Writing Contests

Every once and a while I like to look through the writing contests to get inspiration to maybe enter something, but then it gets a little complicated. I checked to see if this was suggested and didn't spot anything. First and foremost, I understand that some of the clutter is because people don't alert mods when a contest is closed and such so that it can be locked/moved/whatever.

That being said, would there be a way to make it so that it's easier to tell what stage the contest is in or just be able to judge how long the contest has been up? My only idea currently for the first part is to make it a requirement to fill out the description and keep it updated with the status (open for entries/judging/closed), although I'm not entirely certain how that'd be enforced. My other idea, just so people can choose whether to gamble on it or not, would be to somehow make it so that we can see when the first post was made.

That way, say, if we see a contest was posted in yesterday, but then glance over and see that it was initially posted, say, 9 months ago, it's easier to realize they're probably not looking for entries at that point and have probably moved onto judging/final results.

CallusedSilk:

My other idea, just so people can choose whether to gamble on it or not, would be to somehow make it so that we can see when the first post was made.

That way, say, if we see a contest was posted in yesterday, but then glance over and see that it was initially posted, say, 9 months ago, it's easier to realize they're probably not looking for entries at that point and have probably moved onto judging/final results.

Can't you just look at the time-stamp on the very first post?

But I do agree that it would be nice to have things in the section a little more organized, but to be fair, the contests are a lot less cluttered than they used to be

@ bellamy blake
Yeah, I could, but I'm trying to come up with ways so that upon first glance people can tell what's going on without having to click on the thread. Plus, it could probably help mods keep the area more cleaned up anyway.

@ CallusedSilk

With the way that the boards are set up, only mods/admins can edit the title/description of a thread (that's why you'll see some contests that still say "open" or whatever in the description because the host can't go back in and update it), and for the most part, that section runs a ton more smoothly than it has in as long as I can remember (that's always been a section of the site I've been very active in ), and I've found that hosts have gotten a lot better as far as keeping that first post updated to reflect the current deadlines/status of the contest/etc.

I mean, if you're interested in the contest, you'd have to click the first post anyway to see the prompts and objective of the contest.

@ bellamy blake
Yeah, but a problem with that is clicking on it and becoming excited about a contest only to find out that the contest is no longer open or has been in limbo for forever while the starter just keeps posting updates to explain why there's been a delay.

My whole point of posting ideas to make the section better is so that maybe people can know the status of a contest before getting their hopes up. I totally understand that I could just go through the contests one by one checking every single post for pages to find a contest that isn't dead/in the process of being judged/etc. My whole point is that I'd like to know that before even looking at the prompt. Because if I do click on it and I like the prompt, but it's not even an option, then that's a waste of time and a disappointment in my opinion.

So maybe just make it so that people can edit their own description and that way people can have an easy way to keep people informed.