after the judging was over. Would this still qualify?
And until I hit that line, everything was looking perfect for the clopfic contest I was planning to run sometime next year. I’d even met the requirements of having a previous contest.
Any particular reason for the prohibition on M-rated contests?
And what about contests that allow all ratings? Is a contest disqualified if it allows M-rated submissions at all, or is it only disqualified if the contest is primarily M-rated stories?
It might need a few more adjustments (see some of the posts below), but overall it seems like a nice idea to me! Here's hoping all the added publicity helps convince more people to pick up the pen, so to speak.
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There is no stated time that the stories have to be submitted to fimfic, so I've specified that as long as they are submitted at any point during the contest, that is fine.
Oh, nice! This will certainly keep our amazing community writing. And hopefully, if I ever decide to run another contest in the future, I'll get more than four participants.
5167418
The E/T rule may change at a later date or if there is enough interest, but the other reason is a lack of ability to filter a social site post for mature content rather than just all social site posts.
5167440
That’s okay, I guess.
Might still do it anyway, without a site post. The previous contest did pretty good without side-wide posts, after all...
This is awesome! The only sad thing is that Jinglemas is already underway! There's always next year though :)
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While you answered the first point about the prohibition of strictly M-rated contests, what about those that allow M-rated stories without the contest being specifically for them? I was going to kick off an AppleDash contest in a few days that may allow M-rated submissions (possibly depending on your answer), and has in the past, but the vast majority of entries are E-T. There'd be no mention of anything M-rated other than the fact that such entries are allowed.
Also, is there any restriction on prizes? A couple years ago I put in for a site post, but was denied due to the issue of the site not wanting to get involved with things that offer monetary rewards. I'd love to get a site post in for the aforementioned contest, but I also want to make sure it checks all the boxes before I go write up a post for it.
Questions aside, it's really cool this sort of thing is coming back to the site. Looking forward to what comes of it!
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You should! Not having site posts never stopped Barcast ;) I'd happily help promote
Or: How to entice new people to the site even thought the show "ended"
Great idea.
5167418
Bear in mind there are always other places you can promote...
--Sweetie Belle
Awesome news!
... Though that "fully planned sequence of events" might take a bit of work in terms of when to expect results...
Still, wonderful to hear.
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The continued community maintenance and thoughtful services makes the place feel warm and alive.
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Because I was unaware the mature filter can hide embedded Mature stories in comments and blogs, we'll remove the E/T criteria.
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That's something I love about embeds, and is one of the reasons I've been promoting using them instead of linking to stories for quite a while. That and they give a pretty good idea if you'll be interested in a story without clicking on it.
--Sweetie Belle
Gosh dang it, you just edged the SA out of owning the news box... curse you and all your donkeys! :P
In all seriousness though, this is a really cool idea, and I totally support it. I hope it works out as well as we want it to!
Thanks for adding this feature!
I like this idea. The restrictions sound fair, since you need to keep a certain quality for site posts. At some point you might want to upgrade this to a site mechanism, but you can wait and see how it works before investing effort in that.
And I'm suddenly very interested. I just went live with a longer contest that's accepting new people until January. Since the contest blog post is already live, the site post would need to be a link to it instead. Does that work?
Question: is it possible to edit these site posts after they go live? My current contest has a counter of the places still available, that I update as people sign up.
Question: is there any option for using a site post for the results of a contest?
im new to this .it says i must have won or at least participated in another contest to take part in this one?
and that sweetie belle profile pic is hilarious .where did you find it?
5167620
No, it says you must have run a contest in the past. Your writing ability is irrelevant, it's your ability to run a good contest they're interested in.
Oh sweet! About time we had something like this. The amount of times I've seen writing contests that I could've participated in, but had no idea they existed until fics started hitting the feature box...
Top job, lads!
Sweet! Maybe I'll actually start hearing about these contests soon enough to actually think about participating in them for a change now.
I think this is a good idea, but would there be a way to opt-out without opting out of site posts as a whole? I'd like to be notified of site posts regarding updates of Fimfiction, but don't want contests in my feed.
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i.gyazo.com/7e4f1da0af238dcaee915f718dd4b66e.png
Unchecking the Social Site Posts option hides all site posts that aren't to do with updates. It's a button we've had for a good few years, now.
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I assumed that disabled all posts, but okay. Don't need to sound so matter-of-fact about it, but thanks I guess.
I look forward to seeing this feature in action!
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Some had predicted the fandom would end after the finale.
Now we have even more proof they were wrong.
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Considering you are promoting your own group this post is an shameless self-promotion.
...
Heh.
5167872
I always tend to feel like since I'm running the group these days, I should live up to the group name.
--Sweetie Belle
Hey just a question, I'm a new user and I was wondering where I would post a Story Request. I already have it on my blog but that seems unreliable. If anyone has any suggestions please tell me.
Someone go grab RogerDodger. I'll bet he'll laugh.
An additional question: are these posts expected to be the full contest announcement (with detailed rules with clarifications, etc) or something shorter with a link to, say, a forum/blog post? My contest announcement posts can be quite... long.
5168511
The first will go up some time tomorrow morning, so you can see the expected format then. Contest owners can write their own blurb and a link to the main contest group/blog, but the site post will specify a condensed version of their rules and schedule at a minimum.
5168525
That's perfect, thank you!
Down vote.