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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (2) Thanks(2)   Quote Probably Someone Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Writing Battle Genres
    Posted: 04 Jan 2023 at 7:29am
Max, this keeps getting better and better. I was honored to win Cyberpunk among such great stories, and will definitely be a participant for as long as WB exists. Thank you for everything you do. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote maxbjork Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Jan 2023 at 6:38pm
@CamsynClair - Good idea about locking comments. Makes sense to have this option too. At the very least this option will be on the new site.

@MartyEss - No problem. Our pleasure :) Yes we did expand the payout structure. I still love the idea about the badges, and it will definitely be on the new site. The entire debrief section of the new site is going to be awesome. It's not just going to be a forum, but a tournament viewer/story navigator where you can go to a story's page and leave comments. We could easily include the badges that a story received on the debrief navigator. But I have to do it first haha gonna take a few months for sure...

-Max
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote MartyEss Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Jan 2023 at 10:04pm
Hey Max,
Thanks again for all the hard work.

Did you end up expanding the payout structure  and/or  any of the ideas about badges etc... that were under discussion?

TIA


Edited by MartyEss - 02 Jan 2023 at 12:27am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote CamsynClair Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Jan 2023 at 11:30am
Originally posted by maxbjork maxbjork wrote:

@Mrsnetpro - yeah this is a great idea. I will 100% implement this at the very least on the new site. And maybe on the current site too. Also, someone mentioned that it would be nice to stipulate what kind of feedback (if any) that you're looking for during debrief.
----
There's a reason that Single Elimination is widely used. There are properties of this tournament structure that are special. It's also more "fun" in my opinion. Thank you for all that participated in this discussion. Special thanks to Dave who even provided graphs for the different methods. It needed to be explored, and I hope that it's clear that Dave and I put in a ton of work to try to determine the best method.

Cheers and Happy New Year everyone!

Thank you, Max (and Dave!!), for working so hard to figure out how to make WB run best! I know that you put so much thought into everything!

I love Mrsnetpro's idea of anonymous posting in the debrief (maybe with the option of locking comments, too?)--hoping that encourages even more people to post!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote maxbjork Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Dec 2022 at 12:02pm
@Mrsnetpro - yeah this is a great idea. I will 100% implement this at the very least on the new site. And maybe on the current site too. Also, someone mentioned that it would be nice to stipulate what kind of feedback (if any) that you're looking for during debrief.
----

I wanted to give everyone an update about the tournament structure changes...

Alas, there will be no tournament structure changes. We are sticking with the tournament structure that is currently in place (Single Elim).

A participant of Writing Battle (and I think NYCM) named Dave Klotzkin and I created a simulation of the proposed Swiss tournament, as well as a simulation of the current Single Elimination tournament. We used a model to determine the winners of the duels that used a random "quality score" along with some randomness to account for personal taste. Our goal was to determine which tournament structure is more likely to "pick" the best stories -- thus more "fair."

We found that Single Elimination performed better than Swiss on average by a minimum of 20%.

To put it plainly, although it is true that Swiss helps even out the feedback, it also introduces too much randomness to the judging structure. As a result, the best stories are less likely to be propagated to the top of the heap.

Furthermore, with the way we were planning to implement Swiss, it also wasn't true that folks could "bow out" if they had no chance of winning. So one of the reasons to switch was not applicable. However, Swiss-style is still our preference for the planned mini-battles.

There's a reason that Single Elimination is widely used. There are properties of this tournament structure that are special. It's also more "fun" in my opinion. Thank you for all that participated in this discussion. Special thanks to Dave who even provided graphs for the different methods. It needed to be explored, and I hope that it's clear that Dave and I put in a ton of work to try to determine the best method.

Cheers and Happy New Year everyone!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Mrsnetpro Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Dec 2022 at 3:41pm
 I'm not suggesting this for the upcoming battle, but I wonder if it's possible for someone who wants feedback but doesn't want anyone to know who they are (since we are mostly using our names) to post it as Anonymouse. There's so much support and positivity that it might encourage people to do so if they didn't have to be associated with it. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote maxbjork Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Dec 2022 at 3:11pm
@slinkylink - I think "trophy morphing" is what it should be called on the site. Morphing sounds so much cooler than "combining." :D

@MrsNetPro - Yeah I wish more people shared their story in the Debrief forum as well. It's a great way to get more feedback. Still though, a TON of people shared. 57% of the writers shared in Debrief. Those participation numbers are kind of insane.

@hungrywriters - Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! The judges your get are definitely luck of the draw. I hope it illustrates how the real world operates too. Great stories have to get past barrier after barrier to be published, and it can come down to a gatekeeper (reader) just having an off day. It's all just personal taste too! For any judging in any contest. If you were to shuffle the judges, you would get different results each time. However, the winning stories will likely always be in the top 10%. And there's a handful of stories that might win 99/100 times. The goal is to be the latter story.

I'm looking forward to Swiss too! I've started implementing it... Going to have best of both worlds. Start with Four Rounds of Swiss, then the top stories compete in a Single Elimination best-of-five tournament. So as a judge, the first four judgements are for the Swiss Qualifiers, and the last duel is judging the Single Elim tournament. Which means that everyone will get at least 8-ish pieces of feedback, and you will still have the fun of judging two of the top stories in your last duel.
Judges are still only judging 5 duels (no rapid fire duels or anything like that).
Stories will need to win 6 of their 8 Swiss Duels to qualify for the Tournament which should roughly be the top 15% of stories in each genre.
Oh! And no scoring either. Everything is based on the results of Duels.

I think that addresses everyone's concerns that I've heard being raised about the switch to Swiss or the previous Single-Elim system.

Also, the Past Winners page has been updated with the Autumn 2022 Short Story Battle results! Congrats to Aeris Walker, Chad Frame, Corrie Haldane, and Freya King! They each won $1250.00 USD.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote hungrywriter Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Dec 2022 at 8:52am
To be honest, when I signed up I was on the fence on how I’d feel about WB. It’s a lot of feedback I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear. 

But I want to say I really enjoyed this experience! The majority of my feedback was really thoughtful and gave me some excellent points to consider, well beyond what I’ve received with judges at NYCM. There are so many fantastic writers participating that for me, a newbie, it’s worth the entry fee to get feedback from more experienced writers. It’s definitely a different sort of contest, and there’s definitely some luck of the draw depending on who reads your story, but ultimately seeing how readers react both positively and negatively is very valuable!

 I’m looking forward to seeing how Swiss goes! 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Mrsnetpro Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Dec 2022 at 5:57pm
Originally posted by maxbjork maxbjork wrote:

Glad you all enjoyed the experience! The writing in this Battle was next-level.

Not that anyone asked, but I thought I would get ahead of this. For those that participated and saw the winners, you might have noticed that none of those people have won before. In fact, we have never had a repeat winner. Two years doing Battles (8 contests total), and four winners each Battle. We never had the same person win twice. This is solely by chance and the will of the judges. The same person can win multiple Battles -- and I expect it to happen eventually.

I just wanted to say that "aloud" since I noticed a lot of people using aliases on NYCM after winning a couple of their contests (perhaps thinking that they will select someone new over someone that has won before).

No need to create a new account on WB or something. You can win again! It just hasn't happened yet.

Also, I know I shouldn't pick favourites, but Cyberpunk's stories were amazing. You all should seriously get together and make a Cyberpunk anthology. I will buy it (and of course advertise on WB for free). Do it up! You all should be trying to contact each other and self-publish.... Or not :D just an idea!

Great work everyone :)

I only ever read one book on sci-fi (The Illustrated Man) and the only movie I could think of that fit this that I thought would be close was The Matrix so I tried to use elements from both and hoped I got it right. Maybe it's the "new" in a genre that motivated people? I have to say though that CC was funnier than most non cannibalistic comedy, perhaps for the same reason? 

This was a lot of fun and I look forward to the next one. 

I wish more people would share their stories, I'd love to be able to tell them how great their stories were, especially when they get knocked out by a story that winds up finishing top two. Some of the duels I judged were far tighter than I'd expected after I did my initial read through's. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote slinkylink Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Dec 2022 at 7:14pm
Originally posted by maxbjork maxbjork wrote:

Glad you all enjoyed the experience! The writing in this Battle was next-level.

Not that anyone asked, but I thought I would get ahead of this. For those that participated and saw the winners, you might have noticed that none of those people have won before. In fact, we have never had a repeat winner. Two years doing Battles (8 contests total), and four winners each Battle. We never had the same person win twice. This is solely by chance and the will of the judges. The same person can win multiple Battles -- and I expect it to happen eventually.

I just wanted to say that "aloud" since I noticed a lot of people using aliases on NYCM after winning a couple of their contests (perhaps thinking that they will select someone new over someone that has won before).

No need to create a new account on WB or something. You can win again! It just hasn't happened yet.

Also, I know I shouldn't pick favourites, but Cyberpunk's stories were amazing. You all should seriously get together and make a Cyberpunk anthology. I will buy it (and of course advertise on WB for free). Do it up! You all should be trying to contact each other and self-publish.... Or not :D just an idea!

Great work everyone :)

Winning twice is SO one of my goals. Especially now that I know about the trophy morphing thing. Tongue 

I read some great stories this round, both in judging and on the forums. I agree about cyberpunk. Those were the toughest battles I’ve judged in four Writing Battles. Congrats to all the winners! 
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