Terrifying Tales Contest WINNERS!

Beaker had two!? That sneaky woman, erm, Muppet.

Congrats to all. I enjoyed them all and really struggled with voting. My top four were:
1. Twins
2. 100 Maple Tree Lane
3. Rebirth Effects
4. Dressed for Death

If anyone cares.

Why not? Mike-the-non-writer had five! To everyone, outstanding job!

I had Twins, Tudorache, Moon, and Sentinel. But boy oh boy, was it hard to choose! So many incredible entries, and I changed my mind five times before sending it off!

Mike was hysterical offline with me during the entire process. Oh, here's another, and another, and another. At one point I became disappointed when I didn't have something in my mailbox from him.

Beaker was sneaky had me running around like a chicken with its head cut off with two entries at 11:59 time stamp. Thanks Beaker!

Beaker- Rebirth came in at the 9 pointer spot for me. I thought it was fabulous and really WAS glad it got in under the bell.

This was so much fun - and nah, don't worry about the stats, Viv. I hear ya on the "too much to do" thing.

Ask Mike for details about his. He was talking way above my pay grade about literary styles of previous centuries and genres and experimental writing styles. Fascinating stuff, but he needs to share the info with an audience able to keep up with him. That would be the rest of the wombats. And yeah, I think the writing bug bit him. Another one bites the dust. MWAHAHA!

Vivian, another great contest. I added a comment on my entry, noting a couple of things that didn't come up in the reviews.

I got the author right on Locked Away and The Squirrel's Curse.

My top picks were: Dressed for Death, Every Third Quarter Moon and Nineteen.

I was in the fortunate position of not being allowed to vote. I can't imagine which I would have selected. One of the best perks of running the gig if you ask me. I really love that there are so many different styles in the genre and it was played well from gritty to the humorous.

Great fun!

I haven't had a chance to read all the entries yet and no time to finish my own story so I had no entry. The winners were terrific, all three!

Great contest Vivian, really terrific!

Vivian, a very well run contest, and a fabulous, if maddening reveal! You have learned well, grasshopper!

My top 4 were:

The Abandoned
Every Third Quarter Moon
Sentinel
Twins

Not a bad record, since 3 of these were in the top 4.

Congratulations to Mike for proving he could write in many voices and confuse the rest of us!

Vivian gave me the idea to write a second tale, when she said somewhere that she wanted more entries and added words to the effect of "Hey, multiple entries are accepted!" I tried to disguise my voice, but many of you still guessed it was me.

Sorry to come in so close to the wire, Vivian, but I thought I had until midnight pacific time, and I was in there at 8:59....

You were correct Beaker, but I was getting tired and I thought Beth's was the last one in under the wire earlier in the day. NO Problem, glad to have it and glad people got to read them before voting.

AND that is why I do not post the ballot before I close the entries submission window.

My top five--

Fruits of His Labor
Dressed for Death
Twins
The Abandoned
Rebirth Effects

Vivian, you did a great job with the contest and the reveal. Thanks for egging us on.

Gang, as always, a pleasure to write with you. Ken, congratulations big time. I hope Mrs. ACA treated you to dinner on the town.

Top picks were: Twins bY Ken C - loved it

Nite sounds - by Rand - Killer - -

And Jamie C - The Abandoned. . . Very Well written - creepy

Congratulations to all. I read almost all, just didn't have time to leave comments on all. Had some bad news about one of my brothers, come in late yesterday and just didn't have the heart to do anymore . My top picks were
Twins,
Sentinal,
Night Sounds,
The Squirrels Curse,

I can't remember what I had next. Anyway, the contest was interesting. Made me stretch as a writer, even though I didn't finish editing mine last night. Not a good as what was there just couldn't get the whole creepy thing down, lolol!

It was a pleasure.

Cool - congrats to the winners!

Glad you spotlighted this. I'm catching up on what I missed. Cool!

Valerie and Sheila, glad you are enjoying the tales.

Congrats to all the winners

I don't understand this at all. Why when I click on the name of a winner do I get a post written by you or a copy and paste of the winning story so you are getting all the credit and points for their hard work.

I should be able to click on the story and be sent to their post to congratulate them. And all those featured articles in your group should be the authors personal posts so they get the points and credit - not you.

I'm going to check but this looks like copyright theft to me. Why would you do this if not for the points?

Diva, we (wombats) run anonymous contests for our members to compete in. Therefore, one person posts and doesn't compete in the contest. Check out the Writin' Wombat group link for more details. All the members forward their contest entry to the contest administrator for posting so that people are more likely to vote on merit, not just name recognition.

After the contest I go through and manually acknowledge which post was written by whom and provided links. I could go through and add all the member posts too, but did not add those in. We all know each other when the reveal is announced. Sorry, it seems confusing if your not taking part in the group.

Very cool, congrats.

Wow, I really thought you were stealing from your friends.

I understand what you are doing now. However, when announcing the winners I would have used the original posts so my people in the group gets the acknowledgment and points for winning the challenge.

How would you do that, you ask?

Just like you did here but put the link to the original post. I realize that would send everyone away from your group setting - so to remedy that I would add all the posts to the group in the process of making the announcement to keep it secret until that moment and use the group link as the winners link. That way, the authors are getting the points instead of you - which I think would follow Gather's TOS and NOT make you look like a thief.

I do this weekly in one of my groups. To help me figure it out while in the process of choosing and writing at the same time I feature my winners and make my winning posts from there. Never in a million years would I take points and accolades that belong to my group members.

Diva, good point. BUT, we are trying to create anonymity through a single person posting. That way, when the stories are read they are judged without the knowledge of who created it. Essentially, we are trying to create a blind judging contest. I don't admin all the contests, there are several and we often revisit and vote on whether or not to do it this way. Honestly, it is a lot more work to do it this way then just a single article with links. But then you know who posted it, the author, and you lose the anonymous aspect of judging.

Imperfect system. Alternate would be to have people create a new identity for each contest and post, but that's work too. Always good to revisit concepts though. Most of us aren't big point people anyway. I think I might average one, maybe two cards per year here. Same with most of our group.

I understand what you are talking about for the judging. I like the anonymity - the blind judging.

What I'm talking is about the announcement of the winners and the list of authors. This Article - the one we are commenting on right now.

All of those links that sent me to YOUR pages should have sent me to THE AUTHORS PAGE.

I (and any one who comments) should be speaking to the author of each post and giving them comments, page views and points, not you.

This post could have sent everyone to the original post as easily as it sent us to your posts.

You could easily click on the winners name ( you've got that info in you list of member) and go to their site and get the address

OR when the judging is over ask all participants to resend they stories to the group, accept them into the group and use the group page address for each author in the announcement so the authors get the credit.

Their writing is intellectual property - their intellectual property not yours. The way you have it working here your name is attached to THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY and if they EVER try to sell the story, when a search is done for the story your name is going to be attached to it and it will be a hard sell for them.

Below is a first line search i did on the Internet for one of the winning stories. What comes up is your articles. You say the story is written by someone else but there is no way to get to that person. That's NOT FAIR to your group members and I hope you will change the way you are doing this.

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,890 for Jennifer parked her Camaro in front of the simple two story town house, and checked her face in the interior mirror.. (0.84 seconds)

Search Results

1. phantasmorgia posts | Gather
For all the rules, check out Phantasmorgia~ . . . more ... 2008 11:14 PM EDT -- This entry was written by Sy G. Jennifer parked her Camaro in front of the simple two story town house, and checked her face in the interior mirror. ...
www.gather.com/phantasmorgia - 55k - Cached - Similar pages -

2. Teacher's Pet | Gather
Jennifer parked her Camaro in front of the simple two story town house, and checked her face in the interior mirror. Her lipstick was fine, and she wasn't ...
www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977476888 - 80k - Cached - Similar pages -

More results from www.gather.com »

Having them repost would be an excellent idea. Thanks for the idea.

Diva, honestly, those of us that participate in these wombat group contests, aren't in it for the POINTS. As Vivian said, we do vote how we run the contests and Vivian graciously agreed to be the administrator for the contest even though she is going through a grueling degree program. We send everything to her or who ever the administrator is. So it's blind. It's a way of challenging each other to stretch as a writer. I didn't participate in this one, but I have in other blind wombat contests.

I understand the point you are making about the intellectual property. But when we run a blind contest, among wombat members, this is the way we wombat members choose to do it. Our Prizes are not the points, most times we have a private pot for prizes and they are awarded privately among our group. Every Gather group handles contests differently, this is how we choose to do it. We do have the option of reposting our story pieces, if we want to. As you've obviously seen, most of us don't choose to.

Diva, I know you and you are a gifted photographer and as such intellectual rights are very important. I feel the same about my serious work but not as much for something I wrote for fun for one of our blind contests. I realize caring is at the base of your concerns here. And it is sweet for you to care. :-)

Diva, mine is one of the names up there. Sia and Vivian have done an excellent job of trying to explain it to you, but you're just not getting it. This is something I wrote as a contest entry, with a full understanding of the rules, and more importantly, having won that contest I got paid cash money for it. I'm absolutely not in it for the points, as I usually donate mine to Habitat for Hunanity anyway.

I appreciate your point of view, and appreciate that there are watchdogs like you on Gather, and as a writer, I totally value protection of rights. However, in this case, you are out of line and unnecessarily busting sombody's chops over something you're just not getting. The wombats are not going to change the way we run contests, the way the participating group members agreed to run the contest just because you disagree. I don't believe a single particiapant plans to sell the story they entered. It's a writing excerise, done for fun. If they do want to sell it, all they have to do is ask Viv to delete it. We're friends. I'm pretty sure everyone on that list feels the same.

We appreciate your concern, but it's not warranted in this case, and you need to stop harrassing Vivian about it. I considered sending this to you in an email, but such public allegations deserve a public response.

Diva, this is how the contest was set up. All of us knew, understood and agreed with the rules. Suggesting that Vivian is in anyway acting in an unscrupulous manner is way out of line.

If the authors wanted to post them to their home pages they would have by now. I understand to the uninitiated this can appear skewed and even unfair. We appreciate your concern, and it is completely unnecessary. The Writin' Wombats aren't about the points, or the google search.

I actually have asked another contest administrators WHO ARE WOMBATS (our Gather group) to delete my story if I'm thinking of doing something professional with it, but to leave the comment thread.

I DO use my Gather points but I have absolutely no problem giving them up for the contests. Wombats read the rules, Wombats understand the rules, Wombats "get" the workings of the contest. Having us repost our stories does nothing for copyright because we will post them AFTER the contest administrator does. Oh, I'm sure we could post them as private to ourselves, then release them afterwards, but we have enough going on trying to read them and rate them and fix them, and rank them, and a whole host of other things we do during our contests. That will take away the fun of them.

Thank you, Diva, for protecting our rights, but are all comfortable with this process and the 20 points I give up for it are negligible. Check out the Wombat page, we're on our 271st chat thread since May of 2007, with at least 300 comments each and we have no set way in which our threads are assigned - whoever is available and has something to post gets it and the points. No one minds. It's all good.

And we invite you to join us. We're a very friendly (and cuddly/fuzzy) group.

Diva, we really do appreciate that you're trying to look out for members here and stand for fairness. But those of us who participate in the contests - and as Judi points out above, the rotating chat threads - do so with full awareness of the process and the implications of the points and so on. Hey, I started the group, and I've probably hosted fewer of the chat threads than any of our core members. We're here for fun and because we like and want to support each other.

Like Judi said, check out our chat threads. We welcome new Wombats!

I have to add my voice to the "We're not in it for the points" meme. I ran a similar contest with similar rules and have no problems with the way this one was run. The various contest administrators have generally used the 'extra' points they get from anonymous contests in various ways that benefit the group, given them away to charitable causes, or used them to partially offset the cost of the prizes given out in the contest, but I would not begrudge them the points if they chose to keep them. Running a contest this way is HARD work, and there are far easier ways to make the dozen or two dollars that the points represent.

I give Vivian A written permission to display my work entitled "The Abandoned" under her name for the purpose of this contest.

But I want my points back. Just kidding!!!

I suggested my last contest not be "anonymous" and the contest entries not be posted under my name for the selfish reason that it was more work for me to run an anonymous contest. However, the consensus among the Wombats was we get more valuable feedback when the entry's author is unknown and people have fun trying to figure out the author's identity. With all due respect, I suggest Ms. Diva mind her own business and Vivian delete Diva's unwanted "assistance" and simply ignore any further nonsense of that nature. For the Valentine's contest, a couple of authors asked me to delete their entry after the contest and that was done promptly. No big deal. We're doing our own thing and it's not our problem if someone does not grasp the concept.

I agree with everybody's comments, if you can keep the post it would be great, a lot of Wombats history and mastery went into each and every story :)

Like the other wombat participants, I posted my story knowing all of the rules upfront and it's not really hard to figure out the story I wrote if you look at the authors list. So, I'm happy with leaving this post and the story up there. If I want to do anything professionally with the story, I'll have Vivian delete it.

Ditto what James said.

I like the anonymous contests. They lend an air of . . . anonymity! I am more than happy to have Viv get the points since she does all the work.

Too bad we have copyright police knocking at the door.

As always, I am happy to abide by the authors' wishes in this matter.

All authors that I have received consent regarding this matter I will leave up. Those authors who do not respond, I will delete their entries, but leave their title in the submissions' listing.

Thank you all.

As noted in my earlier comment, two authors did not contact me stating that leaving their stories up was acceptable; therefore, I have deleted their entries.

CONGRATULATIONS Jill on publishing your story! We can't wait to here how to purchase the anthology.

Thanks, Vivian! How to order the anthology with my short story

YAY!!! Congrats Jill and thanks for coming back and providing us with a link.