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I use a linear distribution because I otherwise suck at scoring things

To give a concrete example, I actually use a two stage scoring process; my first score is a more traditional one, from 0 to 10, where I try to evenly consider objective quality and my own enjoyment, and for the final score I order the stories according to their first score and put them on a linear scale.

For this event, my first scores consisted of two 6s, two 10s, and 18 scores spread between 7 and 9. This would not be of much use for determining the final placement of the stories, and without forcing myself into an artificial spread I wouldn't be able to increase the range.

Besides, those scores are merely tools; I see little value in increasing them just to massage egos. I would look at them in a different light if specific scores were tied to specific results — say, if stories below a given score were given negative points, though that would likely just make me ignore scores below the cutoff point when assigning my own — but in the Writeoff, as Einstein would say, everything is relative

I've been trying to spread my scores out into a bell-curve more often than not. This time, for instance, my initial crop of scores after reading everything had lots of 4s and 7s; I rearranged everything so I had more 5s and 6s instead.

I didn't put in a 0 this time around, though. :O Just to increase the positivity, while I characterized this round as "weird" and Pascoite brings up the low scoring winners, I'd be hard pressed to say any of the stories this time around were bad. Someone else (TD?) mentioned this. Sure, there were still some with rushed endings (very few, honestly), and quite a lot that needed more proofreading than they'd gotten, but conceptually, almost everything worked. There wasn't anything that I found painful to read, nothing that failed on both conceptual and executional fronts. And that's not something I can really say about a lot of writeoffs.

So it's hard to give a 0, which I usually save for "you shouldn't have written this" stories, to a group of entries like this one.

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This is an imperfect comparison, because hey, games journalism is weak, but - you almost never sees 1s and 2s in game reviews, or a score less than 30 on Metacritic, because such games are so rare as to be a once a year sort of affair. So while the vast majority of things score in the 60s-80s range, that doesn't stop it from being a useful medium - and means those 1s and 2s serve as resounding condemnation of things.

Again, it comes down to 'Is this about focusing on a winner, or is this about focusing on story quality' - both of you are basically arguing in favor of the former here, and I am advocating the latter. I'm not really concerned that my vote has less impact in selecting the winner; if I really cared, I'd take my top 3, give them a 10/9/8, and rate everything else a 0, because that would maximize my vote in terms of impacting who wins.

If one's scores are lower across the board because one's a harder critic, fine, that I get. But artificially lowering/boosting scores to game the voting system only tells me there's something fundamentally flawed about how voting is used to determine a winner, and that leaves a somewhat sour taste in my mouth.

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I suppose I'm pretty much repeating what I said above, but - so what if it's of less use? That's why we have a larger pool of people judging, so that even if one person can't really decide particularly well between entries, the overall pool will do so. Yea, there'll be ties here and there, but the only time that matters is prize support and I don't think that's a good reason to alter scoring.

Because as-is, if you give a story a 2, for example, I don't know whether or not it's 'I liked it, 18 entries were better' or 'This is garbage', and so forth.

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Huh, I actually see the voting here as being mainly aimed at finding how the stories are ranked. Thus, it's not an effort to game the system, but rather to make it work more effectively; a vote using the full numeric range is worth two votes that only use half of it, so if everyone went for a smaller range, the system would need more people voting to maintain the same result quality.

Besides, you don't see my votes individually, only an aggregate that mixes the scores given by many people, often with wildly different tastes and voting criteria. Unless there was an effort to standardize the voting criteria, the average score would be mostly useless for what you want anyway.

And, in any case, not everyone can give a fine-grained score that is consistent between events. I for one can't, which is why I'm unlikely to abandon the linear distribution I use as a scoring crutch.

Sincerely, stop worrying about the exact score. Look instead at the reviews of your story (or stories) and where you placed (and how good are the stories that placed close to your own, and the controversial score if you were among the five most controversial and know what the standard deviation means). For this specific event what those things told me is that no single story stood above the others, and even the stories with the lowest scores were seen as worthwhile, if not outright good, by at least part of the readers; an event where stories ranged from average to great, and one I'm proud to have taken part in, even if I got a spoon out of it.

(And, if that fails, add 10 to the score and divide by 2; if how I normalized the scores this time is close to the norm, that will give a value close to what your score should have been.)

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For me, I put the worst at 0 and the best at 10. If there are a lot of really good ones close together, and a lot of really bad ones close together, I'd rate them that way, but there has been a continuum for the stories so I have not let any numbers go unused. I do adjust things if I'm wrong about where the limits are - none of the stories this time were as good as Brewmare, for instance, but that didn't stop me from giving out a 10. I also lop off the bottom of the scale for reasons noted below.

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The problem is that, as many, many folks have noted, this is actually an objectively bad way of doing things for consumer reviews. The reason is that you're removing almost all information, and you make things muddled and unclear. If under 60 is "really bad", then really, realistically speaking, you're not getting any additional information out of all those scores - if you changed your scale to 5-10 (or 0-5, more logically), you'd have 0s being "this is absolute garbage" and 5s being "great". The difference between a game being a 50 and a 20 is irrelevant, because both are "there is no reason to buy these games", and pretending like that part of the scale exists is problematic. That 2/100 doesn't really say anything other than "I hate you for making me play this game". Your goal, generally speaking, should be to highlight the differences which matter the most to the people involved - if the worst story was a 5 and the best was a 10, I'm giving everyone less information than if I doubled my scale (from 0 to 10) and used the full range, as then the bottom scores are more different from the top ones.

If I'm trying to make a decision as a consumer, that 60-90 range is what is really most relevant to me, as it is the difference between a mediocre game and a great one. As such, by compressing them, it makes it less clear what the numbers mean, and you end up with games which get a MC score of 80 which are only okay, and the difference between 70 and 80 is smaller than the difference between 80 and 90 in most cases, with 90+ being very hard to achieve.

Using the whole rating scale is important and logical when you're dealing with stuff like that. That is why, incidentally, we give out letter grades, and Fs generally make up half of the scale or more - if you get less than 60% right, you fail, but there's no practical difference between a 55 and a 5, because in both cases you aren't qualified to pass the course.

Even if someone did submit a kick in the nuts bad story, there's no reason to reserve half the rating scale for them, and it doesn't really help or add information, and can come off as a bit mean.

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Yeah, I don't let the really good past entries stop me from giving out tens (sometimes more than one), I just feel like a zero is a major "you have failed". It probably doesn't matter, though, I don't ever release my scores. :B

3654242

Sure, I can buy 'bad for consumer reviews', but the scoring in my eyes isn't about consumer review, but author review - where in that regard, the difference between a 5 and a 50 is huge because even though both are failing, it gives you more info for degree of failure.

I mean, I suppose what I'm really after here is a standardized voting measure for the contests as a whole, rather than people using 10 different systems with 10 different forms of intent - if the system is to be used purely as a measure of 'Do a linear distribution' or 'Do a bell curve' or whatever, I'm fine with that, but ideally the voting guidelines should be updated to reflect that, because right now I see '0-10' and my mind goes 'Quality scale independent of the other entries'.

I don't mind adapting, because I do think it would be a good thing for everybody to be working from the same goalset voting-wise. But as is, I think the system is set up for 'Quality scale independent of other entries', otherwise there wouldn't be a Hugbox Score to begin with.

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I don't think telling someone that they suck at writing to the point where you give them a five out of 100 is very useful feedback, honestly, and really, as far as rating goes, it doesn't really matter if you're a 5 or a 50 - the story still isn't worth reading. The fact that none of these stories are Love on the Acers of Sweet Aplles means that there is little need for such in the grading scale.

Plus, as others have noted, all of our votes are private anyway.

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It's entirely useful. It's the difference between 'Look, you need to gain a grasp of core spelling/grammar first, then you can develop your narratives' versus 'Alright, you have a grand vision, but it's bogged down in classic Mary Sue Mistakes' versus 'Right, you are experimenting with something you just can't execute yet'. They may all not be worth reading, but if things are done with an eye for improvement, then yes, such metrics remain useful.

And yes. I am aware the votes are private, but that's not really the point - it's that having a standardized voting metric would be useful so that people are on the same page -for- voting and as a result we avoid things like 'Hey, story rating means this' 'No, it means this' and so forth.

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Thing is, you already can (and do) communicate that textually. You don't really need a score for that.

And I dunno, folks have resisted having it mean a single thing, as that's more to keep track of and consider.

Okay, the final three reviews, for the stories I sadly didn't get to in time to score.

Stallion Whose Name I Forgot - Another amazing story. Wow, I am so very sorry that I didn't get to this one in time to score it. THe prose is elegant, and the overall themes just perfectly capture that surreal nature—that feeling of chasing the muse. Though it was a bit heavy-handed with the metaphors and their explanations (we get it, you can't catch fire without catching fire) I really enjoyed it throughout and felt it did a great job of embodying the theme of the contest. 9/10

Tumbling Down the Slippery Slope - This one was a mixed bag for me. The political nature of the main plot is hard to reconcile with the relatively silly tone. You're touching on racism, classism, and a whole lot of very sensitive topics here, and at many points it was only a single phrase away from reading alternately like an Occupy Wallstreet manifesto, a justification for manifest destiny, or even an argument in favor of the white man's burden. Parapharsing MLK, especially felt like it was in really poor taste. That said, I really DID enjoy the moral to the story. The overall message that being jealous of your friend's talents or abilities isn't good fits right in with the show, as does the comical pun-ish "Humbugs" and the quip about "Dirty Laundry" being aired. Beyond that, I felt the bug-based "infection" was obvious from the get-go, so that a lot of the story felt like it dragged somewhat. Tightened up though, and with a little less politics, this could be a really good one. 7/10

Mark of Destiny - That was... odd on many levels. I was hooked immdiately, and the weirdly dystopian view of even magic and destiny being corrupted by corporations and politics was definitely unique. The whole thing felt oddly coherent, despite the weirdness though. Well, the second-person epilogue at the end is an exception. So many stories in this contest had an out-of-place epilogue for some reason. I find myself wondering if yours was planned, or merely an actual "Oh no, I'm at the word limit!" punt. Either way, very good story, and a really unique take on HiE.

3655030
>implying Love on the Acers of Sweet Aplles isn't worth reading

3652523
"But please" is another sentence fragment. It goes with the cadence of how it's spoken, but I guess we already know your views on that.

Sentence fragments are not a problem in dialogue or limited narration, except if they are used so rarely that they don't fit the character of what else is there.

I said grammar issues, doesn't not using grammar fit into that category?

Not if the author uses good grammar elsewhere to the point that it's obviously a choice and not an oversight. You'd really have a couple of street thugs speak with perfect grammar? It has to fit the situation, and certain narrative styles should adopt a conversational tone. You have a pretty indefensible position here.

"Oh, well."
Both words can be used separately as invective. You presume that I didn't mean them individually with a pause between them.

3652653
How far back? The voting has surprised me at least a little in the last four rounds.

Things like grammatical correctness, being well-written, or having literary merit (whatever that means) should factor into your enjoyment.

Depends on the voter. Not all people hold mechanical problems against a story, particularly in a time-limited event. Not all people would even notice mechanical problems. Some voters can overlook a lot because they thought a story ended on a hilarious joke or skewer a wonderful concept for spelling errors. It's nice to say that all these things should affect a reader's enjoyment, but the fact is that there's no way to know or enforce this.

3655030
Ha! I went up on stage and read part of that story for the Hoof of Argon panel at BronyCon this year. 'Twas fun.

3657354
Well, as I noted elsewhere, what defines a major grammatical error is whether or not it bothers the reader.

3657712
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Sorry, grammar's a pretty well-defined thing. It's up to a voter how much he cares or if he even knows it's an error, but that doesn't keep it from being an error. It's either wrong or it isn't. There's no hierarchy to degree

3658576
That wasn't what I was getting at.

Stories contain errors. Even published novels have errors in them - missing letters, a missed or duplicated word, ect. It happens.

The issue is whether or not the errors end up pulling the reader out of the story.

It is wrong no matter what, but the line for when spelling and grammar really mess things up is when they end up being sufficiently large that they pull the reader out of the story and break flow and immersion.

This line is at a different place for different people, and different errors tug on different readers to differing degrees, but the point is that spelling and grammar errors only become really important (as opposed to just something you need to get right) when they negatively impact a reader's ability to enjoy the piece.

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Hello! Sorry to bother all of you, but I'm working on revising Dawn for publication here on FIMFiction and I'd like to talk about some stuff. If any of you guys are interested in giving me any feedback on my thoughts here, I'd appreciate it. And if any of you would actually be interested in helping me edit it once I've revised it, I'd appreciate the help.

Quick reminder, in case you've forgotten after a week or two as to which story this was: Dawn was the story about Luna and Celestia having a conversation before dawn, when Luna was naught but a filly and Celestia only a young mare. They discuss the disrespect of the Circle of Magi for Celestia, talk about cutie marks and destiny, and at the end Celestia raised the Sun.

So, without further ado:

1) Mayhaps and other archaic dialogue. Some folks really liked this, and I am definitely going to keep the "thouing" bit in there, but I sprinkled in some other archaic, early modern english stuff in there (such as mayhaps) and... almost everyone who commented on it noted that it felt bad. Should I just remove most of the archaic stuff? Should I go further with it, and put in a bit more to make it more consistent?

2) The t-v distinction discussion - that is to say, the discussion where Luna is upset because the Circle keeps referring to Celestia as "thou" rather than the more respectful "you", whereas Celestia, being more polite, addresses everyone, even her little sister, as "you". I liked the idea behind this, but some folks felt like it dragged, while others felt it was confusing, and still others felt it was educational.

I'm going to keep it because I like it (and I like being educational), but I would like to improve it to make it more universally liked. To those of you who felt it was confusing, what do you think would be the best way to help the reader to understand that "thou" is less respectful than "you" is? How did you feel that it was lacking in the story as-is? Was it not clear enough from the context? Did it feel too sudden? What do you think would be the best way of incorporating a better explanation?

To those of you who didn't like that bit - how do you think it could be improved? Make it less confusing? Do you feel it was unsalvagable? Too long?

3) The meandering plot. This was something a number of folks brought up, including myself, and I agree - it doesn't really feel coherent enough as-is. My present thought on this is to change the story thusly:

We start off with Celestia touching the Sun and the Moon with her magic, before Luna interrupts her. My thought here is that Celestia, in this version of the story, is contemplating whether or not to try to lower the Moon and raise the Sun on her own, but is hestitant; when she touched the heavens with her magic, she felt their pull, and at the same time, she doesn't want to be a petulant child to the Circle and simply do it out of spite. She also doesn't want to prove them right about cutie marks, because she sees them as something which ponies let themselves be defined by, when in fact they're the ones doing the defining, and fears that if she did do this, and got her mark for it, it would undermine all that she has tried to tell Luna about these things.

But at the same time, Celestia is tempted to do so because she feels like she can do it, and that it would earn her at least some respect, and getting her mark would solve a lot of her problems. So when she talks stuff through with Luna, she's taking a somewhat different standpoint on things, and is not only teaching Luna, but also trying to listen and make sure that she isn't just behaving like a foal.

In the end, Luna wants to go join the Circle to watch and learn, and Celestia realizes that the Circle would never let a filly watch so closely, much less explain what they were doing, because they are jealous of their power and have little respect for those far below them. And so Celestia raises the Sun on her own, not to spite the council or to prove herself, but because she wanted to share it with her little sister.

This would involve a pretty heavy amount of rewriting - indeed, it would nearly be a different story - but I think it would make for a better story, with more actual conflict and real structure. What do you guys think?

4) Were there other issues that you felt needed to be addressed which I didn't discuss above, but bore major discussion?

I'd really appreciate some feedback before I start rewriting the story. Am I going too far? Do you think that this would improve the story?

Thanks!

3666758 I can't promise just how much free time I can put into something, but... a short story shouldn't be too much of a commitment, so I'd be happy to help you edit if you'd like. Send me a PM when you get going on it.

As for the topics you brought up... Well, first let me start by saying that Dawn was in my top favorites for the contest so I had very little to critique about it. That said, by the numbers:

1) Archaic is good... I love the old words, and the big ones. But yes, it could be slightly more consistent. There are a few phrases (I can't remember specifically now) from Luna that stood out as particularly too modern.

2) I thought the pronoun argument was a key point to the story, and yeah, it's educational too. Like the above though, the other language needs to be evened out around it to not be anachronistic.

3) I'd really need to do another read through to watch for this (and it's too late here to start that now.) I had no problems with it on my first way through though. While it wasn't a razor straight plot, to me, that was the point. If it meandered, it did so because it was a casual stroll, illuminating the sisters from multiple angles, not just cutting straight to some perfect point to be made. Not that your rewrite idea is bad either, but I'm not sure it's neccessary in what is, to me at least, primarily a character piece.

4) Again, might find something on another read through with more editorially focused thoughts, but nothing stood out on my first read.

3666758
I didn't comment much on my review but here is some follow up comments on the points you're asking (with a second read through):

1) The problem with "Mayhaps" is that it is a word the average reader doesn't encounter frequently (maybe during their high school/secondary school reading of Shakespeare) and it jumps out prominently and it's distracting when it's used in short succession in several instances.

At least that is how it was with me.

2) Was okay actually since it was:
1. short, educational, engaging and gave a good view on the attitude of the ponies of the period (and world-building)
2. a lead-in into the meat of the story

3) The plot didn't feel meandering to me but more of a filly trying to get her big sister to agree with her (that the Circle is a bunch of uppity jerks) and the big sister deflecting those questions. It gives the impression of meandering due to all the jumps in the topics but it's all part of a natural progression due to Celestia's deflection and her education of Luna on finer points of etiquette and respect.

I think my biggest gripe isn't really the plot but that I didn't get much visuals of the scene itself, which contributed to my "talking heads syndrome" line in my first impressions review previously. Yes, it's supposed to be about two sisters discussing about various issues/topics but there are literally no descriptions on the surroundings and thus no atmosphere. Maybe it's not important but I feel even a little description about the surroundings can help give weight to Luna and Celestia's words.

4) I don't have any other ideas right now, I'll need a few more reading to get a better idea.

3666758
I think the problem with "mayhaps" was A) you used it too many times, and B) you could have just used "perhaps" with no problem. Remember that archaic speech, even if rendered properly, sounds clunky to a modern reader regardless of how appropriate to the setting it is.

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Some real grammatical problems on this one. It jumps tenses, loses subject-verb agreement, etc.

May I have a few examples of them, if you still remember? =x I'm starting a rewrite now so I could use the examples to see if I caught them in my current proofreading.

3669160 Sure thing! Though I'm a bit pressed for time, so apologies for the bluntness of the following.

Second sentence in: "Fast driven snow stung like ant bites on their carapace." "Their" is plural, but "carapace" is singular.

Later that paragraph: "...the wind froze their glittery gold, blue and red colored wings and grass colored feelers at an angle." A bit of a run on there with too many "and"s... should probably use some seicolons and hyphenated words. It also uses the singular "an angle" when it should more likely be "at uncomfortable angles" or some other descriptive plural.

Third paragraph: "She and her husband Star Dust have come too far." That's present tense, while we're generally in past tense. Should be "had come too far."

Fifth paragraph: "The echoes had grown fainter and fainter until it stopped altogether a few hours ago." "Echoes" is plural, "it" is singular. Should be "until THEY stopped altogether."

Continuing with the sentence right after that, "Or what she thought was a few hours ago, since the perpetually overcast skies revealed no sign of whether it was day or night." Who is "she"? The only subject given thus far in the paragraph is "The echoes."

And right after that... "She would have given everything she got just to punch a hole in those thick black clouds but she right now could barely stand and walk, let alone fly." Wrong words and missing commas here. Should be "...everything she HAD to punch a hole in those thick, black clouds, but right now she could... " and there needs to be a comma before "but," as well as

Two paragraphs later: "She felt her Warming Crystal glowed in overdrive and the blossoming heat drove away the cold that encroached while she stood." Should probably being "glow" or "glowing" and if the latter, than "drove" becomes "driving."

Next paragraph: "His ghostly white mane and his golden wings were the only thing visible." Those are at least two "things", if not three (wings come in pairs.)

I'll stop there for now, as that's basically the end of the first half page. Aside from the pure errors like the above though, there's also some more subtle "incorrectness" as well.

A lot a pargraphs use pronouns without a noun/subject being used first. A lot of commas are missing when multiple adjectives are used. There's also a few sentences that are only fragments ex: "Not even the Windigo." And several that start on conjunctions. "But Glitter Song didn’t want to give up." These are all more minor issues though, and the type of rules it's okay to break from time to time, as long as you're doing it intentionally.

Overall, the grammar improves a lot as the story goes. It's the beginning that's roughest, so that definitely shows improvement (at least in focus) as you wrote.

Anyway, gotta go. Hopefully that's enough to get you started though. Feel free to PM me if you have questions or want more clarification.

3672974
Yeah, that's definitely enough for me to start looking at the rest. Looks like I'm missing a lot of the mistakes even after another few read through.

Thanks very much for taking the time and for the examples. =)

A thank you note to the group. This past Thursday, I was looking at an empty weekend ahead, and then I remembered that the Writeoff site has all these prompts from earlier contests just sitting there. I wrote a story for this one, and I even found the perfect piece of art to go with it on Deviantart. So I can submit the story to the Equestria Daily Friendoff at the end of the week once I get it cleaned up!

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Thank you guys for all the feedback you gave on Dawn; I ended up editing it fairly significantly. The ending of the story has been changed significantly (spoiler alert: she still raises the Sun) and I think it is a better story for the changes and all the feedback about what people found off or confusing. Though ironically the speech became both more and less archaic at the same time, as I got rid of a few early modern englishisms for the sake of readability, while simultaneously increasing thou density (but hopefully, explaining it better for those of you who found the t-v thing confusing).

The story has been posted - because, clearly, there is no better time for this story to go up than the middle of the night.

Dawn

Celestia raises the Sun for the first time.