Hi Pat. I appreciate the thought that you've put into this, given that your goal is a fair and honest review for the authors. I think if everyone began with your attitude in the first place, there would never be a problem. That said, I think voting 'strategies' like giving a specific score to the top two, then a different score to the bottom two, etc. are a mistake. By definition they would only be valid if everyone did it. That is to say, for a score to be completely valid, two things have to happen. First, the vote has to based on a judgement of the work's merit and nothing else. Second, a particular score has to mean the same thing to everyone. I want to focus on the second for a moment, since I think that's what's been overlooked.

Of course, what I think rates a ten will not necessarily be what you think rates a ten; that's not what I'm saying. But we both have to mean the same thing by giving a ten. If we both give a ten, and mean by that the story is outstanding, the resulting average score of ten means that we two as a small community think this story is outstanding. But if (to argue ad absurdum) I give tens to the stories that I hate, or that spell everything correctly, or that use as many 'Q''s as possible, or whatever other criteria I set, the resulting average score of ten tells the author nothing, since he or she no longer knows what the ten means. A score is valid only to the degree that the entire community agrees on what a particular score represents. I hear the disagreement already, but think about it. Everbody just 'knows' that a one is bad and a ten is good, right? Well what if you didn't? What if your culture assigned the opposite values? (And incidentally, some do!) Your vote would contribute to a slightly less valid score since the resulting average would be slightly less representative of the opinion of the gather community taken as a whole. Then, if we both thought the story was outstanding, I'd give it a ten, you'd give it a one (thinking number one was the best) and we'd get an average of five. The author would think we as a small community thought his story was middle-of-the-road when in fact we both loved it. Again, a score is valid only to the degree that everyone agrees on the values arbitrarily assigned to a given vote.

The problem with rating 'systems' like those discussed in the article is that if everyone isn't doing it, all they do is confuse the final score. That's why I was baffled by the many people who wanted to read every story before assigning any rating. The quality of your story has nothing whatever to do with the quality of my story. Where does it say the stories are to be judged relative to one another? Is that what everyone is doing? I grant that makes some intuitive sense in the final round, where there are ten stories and ten possible scores, but when there are literally thousands of stories, it makes no sense.

We're all thinking way too hard about it. If you grew up in America you've been doing this since you were a kid. How many times has someone said to you, "what would you give it on a scale of one to ten?" How many of you have asked how a movie was and had someone answer "I'd give it an eight." Did you have to ask what they meant by that? Did you ask 'compared to what other movies?' A five or a six is not artificially elevating or depressing a score (and it's not 'waffling') if the reviewer thought the story 'was' a five or a six. "How was the movie?" "I'd give it a five." You'd know what they meant, right?

In closing (and I guess this comment should have been an article. Sorry it's so long) let me say again it's clear Pat only wants a clean and fair contest, and I think that's true of most of the people I'm addressing. The real problem are the people who cast their vote based on any consideration beyond their opinion of the story. Except mothers. My mom gave my story a ten, and I think that's completely valid.

Scott

Hear Hear. I agree.

Scott

I suspect the rate of submissions will increase toward the end of the posting period, as people who heard about the contest scramble to complete something in time to submit it. I also suspect (perhaps unfairly) that the quality of these submissions will decrease for the same reason.

I think Sherrie raises a good point. It will be very telling to see the quality of the 20 second chapters. I'm certain, (as are all of you, I guess) that the twenty selected will be vastly inferior to our own work (assuming we're not among them). But, that said, I'd like to think that they'll all be of high enough quality that one can easily see how they might have been expected to win based solely upon their merits. If there are some that are flat-out-awful but did well in the voting, we'll know just how flawed the system was.

Joan, you should send word of this to the contest admin. If enough of us do, perhaps they will take it into account. Particularly the part about the scores getting spiked just before the voting closed. Happened to me too.