Contest Section

Just wondering, but what about if a contest gets cancelled because no one enters? Or no participant submits their entries on time? Does that mean the host loses a rating or percentage of contest completion?

I also think with ratings it would really have to be made clear it's not the quality of the current contest, but how good the user is at being a good host. I can imagine people scrolling through the contests and looking for a five star one because they think it's a good quality contest, when someone might have no stars because they're doing their first contest which is actually a really good contest, for example.

@ darkfallenangel
Yeah; that was always an issue with the story star system, where people thought it was a bulletproof measure of quality instead of simple popularity.

As for cancelling contests, I think there should definitely be outs, like you can cancel your contest by a certain date if there isn't enough interest or if 0-whatever number of participants turn in entries and it won't affect your rating/stats.

@ battalions
What happens if you don't cancel it by that certain date though?

I won't lie, I don't much like the idea of a rating system at all for this, but that's just me.

I like the idea of rating/commenting people who run contests. At least then individuals would have an idea of what they're getting into, instead of just getting repeatedly screwed.

@ battalions
Maybe there should be two ratings displayed under a contest title's name? One being the host's rating (by their username) and then another being a rating of the current contest (by the title)? And everyone can rate it, even if they're not entered, just based on whether or not they think it's a cool idea/good prompts/nice prizes/etc.

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Another thing is perhaps there could be some sort of countdown to the deadline to submit your entry displayed in the first message as well. I know I've had issues in the past because I'm in a completely different time zone, so maybe the host could set a time and date that gets displayed depending on where you are in the world. So just because I set it to 5pm in my time, if it's 2am in your time, it will say 2am when you view it. And it would also be handy in the sense that when you check the thread you can see "Two days remaining" or something, regardless of if that alert system would be added.

^I really really like the countdown idea.

@ ladyschrei
Maybe we could have it so that you could officially cancel a contest at any time before the entries are due (or maybe with a few days grace period after that?), but if you straight-up abandon a contest it counts against you (though you can build your rating back up by completing more contests).

Or maybe there could be like, a host-history tab where it showed all their past contests and how they worked out. That way you could decide for yourself if you want to go with someone based on how often they cancel / how they judge stories (for example you decide against entering a contest where the host seems to be biased toward/against a certain fandom), but it wouldn't be all in-your-face, this person is rated that and if you don't have a certain rating no one will enter your contests because they assume you're horrible etc. etc.

@ battalions
That idea sounds a lot better. I can definitely see where users would be like "):< no entry for you your rating sux!!!1!" or something like that, and it would end up really biased. But a straight-up sort of stats page sounds a lot more effective.

@ battalions
Kurtni and I were talking about that earlier, I made a suggestion, that users should be allowed to see a host's stats and see how many contests they've completed, and how many they're taken down.

And then hosts should be able to see how many contests a user has completed, and how many they've pulled out of.

Either way, I'm not really for a rating or voting system at all. Lol.

@ ladyschrei
Yeah, I prefer stats to rating, but I think linking to all the past contests rather than just showing raw stats might be better because it gives you the whole picture and lets users make their own judgments.

@ Takanori Matsumoto.
Exactly. That way people who haven't built up some padding don't get branded if they have an emergency and have to drop a contest. Plus it helps a bit with other issues, like spotting people you think will judge your story unfairly ahead of time.

Yeah, I think stats might be better as well. Maybe on the side underneath the username there should be the stats so you can easily see them. And having it for both hosts and contestants would be good too.

I dunno if this has been suggested before, but could there be a way to do join-contests? Like, have multiple hosts, sort of like we do with stories? :)

@ battalions
I think it'd be good if it did both. Like, maybe you could see stats of the host before you click on the contest, but then you could also click on the host's name and it would show you all their other contests.

Idk where we would put like, participants' stats though. O.o

@ ladyschrei
I think joint contests would be cool. I've seen people attempting to do it in the past, but it seemed a bit difficult and ended up just being mainly one person.

I think in the contest section underneath the username/age & country there could be like, a little summarised stats part, perhaps showing the percentage of completed contests for hosts and percentage of submitted entries for contestants. Maybe a "Stats" button there too, if you wanted more detail.

I think this is a really helpful thread for suggestions. :) But, I do think that having a possible temporary ban for canceling contests is a little over-the-top. :/

I was thinking, with the whole rating the host thing, that there should be a rating for "delivering prizes to completion", or something along those lines. However, you obviously can't rate that before you see the winners, as it's been previously suggested.

When someone is posting a new contest, how would you organize it? What fields would you have the authors input info into. I'm thinking:

• Contest Summary
• Rating limits
• Word limits
• Type (Fan fiction, original fiction, true story)
• Genre
• Entry Deadline
• Prizes

I also think there should be a field where the author isn't checking off boxes or selecting options, but just a place for them to type in general contest info or anything unique about their contest that doesn't fit anywhere else.

@ Kurtni
Yes! And somewhere they can put rules that are specific to their contest, but they could just put that in the unique portion.
Also, maybe something they can click for if they would accept stories, poems, blogs, or articles and which they wouldnt accept.

@ Kurtni
For contests with specific prompts (like, several quotes/songs/pictures) – it'd probably be easier to just have an option to add a note next to a entrant's name, but it'd be cool if you could choose an option to have prompts and then list them, and then users could claim them and it'd show up automatically on the entrants list. And the contest creator could choose how many people were allowed to select a prompt (or have no limit at all), so for contests with one prompt per person the prompt would be removed from the list once someone claimed it.

@ Kurtni
I'd like type for those that do it. (Picture, prompt, song, quote would be the main ones I think. Then there would be an 'other' category.) We don't have to do that, but I think it would help sort them.

I feel like someone's mentioned this already, but there should be a tab on My Mibba for contests where you can see all the contests you're in / hosting and their due dates (with links to the contest page, of course) so you can keep track of all your contests.

@ battalions
I really like that idea ^-^