3558262
At the risk of sounding obtuse, I think you're over-thinking it. There are no absolute values when it comes to scoring something like this, and consequentially there's no real reason to assign concrete values to your scoring scale. As long as you rated stories you liked more higher than stories you didn't like as much, you're golden.

3558304

If someone is very critical, and rates a lot of stories in the 0-3 range, then as long as he is just as critical with all the stories, it won't cause the final score to be unfairly biased.

Consider:
Person: A B C Sum Average
Story
a 10 5 6 21 7
b 1 6 8 15 5
c 2 6 10 18 6

Persons B and C both liked stories a and b better than story a, but story a wins because person A spread his ratings out farther.

3558262
To answer your question in part, it only makes sense to rate the stories relative to each other. 0 means that it was amongst the worst amongst the entries, and 10 means that it amongst the best. 1's are better than 0's and worse than 2's, etc.

3558262

It really comes down to personal preference, as there's several schools of thought. But ultimately while some methods of voting have disadvantages, there isn't anything strictly wrong.

Some people use a bell curve. Some people use a flat distribution. Some people don't focus on a distribution and simply vote as they see fit. Pros and cons to all of these.

Relatedly, some people try to control their hugbox score (i.e. the average of all votes given). If you use a bell curve, your hugbox should be right in the middle. If you're very critical, a low hugbox score, and if you're very generous, a high hugbox score. Pros and cons to all of those.

Some people recalibrate their scale (10 = the best fic in this round) whereas other use a consistent scale (10 = what I consider the best of the best. This round may not contain any 10's.) While it's a matter of preference, I recommend giving at least one 10 and at least one 0, in order to maximize the strength of your vote.

EDIT: There's also the matter that enjoyment and the criteria for a score are all entirely subjective. If I found very little enjoyment in a fic and thus gave it a 0, you could try to counterargue that there was some redeeming value and that I should instead give a 1 or 2, but you can't realistically tell me that I was wrong for not enjoying the fic. Then, throw in the fact that some people are scoring based purely on reader enjoyment, whereas some people are strictly judging on literary merit, whereas others have their own individual scoring criteria... It's really just up to you, and which fics you feel deserve 10's.

3558649

okay that is fine but the fact remains...

PF3... (that's you)

...has no reviews!

3558649
I keep seeing people referring to a hugbox. What, pray tell, is this?

3559244

http://writeoff.me/user/list

3559244

It's the arithmetic mean of all the scores that you give to fics. If you ranked three fics 10, 2, and 9, your hugbox score would be 7.

Also, in more generalized ponychan parlance, "hugbox" is slang for "circlejerk".

Oh. Well that's silly. I don't get it, why not just call it the mean or the average? Why "hugbox"?

3559491

You don't like hugs?

3559512
Ehhhh....

I've only read and rated 31 stories so far and UGHHH this is getting difficult. Every time I finish a story, I slot it in somewhere, but I get situations where I like story A a lot more than B, but have them both slotted in as 6. Obviously I want to either promote A or demote B, but then it causes those same conflicts with other stories in the adjacent tiers! Eventually, fine, well-written fics that I just personally didn't care for get demoted over and over again as other stories bump them out, until one of those honestly good fics gets as low as 5. But wait, I have some hugely flawed fics slotted in as 4! Ughhh, that won't do at all! Let's shove those flawed ones down to 3 then... ugh but 3 out of 10 is so brutal! I don't wanna be mean! T_T

And what's this now? Still twenty fics to go?!

3559544

yes, do it. Be brutal. Crush their fragile dreams in the palm of your uncaring hands.

3559107
*Runs sobbing into bedroom* Jacob's mom loves him more better! She lets him play XBox! *slams door*

3559491
It comes from an earlier time in the fandom when the readerbase was very criticism-adverse. "Well sure, every other word is misspelled... but you put a lot of heart into it!" Eventually the community improved, and realized it's possible to be kind as well as critical and constructive. So, someone who gives a ton of 9's and 10's has a high average, thus they're hugboxing a lot. The more critical people with averages around 2 or 3 are not hugboxing in the slightest.

3559544
I'm still reading entries, but it's entirely possible that there is no entry that is flat-out "bad". So it's easier to not think of it as a good/bad spectrum. 10 is for your favorite fic(s) in this competition. 0 is for your least favorite—not necessarily bad, but it had a lot of strong competition. 5 is average in the context of this competition, which means it's pretty good.

3559544
If it's breaking your heart to knock a story down by three or four points, then you may want to re-examine your scoring metric. If you end up with 12 stories with a score of 7 and only 2 stories with a score of 0, I would say that just means that the stories you liked are all a lot closer to each other in quality than they were to the stories you disliked. If I were to end up rating a good story and a bad story only one point apart, I'd think my system was too rigid.

Sounds like the "3/10 is brutal" idea may need to be an early casualty here — more space between the good and bad fics would give you more wiggle room in the middle. As 3558649 said, giving out at least one 10 and at least one 0 ensures that your vote carries maximum weight. (I haven't given out a 0 yet, but I've dropped some 1s in the past.)

Looking through my own scores, I have a lot of 5s and 6s (I've reviewed 36 out of 52 stories and have already written 9,000 words of reviews ), with a small tail of lower numbers and a small tail of higher numbers. So it's going to probably end up looking like a bell curve, even though I'm not explicitly intending to do it that way.

I think I'm okay with that. It reflects the real distribution of fic quality, if you believe in Sturgeon's Law.

3559858
Ah, I see. Normally I'd respond to in the affirmative as "roger doger", but, well, you know.

3558335
This is true but Arrow's Paradox means that any system like this will necessarily end up with such issues.

Moreover, it is hard to say whether or not that set of results is "wrong" or not; if person A considered stories b and c to be terrible, and story a to be great, person B was indecisive (eh, they're all about as good as each other), and person C thought that a was okay, b was good, and c was great, then you don't even necessarily have an incorrect result if they all voted honestly - the first story hit all three readers as not bad, whereas stories b and c were seen as terrible by one of the readers.

3559544
I accidentally posted all my scores for all the stories very briefly, and, naturally, one of the people who saw it in the few minutes before I fixed it was one of the people I gave a zero to.

I mean, not that I don't stand by my scores - I'd be willing to share them - I just don't know if, you know, people really want to know if I gave their story a 0.

3559897

9000

Yeesh, and I thought my 6,912 words worth of reviews were a lot.

Though I've actually said a bit more than that.

But you still have 15 stories to go.

You poor bastard.

What are your favorites so far, if I might ask?

3559544
I handed out 0s to stories I didn't consider dire. Quotes was one victim of such.

As I noted, my personal goal was to give myself reasonable differentiation between the stories which deserved to win and which deserved at least some points versus the stuff which definitely did not, and as a result I ended up lumping 13 stories at 0 which I felt all didn't deserve to win at all for one reason or another.

So the best stories got 7-10s, the middling ones got 4-6s, the okay but eh stories got 1-3, and the "these don't deserve points" got 0s. There wasn't anything truly dire here, so that meant some stories which weren't dire got 0s.

3560040

I mean, not that I don't stand by my scores - I'd be willing to share them - I just don't know if, you know, people really want to know if I gave their story a 0.

If you do, wait the results since we will be able to tell which story is yours based on it not having a vote.

3560053
Oh, I put scores in the document under my own stories too.

Wow. I just didn't want to be mean to anyone, but compared to you guys, I've been handing out cupcakes and smiley stickers with every rating. O_o;

3559643 Egad, you're right! I will now apply this philosophy to everything I do in life. Tomorrow I'll be teaching a group of 5 four-year-olds. Little buggers better suck it up and LEARN. I bet my boss will give me a raise!

3559858 I've been using 7 instead of 5 as a standard of excellence, and then bumping up and down from there based other factors. I'm gonna change that =/

3560050 0s to non-dire stories? You, sir, are a paragon of heartlessness and an example to us all. I salute you.

3559897 Yeah... gonna redo my scoring system. Five days left... just enough time to crush my heart and all its useless emotions into tiny pieces, as the rest of you have. Friendship is truly magic!

Uh, also, just to make sure no one takes this the wrong way, I'm not bashing anyone by saying you're heartless. I really do need to lower all my rating numbers a bit, and I took the opportunity to crack some jokes

3560111

0s to non-dire stories? You, sir, are a paragon of heartlessness and an example to us all. I salute you

Now, now, unlike SOME dragons, I know better than to give my heart away.

Poor Draco.

3560111

It's too late, you hurt my feelings. I'm going to hate you and post a nasty blog about how insensitive you were to my feelings.

Alright, alright, ya savages. Here's a few of my reviews. Given the volume of fics, I tried to stay briefer than I've been in previous rounds, but with 1900 of review for the first 16 fics, I'm off to a bad start. Oh well, bank error in your favor.

Falling Apples - Alas, poor Big Mac. You seem so wise in the show, and you were doing so well here by keeping your mouth shut. Yet you relented, and such was your downfall. A really cute application of the prompt. My only quibble is that I now don’t see the relevance of the cold. I’m left to assume it was a very heavy red herring.

The Last Words of Star Swirl the Bearded - An amusing punchline, as I always appreciate a good trolling, for such a moment as this. Reminds me in a way of Graham Chapman’s funeral. Though, my quibble with this is in the tonal shift halfway through. The first half starts off sounding more like a narrator in a history special. And I mean that in a good sense! It painted a good historical narrative, and offered tantalizing glimpses at the past. But then in order to actually see the event, you’re forced to cheat, introduce a character, and change the tone of the fic. If you’re going to use Twitwi as your DeLorean, then at least put her in the entire fic. That said, it’s still a quibble. I liked this.

Love Thine Enemy - Clever twist on the prompt. While I liked the reveal, I sorta had issues with Cadance’s characterization though. There was a fair amount of political and militant discussion, and maybe this is just headcanon bias, but even as Princess of the Crystal Empire, I have a difficult time reading this as in-character for her. Yet at the same time, I understand her inclusion, for that reveal at the end. Maybe if you put both Shining and Cadance in the scene? Good cop, bad cop?

25 Famous Last Words - Big ol’ tell in the first paragraph to set the scene. I guess that was done to squeeze under the max wordcount, but yucky. Either spend the first paragraph to paint more of a mental picture, or weave subtle clues throughout the first scene and let the reader put two and two together (you’re already part-way there, with some of the current dialogue). That said, concussed!Twilight was a hoot, and got a number of laughs out of me. This does need a bit of copy-editing, as there’s a number of silly mistakes like missing capitalization or missing apostrophes. Since it doesn’t particularly have a climax/punchline (“Because Discord” isn’t a punchline!) the ending sort of fizzled, but as a vignette it was amusing.

You Had to Say It - Amusing and silly, but it basically played out like Feeling Pinkie Keen 2. As a suggestion, you could take more advantage of the fact that Discord is the stooge in this setup, rather than Twilight in the S1 episode. Twilight would simply doubt, be scientific, and tempt fate. Discord could leverage heavy amounts of chaos to attempt to nullify any cause-and-effect (ex. rather than fall in a river and get wet, he turns the river into a trampoline) yet still get foiled for tempting fate (ex. and after bouncing off the trampoline, he lands on a cactus). Not the best example, but see where I’m going?

The Worst It Could Possibly Be - Tangent: I know that the show-writers don’t want to overuse their own gags, but still, what ever happened to the Flower trio? Anyway… Okay, I laughed pretty hard when Pinkie turned out to be a changeling. The whole thing is just a ball of [Random][Comedy], with the mantra of “ you, that’s why”, and what it sets out to do, it does well. I’m not sure I like the extra scene at the end; it felt tacked on. The universe ended! Just go with that!

Pinkie Pie Makes Brownies - Exposition opening. Hehe. While I could see the whole “brownie” thing coming a mile away, it was still funny to watch Pinkie all goofed up… at first. But she had huuuuuge mood swings, which were really jarring to read. I’d recommend less-is-more, quality-over-quantity, for the mood swings. Pinkie’s last words have an amusing dark-comedy to them, but then Twilight’s lines… aren’t? So it leaves the reader feeling uncomfortable rather than the “haha, that’s awful but funny” of Pinkie’s line.

Those Awful Rumors 'Round Town - Topkek. I love the double subversion, as we’re first sure that Scoots is BSing, only to find she was actually telling the truth, only then to see the crapsaccharine ending—nicely played. My main beef is that, in order to pull of the parental bit, you’ve got a solid wall of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome. All I saw on the first read was “color color color color color”, and it distracted me enough that I even missed it was the same two color palettes over and over. Still, it’s probably fixable, and the premise is solid.

Rain - “Certainly, in his bit to woo the heart of Cloud Swirl, his wife and now widow, he had shed most, if not all of his old nasty attitude and all that to marry a commoner.” Everything about this one sentence is grating to me Though, it’s just the one line. There’s a good start here, but unfortunately for a minific competition, it just feels too short. What you have so far is good, but the bit about his wife alone isn’t enough to make me feel the transformation. I need to see more before I’ll buy it, and without that investment, the famous last words don’t have as much impact.

Listen - The word Loquacious always makes me laugh, because on a friend of mine’s first playthrough of FF7, he renamed Aerith to “Loquacious” because he didn’t like her expositing. Anyway, some of the juxtaposition is cute, like “divine slobber”. But I dunno, the identity of the characters backfired here for me. Since I figured out who the baby alicorn was, I started racking my brain for who Loquacious or this cult was supposed to be. I forced myself to check the comments, where maybe it ties into an AU? Or maybe it was just an invention for this fic? But either way, trying to figure this out completely knocked me out of the story, which you never want. And then it’s like… if there’s no connection, then was there a reason to include Cadance in that role? World-building, I suppose, and props for it… but, world-building in a minific is a challenge.

Moving Heaven and Earth - Ow. You punched me right in the dawws. The ending was super-cute Woona goodness. But I also really like the use of rejecting elders. It’s too easy to just paint the alicorns as these saviors and perfect beings who just reformed all of Equestria with the flick of a horn, so seeing doubt, scorn, and unfair burdens is a refreshing spin. If I had to find something to nitpick, it was a bit talking-heads. A bit of Tia struggling but body language was otherwise sparse. A bit of the setting sun but I don’t otherwise know where this scene occurred.

The Last Line - Author feels! Author feels! Spike gaped. “You mean I’ve got to keep writing?” Poor Spikebro. Anyway, I really liked this one, because of how many levels this works on. There’s clearly a horseword-author meta-level. There’s also the Twilight-is-best-sister level—not enough Twilight-Spike daww stories. And as well, the moral (while perhaps bluntly delivered. It fits the style of a friendship report, but it’s pretty on-the-nose when it takes up most of the minific) is a great lesson applicable to all of us. I suppose that’s kind of a double-edged sword though, because if another reader disagrees and found the moral to fall flat, there’s really nothing here for them.

Half-Moon - Sorry, I’m sort of struggling for much to say here. The technical aspects like scenery and body-language are good, but not spectacular. Really, the crux of the issue here is that this is a Luna-being-tempted fic, and I just didn’t feel like this did anything to set itself apart from other Luna-being-tempted fics. Perhaps I would’ve looked to the prompt; the prompt tie-in is fine, but perhaps you could have taken the tie-in further, in an attempt to go someplace that similar fics have not gone.

Laugh, Laugh - Ooo, digging into the comic canon, eh? Interesting move. Doubly so, as I start to read and see what the fic’s actually about. Oh dammit, this is alluding to the recent news, ain’t it? Oi… Anyway, being in first person, this is a monologue by Pinkie, and thus it needs to be in Pinkie’s voice. In paragraphs #1 through #4, I just didn’t really feel Pinkie in there. #5 through #9 is where you hit your stride, and this felt like a good “serious and introspective yet still absolutely Pinkie” voice. Then paragraph #10 starts to get borderline too bubbly or silly for the context. It’s just something to be mindful of. The “last line” felt a little apropos of nothing to me, as though it were only included for prompt connection… unless the significance of the note went totally over my head. Still, it’s a nice enough story. I like the idea of a Pinkie who has come to terms with the meaning of death, yet who also gets a lot of character growth from an event such as this.

Disconsolate - Well, that’s an apt title. Arguably it’s something of an idiot ball moment, since Rose ought to know the alibi printed in the paper, but since I don’t imagine she (or anypony in Ponyville, for that matter) have a lot of experience, I’m willing to let that one slide. I do take objection to Twilight though. I get that she felt uncomfortable and was doubting why she was even there, but “tuning out” while a grieving family member is pouring their heart out to you just rubs me the wrong way. Still, this was nicely written. Due to the order in which you unveiled facts, you were able to save that twist for the last possible second, which was really effective. Kudos.

The Bearded Geezer - “Talked like a zebra” wow 2racist4me. An interesting little cutie mark story. I don’t think I’ve seen these two characters connected very often at all, and I do like how some of Trixie’s talents were leveraged, like being able to recognize stage props. My biggest quibble is that I suspect the original draft of this was around 1,500 words or so. The outline is good, but the plot just moves so fast. First three paragraphs about the door, then two about the geezer, two with the geezer appearing, two to address the riddle, wait we already solved the riddle… It felt like when you’re walking a dog that’s tugging hard at the leash. This story could easily stretch to 2,000 words without feeling bloated or padded. But, if properly slowed down, I like it.

3558335

I've been contemplating this particular scenario since you posted it, and trying to determine a suitable solution. In engineering, if we see data that is very different from the other times we repeated a test, we usually throw it out as anomalous due to error. In this case though, throwing it out seems unfair to the voter and against the spirit of the competition (though I think the moderator should contact the voter in suspiciose circumstances ie. having all votes but one or two in the 0-1 and the remaining 10).

We could also try voting standards and criteria, in which you vote on multiple components like spelling, grammer, story and characters and such. Doing this directs the judges attention to individual parts, allowing for a more empirical approach and evening out the spread. The downside to this is that authors will start writing to fit criteria of voting rather than for enjoyment. For instance being extra careful with grammer and spelling to earn points and beat out stories that may be more interesting but have mistakes. It is also tedious on the voter.

So what else can be done to insure extremely polarized ballots not hold undue sway? I think the most appropriate and effective manner is just to encourage more participation. With more votes, those that are extremely polar hold less power than they normally would, and in many cases will have polar opposites to counter balance (ie. stories that are unduly voted low also having votes that are unduly high). This makes the most accurate rating with out putting too much burden on the voter or unfairly discounting their vote.

3560130
Those Awful Rumors 'Round Town, the ending:
So I wrote my reviews without reading others' first. Color me surprised that, not only was everyone confused about this fic's ending, but no one else mentioned my interpretation of the ending. I interpreted the ending at face value. All of the classmates assumed orphan or similar variants. Scootaloo responds to her classmates, telling them that she has, quote, "all the parents [she] could ever want!" The classmates exchange looks, as they (and likely the reader) assume Scoots to be Equestria's worst liar. Cut to Scootaloo's house and we discover that she literally has dozens of moms and dads, true to her word. However, she breaks down in tears at the end because we can clearly see that each of her many parents is doting on her, and thus she's being smothered to death. In TVTropes terminology, Blessed With Suck, type #5. So the ending was a comedic double subversion, IMHO.

3560204
If everyone makes full use of their voting range, then there isn't much of an issue. In Bad Horse's scenario, the outcome based on the votes is expected: A really thought a should win, and B and C were mostly okay with all the entries. If they thought a really shouldn't win, they should've given it a lower score.

We could also try voting standards and criteria, in which you vote on multiple components like spelling, grammer, story and characters and such.

Aside from the issues you noted, those categories favour mechanics too heavily. I personally don't rate on mechanics unless they're such a mess that the story becomes difficult to read. The value of the current ambiguity is flexibility. You can rate based on whatever criteria you think is appropriate.

I think the moderator should contact the voter in suspiciose circumstances ie. having all votes but one or two in the 0-1 and the remaining 10.

I already do this.

3560204

The downside to this is that authors will start writing to fit criteria of voting rather than for enjoyment.

Being the devious bastard I am, I was already writing to win in this competition. (From the reviews I've gotten so far it looks like I'm going to end up pretty far from placing, though.) I actually studied all the stories that had gotten scores of at least 7.0 in previous minific competitions and extracted a set of winning rules from the data.

How to win a minific contest:

1. Write Slice of Life. A bit of humor doesn't hurt, either.
2. Use mostly canon characters with developed personalities.
3. Keep a very narrow and intense focus, telling the entire story in one scene if possible.
4. Lean toward being dialogue-heavy rather than heavy on action or description.
5. Aim for your readers' feelings first, and thoughts second.
6. Be sure to actually tell a story, one that has a conflict and some semblance of a resolution.
7. Use all 750 words.
8. Don't waste energy trying out new, fancy writing tricks. Instead, just try to execute on the simplest, most basic rules of craft. Most of the stories in every competition fail to execute on some elementary rule of craft or other, so any writer that can execute these is almost guaranteed to place well.
9. Address the &*%^ prompt.

Who knows whether these "rules" are worth a damn, though.

3560204
Well, in many competitions, they throw out the highest score or the lowest score, or the highest two scores and the lowest two scores, and then use all the rest of them. This eliminates outliers, but also makes ties more likely.

All voting systems are vulnerable to at least one of:

The rule is dictatorial (i.e., there is a single individual who can choose the winner), or
There is some candidate who can never win, under the rule, or
The rule is susceptible to tactical voting, in the sense that there are conditions under which a voter with full knowledge of how the other voters are to vote and of the rule being used would have an incentive to vote in a manner that does not reflect his or her preferences.

ALL voting systems have these flaws. Well, all voting systems which produce a single winner do; ones which produce multiple winners have other flaws.

Anyway...

We could also try voting standards and criteria, in which you vote on multiple components like spelling, grammer, story and characters and such.

A lot of these things are subjective anyway. Also, really, grammar and spelling are a basic assumption; if you fail at those things, you're probably doomed in any case. It is just basic common courtesy to make sure that your sentences are gramattically correct and that everything is spelled correctly.

The other issue is that stories are not all the same, and ergo, weighting things is just not going to work. Part of the fun of these contests is the ability to write very different stories, which put very different weights on different aspects. Look at Cold In Gardez's Lost Cities; one of those might make an acceptable entry, but they only barely have characters in them, if at all.

3560219
That was precisely why I didn't like the story; I wasn't sure if the writer was going for that or not. If that was what they were going for, which is the other obvious interpretation, then the story isn't nearly as good as if they were going for the dark ending, and the ambiguity was confusing.

3560451
This might as well be "how to get a highly rated story on FIMFiction".

Blegh, finally finished reading. Like I said, I'll wait until Sunday afternoon to post my reviews. It's not like I've likely had anything to say that hasn't been said anyway.

For the record, my top scorers were Final Witness, Moving Heaven and Earth, The Pony and the Phoenix, and the Darkfire Phoenix.

3561406
I look forward to seeing your full reviews on Sunday!

I think I'm a little late to the party. Oh well, I didn't do reviews, but I wrote a quick comment for each one after I'd finished reading.

Also, a question. What's the purpose of the of the N/A voting option? Why would anyone ever vote non applicable?

Falling Apples - Started off very well. Charming, cute portrayal of wife and husband, but never really leads anywhere. The ending joke doesn’t follow very well from what came before.

The Last Words of Star Swirl the Bearded - Good mystery set up, and funny reveal.

Love Thine Enemy - This might be too short for the concept. Twist doesn’t have much impact when we never get any real idea who the OC is, and time for a lead up to the reveal. No little hints or clues.

25 Famous Last Words - Is this even a story? I did enjoy the ridiculously out of place quotes, but it really needs to be tied down to something tangible.

You Just Had to Say It - Discord here is too subdued. He didn’t have any of his usual bombastic personality.

The Worst It Could Possibly Be - I thought the little beginning bit with the waffles was funny. The rest was boring. If all you are is random, random quickly becomes the norm.

Pinkie Pie Makes Brownies - This could probably be cut down a lot and be more effective.

Those Awful Rumors ‘Round Town - I don’t understand the ending. I figure Scootaloo is imagining everything at the end? Anyway, this reads a lot like most other Scootaloo orphan stories I’ve read, besides the weird ending.

Rain - I think this is too short for what you’re trying to do. It’s hard to reinvent an entire character in just seven hundred words.

Listen - I really like this, especially the unique play on the prompt. I also really like the little tidbits of mythos, but I’m told they’re taken from another fanfiction. Weird choice, but I think this still stands well on its own.

Moving Heaven and Earth - Cool and perfectly plausible Princess backstory. A bit rushed, though. Could do very well for an expansion.

The Last Line - This was cute.

Half Moon - This treads on a lot ground that other stories about Luna and Nightmare Moon have already covered. Doesn’t seem to have anything new to add to the subject.

Laugh, Laugh - The narration doesn’t sound much like Pinkie Pie. It’s very slow and somber. It doesn’t have any of her energy.

Disconsolate - So… Rose murdered him? That’s a fun twist, but the set up is a bit drab. A lot of the intro stuff seems completely unrelated to the ending, like Twilight feeling that it’s her duty to attend the funeral. What does that have anything to do with anything?

The Bearded Geezer - Nice little junior explorer thing going on here, and very cute ending.

It’s Liquid Pride - It’s a clever enough pun, but it’s not funny enough to be worth the amount of buildup leading up to it.

Eponalepsis - Ambitious prose style, almost fairy tale-like, matches the little hints of the presented mythos very well, and I think it all pays off. Also, fits the word limit well. I don’t think this one needs any expansion at all. It has just the right level of ambiguity.

The Shortest Possible Distance - The magical challenge was interesting, but the magical pseudoscience didn’t do much for me.

The Pony and the Phoenix - Grim little slice of a pony’s attempt to beat mortality, and focusing on the immortal phoenix for narration was a smart choice. I liked it.

Brother of Mine - I think the very last line greatly weakens what would have been a much stronger story. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s too explicit? Too open? I feel like it would have been stronger if it had been left unspoken. Let the readers question for themselves whether or not Tirek is right.

A Moment of Clarity - This reads like wish fulfillment of every person who’s ever had a relative suffer from dementia. This was very frustrating to read.

Generations - Unfortunately, watching kids argue over jeopardy rules just isn’t very interesting.

The Darkfire Phoenix - This was almost all action, and that action didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t care about who any of the characters, so there were no stakes. I knew they were going to win, so there was no tension. And it wasn’t even particularly exciting. The Independence Day Quote seemed really out of place.

Race the Sun - An interesting concept, but the prose was too ho-hum too ever really pull me in.

Once More With Feeling - Is this a copypasta from Hard Reset? I’m too lazy to actually go reread that fic and find out for sure, but it reads very similarly.

Lessons of the Heart - This one is way too telly.

Epitaphs - Eh, reading descriptions of characters I’m already intimately familiar with just doesn’t do anything for me at all, and the narration doesn’t match the narrator.

Regrets - This is way too short for the premise, but I do think the premise could make for a really fun expanded story.

Humming Brew - Normally, meta jokes like this would break a story for me, but I actually really enjoyed how sudden and unexpected that first one was, but then the one at the end came and broke the story anyway. This also suffers from a lot of editing issues, particularly regarding tense shifts.

Sunset Rising - This is too short for what you’re trying to accomplish. It works… kind of, but Sunset’s change in attitude is happening too fast to be believable.

Why Pony Pants Were Invented - This one didn’t work for me on any level.

Final Witness - Granny Smith is treating her son’s death far too lightly. The joke at the end is funny, but it comes off as extremely inappropriate given the context. All the other feelings portrayed are too cookie cutter and expected to be compelling.

Caped Crusaders - The end is funny, but that whole interview sequence leading up to it feels unnecessary. And too much here is left unexplained. Where did the mane 6 come from? Why are the Cutie Mark Crusaders superheroes now?

Spring Cleaning - This was didn’t manage to evoke any of the feelings in me that I think it was trying to. Technically, it’s fine, but the emotions here aren’t very strong.

The steed of Theseus - This one has a lot of serious editing issues, particularly with paragraph spacing and dialogue punctuation. It’s a shame, because it’s presenting a concept that I think could be very interesting - how immortals change over time - but the technical issues really hold it back.

And a Smile Means Friendship to Everyone - The author’s note was funnier than the actual story. That’s probably not a good thing. And no, I didn’t get the joke.

Quotes - I like that nearly every one of these quotes tells a story on its own, and that together they are able to tell a much larger story. But I’m disappointed that story doesn’t have any resolution. It never really leads anywhere.

Daring Do and the Curse of Ahuizotl - I don’t understand the significance of the dream, whether it’s hinting that there is a curse or that there isn’t. I guess it’s meant to be ambiguous, but I don’t have the faintest idea either way.

The Next Viral Ad - Is this a joke fic? It reads like straight horror, but that final line is so ridiculous, I honestly can’t tell. If it is supposed to be horror, death by cheese fritz isn’t scary at all. If it’s u/supposed to be a joke, I think you’re playing it way too straight.

One Day in the Crystal Library - I’m having a hard time buying into the conceit that Sombra and Cadence ever lived together in the Crystal Empire together. This fic also seems like it’s trying to be a comedy, but none of the jokes are really working for me, at least partially because I don’t think this context or these characters lend themselves well to humor.

Alawst King Do(ne) - Great concept, but I think it would have been a lot stronger if it had been framed differently. Daring telling us how her life went wrong is fine, but it would be much more satisfying if we were able to see it somehow and suss it out what her mistakes were ourselves.

Next Step - Was… was that a YOLO pun at the end?

...but whose? - That last line is awesomely cocky and irreverent, but the descriptions in the rest of the fic never worked for me. The Eater is too similar to too many other amorphous monsters I’ve seen in other stories, and I never got the sense of power or greatness from it that I think the story was going for.

Some Things You Just Shouldn’t Say - This has a lot of editing problems, and I’ve never heard anyone say anything about “I’ll be right back” being unlucky.

Fall - This is probably the best Sombra I’ve ever read. He’s calmly menacing and completely in control of the situation, the best kind of villain. But I’m having a very hard time believing the reveal. It comes out of the blue and has no lead up. I’ll assume it was just Sombra telling another manipulative lie.

Forging Harmony - I liked this one a lot, but then it just sort of… ended. The complete lack of resolution was disappointing.

There Once Lived a Princess - I think this is taking ambiguity too far. It’s a poignant scene, but I’m having a hard time figuring out why I should care. I don’t know enough about these characters or this setting to feel the full weight of the emotions.

The Dying Words of Starswirl the Bearded - Another fic did this exact joke, but paced it much better.

Final Resting Place - This was cute.

Once Upon a Time in Appleoosa - This nails the classic, rugged Western atmosphere, but then it also trips over all the regular Western cliches, and then never really does anything other than what’s expected of it.

3561966
Aside from the auto-N/A for one's own entries, readers sometimes can't or don't want to read everything, so they can mark what they haven't read. Of course, if they don't vote on half the stories, their vote isn't counted, so there's that.

3561966

In one write-off, my friend entered a story and I helped him edit it. I voted on the stories, but selected N/A for his, because I had a hand in composing it.

3561975
But how is that any different than simply not voting?

3560040

This is true but Arrow's Paradox means that any system like this will necessarily end up with such issues.

Nope. That applies only to rank-ordering. We get to assign numbers.

Moreover, it is hard to say whether or not that set of results is "wrong" or not

If person A is you, B is Honeycomb, and C is a clone of Honeycomb, then that set of results is likely wrong.

Which raises the question: Should my clones' votes count for less?

3559897

I have a lot of 5s and 6s (I've reviewed 36 out of 52 stories and have already written 9,000 words of review

That means if you write one more review, you'll be...

3562373

That means if you write one more review...
you'll be OVER 9000!

Booooooo!

3560050

As I noted, my personal goal was to give myself reasonable differentiation between the stories which deserved to win and which deserved at least some points versus the stuff which definitely did not, and as a result I ended up lumping 13 stories at 0 which I felt all didn't deserve to win at all for one reason or another.

3560262

If everyone makes full use of their voting range, then there isn't much of an issue. In Bad Horse's scenario, the outcome based on the votes is expected: A really thought a should win, and B and C were mostly okay with all the entries. If they thought a really shouldn't win, they should've given it a lower score.

Both of you seem to assume that the primary purpose of the voting is to pick a winner, not to give writers feedback.

3560262

I think the moderator should contact the voter in suspiciose circumstances ie. having all votes but one or two in the 0-1 and the remaining 10.

I already do this.

Has that ever happened?

3562373

If person A is you, B is Honeycomb, and C is a clone of Honeycomb, then that set of results is likely wrong.

Not sure how to take this...

3562373

Nope. That applies only to rank-ordering. We get to assign numbers.

Yeah, I realized after I posted that arrow's paradox doesn't apply here, and that I should have instead cited the Gibbard-Satterhwaite Theorem instead. Though of course, the fact that arrow's paradox does not necessarily apply doesn't necessarily mean that the system will always produce the "correct" outcome.

Which raises the question: Should my clones' votes count for less?

If you can easily create clones, yes.

OVER 9000!

I avoided making that joke.

I avoided it so hard.

How many of the stories did you end up reading, in the end?

3561966
You know, despite the brevity of your remarks, I almost feel like they're more useful than mine. I really need to work on being brief. I am told it is the soul of wit.

Plus it is hard to tell when someone actually likes your stuff if they say that they liked everything. You didn't like everything, so you listing some of my stories as things you liked felt good

And also meant that I got real feedback on the ones you didn't like. So, yay.

It is too bad there is no happy Fluttershy emote.

Makes me feel nervous about my fake reviews, though. No clue which one of those is yours. Or ones of those.

Hm, thinking about YOU as a writer, which one did you write?

Blast you, you're better at this than I am. I was probably too nice to mine. You probably called yourself a total hack, didn't you?

3562441

Both of you seem to assume that the primary purpose of the voting is to pick a winner, not to give writers feedback.

Isn't it? I thought voting was to choose the best story, and the reviews were for writer feedback.

3562441
Isn't more differentiation going to give more feedback? I'm not handing out grades for school assignments; if I was handing out grades for school assignments, how many of these would I have failed? How many would get Ds? Cs? What is the grading scale supposed to mean?

I figured that the reason we were voting was to choose the best stories and rating them relative to each other. IIRC on the history repeats contest, I gave out like a 10 to the 18th Brewmare, a 7 or an 8 on Ἐλπίς... maybe a 5 or a 6 to one other story, and then the others were down lower.

3562533

Hm, thinking about YOU as a writer, which one did you write?

Duh.

I wrote the best one.

Because ME is best writer.

I'm kind of miffed everyone's gone from talking about the stories to talking about how they vote. :/ Oh well.

3562325
It makes sure there's a filled-in radio button for the anally retentive? :B

3562655
We're writers. Either we're God's gift to literature, or the worst thing ever and everything we ever create is awful, gawd.

3562567 You're not maximizing differentiation. You're mushing everything that shouldn't win into the zero bin. If everyone did that, a whole lot of fics would get a score of zero.

3562539

Isn't it? I thought voting was to choose the best story, and the reviews were for writer feedback.

That's a valid opinion. I just want to point out that it's an assumption that hasn't been explicitly stated or agreed on.

3562513 So let your clone handle it.

3562931
Well, I probably put more stories at 0 than I should have. I should go back and fix that and try and spread out the bottom of my distribution a bit more so that it isn't so... clumped.

Well, seeing as how I've mostly missed the amazing party here, I'm just going to post all the reviews I have so far, since my pace has been so slow. I mostly haven't read the reviews of others, so my opinions here are pretty isolated.

Falling Apples
…Why did this have to end? It needs to keep going! This is the kind of story I just can’t seem to make myself write when it comes to these mini fic contests; it’s nice and simple, but it has a lot going on too. Very well written, also. I liked how you ended it, and in fact it felt so much unlike an actual ending that I can’t help thinking you were right about to write the next line when you realized you had hit the word limit. In any event, it’s the one question no man wants to answer, the fat question. Woe to he that must! Anyway, very nicely done, author. :D

The Last Words of Star Swirl the Bearded
Niiiiiice xD Haha, I could tell the story was building up to revealing his line being something silly or inane or ridiculous, though I doubt this comes as a surprise to the author. The fun was in wondering just what that ridiculousness would be, not in the “surprise” his last words weren’t life altering (in other words, you don’t lose points for being predictable, at least for me). The theories about how amazing ponies thought his parting words had been only lent to the excitement of getting to see just how much they weren’t. And I wasn’t disappointed! His last words illustrate his genius, and I like that. The fact that the story was almost entirely exposition actually worked in its favor here, I think, and was a wise choice. Nice job!

Love Thine Enemy
I liked the dialogue in this. About half way through I figured that Tundra was probably a changeling, but I think you still handled it nicely. It took me a couple of rereads to figure out what it was Cadance did to him after mentioning the doughnuts, since the wording was a bit vague. Anyway, I like stories that show how clever our heroes are, such as Cadance seeing through the changeling’s guise.

25 Famous Last Words
I really like the central concept here—that of Twilight getting knocked silly and Rainbow Dash taking her to get some help. I found it funny and enjoyable, and really would have liked to see more of her interacting with Celestia and Luna. As such, I demand you turn this into a full-fledged fic. Also, was that a comic reference from Pinkie? Me thinks so! And I only just realized from the title what it was that Twilight was saying: other people’s last words. Clever! Though I would agree with other people here that the humor doesn’t always work. But like I said, the concept it great, imo, and deserves a good proper treatment. ^^

You Had To Say It
I like the grouping of Twilight and Pinkie and Discord; I think it has a lot of potential to create some really funny scenarios. The story was well paced and didn’t feel rushed, and overall it was pretty enjoyable. Discord didn’t quite feel like Discord to me, but perhaps that’s simply me. Maybe I just can’t see him as being the butt of the jokes. I think he works better when he’s the one laughing and fooling others, though of course that doesn’t mean there can’t be exceptions.

The Worst It Could Possibly Be
I love this story for the ending alone. You gave all the craziness beforehand a perfectly logical reason for existing, as opposed to just being nutty for the fun of it, and that’s great. Plus I totally wasn’t expecting it. Well done!

Pinkie Pie Makes Brownies
This was another nutty fic that actually went in a direction I wasn’t quite expecting. The violence at the end—Twi’s bloody nose, Pinkie foaming at the mouth and then dying—was a bit hard to know whether to laugh at or not. Well, no, I know I was supposed to laugh, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to. The idea itself I certainly like—Pinkie accidentally drugging baked goods. I imagine you could write a story where that wreaks havoc all over Ponyville xD The ganguage is a bit repetitive throughout, especially in the beginning—“corner” and “Twilight” appear three times each in only two sentences. Each time you refer to Twilight or Pinkie you use their names, as opposed to sometimes saying “she” or simply letting the reader figure it out (which it can be very easy to figure out who’s talking or doing what when there’s only two characters present). That’s all easily fixable though.

Those Awful Rumors ‘Round Town
Hmm, I’m not entirely sure how to pin this story down. I like the dialogue, and Diamond Tiara and Silverspoon are as annoying as ever, and I like the little emotional punch at the end…but I’m also a little confused by it. Partially, I think, because I don’t really understand what’s happening at the end. Is it some kind of fantasy? Are they changelings? Is it supposed to be a joke? I actually thought the fic was supposed to be a sort of riff on all the “where are scootaloo’s parents” clichés, though I wasn’t sure whether it was treating it in a serious way or a lighthearted, joking one. i.e. things feel serious at the start, with regular-type teasing and Applebloom defending a friend, but then the accusations get kinda zany—making me think it was parodying the clichés—but then even Applebloom gives in and, in a scene jump I interpreted as meaning to be funny, they all hound down Scoots and beg her to answer their questions…after which point things get serious again. So I guess I’m trying to say that, at least for me, the tone kinda jumped around and kept me unsure of how I was supposed to feel about the story—was I supposed to laugh or cry, or maybe both? I don’t know. But it certainly wasn’t poorly written, so don’t worry about that. Without the word limit, I’m sure things would have come across much clearer.