Hiya!

I think we now have enough people / ponies / alicorns here to finally start a discussion on the Official Group List of the Best Stories. I guesstimate there are about 300 stories here currently so it's becoming hard to find the best of the best to read. It's not a problem with the well-known behemoths (e.g. My Second Life) but there are plenty of less-well-known gems that are more difficult to find. It's even worse with completed ones, as those will never be featured (like my beloved The Thessalonica Legacy)...

I think the only solution is an official group list of the best stories. There we could put all the gems we think deserve more publicity. From my Unofficial List (post #26) I know that it's impossible to have a list of fics that will "click" for everypony - we all have different opinions (and that's cool)! The idea of a list is to have something to consider when looking for a new thing to read. Nothing more and nothing less .

Now the problem: we need a set of rules for the list. What I want to avoid is to have an "official list of the best stories voted by Happy Thoughts and Admins". For that - we have the personal user pages :).

What do you think the rules should be? Should we keep the stories on my unofficial list as a base or should we start anew? What criteria should we have for adding a story to the List? (maybe we should ask Voters to have the story featured on one of their Top 5 widget on the user page)? Should we add a way of removing a story from the list or is it better to never remove anything, knowing that as time goes on, the list will be growing?

For now, please refrain from proposing the stories for the inclusion.

296069
It'd be complicated to set up, and there's a lot of hands-on busywork involved, but the only fair way I can think of to avoid the problem of 'as voted by the admins' would be to try and get volunteers that you know to be upstanding and/or active within the group and site with different tastes, styles, and so on.

Have a callout for people nominate to stories, preferably with the caveat that they can't nominate their own because everyone and their brother will do so, myself included.

Pass it around to a number of volunteers (say five?) who like and read the kind of story nominated and ask them to sound off, and try to mix them up between stories. Let the ayes or nays have it.

As I said, endlessly complicated and a ton of work, but I can't think of anything in this setting that's not just one person or same small group deciding.

296075 - To put it into perspective: we have about 300 stories. Let's say about 10% are really unique / good / worthy of inclusion.
Have a callout for people nominate to stories, preferably with the caveat that they can't nominate their own because everyone and their brother will do so, myself included. - I think this is a good start. It's relatively easy to maintain and very fair. The problem is that it can easily be cheated, but I don't think it's a major issue here. There is nothing to win from being included (except a few more visitors).

get volunteers that you know to be upstanding - I see 2 problems:
1) (easier) who will select them? Me? Not an option - I don't know people enough. Admins? Better, but very complicated (not to mention time-consuming for them).
2) (extremely difficult) Even if we find a number of honest people that everypony else will agree on (yea, right ) how can we guarantee their preferences will be different enough to make sure there is something good for everypony on the List? For example I hate humanized ponies but many people love this idea.

296089
I don't disagree with anything you said, and I knew them to be problems heading in. The issue, though, is that for a list like this I can really only see four models for how it would be put together after nominations.

1) Someone in charge yays or nays it, which is the problem with an admin taking the helm.

2) Representative groups that aren't biased against the type of story review the material and make a decision.

3) Open voting, which would likely snuff out the less-liked categories, ie the humanized pony, which I don't care for either, but as you said you'd like to see them represented.

4) All nominations are posted to the list.

Never said it'd be easy.

296091 I agree. Maybe instead of having the list as "all time best stories" we could have it more like a "story of the month".

With this we can have the group members vote for what story they enjoy during the month. At the end of the month (last week or so) there is a vote on which one will be placed as the "story of the month" and the winner is placed on a list/front page of group. There will be a separate folder in the in the group folder for the winners. That way we can always know who won and when.

The challenge will be finding qualified people to vote. We can't have those who submitted stories vote because they will be bias on their story, nor can we have the admin vote because they are running the event. I am plotting out how this can work, but I don't know if you will like this entire idea.

296122 - Hmmmm.... That's a nice idea! Story of the month seems to me a bit too long (we don't have enough of them on the list) but 'story of the week' seems reasonable. After a few weeks we can easily have the 'story of a month' selected from all current stories of a week. All the winners will create the list of the best stories by themselves :).

Now the problems:
- the rate at which the list grows will initially be a bit too low. I think it would be best if we allowed 3 most voted stories for the first few weeks.
- "the popularity contest": the basic goal of the List is to promote the best gems what may not necessarily have the publicity they deserve. For example, imagine a contest between My Second Life (super-well-known behemoth) and The Thessalonica Legacy (the underdog). MSL is way, way more popular than TTL. What are the chances TTL winning the voting? Close to zero. Both are excellent and deserve the praise...

Midnight_Quill - do you see any solution to this problem?

The challenge will be finding qualified people to vote - Do we have to? Why can't we just allow everypony to vote? Simple, honest and democratic :). From my experience with the unofficial list there are no problems with anypony cheating the system so I don't think it's an issue. I suggest we allow voting on any story by everypony but:
- one cannot vote for a story he/she nominated
- one cannot vote for a story he/she was anything more than a normal reader (e.g. a proofreader cannot vote for the story he helped with)

296130 One aspect to solve the problem with the 'well-known' story along with the 'underdog' will be the voters should be encouraged to read each nominee. That way all the voter's will know every story they are voting for. The problem will be if there is too many nominees and flood the voters with reading content. There might have to be a limit with how many stories are submitted at each contest.

A solution to that problem could be each week could be on a different genre. One week will be romance stories, next will be dark, after that will be comedy, etc. This solves could solve the problem of over flooding. Another solution could be a small committee could be made to choose the best of the submissions and place them on the voting block. It will be their job to act as 'editors' to go through each submission and compare how well written it is and how well it tells their story. They need to be carefully chosen to have as little biases to different genres and likes reading all works equally. This is a little riskier since we cannot be sure how un-biased they are until they are in the committee working. (please not that this committee only comes into play when we are overrun with submissions. They will have to read through the 20-30+ entrees and choose the best 5-10 for voting. I doubt it will be needed often, especially near the beginning)

I don't see the problem with the public voting. We will have to rely on them to read all the stories submitted and ask them not to vote if they didn't read them all, that way there won't be an unfair advantage to more popular stories vs overlooked great works.

Another rule will be that stories that have already won cannot be resubmitted. I know that sounds like a basic rule that everyone should know already, but better safe than sorry.

296132 - The flood looks simple to avoid: the competition should end as soon as there are more than x stories in the queue OR 1 week has elapsed, whichever comes first. At most 2 competitions should be held each week as there should be enough time to vote. Normally, for 1 competition / week there should be 1 week for voting.

If there are 2 per week due to the massive influx of voted stories, the competitions are voted in order (FIFO rule). Each vote takes 1 week OR until there are e.g. ceil(1.3*x) votes. If there are enough votes, the voting for the 2nd competition is started immediately with the same rules (1 week or 130%x). No new competitions are started if there is more than 1 left to vote for to avoid excessive time between nominating a story and voting for it.

Another thing to consider - if there is less than y votes, the competition is void and no story of the week is selected. Persons who nominated the stories are free do to so again.

Yet another idea: No story can be added automatically - each one must be nominated by hand each week. The same person is allowed to nominate the same story (that did not win anything) each week if he/she so wishes.

What do you think?

296146 Your math confused me for a little (I'm not very good at it), but I think I figured it out. It sounds like it should work, I don't see any obvious flaws at the moment. I do like the concept that no stories are automatically submitted.

Just out of curiosity, does this competition include all stories, or just HiE stories? (this is the HiE group, so I am assuming it is just those stories.)

296148 - Just out of curiosity, does this competition include all stories, or just HiE stories?
We're discussing it now, so I don't know the answer :].

I think only HiE (in the broadest sense) should be allowed. If a story is good for this group, it can be nominated.

EDIT: The HiE should also include "Pony on Earth" etc.

296151 Sounds fair enough. Your definition sounds like it includes rebirth to equstria, summoned to equestria, and accidentally/purposefully thrown into equestria stories. As long as there is a human relation to the story it is allowed. Am I correct in this assumption?

296153 - Am I correct in this assumption? - I don't know. This thread is exactly for making the rules. I am NOT an admin here .

My view on this is simple: all or nothing rule. If the story exists in this group, it can be nominated and voted on. If not, then not :). If any admin decides the story does not fit and removes it, it's automatically removed from voting and cannot be nominated. Exception: if a story wins, it stays.

My personal opinion on this is to allow everything that has anything to do with humans and Equestria, including, but not limiting to: rebirth to equstria, summoned to equestria, and accidentally thrown into equestria, Pony / Griffon / Diamond Dog / FIM canon Dragon etc. on Earth and/or Human / Dog / Elephant() etc. in Equestria but main character of the story must be human in any part of it.

296154 That is exactly what I think would be needed in this competition. If the rules restrict the content of the story, many very well written ones can be overlooked. Are you the one putting this all together or is it the Admin's? You made it sound as if you are just expressing the idea and they take over.

296155 - I can do so - I did maintain my unofficial list so I am "sort of" qualified. Unfortunately the RL issues don't always enable me to spend time on it so the whole thing must be done so that I can be easily replaced if necessary. Maybe another user made only for the purpose of competition management, whose password can be shared with trusted people?

To everypony else: I can see there is very little interest here... Do you think this is a good, useful idea or a big waste of time? C'mon - if only 3 people are interested, it makes no sense to talk about the rules as there won't be enough voters :(.

What do you think?

Tacos!

I'm interested. I'd vote, certainly. However, I do have a signicant bias against some types of story, I'd admit. If possible, I'd submit my own story, but, heh, it's not the best one out there by far.

Now, for rule suggestions apart from what has already been said...
*Story must be complete, or of significant length to be judged. (7.5K+ words) (Loose, very loose, merely a recommendation.)
*If incomplete, story cannot be 'cancelled' at the time of nomination (Then we'd all be wondering what happens next and it would never come!)
I don't have any more right now.

296283 Agreed with with completion and length of story. Should we add in a rule that the story must have updated within the past month? I know of some really good ones that have not updated since last December, but I don't think it is fair to the stories that are actively updating now...

296246
Honestly, this sort of thing kinda comes up a lot,
and I still think that the "List by rating" option on the collections pretty much handles this stuff already.

But, you know, whatever you want to do.

296294 Honestly, this sort of thing kinda comes up a lot - could you point me to the discussion please? There may be some interesting thoughts there!
"List by rating" option on the collections pretty much handles this stuff already. - well... yes and no. Yes, it will most certainly pick up the "behemoths" with tons of positive votes but it won't help with more less known gems which had some bad press initially (due to e.g. lack of a pre-reader) but got much better after some time.
whatever you want to do - this may be fun and, more importantly, would give the best stories some additional viewers (which is especially important to less well-known ones). I also think (please correct me, if I am wrong!), it's good for the ego of the winning Author's :).

296283 - good idea!

296284 - this is something to think about... I propose to add a rule to allow to nominate only either: completed stories OR stories which, at the time they were nominated, were updated at least once during a 180 days time frame. Once the story is nominated it cannot be removed from voting due to "inactivity" (this is to remove the "border cases").

I also propose to add, that everypony can nominate only one, single story during each competition - this is to avoid adding "less than stellar" stories and to make it easier to vote.

What do you think?
EVERYPONY - IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN THIS - post! . It makes sense to try the first "story of the week" only if enough people are interested.

I'd certainly be interested in this. Though in the off chance Displaced were nominated, I'd obviously not be able to vote.

It seems like a good idea, will be a chance for the less known stories to gain a few more readers. I will be watching.

296350 - nope :). You won't be able to vote on your fic or nominate it, but that does not mean you can't show appreciation of other people's work! You can vote and/or nominate anything you were not involved in creating.

Guys - I have yet another idea before we start this :).

Perhaps we should try the Alternative Vote method? This way everypony can vote for anything (e.g. an author can vote for his work) - this is more fair and requires much less trust in everypony. The downside is that counting votes is a bit more difficult - I don't think it's a problem here as there will be only a few voters (say, <50).

What do you think?

ps. I've PM Alvinsaur, the founder of the group and he is more than happy to grant the grand prize to the best fic by linking to it from the main page. YaaY!

I tried to take into account our discussion. This resulted in a set of rules which are given below:

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RULES

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GENERAL:
- (TWO PHASES) each competition consists of two phases:
- first, the NOMINATION PHASE
- then, the VOTING PHASE
- (PRIZES): the story which wins the VOTING PHASE is declared the 'Story of the Week' and the link to it is posted to the main page of a group. Additionally, the Author of winning story is congratulated by PM by one of the group Administrators. Everypony else is encouraged to congratulate the Winner. Moreover, winning stories will be copied into a separate folder. This will create the Official List of Cool Stories.

NOMINATION PHASE:
- (ONLY A SINGLE NOMINATION PER PERSON) Everypony is allowed to nominate only one, single story each nomination phase.
- (NO PREVIOUS WINNERS): one cannot nominate a story that has won any previous Story of a Week competition
- (NO SUPER-SHORT STORIES IN PROGRESS): Story must be complete, OR of significant length to be judged - more than 7499 words
- (NO CANCELLED STORIES): A story cannot be marked 'cancelled' or 'on hiatus' at the time of nomination.
- (NO ABANDONED STORIES): One cannot nominate an 'in-progress' story that has not been updated in the last 180 days.
- (OLD COMPLETED STORIES ALLOWED): Completed stories can be nominated, regardless of time they have been written.
- (NO SELF-PROMOTION): One cannot nominate a story he/she was anything more than an ordinary reader (e.g. a proofreader cannot nominated the story he helped with)
- (ONLY GROUP-ADDED STORIES): only stories that can be found in the group folders can be nominated. If the story is not on the list, the person wishing to nominate it should add it to the appropriate folder prior to nominating it (which can be done immediately after adding the story to appropriate group folders).
- (AT LEAST 3 NOMINATIONS PER STORY ALLOWED) any story that has been successfully nominated (i.e. that fulfilled all the requirements) can be nominated for at least 2 more consequtive weeks (regardless of the Author's inactivity) if any person wishes to do so.
- (NO AUTOMATIC NOMINATIONS): Each nomination for 'Story of a Week' must be done by hand. The same person is allowed to nominate the same story each week if he/she so wishes (and the story meets other requirements).
- (NO REMOVAL DURING VOTING): After nomination phase, no story can be removed from voting for any reason
- (NO REMOVAL OF WINNERS): If a story wins in voting, it cannot be removed from the group
- (ONLY HiE STORIES): one cannot nominate a story that is not appropriate for the group, i.e. that is not a Human In Equestria story. All the forms of those stories are allowed, including, but not limiting to rebirth to Equstria, summoned to Equestria, accidentally thrown into Equestria, Pony / Griffon / Diamond Dog / FIM canon Dragon etc. on Earth and/or Human / Dog / Elephant() etc. in Equestria but (at least one of main characters) of the story must be human in any part of it. The humanized ponies' stories are also allowed. All HiE stories, regardless of ratings (including Mature and clopfics) are also allowed but all highly questionable content should be included as tags after the title.
- (HOW TO NOMINATE) Example:

A nice clopfic] [MATURE, SEX, SAD, GRIMDARK]

The nominated story MUST be linked to an appropriate [url=FimFiction.net]FimFiction.net page to avoid errors.

==============================

NOMINATION PHASE DURATION:

- (5 OR MORE NOMINATIONS NEEDED) if there are less than 5 nominations, this phase runs for another week. If after 2 weeks there are still less than 5 nominations, the whole competition ends :(.
- (NO MORE THAN 10 NOMINATIONS) the nomination phase ends as soon as there are more than 9 nominated stories OR 1 week has elapsed.
- (EVERYTHING AFTER 10 NOMINATIONS IS VOID) all nominations added after 10th one are invalid and can be post again during the next competition if desired

=============================

VOTING PHASE:

- (NO MORE THAN 5 STORIES PER VOTE): Everypony can vote on 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 stories. If no stories truly deserve to win, simply don't vote.
- (EVERYPONY CAN VOTE FOR ANYTHING) There are NO EXCEPTIONS during the voting phase! Even an author (or a pre-reader) of a story can place his work as his #1. He cannot NOMINATE his work but he can vote for it if it is nominated by somepony else.

- (VOTING SYSTEM EXPLANATION) The voting will be based on the Alternative Vote method. Everypony can vote on 5 or less stories, creating a numbered, ordered list. The story marked as "1" is the best and the last one on the list is the last one that is worthy of winning.

- (EXAMPLE): there are 5 nominated stories: a,b,c,d,e. According to a Voter, the best (most deserving to win) is a story 'a', then (a bit worse) 'b', and finally (a very good but worse than 'a' or 'b'), story 'c'. Stories 'd' and 'e' are, according to Voter, not good enough and should not win.

- (VOTING EXAMPLE) This person's voting should therefore be:

VOTER'S_NAME:
1. a
2. b
3. c

Note that there is no '4. d' or '5. e', as 'd' and 'e' are, according to Voter, not good enough to win.
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I have marked rules that I feel might be highly controversial in red and the ones that you may want to read a bit more closely in blue.

If you find any errors, omissions, problems, inaccuracies or bloats - please comment!

The preliminary rules were discussed briefly with Alvinsaur, the founding father of our group, who agreed with them .

EDIT: removed typos

Sounds good.

298362 - I will let it sit here for a day or two and then... WE WILL COMMENCE WITH THE FIRST Official Story of the Week Nomination! YaaaaY!