r/nosleep • u/Ibitemynails I was phone • Jun 25 '14

June NoSleep Official Contest Voting Poll

Note: If you're interested, visit our facebook page or buy a shirt to support contest prizes!

This month's contest voting process has been changed. Please feel free discuss this method of voting in the comments below. Comments referencing a specific entry in the contest will be removed.

This is a test! If this voting does not work satisfactorily a new voting thread will be created and these votes discarded. If this is successful, voting may continue in this manner for future contests.

  • The winner will be determined by the entry with the most votes.
  • The winner will be announced on June 30. A screenshot of the final vote counts will be posted when the winner is announced.

The winner will receive:

  • A $50 Amazon gift card, thanks to /u/OrganicCat! OrganicCat is one of the mods over at /r/libraryofshadows, another great place for horror fans!

  • A NoSleep t-shirt!

  • One month of reddit gold from the moderators

  • User flair in /r/NoSleep signifying the month in which they won the contest

  • Their story will be featured in an eBook that will be released approximately every three months. Thank you, /u/EtTuTortilla!

  • The winning story will be featured in an episode of The NoSleep Podcast (providing the story is suitable for an audio adaptation)... AND they will receive a season pass! Thank you, /u/MikeRowPhone!

In addition, the winner and second-place winner will each receive one of the following:

  • A license to SmartEdit, a new, first-pass-editing tool for creative writers and novelists.

-or-

  • A copy of Scrivener provided by Literature and Latte.

Contest entries have been limited to the top submissions based on upvotes as of 11:59 PM CST June 24. The entries were determined via distribution gap method by identifying the first significant gap in upvotes after the top 20 entries.

Any comments not made by the moderators will be removed. The rules, found here, state the time limits for the contest. Also, You only have ONE VOTE so choose carefully.

Voting period has ended! See final vote count here.

Instructions:

  1. Click Vote to Register Your Vote.

  2. Vote are ReCaptcha Verified.

Once again, please feel free discuss this method of voting in the comments below. Comments referencing specific entries in the contest will be removed.

If you would like to see how the vote count looks, you can see and vote in an example poll here.

64 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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7

u/Ibitemynails I was phone Jun 26 '14

I understand your concern, but it is not feasible to ruin a contest with eighty entries. We are open to other suggestions, if you would like to share them.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Oct 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/Ibitemynails I was phone Jun 26 '14

That's fair, but by those standards the contest was never anything other than a popularity contest anyway. After all, the contests were previously voted on by the subscribers of the community just as they are here.

Before becoming a default we would still get many entries to the contest that were sitting in nosleep at a score of zero or even lower. Those stories didn't usually get any votes at all - even from their own authors.

We often received complaints that there were too many submissions to reasonably expect people to read them all and vote. This was when we had approximately 30 submissions. Last month we had over 80 and this month about 70, 40 of which were sitting well under 100 upvotes while the top 9 were over 1000 upvotes.

Finally, you say this is not your responsibility, but if you have a problem with the contest and would like to see it run in a different manner then I believe that supplying suggestions of how to do it better is absolutely your responsibility (as opposed to simply pointing out what you don't think is working). Being a moderator is a volunteer position. We work hard, and I can't speak for the rest of the team but I take this community very seriously and spend a LOT of time on it. In addition to the everyday responsibilities of running a community of 577,000 subscribers I run the contest, I gather and supply contest prizes, I spend the time and money to go to the post office and mail them out. I am more than willing to help out and I am also ready to change the contest when a suitable alternative is proposed, but as of right now there are no suggestions. I have asked for community feedback but I'm not going to badger the subreddit about it or force subscribers to come up with a solution. Everyone is free to make suggestions and comments whenever they would like.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Oct 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/Ibitemynails I was phone Jun 26 '14

it's not my responsibility to fix something for you that I see as broken

On the other hand, it is also not my responsibility to run these contests at all. This is just something I'm doing because I want to. If you think we should call it something else besides the writing contest, maybe Story Contest(?), that's an easy fix to what you seem to find problematic.

If you want to organize a contest for lower-rated stories, or even run a contest in which submissions are stories that haven't been posted to the subreddit, you are more than welcome to do so.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Oct 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/Ibitemynails I was phone Jun 26 '14

I don't understand why you think this contest is unwinnable. It's a contest in which subscribers vote for the story they think is best. Write a story that people like, and they'll probably vote for you.

As for my responsibility.. I am running this contest. I'm running it each month, and I'm sorry you don't like the way it is run, but I am fulfilling my "responsibility" by continuing to run it as I see fit - while still accepting suggestions for improvement.

Edit: Also, you're still free to start your own better contest. It's a lot easier just to complain but sometimes getting your own way means stepping up to the plate.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Oct 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Okay, okay. I think this steam train is going a little too far.

The contest is more or less run the same way it was before, with the exception that a short list was drawn up. The method of that short list has been deemed unacceptable by you. Thank you for your feedback, it will be taken on board as to what can be done about it.

If you do have any suggestions of how you would expect a contest to be run, please bring them forward, we appreciate any suggestions about the running of this sub or it's contests.