The First Chapters Cantest was a Zero Sum game for the most part. Twenty people out of 2000 or more got to the second round. Everyone else lost. Some of us did find value in the critiques of our chapters, and some of us found friends that we'll continue to interact with. That happened in spite of the way the contest was designed rather than because of it. If Gather does this sort of contest again, they would be better off designing the contest to minimize the Zero Sum nature of it and maximize its utility in building community. I have some ideas on how to do that.
The way the First Chapters contest was set up insured a bloodbath. Early on it was apparent that there would be at least several hundred contestants fighting for those 20 spots in the second round. The way to win was to bring in people to rate other entries low and yours high, ending up with as a high a rating as possible. If you got a rating that put you in the top 20 (actually 15) so far, you then had every incentive to make sure nobody came along later and knocked you out of that spot. Things got cut-throat. As most of us probably know, att least forty or fifty contestants or their friends resorted to sitting on the Highest Rated screen and systematically giving low scores to anyone with a rating higher than they ended up.
The contest was structured so that people willing to do things that hurt the community as a whole had an advantage. There was no advantage to doing things that helped the community, such as commenting on entries that weren't likely to win.
How could a contest like this be structured so that it helps build a community of writers here on Gather while still choosing a solid winner with good promotional skills? Gather needs to do four key things to make that happen. It needs to make the elimination of entries more gradual. It needs to reward contestants that do socially useful things. It needs to insure that readers have as many tools as possible to find entries that they want to read. Finally, it needs to make sure everyone has as equal a chance as possible to get readership.
More gradual elimination of entries would make the contest far less cut-throat, and give people a chance to bond in the early stages of the contest. How about this structure: All entries go up at the same time. After 2 weeks, the bottom 40% are eliminated. The rest remain. This process goes on for 8 weeks. Assuming 2500 entries, that would give us:
Start = 2500 entries
2 Weeks = 1500
4 Weeks = 900
6 Weeks = 540
8 Weeks = 324
10 Weeks = 194
At that point, the first round would be over. Second chapters would go up, and the process would continue.
12 Weeks = 117
14 Weeks = 70
After 14 weeks, third chapters would go up, and the process would continue. As the numbers dropped, you could go to a one week period for eliminations.
15 Weeks = 42
16 Weeks = 25
17 Weeks = 15
At the end of the 18th week you could go to the five finalists.
Obviously none of these numbers are set in stone and the setup would have to be capable of handling unexpectedly high or low amounts of entries, but the principle is that as long as possible the majority of the people left in a round should have a reasonable chance at continuing.
Second, socially useful things should be rewarded. Gather already has a mechanism for that: Gather Points. What if a certain percentage of the people remaining in the contest was determined by the number of Gather points they have earned so far during the round. So if 60% of the entries went on after two weeks, 50% might go on based on ratings, while 10% went on based on number of Gather points earned. That would give authors incentive to comment on other entries, start or join groups, and other things that benefit the Gather community as a whole. That in turn would reduce the influence of 'fan clubs' and drive-bys.
Third, readers should be given as many tools as possible to find chapters that they like. Synopsis and first paragraphs should be posted, or at least contestants should be encouraged to post them in designated areas. Readers should be able to search for a particular genre of their choice.
Fourth, chances at getting read should be equalized as much as possible. Maybe the start point for looking at chapters could be changed on a daily basis, and more often on weekends. I don't think that would be particularly difficult task. Gather should also provide a jump table so that readers can simply click on a link and go to the top of any page of entries.
Would this make for a perfect contest? Of course not. Would it make for a contest more likely to bring out the best in people and more likely to produce strong winners with a strong built-in fan base? I think so.
For further thoughts on future contests and other First Chapters-related thoughts, check out the following articles and their chains of comments:
If There Is a Next Time - http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976949992
First Chapters - The Final Frontier..rants and Reflections - http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976996166
Wombats In Space - http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977004914
The Writin Wombat Manifesto - http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977018657
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Comments: 20
I'm not sure two weeks would be long enough to give all 2500 entries a chance to be seen, but I agree that putting them all up at the same time would be much fairer. And I like your ideas for synopses, first paragraphs, genre, easy links etc., specially since quite a number of chapters came up without even a first sentence, and probably suffered for it.
I really hope they run this again, though I don't know if I would enter again. Still, I'm still on Gather :)
Well-put, Dale.
They need to limit the number of entries seen at one time somehow. The synopses will help, but sifting though 2500 synopses in two weeks isn't doable for anyone.
Gather needs to run the fraud sweeps EVERY NIGHT!
I like the gather points idea. Maybe they should have a separate contest for those that are already gather members - guaranteed 10 spots for round 2 go to "regulars" or something. This would make people stick around longer, if they thought the best chance in the contest was to be an active member (this would benefit those of us who are still interacting on the site, so I really like this idea). :)
I guess we won't know if all of our brainstorming is affective until the next contest comes out. I hope they are listening.
If rankings for each group was based on the total votes for that group, it would have created a more balanced final, and wouldn't have eliminated everyone from the early days.
Kind of like Jamie said, I guess.
As I've said, the real contest is held in NY every day. Let the games resume. They began a long time ago.
Maybe a note on the contest page, "Thanks for joining. And you'll want to read x and y and z to make your Gather experience more productive."
I hope Gather doesn't discourage contacting others for reviews. I think I had 4 comments that I didn't solicit. Of course, if the article pool is smaller, this would be less a problem. My solicitations were personal--no mass email.
Dale, if Gather would follow a program as you've lined it up, we'd definitely need more than 2 weeks for the first group. That's not enough time to read and comment.
I did like the idea (several people mentioned this before) of each reviewer being offered an article or two to comment on for every one he chose himself. At least stories would be seen.
If they rotated the start point, we would still miss submissions. And I liked knowing where I'd been so I could begin there the next time I came to read. But I'd sure like an easier way to find the stories. Clicking NEXT over and over? What's wrong with Next, Previous, First, Last, and all the page numbers in between? I assume they didn't have page numbers and Last because they were constantly adjusting them, but I don't know that it's an impossibility, even with a twice daily increase in pages.
I'm certain Gather has considered all sorts of options we haven't even looked at. They were overwhelmed with submissions. As were we as readers. IF they decide to do this again, I'm certain there will be changes. Can't wait to see what we all come up with.
Certainly, the entries need to be given an equal shot; this definitely did not happen this time, since very few of the first 2 month's entries got into the top 20, but I did not see a dramatic change in overall quality that warranted that result. Better access tools are essential, including lookup by genre, expiration date, title and so on.
With all that has been said in the various articles, I'm sure that Gather can do a much better job in a future contest like this.
I read or started to read a LOT of entries in First Chapters, and my general impression is that the ones in the bottom half of the rankings almost always deserved to be there. There may have been a few exceptions where someone was deliberately targeted to drive their ratings down, but if you could go on through Gather Points it would probably not be worth the effort to do that kind of targeting. I'm visualizing the first two weeks as a period where really awful entries where the author doesn't have a fan club and is not willing to put out the effort to go the Gather Point route get knocked out. If you have potential or are willing to work at promoting or even critiquing other people you shouldn't get knocked out at that stage.
By the four week mark, the average quality of entries should be up somewhat, which should make them less of a chore to read. By week six you should be down to people with a quality entry, a big fan club, or the ability to work hard to get Gather points. That's the theory anyway.
Jaime: I thought about the mini-contest route, and it is attractive in several ways. You could even have some of the mini-contests be genre-specific, which would have its advantages. It would also mean that ther would be less incentive for people without current entries to try to knock people down. They would either be in the next round or out of it.
The disadvantage is that at any given time you only have a tiny minority of the people in the contest as a whole engaged. At the end of your week, you're either a survivor or out of the contest. That's probably going to mean less attention to entries outside of your block.
I suppose you could combine some of these ideas. Maybe do mini-contests where the top 5 or 10 go on and the top half are eligible to potentially go on if they are in the top xx% in terms of Gather Points. There are a lot of possible combinations and permutations of these same basic ideas.
As far as the spamming goes, yeah I know that's going to be a problem if they do the contest again. I'm guessing that by the end of the contest everyone on Gather was tired of hearing about First Chapter entries. I hope it didn't drive people away. On the other hand, the worst spammers tended to get hit hard in the ratings, especially in the second round. It doesn't pay to annoy the people who have your fate in their hands.
As far as navigation goes: I figured out a way to get to any page in the contest, and posted how to do it, but I don't think many people saw it. If Gather doesn't improve the navigation for next time I may just post a page of addresses you can click on to get to any page in the contest. Unless they change the way they do things it shouldn't be that hard to do that.
Great article and suggestions. I'm copying and pasting my comments and suggestions from another thread below. I may write an article and letter to the powers that be, as having been through all of the rounds (and not winning) gives me the perspective of only 3 others in the 2,676 field.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to state that after time and reflection (so that it wasn't a knee-jerk reaction), that I am retiring from Gather Writing Contests...Forever. I'll participate as a reader, but I feel that I've taken my writing to the highest level that was possible with Gather and S&S. I see no practical point in entering a contest here again. I would love to see the contest format improved, so that this forum can provide people with a chance to move their writing along to the next level.
my thoughts moving forward:
First, future contests will be genre specific. I don't think it's fair to judge a sci-fi book against a romance, or to have people completely unfamiliar and biased against a genre "forced" (in order to be thorough) to read and rate books that they don't enjoy.
Next, future contests could be weighted by 3 different factors.
A. total number of votes (that kills the drive by 1's...they'd be HELPING the entry)
B. Rating by the general public
C. Rating of "official" reviewers assigned to that chapter - maybe 5 each.
The "official" reviewers should be REAL gather members who "register" to review the first round chapters. Even if you have a chapter you could be one of the reviewers, just to keep the numbers high. Each entry could be given random reviewers to judge the entry. The official rating would be a mean (highest vote thrown out/lowest vote thrown out and then the avg of the 3 remaining). Moreover, the first round could week out the bad reviewers. For example if a chapter is given scores of 8, 7, 7, 9, and a 4 - the 4 obviously is wrong (or biased). Maybe they didn't "like" it, but that's not a reason to be so far off from the others. Likewise if one is rated a 5, 6, 5, 7 and a 10...well you get the point. And I bet you'd be surprised how similar "real" reviews would be.
The second round would be judged with the 3 grading systems A. # of votes, B. Rating, and C. (with a now higher weighting) Official Judges (who have passed the first round).
What solves the "beat the ratings" game? The rating of the chapter should NOT be publicly displayed. Why should it? All it does is give people a target to hit if the rating is high, or a reason to "not like" or devalue something if the rating is low. Why prejudice the reader with that information? Let them judge the chapter on its own merit. This also takes away the "sort by" BS that was completely abused in the first round.
No more Gather contests for me either, not as a contestant. I think I'd be willing to read/rate though. I actually enjoy that, though the volume of this last one was overwhelming.
I agree about doing this sort of thing partly or entirely by genre. I would love to see Gather work with say Baen on this kind of a contest, or maybe even set something up where the winning science fiction entry was serialized in one of the pro-zines like Analog, or Asimov's. I would love to see Char serialized in Analog. By the time I get the next set of revisions in it would be perfect for serialization there..
Lisa, you had it tough too because you went early and did well. That meant that you had six weeks or more when you weren't sure if you were in or out and your fate really wasn't in your hands anymore. That had to have been incredibly stressful.
For people in that situation, the temptation to just start slamming high-rated entries that were still in the running had to be incredibly strong. I'm not surprised that a minority of people in that boat did go for drive-by ones. The incentive to do that was built in to structure of the contest. That's part of what Gather needs to avoid if they do this again. They need to make sure nobody is sitting there with a major incentive to do things that disrupt the contest.
I don't care if they do it exactly the way I outlined. I just hope they think through the incentives and reward things that help build a healthy community. That's especially important for me because I'm isolated from other writers here in the far Chicago suburbs and really need an online community.
Still, flaws and all this contest accomplished at least some of the goals set forth. There has been an increase in site traffic, and membership means ads and ads mean revenue.
I would love to see the genre-specific format come to fruition. It's been suggested, repeatedly, so perhaps Gather is listening (reading?).
I intend to re-enter my novel if/when this contest runs again.
Leaving the rating anonymous will help, but those rating surely helped push the top performers to round up more reviewers. If they didn't know their score they wouldn't have hussled. So I'm not sure that will help the contest overall or not.
I said to myself at New Year that I was going to freakin' sell something this year, and that's what I am hoping will happen. Then I can sit back and do my work and help other writers, which is really what I would rather be doing.