February '08 Elimination

Please vote for the story you like best and the winner will be taking part in the final vote at the end of the year.

Discussion of the stories, to avoid influencing the outcome of the poll, are not allowed.

If contributers would like to ask questions, they should email us at [email protected].

Please note that the authors agree to keep their identities secret when they enter the competition.
Those who breach this rule will be disqualified automatically.

Good luck, everyone! :)

Competition Rules
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Note: This poll will close on 1 March 2008.

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Posting here so that I can receive notifications when others have voted.

My goodness that was a difficult choice .... stellar stories everyone ! :thumbs_up

Holy smoke, I've forgotten about this.

Another close poll!

Nice stories :nod: Couldn't easily make up my mind between two..

Well done, everyone. I'm going to have to read them a few more times before I make up my mind.

7 stories.
15 votes.
One story that doesn't even have ONE vote.
What's wrong with this picture?
Where are the voters?
If you take too long to make up your mind,
the clock is ticking and you'll run out of time!

OH, and let's say all 7 authors voted, and since nobody knows who they be, we dunno if any of them did, but if we give that, that means only 8 other people did! Isn't that pathetic? Isn't that sad? Literature Forum? Hello? Are we to busy to bother with our own activities? Wake up and smell the ink or something!

Pendragon

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Originally Posted by Pendragon

....Isn't that pathetic? Isn't that sad? Literature Forum? Hello? Are we to busy to bother with our own activities? Wake up and smell the ink or something!

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You raise a very interesting point, Pendragon. I'm a relatively new member here, and while I love the forum, I've been somewhat disappointed in member participation. I'm in a baseball forum that uses the identical software, so it looks just like Lit-Net. The baseball forum has less than half the members of Lit-Net, but the post-per-member ratio is three times higher in the baseball forum than it is here.

What this means to me is that we have a lot of lurkers here.

Obviously we don't want people to post simply for the sake of posting, if they have nothing worthwhile to say. But it seems like more folks could come up with something worthwhile to say every now and then.

I guess that people who lurk exclusively are not allowed to vote, and that's how it should be.

But I sure agree that there are some fantastic stories in this competition, and it's disappointing that we can't even come up with more than 15 souls who can take the step of voting.

Dick, we also have a lot of regular members who don't vote in these contests.

Yeah. we raise this issue every voting seson, Dick, and it still doesn't seem to get any better. If it were lurkers, I would say nothing. But I can count right off hand some good 40 persons I know well on the forum, and twice that that I have spoken with more than once. My paperdoll wall of fame has IDK, 100 dolls or so on it. Now true, some of these people have left or moved into a status where they cannot vote, some were perhaps banned. But the greater part are here and able to vote. No, you don't have a doll yet. I don't have enough clues. Baseball, huh? :) :idea:

I voted.

/flex

Edit: over a week ago, by the way. /flexagain

Honestly, though, I just don't think many people at these forums are all that interested in learning to write. And most of them are certainly uninterested in other members' works.

It seems that these forums are more for people who just want to discuss literature (and anything mildly related to it), which is to be expected when considering the name of the website.

Still, it's dissapointing mostly, the type of discussion that goes on. Lots of mainstream commercial writing hate (which I'm not saying is undeserved, just pointless), mixed with a good dosage of "I'm smarter than you" posters, mixed with a lot of people who are here only because of mainstream commercial writing. The first of these three groups is too busy hating everything, the second group is 'above' reading anything besides classics, and the last group is mostly clueless and apathetic.

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Originally Posted by APEist

The first of these three groups is too busy hating everything, the second group is 'above' reading anything besides classics, and the last group is mostly clueless and apathetic.

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Aw, c'mon, don't be judgemental of the people here. We do have a mixed bag, and too many don't want to be involved with voting. But I was asking myself WHY IS THAT. And maybe (I said this before) it is because you can publically see who voted for who. I really think that some form of anonymity (spell) be added, and you may get more voters.

Just a two bit statement from the peanut gallery. ;)

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Originally Posted by APEist

Lots of mainstream commercial writing hate (which I'm not saying is undeserved, just pointless), mixed with a good dosage of "I'm smarter than you" posters, mixed with a lot of people who are here only because of mainstream commercial writing. The first of these three groups is too busy hating everything, the second group is 'above' reading anything besides classics, and the last group is mostly clueless and apathetic.

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Very interesting. Which group would you put me and, say, Kiz or Pen, in? :D :D

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Originally Posted by kiz_paws

Aw, c'mon, don't be judgemental of the people here. We do have a mixed bag, and too many don't want to be involved with voting. But I was asking myself WHY IS THAT. And maybe (I said this before) it is because you can publically see who voted for who. I really think that some form of anonymity (spell) be added, and you may get more voters.

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Seconded. As much as I like seeing who voted for me when I've contributed myself - it might put people off who don't want others to know what their favourite is.

BTW, other than Pen, I never vote when I've contributed. That way I'm not in danger of voting for my own entry. :blush: Pen, you're so selfless there!

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Just a two bit statement from the peanut gallery. ;)

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And I thought only the British were good at understatement! :D :D

Those 3 groups I outlined arent all-inclusive, obviously. They are just the 3 main types of people I see on these forums.

Categorizing + generalizing is for cool people.

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Originally Posted by APEist

Those 3 groups I outlined arent all-inclusive, obviously. They are just the 3 main types of people I see on these forums.

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Well, at the risk of your annoyance to my reply, you need to get out there more before you insist on those three categories listed (even though you did say they were not all-inclusive).

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Categorizing + generalizing is for cool people.

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This has to be a funny, so we'll let it go at that. ;)

Get out there more?

It's an internet forums, LOL.

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Originally Posted by Pendragon

7 stories.
15 votes.
One story that doesn't even have ONE vote.
What's wrong with this picture?
Where are the voters?
If you take too long to make up your mind,
the clock is ticking and you'll run out of time!

OH, and let's say all 7 authors voted, and since nobody knows who they be, we dunno if any of them did, but if we give that, that means only 8 other people did! Isn't that pathetic? Isn't that sad? Literature Forum? Hello? Are we to busy to bother with our own activities? Wake up and smell the ink or something!

Pendragon

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Thank you Pen. It is sad that more folks don't take a little time to read and vote. I know everyone worked hard to get their stories done in time to enter and I wish more would read them. But, you're preaching to the choir on this thread. Maybe you should start a new thread about voting??

I do believe that more folks would vote if there were a way to keep everyone else from knowing whom they voted for.
We need a secret ballot.

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

I do believe that more folks would vote if there were a way to keep everyone else from knowing whom they voted for.
We need a secret ballot.

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As a newcomer, it seems there are valid arguments either way - secret or open ballots. From my perspective, however, I like to see how the voting is going - by name. Maybe I just don't understand the situation, but why is it a bad thing if someone else sees that I voted for this story or for that one?

As I understand it the voting is 'open' i.e you can see who's voted for what, because there have been attempts in the past to rig the voting where the votes have been anonymous. I don't see any reason why people shouldn't be able to see who's voted for what - ultimately all that says is what people have liked best.

As Fifth mentioned in her post, we have public polls to prevent any possible poll-rigging attempts.

Since the identity of the writers are not known, it matters little that we can see who has voted for which story here. It is obvious that we are voting for the story we like; not for its writer.

As a side note, I think contributors should vote for the story they like too (for their own if that is the one they like best). By withholding their vote whenever they submit a story, they are, in a way, revealing their identities, are they not? ;)

Ho' up now, let's go easy here for a minute. I hung around here a while before I even realized you could post. There is a ton of good reading on this site, that's how I found it.
While you might think having anonymous voting might bring more votes, I don't think it's true. Last year, I think it may have been a mistake, but one round did: not show the voter's ID, and still, there were only a handful of votes.
The truth is for me, I haven't read all the stories yet. And I don't know about anyone else, but, trying to decide the better among a group of stories is more about me, at the moment I voted, then the story's merits on their own. It's like saying, "banana, pineapple, mango, Apple, orange.., pick the best.", right? On the other hand, we all think we know what's good.

But DickZ and APEish; don't be too hasty to judge the people here -- this place has made me a better person. I mean if this group isn't the set of {what's-good-about-humankind }, it's pretty damn close.

Hang around..._P.

Going once...

Got my vote in!. Closer to the deadline than I should have.

This

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Originally Posted by Captain Pike

But DickZ and APEish; don't be too hasty to judge the people here -- this place has made me a better person. I mean if this group isn't the set of {what's-good-about-humankind }, it's pretty damn close.

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brought me close to tears (manly ones, of course....).

Yay Cap'n Pike!

I guess Scher is right about the reasons for having a public vote (as opposed to secret ballots), I didn't think of people rigging (how pathetic, really).

I wrote what I did regarding what I 'thought' would be a solution to a problem with some folks feeling that it was all a popularity contest in the end. Which it is not, how could it be when the submissions come without name...

Anyhow, I hate to see hurt feelings, so I guess as the decent group that we are, we need to find a way to get more folks voting. All those stories are worthy of a read, the rest of the site can really get a glimpse of what good writing is all about, if they'd only give it a few moments of their time.

And if I can sneak in one more comment -- every story submitted was stellar writing -- chosing a 'favorite' was the most difficult thing I've done. :nod:

Cheers, people! K♥z

Going twice...

Good ol' Cap Pike! God Bless him! If he only could influence voters! http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...mKane/Vote.gif Only 20 this round!

Still going twice...

Congratulations to the author of "The Myth of Generations", who is the winner of February elimination!

You can now submit your stories for April.

Those contributors who would like to receive feedback on their stories can do so by starting individual threads.