Pascoite brought this up in regards to my story Ruin Value, which was an entry to the More Most Dangerous Game competition, as well as in the last write-off. The story was inspired by the Fallout: Equestria prompt, "In an Equestria devastated by an apocalyptic war, the few that remain try their best to survive or rebuild--however they can," in addition to the "all in" prompt with the idea of MAD with Discord's magic creating firestorms across the world (powdered milk is highly flammable, and what else would a cloud that rained chocolate milk be made from?).

Pascoite raised the question of whether or not this was potentially problematic; after all, many folks here might be participating in the More Most Dangerous Game competition, and might not want to help their competitors! I never even thought about this while writing the story; I've helped people edit stories for competitions I've been involved in without thinking about it, and folks have beaten me with stories I helped edit, and I didn't care. But I can see how this could give some folks pause, so I was wondering: what do all of you think? Do you think it is dishonest to do so? Is it wrong? Does anyone care?

4012877
Personally, it doesn't affect me.

Generally, I see where it could rub people the wrong way.

I've wondered the same thing lately in regard to posting a writeoff story in the FriendOff EqD thing, since a lot of what I write is inspired by art. For previous entries, it wouldn't be so bad since it's not really a competition. For the new event this week, it would conflict with the voting going on over the submission deadline of Feb 6th.

It's a tricky topic, and one that I would hope people view in the best light of intention possible. I won't take offence to someone continuing their work here and submitting it to another contest. When actual prizes come into play, it does sort of change the discussion.

I don't quite understand the question. If it's a question of rules, consulting the rules is more appropriate than consulting the forum. The relevant rules in this case are:

1. Submitted works may not be submitted elsewhere until the event's conclusion.
3(a) Participants may start writing only after the prompt is released.
3(b) Participants must remain publicly disassociated from their submitted works (i.e., anonymous) within all reasonable means until the event's conclusion.

Entries breaking these (or any other) rule will most likely disqualified.

I don't think Pascoite meant you did something wrong. I'm guessing he meant you were taking a risk of not getting as much feedback.

I see no problems with creating a Writeoff story that just so happens to be eligible for something else, so long as you followed the Writeoff rules (as Roger already said). There's no exclusivity baked into the Writeoff. If you can fit the entire creative/writing/editing process into the tight Writeoff time window and still churn out a decent enough story to resubmit elsewhere, you're a wizard anyway.

The grey area I see is whether it followed the MMDGC rules, which say (as most competitions do) that the story has to be newly written for MMDGC. A single story that is "newly written" for multiple contests at once seems unfair — you get two shots at stardom for the price of one — but if you sat down to write the story also directly intending to submit it to MMDGC, I think the same logic applies as above: it just so happens to be eligible for something else, so it's not explicitly breaking the rule. If you retroactively repurposed the Writeoff story into an MMDGC one, that reads to me as breaking the MMDGC rule.

That's the legal side. As to the ethical side Pascoite brought up, 4012892 basically speaks for me.

4013434

Thornwing basically speaks for me.

I fully intend to abuse this power in every conceivable way possible.

4012877 When I wrote Little Apple for the EQD summer contest, I also double dipped in in a fanfic contest at a local con, which I ended up winning.

Of course that contest only had six entrants total, so I wasn't particularly worried about stepping on anyone's toes.

4013031
4013434
I was more wondering if people were uncomfortable with it, not whether or not it was against the rules of either contest, and it wasn't so much about my story in particular as the question in more general terms.

Obviously if a story violates the rules of any contest or competition it is entered into, that would be a no go.

4013083
Yeah, I didn't intend to say that he thought I was doing something wrong. It was just an interesting question I thought I'd bring up and discuss more generally in case it did bother folks, especially given I accidentally purged all the comments on the story when I queued it for publication today. This seemed like a better venue than the comments section of Ruin Value anyway.

It's one of those cases where you're entirely within the bounds of the rules, but against the spirit of at least MMDGC's competition, as I see it. I think it was a bad move and you should consider withdrawing, but that's just me. :/ Really it's up to the judges either way.

4013901 Do you say that because it goes against the spirit of the "newly written for MMDGC" rule? Personally that seems a more pressing concern than the "aiding the enemy" idea that TD alludes to in the OP, though I may think that because I've never actually had a dog in any of these fights. On the latter point, I think TD and Pascoite's concern is justified, but there's no need to assume it's substantial unless someone actually comes forward to say "yes, I would feel cheated if TD used my own edits to beat me in MMDGC"; the ideal would be a full disclosure "this fic may go into another contest" announcement of some kind upfront, but I can't see a way to do that and preserve anonymity.

As for the MMDGC concern: like I said, I think it's more problematic, but it's also more of a question for their judges and not this community. TD, I do think you should at least notify them of the situation to keep everything on the level. Of course, you're going to run into problems like this any time you mix motives (or contests); there may be a philosophical divide here between people who see contests as basically a prompt/schedule/workshop/promotion thing (TD, presumably) and those who view them as straight up competition.

Mostly, though, I'm just shocked that the MMDGC prompt was announced long enough ago for you to write in parallel with the last writeoff. Seems like everyone waited til the eleventh hour to submit for MMDGC, huh?

People seem to have already made some good points so I'll just give my opinion; I personally don't mind, and I would review your story in a writeoff even if I knew you were submitting it to another contest in which I was also competing. Just kinda seems like the sportsman-like thing to do. Besides, if I'm going to claim to be a reviewer, even temporarily, then I ought to also assume the goal of that position which is to help make better writers and not serve my own ends, such as not lending aid in order to make it easier to compete against you later on, or lending false aid in order to sabotage.

Are you being dishonest? Probably a little, technically, but I've always sought to use the built-in aid offered by the writeoffs to serve my own writerly goals, so I'm no different. Besides, it's really not that much different than using the critique in order to better score the feature box or more watchers. Anyone who gives aid to a story, especially an already very good one, knows I think that they are only increasing another author's chance at getting recognition ahead of them. If you're reviewing and knew or have come to realize you wrote a poor entry, when it comes time to review a good entry you know you're helping someone beat you in a much larger game we all presumably care about. If you were very uncomfortable with that then you probably wouldn't review at all, or would already be trying to sabotage fics you thought were good.

And what is the feature box and watcher count but just another fanfiction contest, like MMDGC?

We're always competing, really, just in a game that has no deadline.

4014938
It's more the "use an unwritten story" idea. I mean, if you've got a story you wrote two years ago and haven't published, I could see using that (just don't be too loud about it), but he already released a version of the story (I can't deny that it's been hugely modified), and, as you note, he's already gotten feedback.

Again, it's not for us to decide and honestly I wonder why TD even brought it up here. <.<

4015426
I think he brought it up just to get people to weigh in on the "aiding the enemy" thing. Obviously the story has to fit the rules of whatever contests you're submitting it to, and equally obviously that's up to the judges of those contests, but as a potential participant in those contests, would it bug you if you gave feedback on a story as part of Writeoff and it beat your story?

My answer is no, but then I don't give very useful feedback and (totally unrelated) I see all of writing as kind of a soft competition anyway-- anyone's story might be competing with mine for views, feature box, etc., and I'm fine if something I said was helpful in making the story better in those situations, so the story being in an actual contest against mine doesn't bug me.

4015426
4014938
4015847
Yes, it was about the "aiding the enemy" thing, not about whether or not it was against the rules of either competition.

4014938
Yeah, they definitely waited until the last minute to do it. As always, really; most competition entries come in at the very end due to the power of procrastination.

4016918
As I said, not rules, but spirit.

You were clever enough to kill two birds with one stone; good on you.
Also, 4013901 is against it; therefore, I am for it.

4017402
Those birds had it coming.

4017757
I thought you were cool, man. ;_;

I don't actually know if birds can cry. And even if so, it'd be more accurate W.R.T. beaks to type ;v;