Anonfilly Contest Update 1, and precision on voting process. · 5:45pm Jan 25th, 2020
Hello everypony!
Already a few days into the contest, and at least one entry has been sent to me! For the rest of you, here's a cute picture to motivate you:
In more serious news, there seems to be some people who are confused about the voting process.
Most contests have people submit their stories openly, and have a panel of judges decide which story is the best. This method, while good, has a few problems.
-First, the power to decide the winner is in the hands of a few people, sometime just one, so even the best attempt at choosing the best story may be very subjective.
-Second, most communities are pretty closely knit, and everyone knows everyone. The judges are usually part of that circle, and they know who wrote what stories. This naturally cause bias in the judging.
-Finally, because of those first two reasons, those contests usually have plenty of drama from people who feel they might have been slighted by the voting process, and shade is thrown on the winner(s) because of accusations of favoritism.
This is why the group I'm part of ran two contests with a different method for judging the winners. Stories are sent to only one person, in this case, me, so only one person knows who is the author of the stories. The stories, stripped of any information regarding who wrote them, are posted at the start of the voting period. Anyone who cares is entitled a vote on their three favorite stories, and voting is tightly monitored monitored to detect any attempt at tomfoolery. This has the following effects:
-First, the judging is in the hand of many, many people. Once the votes have reached a certain number, statistically speaking, bias is eliminated in favor of what people think is objectively the best. Votes follow roughly a bell curve, which makes it easy to detect an attempt at sabotage.
-Second, people are allowed three votes, ranking their favorite choices 1 to 3, with a different point value associated with each. That means that a story that is appreciated by a lot of people but isn't anyone's first could still in theory beat a story that is the favorite of a small minority.
-Finally, hiding the identity of each author makes it so they can't use their notoriety to get votes. It is still technically possible to identify an author by their writing style, but that's a lot less likely to influence the vote.
For all of this to work though, there is one simple rule to follow for those who wish to enter: DO NOT DISCUSS YOUR ENTRY WITH ANYONE. Or at least, as few people as possible, but ideally none. It would ruin the anonymous property on which the entire thing is built. Again, we closely monitor the voting process, so if there's suspicion that a story is getting a lot more traction that it should, the author will be informed of that. It hasn't happened in two contests so far, but this is the first contest with such a widespread audience, so I will be extra careful.
If you have any other question, feel free to comment or send them to me through PM. Thanks you.
-- Sparktail
Well, what have we here?