Thanks for this! Anecdotally, there are several prizes where I’ve fleetingly thought ‘hmm, maybe I’ll try and write something for that...‘, but then....not. In my case this is a combination between not being (able to be?) risk-neutral about personal finance and maybe feeling obligations to others more keenly than the pull to do something cool/fun. This might me more of a problem with me than with prizes, but I just wanted to add myself to the anecdotal pile of people who (it seems) don’t seem to ‘respond well’ to prizes as an incentive.
For me I think the potential cost to my reputation and self-esteem of publishing something really poor outweigh the potential benefit of winning even with a half-assed attempt
(Extra evidence for this: When contests are private and most people won’t see my entry, I am more likely to submit! I’ve entered one contest without people seeing my work, and zero(?) where they do.)
The flip side of this is that people with less existing “reputation stock” may see the potential status upside as the main compensation from a prize contest, and not the monetary benefit
Thanks for this! Anecdotally, there are several prizes where I’ve fleetingly thought ‘hmm, maybe I’ll try and write something for that...‘, but then....not. In my case this is a combination between not being (able to be?) risk-neutral about personal finance and maybe feeling obligations to others more keenly than the pull to do something cool/fun. This might me more of a problem with me than with prizes, but I just wanted to add myself to the anecdotal pile of people who (it seems) don’t seem to ‘respond well’ to prizes as an incentive.
For me I think the potential cost to my reputation and self-esteem of publishing something really poor outweigh the potential benefit of winning even with a half-assed attempt
(Extra evidence for this: When contests are private and most people won’t see my entry, I am more likely to submit! I’ve entered one contest without people seeing my work, and zero(?) where they do.)
The flip side of this is that people with less existing “reputation stock” may see the potential status upside as the main compensation from a prize contest, and not the monetary benefit