Recent events have brought to light a number of problems with the current rules regarding anonymity. It is with these cases in mind that I would like to consider a discussion on how these cases should be handled. Here are the following problems that I have identified. Feel free to suggest any I have missed.

Problem (a) I was asked this via PM:

I have a story idea that I may or may not eventually write for the WO depending on various aspects. Thing is, it will be painfully apparent to exactly one participant that it's by me, due to them knowing the subject matter. Would this be a violation of anonymity, even if I do not explicitly say it's by me?

It was previous ruled that you may reveal your authorship privately, on the condition that those who you reveal this to do not vote on your entry. With prelim rounds, this does not work, since you cannot opt-out of voting on a single story. Solution? Do not compromise your authorship to anyone.

Problem (b) Stories written by the same author that are linked will compromise anonymity after the prelim round reveals some and not the others. This also acts as a work-around to the word count limit. Solution Submitted stories may not be connected. This asks for clarification on "connected", e.g., "Are two stories written in an author's distinct style connected, and therefore subject to this rule?" My current lazy answer is "you know it when you see it".

Problem (c) Stories written by an author under a pseudonym who compromises the pseudonym's authorship. This asks for clarification on what exactly the identity is that you're anonymising. Solution Disqualify author's entries.

More generally, I ask what exactly is the definition of remaining anonymous? The goal of the rule is to allow discussion of a story to be undisturbed by the author's word and image. A primary goal of the write-off is for all entries to stand on their own merits and those alone. What should the approach be regarding borderline anonymity breaches?

I am noticing people increasingly push the boundary of what is considered maintaining anonymity, and my instinct is to start cracking down on the borderline cases.

Is it an anonymity breach if I write a Winx crossover? Is it an anonymity breach if I write a story idea I've discussed previously? Is it an anonymity breach if Cold in Gardez writes a good story? Is it an anonymity breach if Present Perfect writes a Hot Shot a Hugh Jelly Jam story?

The solution I would like is for people to actively maintain plausible deniability. Many people are subtly confessing too quickly.

I'm going to tie this all back with the Author Guessing function, in particular the active discussion of authorship that takes place in the review thread. While I consider the review thread to be a critical part of the Writeoff, I dislike the fact that people are also discussing authorship as part of it.

Here's the context I'm approaching this with, from the last Writeoff:

The Destruction of the Self Suspected authors:

Cold in Gardez (11), Bad Horse (2), sharpspark

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With respect, that part isn't so much compromised anonymity as simply...you do have a distinctive style that long-term competitors are picking up on. I don't know if author guessing is leading more people to do it, but it's like Schedules and Starbats - where there were 14 votes bookplayer & 1 for one other person. I don't think that can really be solved short of...having a less recognizable style.

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I'd say allowing one to N/A prelim stories would solve that first problem; that also fits if you run into one you go 'I really dont know HOW I consider this' even if it's a rarer one.

Really though I would say the only breaches are ones that flat out reveal who wrote it; yes, PP or CiG or bookplayer or Bad Horse have distinct styles, but well - look at this past one. Tons of people thought certain entries were Bad Horse entries, and he dramatically deviated and did different stuff, so style alone isn't enough.

Be me

Only have 1 story on my bio

not a very good author

No one could ever guess my entries

its easy being me

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Ponies guess you more than they guess other ponies. You submit a lot of stories and you write horse words good, so if the story is good and engrossing and has interesting ideas, CiG is the appropriate fallback guess.

I was one of the Bad Horse guessers, because that struck me as a Bad Horse story. Still does.

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The quoted PM for case (a) doesn't seem to have anything to do with your response to it. Are you saying that pony should not write that story just because one other author would be likely to guess who wrote it?

a) I've written stories I knew Present Perfect would immediately identify as mine. I don't have a problem with that, since I trust him to vote objectively. He's not afraid of telling me when I wrote something that sucked. As long as you think it's someone who can be objective, it shouldn't be an issue, and to some degree, this can't be helped. This is specifically for instances where someone will recognize your style or know you'd want to write about something. If it's because the story works as part of a series you know that person has read, that'd be a different issue.

b) This is a toughie. If someone enters three stories with the same shipping pair, that's suggestive but not conclusive. If someone picks titles that form a clear series or, worse yet, writes individual stories intended to be assembled into a longer one, that's a problem. The blatant ones we got this time probably cross the line, but there's a huge gray area. A couple years ago, you could have picked me out just by stories about Derpy, or Doseux for artsy ones. They can be obvious as well, but there's a whole lot more plausible deniability there, plus it'd start getting toward stifling creativity than punishing offenders.

c) I'm not sure how bad this would be, since it'd make the story appear to be written by an unknown and thus come with no baggage, which would usually hurt a story's chances, if anything. Sounds like they'd cause their own punishment without your having to step in.

But yes, people are drifting too far toward skirting that line. It's common in the Skype chat for people to mention clues to their word counts, for instance.

And as Gardez implies, but perhaps didn't explicitly say, the many people who discuss authorship rather than just filling out the form and remaining silent on the subject, do tend to compromise anonymity. In group discussions, it's more likely that one member can reliably pick out someone's writing style, and unless someone wants to be deceptive, the mere facts of who says what about possible authors helps to narrow things down.

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You and me both, buddy.

I agree with 4426632

you do have a distinctive style that long-term competitors are picking up on.

I think that the more followers an author has, the more the readers would recognize their work only because they read that author's stories more than other authors. More people do know CiG's style. I've only been here for a couple of months and I was tempted to guess him as The Destruction of Self. On the other hand, though I do know bookplayer is a TwiJack fan, I never would have connected Schedules and Starbats to her if someone on the forum didn't explicitly call her out (it was so obvious though).

If anonymity is a problem, I agree that the discussion of authorship shouldn't be in the review section.

I know I've been out of commission the last couple rounds, but I figure somebody ought to speak up on the other side for author guessing in discussion.

To me, the author guessing is one of the most fun parts of the Writeoff. This is true for a few reasons, but they mostly stem from a difference in approach I have from some of the other people here, I think.

To me, writing is a form of play. That's not to say I don't take it seriously, but it is to say that I don't really understand people who write for any reason other than having a Pinkie-like joy in the written word. Outside the Writeoff, I do my best to try to explore new styles and genres when I write, instead of going back to the same well for story after story. So to me, looking for patterns in other writers' works is a fun activity. Can I spot an author based on repeated use of themes or styles? Better yet, is anybody trying to ape another writer? That's one of the cool things about anonymity, and something I'm always surprised I don't see more of in the stories here. I know what a Present Perfect trollfic looks like, and I always expect that the Writeoff is going to include a couple imitators, trying to pass themselves off as PP. I know I certainly find myself wanting to do that. There are certain motifs and styles I associate with bookplayer, too, and it'd be fun to kick out a story designed to look like one of hers. To me, the who's who game is a lot of fun. And it's not like I can't divorce my opinions about authorship from my votes on story quality. They're correlated, obviously—some of the writers here tend to produce better stories than other, and that shouldn't surprise anyone—but thinking horizon wrote a story isn't going to substantively alter how I rank it against other stories.

So to me, anonymity is more of a game to be played than a deep, important value to be preserved. I like being able to read stories without knowing their authors, but it's natural that I'd try to figure out their authors when presented with them in that way. I think that's natural for a lot of people. And I love to see who people think wrote my stories (and I really think Gardez needs to figure out the whole risk ratio thing before he complains too much about people identifying him, because looking at the raw total on his stories is still mathematically meaningless). It's not like readers aren't going to make these judgments themselves—such judgments are even directly encouraged with the author guessing segment of the competition. The only thing we're talking about here is whether it's okay to tell other people what you think—and making a rule against that just doesn't seem to make much sense to me. The only "problem" it can avoid is the apparent development of consensus opinion about who wrote what, and I don't personally have a problem with people making that sort of speculation. Some stories are easily identifiable, and if their authors don't want to be identified, they should probably work to avoid being so easy to spot. Some stories aren't, and in those cases, I'd guess consensus opinion may not be all that likely to be accurate. Maybe it is. But I don't see Titanium Dragon, Bad Horse, or Thornwing publishing stylo analyses mid-writeoff, so I'm guessing that the information going around doesn't tend to be that informative. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe somebody can prove that to me, but I tend to doubt that allowing public discussion of authorship is causing a serious loss of anonymity over and above what loss is incurred through authors writing predictable stories.

To be clear, if author guessing in the reviews gets banned, it gets banned. That's fine. I can stop doing it. I just don't see any practical point to banning it, and I think it'd make the Writeoff less fun for me. It might make it more fun for Gardez, potentially—but I suspect he's still going to get a huge share of guesses for high-ranking stories whether or not we ban public discussion of authorship.

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You got me.

Sorry, I spoke thoughtlessly and too soon. Let me rephrase myself. When I said it shouldn't be in the review section, I didn't mean banning it. I honestly think it would be pointless to ban it. I know that the author guessing function is fun for others. Hay, it'd probably be more fun to me if I recognized more authors' styles.

I do agree though with:

I tend to doubt that allowing public discussion of authorship is causing a serious loss of anonymity over and above what loss is incurred through authors writing predictable stories.

If people recognize other people's styles and stories, you're right, that can't be helped. But then Roger says that the "solution...is for people to actively maintain plausible deniability. Many people are subtly confessing too quickly."

I didn't notice people subtly confessing and breaking their anonymity of authorship.

...I don't know. I'm in a discussion that I obviously have no experience in. Sorry. I'll bow out now.

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I disagree. The author guessing actually encourages the best guessers to keep silent about their guesses in order to avoid giving other people advantage. I guessed twelve people correctly; if I had shared my guesses, surely some people would have been like "Yeah, that's probably right!" I'd probably be a lot looser about my guesses if I didn't have to compete with others on them.

And frankly, the groupthink is also helpful to me personally as I can make use of it to divert attention from my own stories' authorship and blame others for them.

Mostly bookplayer.

Mentioning who I guessed on some stories sometimes privately is a method I use to throw people off my trail, as I intimately tell them my obvious guesses and throw in some of my own stories to mislead them. Or someone says that they thought I wrote a specific story and I tell them that I guessed someone different on that one. OR DID I?

Someone accused me of writing a wrong story this round and I just grinned. Fortunately facial expressions don't transmit through monitors.

But then, I was introduced to the writeoff with the idea that writing fake reviews and trying to trick people into thinking you wrote a different story than you did was a thing, and thus I have taken to it with gusto and probably spend more time scheming about how to trick people than the next three people combined.

A lot of the people I guessed correctly for are people who I have read a lot of the corpus of, and in many cases have edited stories for. Poor Adren has had me guess him 3/4 times, despite not being tremendously well-known, simply because I've edited one of his stories.

You got so heavily guessed because A) it was a really good story and B) it was in your writing style. People like you and bookplayer have diminished anonymity because you have a distinctive writing style and are good writers; your best story is very likely to be guessed by people. I've also sort of started to sense a sort of meta-cognition thing going on with your stories, but I'm not sure if I can use it to predict your stuff in the future or not; you do have a certain approach to things, though, idea-wise, which means that certain sorts of ideas say "Cold in Gardez might have written this".

To put it bluntly, you have precious little deniability, and your writing style and talent obviously marks you as you. Without the author guessing, people would be even more free to guess who wrote stuff.

The same applies to Bookplayer, and HoofBiting when he employs one of his styles, or Bad Horse when he writes one of his "children's stories". Monsters this round got everyone to guess that it was Bad Horse (incorrectly) because its style matched the sort of thing that Bad Horse might do, and even though they were all wrong, people guessed wrong. My Jonagold stories had everyone guess Bookplayer on them because Bookplayer loves Applejack and dialogue; without bookplayer in the competition, I would stick out like a sore thumb on a lot of my stories because of my style, but it is close enough to Bookplayer's style (and overlaps frequently enough in subject matter) that I can confuse people.

But Bookplayer guessed literally every one of my stories this competition, and was the only one who did so, meaning that I am very transparent to her unless I deliberately alter my writing style.

If someone wrote a RariJack story, a lot of people would guess it was me on principle; see the three people who guessed me on Gossamer this time. It wasn't my story, but the subject matter alone made me a good guess because they didn't know the person who wrote it from Adam; any guess that narrows down your field and increases the probability above random is a good guess. If you can narrow all the stories down to just ten writers, you'll have an enormous advantage over the field. If you think a story had a 30% chance of being written by someone, you should guess they wrote it unless someone else has a 40% chance of having done so. And if even 10% of the RariJack stories entered into the writeoff are by me, then guessing me on every one of them is likely a winning strategy.

It is the same reason that people guess me on stories about Celestia backstory - I wrote a bunch of historical dramas, and thus guessing me on those is a good guess, even if you're wrong more often than not, because 20% is better than 2%.

The other thing is that people who vote intelligently will vote you for any story that they have no better options for; in previous competitions, I would get heavily guessed on for the very best stories because a lot of people perceived me as being one of the best writers, not because those stories seemed very me, but because if you know someone is a good writer, and it MIGHT be them, as long as the odds of it are greater than random chance, you're better off voting for that person than voting randomly. Heck, if someone guessed Morning Sun on every entry this last competition, they would have gotten 7 right and beaten Bad Horse.

So for instance, this round I hedged my bet on you by voting for you for both The Destruction of the Self (which I was nearly certain that you'd writte) and Ninja School, not because I thought you wrote Ninja School but because I had no better guess on it, it was pretty funny, it involved Japanese (which you speak), and thus there was little reason for me not to list you as the writer of that as well. I would have seemed like a wizard if you had actually written that, but instead I just wasted one guess - but because I would have been guessing randomly otherwise, it wasn't a terrible choice for me.

I didn't even notice people accusing you of it so much; it wasn't like Starbats, where people actually were like "that was a sweet story, bookplayer" in their reviews without even pretending like the writer wasn't bookplayer. I mean, we all knew it was you (obviously), but there's not really any solution to that short of you changing your writing style to deliberately mask your identity.

Also, you announced you wrote only one story this round, which was a bad choice because it meant that once we found one story that was obviously you we stopped looking; if there had been the chance of more CIG stories, we might have been less suspicious of just the obvious one because there might have been others lurking. I've been keeping it increasingly vague how many stories I've written over time because I realized that knowing how many stories you wrote would be an advantage. Had I said that I had written three stories, I'm pretty sure a ton of people would have gotten me on the Jonagold stories.

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Okay, so I looked at the RR thing myself, since nobody else is going to do it, and what the heck? Apparently everybody piled on Gardez's story with correct guesses with who wrote it this round. I haven't read it, or most of the review thread, so I don't know what happened there, but yeah—he got guessed overwhelmingly for his story, and almost not at all for the other top stories. Is this just a matter of Gardez generating predictable content, or is my above comment totally off base and was there a real problem with consensus developing in-thread on this one? It certainly doesn't look like the other top contenders.

For that matter, the only other top-ten stories for which a consensus seemed to exist all got it wrong. It's really just Cold in Gardez's story where this seems to have happened (and possibly others further down-stream—I really don't want to check all of them). That sounds like predictable content to me, but again I haven't read the review thread extensively and I don't know what the discussion looked like there.

4426719
I agree with Pascoite on pretty much everything, but especially this:

If someone enters three stories with the same shipping pair, that's suggestive but not conclusive. If someone picks titles that form a clear series or, worse yet, writes individual stories intended to be assembled into a longer one, that's a problem.

But I didn't have a problem with Cold in Gardez's cycle from the last minific competition at all, and I think that was acceptable.

But yes, people are drifting too far toward skirting that line. It's common in the Skype chat for people to mention clues to their word counts, for instance.

One competition I got a number of guesses correct by watching when people posted their stories. When people said they'd submitted the 50th story or whatever it was trivial to work out which one was theirs.

Of course, Bradel tricked me by deliberately claiming to have posted his story at a different time than he actually did. Which was very clever, but it didn't invalidate my strategy because enough people did not do so that it was very easy for me anyway.

Though I did very well this round just by analyzing stories.

And as Gardez implies, but perhaps didn't explicitly say, the many people who discuss authorship rather than just filling out the form and remaining silent on the subject, do tend to compromise anonymity. In group discussions, it's more likely that one member can reliably pick out someone's writing style, and unless someone wants to be deceptive, the mere facts of who says what about possible authors helps to narrow things down.

I think people need to be deceptive if they've got a distinctive style, because it is literally the only defense they've got.

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I agree; it is a part of the game to me, and part of the fun - and, let's face it, it is a puzzle, and most of us are smart people who like puzzles. Asking us not to solve it is futile.

I don't mind people discussing who wrote what; Trick accused me of writing the wrong story this competition, and I didn't say anything because it meant someone else was doing my diversion work for me.

4427083

If people recognize other people's styles and stories, you're right, that can't be helped. But then Roger says that the "solution...is for people to actively maintain plausible deniability. Many people are subtly confessing too quickly."

I've noticed people in previous competitions essentially copping to having written stories, and people in the Skype chat are very loose-lipped at times. Most of the thread stuff is much less so.

This competition didn't seem that bad in terms of subtle confessions.

Outright confessions, on the other hand, happened this competition way too much for my liking (which is to say, I don't like that it happened at all). People need to not do that in the future. There's no reason to ask for your story to be disqualified; if it is bad, then it won't make the finals anyway.

It was previous ruled that you may reveal your authorship privately, on the condition that those who you reveal this to do not vote on your entry. With prelim rounds, this does not work, since you cannot opt-out of voting on a single story. Solution? Do not compromise your authorship to anyone.

I actually don't really see this as a problem, because it's technically no different than writing a story which everyone immediately knows is yours due to style or subject matter or some other element. Especially since we allow guessing, and many readers do nail who wrote what (like 14 people guessing bookplayer for one of hers this round), penning a story one or two people will know right off is yours is, I don't think, something to worry about.

However, anonymity is important, and things tend to get complicated the blurrier the line gets, so I think there should be a rule which states, "Do not reveal your identity to anyone once the writeoff begins." If you chatted in skype about a cool idea and wanted to use it, you can, but just don't let on about that fact. And if someone knows it's you, then they should stay silent (though still be allowed to author-guess you). More on that below.

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4426956
Personally, I've never agreed with author guessing. However, I realize the arguments in favor of it, and I understand how much people enjoy it. But for writers who are easily guessable it can create some discomfort, feeling like your mask has been pulled off at the costume party. I'm not sure telling such writers to simply write differently is a fair solution.

Proposition: allow author guessing but don't allow public discussion of it.

Assuming that the primary enjoyment comes from the cerebral challenge of guessing and being the detective--and not from sharing your personal guesses with others, possibly to better hone them--I think this is a fair compromise. After all, the writeoff is about writing stories and judging them and sharing feedback and growing as an author and winning, not about who wrote what, right? Guessing is itself a form of competition, which is why I'm okay with keeping it, and it adds another layer of challenge.

But I think it ought to be a private challenge. Nixing public talk of it would allow, I think, those writers who may be easily guessable to still feel safe and equal, while letting those who wish to hone their detective skills to do so. Plus, if you want to write an idea which you spoke of to someone else, you can do so without worrying over the possibility of it getting out and ruining your anonymity.

The less energy writers put towards masking their anonymity and the more they can put towards writing good stories, the better, I believe. The more we all get to know each other the easier it's only going to get, which means more of your focus will be set on preventing people from guessing you, which is less thought puts towards the story for the sake of its quality.

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Bookplayer also got guessed really hardcore on her Starbats story; 14 people guessed her there, too.

People actually DID say she wrote that one in-thread.

This isn't actually uncommon for Bookplayer's stories, though; her stories that involve TwiJack have ridiculously good guess rates on them.

And of course, when I wrote a TwiJack story, everyone thought she wrote that one as well.

Clearly this means I need to write TwiJack, and Bookplayer needs to write RariJack, and then no one will ever be able to suss us out!

I think a big part of the anonymity is that people who win the writeoffs end up getting a lot more views, and people remember who won the writeoffs. CIG, Horizon, and Bookplayer have all done well recently, and thus it isn't terribly hard to remember their stories from previous competitions and guess them for new ones based on extrapolations. This is why some folks have taken to guessing me on historical Celestia stories - I have written a number which have placed well. No one guessed me on the Jonagold fics, even though I wrote Final Witness some time ago, which was another Apple-family story dealing with death story, because that got like 12th place.

Of course, bookplayer liked that one, which probably made my Jonagold fics all the more obvious to her as she likely remembered it.

Cold In Gardez also won last round and his winning story from last round felt similar to his winning story this round. As everyone read his winning story last round, thus people were primed to pick out the "Cold in Gardez" story - doubly so as most of the mystifiers didn't write Cold in Gardez-like stories, which meant that there weren't other stories that could be called "Cold in Gardez" stories. Of the top five stories, that one stuck out as being Cold in Gardez's style - it was written in his style and involved world-building.

He also said that he only wrote one story, which I suspect also impacted his anonymity - once we found The Destruction of the Self, there was no reason to keep looking. There were other stories that could have plausibly been his, but only like, five people in the writeoff would write that story, and guessing it was Cold in Gardez was the obvious (and correct) choice.

A few other stories (Monsters, Schedules and Starbats, and The Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Jonagold Apple) all had a bunch of people guess one person on them; they were right on Schedules and Starbats and wrong on the other two. I didn't see any discussion of Monsters and The Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Jonagold Apple being written by anyone in particular in the thread, and frankly I was kind of surprised that bookplayer was the only one who pegged me on mine because I thought it was obvious.

It is also worth noting that most of the stories had little unanimity on them; for some reason, those four really stuck out as specific people.

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However, anonymity is important, and things tend to get complicated the blurrier the line gets, so I think there should be a rule which states, "Do not reveal your identity to anyone once the writeoff begins." If you chatted in skype about a cool idea and wanted to use it, you can, but just don't let on about that fact. And if someone knows it's you, then they should stay silent (though still be allowed to author-guess you). More on that below.

First, I'd say you should avoid talking about writing a specific story for the writeoff. If you come up with an idea, then choose to use it later, that's fine, but you shouldn't talk about an idea for a story on the Skype chat for the writeoff and then write it, because that is basically telling us who wrote it.

Secondly, if you did for some reason, you need to immediately start accusing people of stealing your idea, or talking about how they executed it and how you liked or disliked it and how it differed from your own vision for ZE MASTERPIECE.

Being ballsy as hell helps. I tricked Horizon that way last round.

Proposition: allow author guessing but don't allow public discussion of it.

Not allowing people to discuss it is unfun, though, and part of the fun is being able to throw people off your trail by speculating about who wrote the story and offering plausible guesses.

I don't think that it solves the problem at all, and as Bradel noted, it makes it less fun for him.

I think it is fun to accuse people of writing stories. Especially falsely.

I think that the real solution is not to have rules against discussing it, but for people to have more fun with it. And frankly, if everyone is guessing you every single time, maybe you should figure out some way of tricking them next time. Do something like writing modernist poetry about rocks or writing stories in the style of Native American legends or something else. Mix up your style, do something new and different.

Or just shrug and recognize that if you make it obvious, everyone is going to know it was you. If I write a RariJack story for the competition, there's no way in heck I'm not getting guessed on it, so I just would shrug and realize that. I can tell you in the FlutterDash competition that I participated in a couple years ago, everyone knew Bats wrote the best story. That's how it goes sometimes.

The other thing is that driving said speculation underground actually makes it worse, because people will just suspect that people were discussing it in secret.

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With CiG, in my case at least, it's a matter of a strong consensus for the best story being reached on the thread, and then guessing that one (unless it seems more like horizon.) I suspect a lot of people use that trick, even if his name is never mentioned.

Also, there was a strong consensus for me for Schedules and Starbats at #12 (I think?) and there was last time for A Guide to Magic.

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It is worth noting that when CiG didn't win last minific round a lot fewer people guessed his stories correctly.

The more I read this thread, the more my thoughts turn toward "quit with the author guessing". I mean, I can't do it, so I wouldn't be losing anything, but the echo chamber of "I think these stories were done by these authors" helps everyone narrow it down. Granted, author guessing isn't the same as knowing in advance, isn't the same as someone giving themselves away. You can know, but you can't know know.

Is it an anonymity breach if I write a Winx crossover?

Questions like this depend on common knowledge. This is something that (irrationally) concerns me with the writeoff: that everyone is keeping notes on what I do and say in every single post, and are using that to identify my stories, meaning I can't possibly be truly anonymous. Of course, the reality is more that just CiG and I have become memes and everyone votes us for everything for whatever reason, but that's a thing.

Anyway, pointing out something like "I really like Winx Club" will likely stick in peoples' minds. If they follow you outside the writeoff and know, I dunno, that I really like Twidash, they might peg a Twidash as mine. But if there's someone else who's also well-known for liking Twidash, or Rarijack, or a particular other franchise, then you've got plausible deniability. The same goes if no one pays attention to you, and/or no one takes notes. So really, anonymity isn't so much in yours hands as others', though you can certainly do things to make it harder on them to find you.

Is it an anonymity breach if I write a story idea I've discussed previously?

Again, this depends on others. Like Pascoite mentioned, he and I will often swap story ideas on Skype just as a matter of course. And then writeoff time comes, he tells me, "You'll definitely recognize this one" and I will just have no idea what he wrote because I can't remember having talked about it.

I think the lesson is tell me your story ideas, I'm like a black hole of knowledge. D:

Is it an anonymity breach if Cold in Gardez writes a good story?

Yes.

Always.

Gardez gonna Gardez. I think the style question has been discussed a lot already, but having a style and not diverging from it, or not being able to, can't possibly be taken as a breach of anonymity. Of course, I also say this as someone who is painfully incapable of identifying authors by style in the first place.

Is it an anonymity breach if Present Perfect writes a Hot Shot a Hugh Jelly Jam story?

Absolutely, but it hasn't stopped me from considering it. :V Though again, it's worth saying that if I wrote another story like that (which I'm less likely to do now), I would have plausible deniability because others have tried to mimic that style or just written it themselves.

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Outright confessions, on the other hand, happened this competition way too much for my liking (which is to say, I don't like that it happened at all). People need to not do that in the future. There's no reason to ask for your story to be disqualified; if it is bad, then it won't make the finals anyway.

Totally in agreement. Don't panic, getting into the finals is a monumental task for most authors these days, and people are happy to punish you for breaking the rules. :D

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Anyway, pointing out something like "I really like Winx Club" will likely stick in peoples' minds. If they follow you outside the writeoff and know, I dunno, that I really like Twidash, they might peg a Twidash as mine. But if there's someone else who's also well-known for liking Twidash, or Rarijack, or a particular other franchise, then you've got plausible deniability. The same goes if no one pays attention to you, and/or no one takes notes. So really, anonymity isn't so much in yours hands as others', though you can certainly do things to make it harder on them to find you.

I think everybody has plausible deniability any time horizon, Titanium Dragon, or I (or probably some other people) enter the Writeoff. I think it's decently likely one or all of us are going to play around with something we want other readers to misidentify, so even if it looks like it's in your wheelhouse, you can always just claim you didn't write it and one of us is setting you up.

4426485

A lot of these are issues that don't exist... for most people.

Honestly, a lot of the various issues people have raised about the group recently have really been issues that have affected the top scoring authors. This isn't to say that they're complainers, or ruining the competition—far from it (they make it much more interesting, actually)—I think it's just a consequence of a contest that's run monthly. People join each month, some people are better than others, those people are more likely to win, thus people are more likely to pick up on them and guess them for finalist fics.

For the average writer such as myself, these issues mean jack squat to me. Nobody's gonna guess me. This is actually an advantage, thanks to the anonymity. People might see my entry, think it's good and vote it well because my background isn't a factor into their voting.

However it's also a slight disadvantage. Or rather, bias. If someone reads an entry and thinks 'holy hell, this blew my Goddamn mind', they'll vote it high. If they think (insert top author here) wrote it, they might be inclined to vote it even higher, thanks to bias.

Unfortunately, there's no easy fix to this. Fact of the matter is, writing is an art. Each line of text we type is a tiny little reflection of ourselves. Considering this, perhaps it's silly to think anyone can be truly anonymous in this for long. We can give it our best shot though.

4427343

First, I'd say you should avoid talking about writing a specific story for the writeoff.

Oh yeah I totally agree with that.

I don't think that it solves the problem at all, and as Bradel noted, it makes it less fun for him.

Yes, it does make it less fun, but why should Bradel's displeasure get more consideration than CiG's, or anyone else?

Everyone loses something in a compromise, but it's everyone who is losing, right? No one group gets everything they want while another gets none of what they want. A good compromise can put everyone on equal footing in this way.

Now like you said it very well may be that banning public discussion of authorship does absolutely nothing to help the issue, if we can even agree there is an issue. I think there is, but others don't. Author guessing at this point has literally zero effect on me, but I want to make sure everyone is getting fair treatment here. Having fun is important, but maintaining a fair structure garners a higher priority, I feel.

As far as going underground, that already happens, and it's something you can never monitor, though you have a good point: if it's happening underground, does it really make a difference then by not having it publicly? Maybe if it doesn't happen in the open arena most people won't bother with it in private, except probably for skype or something. Not sure.

While figuring out a way to simply trick everyone next time by doing something unexpected sounds nice--and you have an argument there for growing as an author--I dislike forcing a writer to think of anything other than writing a good story during the writeoff.

I don't know what the answer is. It may truly be the case that this really isn't an issue. I suspect more than anything that if it is, we'll find out by running our noses into it at full speed, as has been the writeoff tradition thus far.

It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward, certainly.

4428051

Yes, it does make it less fun, but why should Bradel's displeasure get more consideration than CiG's, or anyone else?

It absolutely should not. I spoke up when I did because it seemed like the only voices thus far had been those who didn't like public guessing, and since I know I feel otherwise (and suspect some others do as well), I thought it would be detrimental to the conversation to not weigh in and open discussion a little more.

I'm totally cool with other people's desires winning the day here, but I thought this conversation deserved to have people speaking up for both sides.

4428089
No worries, Bradel ^.^ I mentioned you specifically in response to TD, that's all. I was simply trying to point out that we should consider the enjoyment of everyone equally. But absolutely we need to have people from all sides speaking here so we can have a fair and equal representation. Wouldn't be the same without ya!

4427708

The more I read this thread, the more my thoughts turn toward "quit with the author guessing". I mean, I can't do it, so I wouldn't be losing anything, but the echo chamber of "I think these stories were done by these authors" helps everyone narrow it down. Granted, author guessing isn't the same as knowing in advance, isn't the same as someone giving themselves away. You can know, but you can't know know.

The best author guesser gets like 10% of the stories right on the minific rounds, and maybe 20% on the short story rounds.

I don't think that's a big deal, and I certainly don't think it is negatively impacting the overall anonymity of the contest.

On the other hand, I'm becoming increasingly good at guessing people's stories as a result of this; I used to have to use other methods to win the minific competitions, but this time around I used nothing but looking at the stories and thinking about whose styles they matched and did as well as ever. So I'm learning a new skill because of the author guessing and seeing actual improvements in myself.

But most people are only guessing a handful of people right. Our best guessers got 12, 8, 6, 5, and 5 people correct this time. What stories did they get right?

4x Schedules and Starbats
4x The Destruction of the Self
3x I Left My Butt in Appleoosa
2x Because That's What Awesome Ponies Do
2x Clipped Wings
2x Reflections

Frankly, this doesn't strike me as a major issue to begin with. The stories that got very heavily homed-in on were very "them" stories, with Schedules and Starbats, The Destruction of the Self, and I Left My Butt in Appleoosa being the sort of stories we'd expect from those three writers. It is worth noting that we also had a few false positives - there was general agreement that Monsters was written by Bad Horse, with 7 people incorrectly guessing him as the writer there. Likewise, The Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Jonagold Apple had five people incorrectly assign it to bookplayer, even though it was mine. Fallen Foes had four people guess it was written by Baal Bunny, also incorrectly.

This suggests to me that unless it is a very obvious story, people are extremely bad at guessing the writer, and that, moreover, the reason people are guessing the writers is because they think they're very obvious, and thus it is only the case when an obvious writer writes an obvious story that everyone homes in on them. If I wrote a dialogue-heavy RariJack story, I'm pretty sure everyone who knows me would know it was me; I have a distinctive writing style and I love RariJack, and the only real mystifiers would be the people who thought it was bookplayer as she is more horse famous.

Pascoite is much harder to guess at despite the fact that he regularly does well in writeoffs than a lot of other writers, and Bad Horse wrote stories that only a few people pegged as his this time, despite having had extremely lopsided author guessing in previous rounds. When Bad Horse writes one of his bad bedtime stories for children, everyone can guess he wrote it; when he doesn't, author guessing falls down to 2-3 people guessing him correctly.

If you write an obviously you story, that isn't a breach of anonymity, but you have to realize that such stories are not going to be hard to guess the author of. If you make no attempt to disguise who you are, you are not going to be as anonymous as someone who decides to write something very different from what they are known for. If next competition Cold in Gardez wrote a comedy, I'd bet that it would be vastly less accurately guessed; if he wrote another strong worldbuilding piece, he will probably have everyone home in on him. And if someone wrote a Lost Cities entry next competition, everyone would guess it was Cold in Gardez, even if it wasn't, if it was well-written enough.

4428051

Yes, it does make it less fun, but why should Bradel's displeasure get more consideration than CiG's, or anyone else?

Because implementing and enforcing new rules is annoying, and thus should only be done when it is necessary to do so. If some people like something and some people don't, unless it is necessary to implement a rule to make sure the contest works, the rule shouldn't be implemented because it adds to the complexity without benefitting the competition.

The reality is that if you want to write something that people don't know is yours, and you then write something that everyone could easily guess was written by you, you aren't really being consistent in what you're doing.

Everyone loses something in a compromise, but it's everyone who is losing, right? No one group gets everything they want while another gets none of what they want. A good compromise can put everyone on equal footing in this way.

Cutting the baby in half is a bad solution.

While figuring out a way to simply trick everyone next time by doing something unexpected sounds nice--and you have an argument there for growing as an author--I dislike forcing a writer to think of anything other than writing a good story during the writeoff.

You don't have to. If you have a distinctive style, you aren't breaking the anonymity rules by employing it. That being said, if you have a distinctive style, and use it, you also have to recognize that you aren't making any special effort to remain anonymous, and thus while your name won't be attached to your story, it isn't going to be hard to guess who wrote it, either.

There is no rule against me entering a RariJack story or a story about Celestia's backstory, or bookplayer writing TwiJack or AppleDash, or Cold in Gardez writing strong world-building pieces, or Present Perfect writing him stories, or Bad Horse writing subverted versions of fairy tales. But if we write a story that corresponds with our "type", then we also have to recognize as writers that we're going to be a lot less anonymous than we might be if we wrote something else.

There's nothing wrong with writing such a story, but if your goal is to remain anonymous, then you're going to want to write something that people aren't going to peg as being you. And that is an additional personal consideration, i.e. something that you yourself must do. We cannot make you write a story that is hard to guess, and we don't mind if you don't do it, but if you care, then you're going to have to personally make the extra effort to avoid being easy to guess.

The reality is that half of the finalist stories were guessed by 0 people, and the author guessing also gives us important feedback on whether or not people truly are being anonymous in the first place - without the author guessing, would Cold in Gardez have even known that a lot of people instantly figured out who wrote his story? If you really are concerned with anonymity, it strikes me that this information is potentially valuable to you; if everyone is guessing you correctly, then you know that you weren't truly getting fully anonymous feedback.

4426485
I'm extremely uncomfortable with the premises staked out in this thread.

One:

Is it an anonymity breach if Cold in Gardez writes a good story? Is it an anonymity breach if Present Perfect writes a Hot Shot & Hugh Jelly Jam story?

First of all, I'm floored that the bolded question is even on the discussion table. How the hell would you enforce that?

You might have meant:

Is it an anonymity breach if Cold in Gardez writes a story in a style most readers guess is Cold in Gardez's? Is it an anonymity breach if Present Perfect writes a Hot Shot & Hugh Jelly Jam story [because most readers will guess it's PP's]?

And there's a HUGE issue with that line of reasoning, exemplified with your earlier statement of principle:

The goal of the rule is to allow discussion of a story to be undisturbed by the author's word and image.

If Cold in Gardez writes a Writeoff entry titled Lost Cities 2: The Lostening, the principle it violates is that we are evaluating the story knowing that Cold wrote Lost Cities, and therefore our view of the entry is colored by our feelings about the original story and its known author. We can't evaluate the story on its own merits. So disqualify it, right?

Alright, but now what if Cold decides to get sneaky, and a user named "Suspiciously Anonymous Author" (created with a burner email address) turns in Lost Cities 2: The Lostening, which is word-for-word identical to the banned entry? We can't actually tell it was him that did it, but didn't we just decide this on principle: that readers' view of the story is colored by the association with Cold in Gardez? Any logically coherent rule would have to disqualify SAA, too.

But wait! There's no Writeoff entry from "Cold in Gardez" this round! So Suspiciously Anonymous Author's Lost Cities 2 has gotta be okay, right? Except if our primary principle is the evil of association, then nothing has changed: Readers' view of the story is colored by its association with Cold in Gardez. It doesn't matter that his name's not in the author list, because everyone will just assume SAA is just Gardez in disguise. Disqualified!

This is where I stop to note that the principle cited above doesn't actually require that "Suspiciously Anonymous Author" be Cold in Gardez.

If you try to disqualify stories purely on association, you are either banning every story that has any identifiable link to any participant, and raising uncomfortable questions about others (our second-place winner substantially featured Dotted Line. How much did that affect voters?), or you are staking out an arbitrary line on a slippery slope. Splitting hairs on the principle and saying "Well, just don't write stories which hypothetically might be from you!" would allow authors to benefit from others' reputation but not their own, in which case please don't be surprised when some enterprising changeling out to prove a point submits an entry next round titled Lost Cities 2.

Now that I've taken the argument to its absurd end: it was absurd to begin with. It's basically an anti-bookplayer, anti-Bad Horse, anti-Cold in Gardez, and anti-Present Perfect rule (the top-tier authors with the most distinct styles), with spillover effects onto the other authors who have stuck around long enough to become well known. The chilling effects would be enormous. There is nothing about this which is a good idea.

You want an alternative? Plausible deniability is a good principle. It's already working for us.

Dragging disqualification into the discussion makes this problematic.

Two:

The solution I would like is for people to actively maintain plausible deniability. Many people are subtly confessing too quickly.

[citation needed]

You very clearly have a different standard of "subtly confessing" than I do. Can you provide an example of one of these subtle confessions? Because this round, I saw two anonymity "problems": 1) people all guessing certain authors for stories they'd "obviously" written (both correctly [CiG, bookplayer] and incorrectly [Bad Horse]); and 2) authors explicitly standing up and saying "I wrote this story," both in the pseudonymous sense (Aristophanes) and in the self-disqualifying sense (Monokeras, Noble Thought). 1 is not a confession and 2 is not subtle.

You are directly calling for people to "actively" maintain plausible deniability. What does that look like?

I like the idea of plausible deniability, but you started out with talk of rules and mandatory DQs, so this is in the context of enforcing plausible deniability. Enforcing incoherently stated rules is a recipe for disaster.

If you're asking for community input — which is great! thank you — then we're not at the stage of enforcement yet. And yet we are. The Rogerocracy has already mandated DQs this round.

Three:
I wasn't here for the beginnings of the Writeoff, but I think this argument in general is straying far from the spirit in which it was originally launched. Back in the chan days, it was accepted to have "Author of Story X" post anonymously to the thread. Now this round we have "Aristophanes", an acknowledged pseudonym, disqualified after making an "Author of Story X" post. I realize there were other factors there, and the DQ of a series of stories interrelated by title is defensible (I'm not here to challenge the "no interlinked stories" principle), but you're talking about rules under which it was the pseudonymous speech that was the problem.

I don't think we should be encouraging that sort of instant response, but it would be a useful safety valve, and (especially given that authors can post fake reviews of their own stories, so we already technically have the ability to put a finger on the scales) I'm really not seeing the harm in it. Meanwhile, last round, HBAO had to stay silent as the thread exploded with speculation about the author's intentions for "Of Losers And Liars", and I remember reading them posting about how frustrating it was. This round, two authors self-disqualified because they regretted their stories, which is a trend I absolutely don't think we should be encouraging, and the ability to post "Author of X here, please don't hate me for X, I'd like to formally disown it and let it sink to the bottom of the rankings where it belongs" could offer a useful alternative.

Basically:
Cracking down on "borderline" anonymity violations is shot through with all sorts of collateral damage, and I don't see how it meets the stated goals of the Writeoff without harm to the community spirit.

Apologies for the wall of text, but I'm really not seeing this as a constructive response to last round's drama.

--
[1] Not to pick on 4426632 … but how is it that nobody's mentioned yet that they acknowledged, after voting was over, writing a seven-part interlinked series on Celestia?

Are those stories now retroactively disqualified? Or is your anti-Problem B rule only enforced if the violation is caught in advance? Roger, you're going to set a bad precedent here no matter what you do, so I would like to suggest that you set one with the fewest unintended consequences possible.

A scale with no grey area between Unobjectionable and Disqualified is chock full of unintended consequences, and I think we've already seen some of them.

Shorter version of my post:

I strongly agree with 4428934 4428977. OP's suggestion that these are problems to be addressed via disqualification badly rubbed me the wrong way.

4428977
4429537
Obvious solution:

From now on, everyone should write TwiJack, AppleDash, and stories about how great AJ is. That way everyone will be properly anonymous: Obviously I didn't write all the stories, but I could have written any of the stories.

It would certainly make the writeoff more fun for me.

4429537

First of all, I'm floored that the bolded question is even on the discussion table. How the hell would you enforce that?

The question is obviously ridiculous. It is saying in a sentence what you just spent a page saying.

As far as your Lost Cities 2: The Lostening thought experiment is concerned, I don't think people intentionally skirting the line should be too surprised if they happen to get disqualified.

You very clearly have a different standard of "subtly confessing" than I do.

Maybe "a lackadaisical disregard for maintaining anonymity" would be more precise.

Back in the chan days, it was accepted to have "Author of Story X" post anonymously to the thread.

That is correct.

However, I think it is better this way. It's too easy for an author to shut down the fun of a discussion by word of god and miss out on the valuable unadulterated feedback they would otherwise receive. Waiting a week or two before you can tell everyone how wrong they are isn't a big deal.

Not to mention, it's perfectly feasible to guide people along the right track by engaging in the discussion as if you're another reader.

Are [Morning Sun's] stories now retroactively disqualified?

Morning Sun told me about those stories after the other stories were DQ'd. They weren't immediately problematic, so I decided a disqualification wasn't necessary. However, I would disqualify them in future events.

4429552
They are problems that need to be addressed. Whether that address is declaring them non-issues, or enacting fascist zero-tolerance rulings to shut the culprits down, is the point of starting this discussion.

Would you be happier if I called them "complications"?

4429537

The one key thing on mine, though, is I did take care to make it not readily obvious they were all interlinked; nobody picked up on it until -after- week 1, and even then despite someone noting I wrote 6 Celestia stories, nobody pegged the 7th

So I guess the key is interlinking by itself isn't necessarily horrid, so much as when it's blatantly obvious 'Y is by the author of Z' except what happens when 2 people collaborate behind the scenes to do Y & Z (Which is still okay, as far as I know) and therefore...

Bam.

4429702
I'm not sure if I'd feel comfortable disqualifying stuff like Morning Sun's stories; it was not at all obvious to me that they were connected even subtly. After I saw all the Celestia-centric stories that Morning Sun wrote in the first round which failed to make it through, I realized that they were writing a ton of stories about Celestia, but it still didn't let me identify which stories in the finals were theirs. On the other hand, that might have been pure luck; had someone written a lot of stories about some character who was more obscure, and thus been the only ones to write stories about them, they would have stuck out a lot more.

4429537

Are those stories now retroactively disqualified? Or is your anti-Problem B rule only enforced if the violation is caught in advance? Roger, you're going to set a bad precedent here no matter what you do, so I would like to suggest that you set one with the fewest unintended consequences possible.

To be fair, if no one notices that the stories in question are connected during the competition, it isn't a problem for anonymity or for word count, so I'm not sure we should be worried about it.

Reading through all of this made me think one thing: This does not concern 80% of writers in this contest. The only people it concerns are the ones with noticeable styles or well loved writing topics with a vast backlog of stories to compare against. Seems like a disproportionate reaction given the number of authors involved.

4428977

Cutting the baby in half is a bad solution.

I'd agree if the writeoff was a baby :p

Though in all seriousness...I honestly think after considering the matter for a long while tonight that the genie has already been let out of the bottle. I feel author guessing worryingly violates the spirit of anonymity, or at least uncomfortably blurs the line. However, it's been instituted, lots of people enjoy it, and it is greatly encouraged (indirectly, mostly), and nothing is going to change that now. At least until something goes wrong because of it. Which, if it doesn't, then good, because walking into a glass wall is never fun.

So while I don't agree with everything you've said (though I did agree with a lot ^.^), at this point I'm just going to wait and see what happens.

My decisions regarding this topic:

– Rule 3(a) will be changed to say, "Participants may not disclose authorship explicitly or implicitly until this website has done so"
– A new rule will be added, "2(c) Submitted written works may not be explicitly connected to another submission by the same participant"
– I encourage people to actively throw out red herrings with regards to their authorship

4429537
I have reconsidered your Lost Cities 2: The Lostening thought experiment, and find that the appropriate course of action is, in congruence with rule 2(c), to disqualify the entry if it was written by Cold in Gardez. Otherwise, 2(c) does not apply.

The benefit of this is that if such a submission exists and is unbanned, it could be deduced that Cold in Gardez is not the author, and therefore the real writer does not benefit from any assumptions that the story was written by Cold in Gardez. Impersonation is ruled out.

The downside is that there will exist a class of stories that some people aren't allowed to write than others are. However, given that there is no need for someone to submit such stories, it is of no consequence.

The only other solutions are to always ban it (bad, because it's too broad) or to never ban it (bad, because it lets people submit sagas).

4430040
It's probably more important for lesser known authors, because a strong focus on meritocracy is what allows their work to stand on its own.

4434214
Reading your earlier response, I don't think we were in disagreement as much as I thought we were. Thanks for the replies.

After some deliberation, I think your rule's the best compromise we're likely to get, and having the rule be explicit up front does help a lot. Though if your goal is to address the Lost Cities 2 thought experiment, the rule should read "Submitted written works may not be explicitly connected to any other story by the same participant," since Lost Cities 1 wasn't ever a Writeoff submission.

The rule also bans the 4429868 interlinking, but you already said you were going to do that, so.

4434214

I have reconsidered your Lost Cities 2: The Lostening thought experiment, and find that the appropriate course of action is, in congruence with rule 2(c), to disqualify the entry if it was written by Cold in Gardez. Otherwise, 2(c) does not apply.

Well, crap. Back to the drawing board.

Incidentally, the title is Lost Cities 2: Loster Cities.

P.S. yes I had a little bit to drink with dinner tonight

4439397

2 Lost 2 City

Lost Cities 2: Found Cities

Lost Cities: City in the City

A Good Day to Lose Cities

Los2 Cities (and its trilogy-capper, Lost Cit3s)

4439320
Though that brings up questios, like what about Dawn/Dusk from way back? I wouldnt call those explicitly connected, and I don't think mine were either; yes, the potential exists to recognize they were, but there was some minor pain taken to conceal that fact, such that its not immediately obvious in the way Spoon Bait was.

4439570
I would assume that per this rule:

The only other solutions are to always ban it (bad, because it's too broad) or to never ban it (bad, because it lets people submit sagas).

something like Dawn/Dusk would not be allowed.

4434214

I have reconsidered your Lost Cities 2: The Lostening thought experiment, and find that the appropriate course of action is, in congruence with rule 2(c), to disqualify the entry if it was written by Cold in Gardez. Otherwise, 2(c) does not apply.

Honestly, I'm not sure if this rule is a good thing, or necessary.

I think the most important thing is that the story stands on its own as a work, not that it isn't thematically linked to anything else.

I like Bad Horse's Bedtime Stories, and Cold in Gardez's Lost Cities, and I don't see why it would be a problem if people submitted stories in those vein regardless of being Bad Horse or Cold in Gardez or not. We saw this last round that everyone assumed Monsters was written by Bad Horse even though it wasn't, possibly on the assumption that it was another bedtime story, so I'm not sure if the competition would be made better than this, especially given that some previous stories in this vein have been really good. Obviously, if Bad Horse writes a bad bedtime story, or Cold in Gardez writes a lost city story, it isn't going to be as hard to guess who they are, but there is still sufficient ambiguity here that I think you could not know for certain that it was them outside of stylistic analysis (which you can do anyway regardless of the nature of the work).

It also would have the side effect of requiring you to be aware of every story that every writer has written in order to prevent people from writing stuff linked to their other works, which I think is difficult to police.

I mean, I agree that I don't really want to see people writing a single saga across multiple writeoffs, but as long as each story stands on its own as a unit, I don't see why it would be a problem. The Lost Cities are all stories unto themselves, and don't require outside knowledge to enjoy.

I think a better rule would be "Stories must be self-contained".

4441425

I think a better rule would be "Stories must be self-contained".

Depending on how pedantic you want to be, no submission is entirely self-contained.

At the very least that rule requires a clarifying list of allowed dependencies, e.g., FiM, EqG, IDW's MLP comics, etc., which just over-complicates things.