Writing contest: Call for judges! · 5:38pm Jan 25th, 2020

I need judges for the Season 10 Bingo Writing Contest. The more judges I get, the fewer stories each one has to read.

Who can be a judge

Anybody can be a judge, except contestants who've entered a finished story into the contest. You may also want to excuse yourself if you have a close tie to one of the contestants, such as having helped them write the story, depending on whether you feel you can be unbiased and fair.

Judges will be expected to read a number of stories in a short time, so consider if the judging process lands at a time when you'll be particularly busy.

The judging process will begin on 22 March 2020.

Judging process

The contest allows stories up to 20,000 words, and there are potentially quite a few of them in the list. Expecting every judge to read every story isn't practical. Instead, I have a process. This is a slightly expanded version of the process we used in the first contest. The intention of the process is to be as fair as possible, allowing each story multiple chances while balancing that against the limited reading capacity of each judge.

Qualifier

First, I randomly allocate the stories to judges to read, such that each story gets read by at least two judges. Judges then give a verdict on each story, which should be one of:

Yes - this story might be a winner
Maybe - this story is still good enough to be worth considering
No - this story isn't a good enough

By keeping the verdict simple we avoid arguments about subtle differences.

Any story that recieves at least one Yes proceeds to the next round. If a story has two Maybe verdicts, or one of the judges requests a second opinion, then the story is allocated to another judge, who should then give their own verdict.

Judges may refuse to read a story if it doesn't fit their conditions - for example, a judges may refuse to read mature stories, or may want to avoid specific tags such as gore.

Second Qualifier (optional)

If too many stories pass the first round, then we expand the process. Judges will be allocated more stories to read, such that each story that passed the first will have been read by at least four judges - including the ones from the first round. Verdicts are made the same way, and added to those from the first round.

Any story that receives at least three Yes votes proceeds to the shortlist. Stories with two Yes votes are given to another judge to read to give them an extra chance.

In extreme cases, it may be necessary to run a third round of qualifiers.

Shortlist

The result from the qualifiers is an agreed shortlist of stories that are considered possible winners, or at least possible runners up. All the judges will need to read all the stories in the shortlist if they haven't already - that's why it needs to be short.

At this point the method changes. Each judge is given 10 points to allocate between the shortlisted stories, indicating their preference. They may choose to give all 10 points to a single story, or to spread them evenly. The points are tallied, and the stories on the shortlist are ranked.

This may require multiple rounds. If so, after each round the list of stories will be culled to about half size (accounting for ties or near-ties that might seem unfair), and judges asked to spend their points again. Eventually, a clear winner and two runners-up will emerge.

Report Shrink Laureate · 247 views · #season 10 #bingo #writing contest

Comments ( 4 )