ArenaSnow — Roleplayer Guild

Here's a pitch I had written, consisting of pure Thought with varied degrees of coherency.

It's early enough in the year to make for plenty of opportunity to start and advance things, based on interest, but the idea behind the thread is to avoid grand writing contests between essentially advanced writers and go to something more bite-sized that the community can collectively sink its teeth into. It is 99% inspired by this - twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?…
TotW, as it is known on that site, has been going on for years, and pretty successfully. Total War Center isn't even a writing site, and it gets a moderately decent population for its writing center. On a site like Roleplayerguild, I would hope that the ideas that have worked other there would appeal to a community over here that is theoretically bred for this stuff. Naturally, it would not be a 1:1 system, and I'm not an advocate of cloning - but I would like to more or less see its theories integrated into a system for the guild.

Writing prompts there have a minimum word count of 200, a maximum count of 500 (an interesting angle for a site like this one), and 5 words that must be integrated into each submission. There's also a theme, though it is not required to stick to the exact theme. People post their stories in the thread (or, here, perhaps by PM), and at the end of the week the submissions are posted for the public to read and potentially comment on. The story winning the vote gets a single point, and once you get a certain amount of points you get a little icon on your profile. 

For here, I'd say people can have the option to submit as a non-entry, just so people can read and comment on it, or maybe just get it published. Maybe have people submit as a voting entry, submit as an entry that wants comments/critique on it, or submit as an entry that wants both. All would be displayed, though entries that want votes would be displayed separately.

The voting is the tricky part - really, the system is quite simple, but it depends on a poll that makes data collection very easy. I'm not sure where polling would be on the great Mahz feature list, if it is even present on said list at all. That leaves replies as the main method for people to submit their votes, or the PM system. At the end of the week, all votes are tallied up and the winners are displayed in a separate thread.

One of the core issues would possibly be 'vote spoofing'. On a site like TWC, nobody gives a shit. Illegitimate votes are virtually impossible to find. On a place like Roleplayerguild, I can't offer the same confidence, given the potential ease of alts, clique voting in some cases, and a potentially weak structure in the event the idea actually becomes popular and people go in wanting to win. 

The only real stopper that can be put on that possibility (not saying it will be the case, just that there is a possibility) is a public notice that duplicate votes, votes made for the sake of a clique, whatever will be tossed out completely. Enforcement of that could be tricky. I suppose it depends on people being cool enough to not put a weak system to the test. Weak enforcement brings the possibility of vote spoofing. Stronger enforcement leads to claims of abuse and blacklisting of the system due to offputting rules or reputation. Best I can say on the front is to have something in between, that will result in "we can't exactly stop you from gaming the system, but we will smash you if we figure it out". And at any rate, winning a weekly contest isn't exactly a big deal. Yay, a point towards an icon and nice words on a thread.

You could always say "just remove the voting/competitive part" yet the reason why I like to integrate both stuff to critique and a competitive aspect is because of simple psychology - even if it's as frivolous as a callout in a section called "writing contests", people may still be active (a vitally important aspect here) simply for the sake of said competitive aspect. On the other side, I'd like to see an option for people to legitimately just submit a prompt for critique. Hence the split systems, though, like the rest of this, that is up for debate.

Fundamentally, I think this would need a dedicated account, shared between organizers that operates in much the same way as that weekly guild newspaper and the guild mods account works.

I'd be willing to set a rather huge chunk of this up, but I'd prefer not to be a sole manager at all if it comes to fruition.

So, to bring the thought-ramble to a close, what I'm thinking would work out to be something like this.
Lets assume WC is Weekly Contest, and we are on Contest 4. Contest 1 started late January, and the Contests 2, 3 and 4 started in February. This assumes contests are submitted by PM, and voted on in the thread.

The first week is the Submissions thread, and the second week is the Voting & Feedback Thread.

The Submissions thread introduces the topic, keywords/niche aspect for a requirement, rules, how to join, whatever. Self sustaining thread containing all people need to know to enter. Discussions can be held in this thread to clarify things or whatnot, while anything broad goes over to the contest discussion thread.

The Voting & Feedback thread is pretty obvious in its intent. Give feedback to people, vote, with an emphasis on @pings and clearly stating what you're doing.

[Current] is used to minimize confusion. {Lock} would not appear, and is simply used to note a thread that has passed a certain period of time and is no longer supposed to be maintained. With mod powers, it may be prudent to have the thread that is marked [Current] be stickied to avoid confusion with this somewhat lax structure, compensating for discussions that may run out of the weekly period, with a lock still coming to both prove that the section is being maintained and to minimize necro-clutter. If things just lock automatically after a month nothing going on in there as I've heard happens in some sections, that would be acceptable as a replacement. Though in the interests of clutter control I would make it more like 10 days. 

Voting and submissions would be aimed/sent to the contest specific account, while any mechanical questions would be sent to organizers/WC staff.
Writing Contests

WC #4 Catchphrase - Submissions [Current]
WC #3 Catchyphrase - Voting & Feedback
WC #3 Catchyphrase - Submissions
WC #2 Catchingphrase - Voting & Feedback {Lock}
WC #2 Catchingphrase - Submissions {Lock}
WC #1 Catch Phrase - Voting & Feedback {Lock}
WC #1 Catch Phrase - Submissions {Lock}
Contest Discussion

Weekly Contest - General Discussions
(I was tempted to come up with a new thread every month, but given the clutter that will happen in one forum, I figure it may be best to simply leave it all in one thread when it comes to discussing things in general)
Catchphrase

Catchyimage.jpg
Inspirational soppy quote thing here
Word - Word - Word - Word - Word


{Assuming words are used, otherwise replace 'word' with something else}
Introductory welcome blah blah text. This is the submissions thread where you do submissions stuff. Blah blah, what to do.
Insert stuff for submissions.
Now stuff for the contests in general.
Then site general disclaimers.

And finally scare people with the 'you might be disqualified for ___' stuff.

<Witty shit here> Asked Questions-
some question about this stuff

Some answer goes here, and so on. Yes, it could get long on a weekly basis. Copy + paste + edit as needed. Maybe make a changelog hider somewhere around here so people don't  have to hunt and peck for that one new thing in the rules.

List'em and maybe another one of those blasted hiders for how people can join.

Maybe some more info/hiders here.
Insert inspiring bullshit for people.

Catchphrase

Catchyimage.jpg
Inspirational soppy quote thing here
Word - Word - Word - Word - Word


{Assuming words are used, otherwise replace 'word' with something else}
Introductory welcome blah blah text. This is the voting and feedback thread where you do V&F stuff. Blah blah, what to do.
Insert stuff for submissions. Oh, and probably voting too, come to think of it.
Now stuff for the contests in general.
Then site general disclaimers.

And finally scare people with the 'you might be disqualified for ___' stuff.

<Witty shit here> Asked Questions-
some question about this stuff

Some answer goes here, and so on. Yes, it could get long on a weekly basis. Copy + paste + edit as needed. Maybe make a changelog hider somewhere around here so people don't  have to hunt and peck for that one new thing in the rules. It might be useful, since the things I add here could probably go into a changelog, but now you have to read everything to know exactly what I did.

List'em and maybe another one of those blasted hiders for how people can join.

Maybe some more info/hiders here.
Insert inspiring bullshit for people. Then some plea for people to participate. Sound more desperate as the weeks drag on. Insert comment somewhere, probably not in here, that the period might be extended if not enough people submitted/voted or whatever.


I got dizzy looking at hiders...

<Snipped quote by SleepingSilence>

I mean it's an interesting way to tell as much as possible with as little as possible words.

<Snipped quote by Frizan>

I would separate it into 3 sections - small, weekly 200-word stories, bi-weekly or monthly 500-600 word stories and the monthly 'whatever amount of words you feel like' stories. 

Additionally, and this is wild, but I'd also like to see art and other forms of creating involved in the latter monthly contest -> music, poetry (although technically you can put that under writing) drawing, digital art, etcetera.@Odin

Art (screenshots at least) is actually a monthly thing on the same site that this thread was based on. It's a valid idea, and something that could also be put to use. Though, I'm personally an advocate of simply introducing things one at a time, to first get people looking at the forum and then interested so that it can be expanded gradually.

I'd be interested in contributing to the development of this section, though that's up to Frizan and the forces above if that's a possibility. If not, hopefully the core ideas at least get put to use.

ArenaSnow Banned

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