First of all, I’m really excited for this contest! Using fiction to communicate EA messages has always seemed a priori plausible to me (along the lines of eg 4.2 here), and I’m excited to see various possible different takes here!
Certainly the success of introductions like HPMOR lends additional nontrivial evidence to this theory, so I’m excited to see more experiments like this one and others.
Secondly, really cool that CEA is taking the initiative to encourage these things.
We want lots of people to read and discuss your submissions — we think the Forum will be a really fun place if good stories start showing up. However, we won’t use upvotes or comments as part of our process for choosing a winner.
If you’re wary of sharing your work in public, remember that winning the contest guarantees your work being shared in public (with many, many people). That said, you are welcome to use a pseudonym if you’d prefer!
I think I personally will have a preference for fiction to not show up as top-level posts on the Forum, unless they’ve been previously vetted as unusually good or they’re unusually culturally significant. But obviously a) different people have different tastes, and b) this is your forum!
In the couple of past cases where people have shared fiction here, it’s been on the frontpage and people haven’t generally seemed to mind. It’s also quite easy to filter out all the submissions if you want — just do this:
Go to the frontpage and look to the right of “Frontpage Posts”
Click “+”, enter “Creative Writing Contest”, and click “Hidden”
You’ll no longer see any posts with that tag, and you’ll see this show up:
In the couple of past cases where people have shared fiction here, it’s been on the frontpage and people haven’t generally seemed to mind.
Presumably we are expecting a much higher volume than in the past. It might be a bit strange for newcomers to the movement, expecting to find a forum for serious idea discussion, instead find themselves on a strange version of AO3.
edit: perhaps entrants should have [Creative Writing Entry] as the start of their title, so it is easy to distinguish on the frontpage?
That’s a solid idea. We could also set a default filter alongside the default Personal Blog filter, so that newcomers don’t see the fiction unless they choose to see it (though they’ll still be able to see it at the tag page if someone links them to it). I’ll talk to the tech team and see if that’s reasonable.
For what it’s worth, I also feel like people might shy away from referring works if every referral has to be a top-level post (rather than a reply, as Linch suggests). In particular, I personally am second guessing myself and will probably not end up referring anything, but would happily contribute things as comments (I might end up doing that anyway, if I feel like it’s relevant enough, and people can repost if they want to). However, this could just be a personal preference rather than a common or shared experience.
Given the upvotes on your comment, I assume that other people share your preference. I’ve created this thread for people to suggest content without creating a top-level post. Thanks for your help!
Interesting. Trying to include an entire story in a comment, rather than giving it its own post, seems pretty unwieldy to me as a reading experience. But we’ll keep an eye on how many submissions come in, and take action if they really seem to be overwhelming the front page.
First of all, I’m really excited for this contest! Using fiction to communicate EA messages has always seemed a priori plausible to me (along the lines of eg 4.2 here), and I’m excited to see various possible different takes here!
Certainly the success of introductions like HPMOR lends additional nontrivial evidence to this theory, so I’m excited to see more experiments like this one and others.
Secondly, really cool that CEA is taking the initiative to encourage these things.
I think I personally will have a preference for fiction to not show up as top-level posts on the Forum, unless they’ve been previously vetted as unusually good or they’re unusually culturally significant. But obviously a) different people have different tastes, and b) this is your forum!
In the couple of past cases where people have shared fiction here, it’s been on the frontpage and people haven’t generally seemed to mind. It’s also quite easy to filter out all the submissions if you want — just do this:
Go to the frontpage and look to the right of “Frontpage Posts”
Click “+”, enter “Creative Writing Contest”, and click “Hidden”
You’ll no longer see any posts with that tag, and you’ll see this show up:
Presumably we are expecting a much higher volume than in the past. It might be a bit strange for newcomers to the movement, expecting to find a forum for serious idea discussion, instead find themselves on a strange version of AO3.
edit: perhaps entrants should have [Creative Writing Entry] as the start of their title, so it is easy to distinguish on the frontpage?
That’s a solid idea. We could also set a default filter alongside the default Personal Blog filter, so that newcomers don’t see the fiction unless they choose to see it (though they’ll still be able to see it at the tag page if someone links them to it). I’ll talk to the tech team and see if that’s reasonable.
A tag is probably enough, but you could also maybe ask people to put some copy about the contest at the top of each submission?
Why hide stuff from newbies? They are here to see the forum, and this is a cool EA thing happening on the forum.
So personally, I will prefer for entries to be replies to a top-level post, and maybe for winners to be reposted to top-level posts.
But I will hide it for myself for now.
For what it’s worth, I also feel like people might shy away from referring works if every referral has to be a top-level post (rather than a reply, as Linch suggests). In particular, I personally am second guessing myself and will probably not end up referring anything, but would happily contribute things as comments (I might end up doing that anyway, if I feel like it’s relevant enough, and people can repost if they want to). However, this could just be a personal preference rather than a common or shared experience.
Given the upvotes on your comment, I assume that other people share your preference. I’ve created this thread for people to suggest content without creating a top-level post. Thanks for your help!
Thank you so much!
(For disclosure: Lizka’s interning under me)
Especially for referrals, since there may be very many.
Interesting. Trying to include an entire story in a comment, rather than giving it its own post, seems pretty unwieldy to me as a reading experience. But we’ll keep an eye on how many submissions come in, and take action if they really seem to be overwhelming the front page.
I have a question: only in english?
Good question. Yes, submissions must be in English.