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Beefysworld (290)     Feb 18, 2007 - 05:50 pm

I'd take a guess and suggest that some other entrants (or friends of) are down-voting other entries. There's some good works out there with lower than expected scores, which is a little sad to see. I know I've personally rated a few 9s and 10s out there. Sure, they might not be the greatest pieces of writing, but if it's informative, on topic and interesting enough to keep me reading, it deserves to be scored well. » Login to reply to this  Yoda_Blues (263)    Feb 19, 2007 - 12:50 am I didn't want to say anything, but I'm getting the same feeling. All I know there are some really good pieces on here that deserve higher scores and some pieces that aren't so great with strangely high scores. Keep in mind I didn't even enter anything into the written contest, so either way it's doesn't effect me. Maybe it's the conspiracy theorist in me. » Login to reply to this  Millroy (24)    Feb 19, 2007 - 09:15 am | Edited on Feb 19, 2007 - 09:20 am I’ve put off weighing in for a few reasons. For one, I’m assuming this is the first time the FS staff have held this exact contest, so they’ll always be a degree of experimentation, and whatever they do, they probably won’t be able to make us all happy. Second, I was fairly happy with voting for my entry, so I didn’t want to jinx anything. Third, I’m new here and don’t want to rock the boat. It seemed to me that after the first day (I wish I’d logged times, because it’s interesting) there were three or four strong articles leading the pack. Then, in a short period of time, the vote counts on some of those articles increased while their scores all went somewhat down, and a few other articles too the lead. The first thing that came to mind is what you all said – that in addition to voting some entries up, friends were voting the highest rated competitors down. It’s the only explanation I could eke out as to why the frontrunners’ scores shifted down suddenly. Well, either that, or a random distribution of legit votes happened not to appear very random, leading us to don our tinfoil hats. If you’re going to have public voting of any kind, there’s no way to avoid friends helping friends out, so you might as well acknowledge and endorse it. It’s more fair than discouraging it, so that some choose not to while others do. Also, for this round, I’m not so sure it made a huge difference, though it’s not as if I’ve been charting this whole thing in excel. It might have messed with someone on the border of the top 15 in ratings, but that’s also why there’s judges. » Login to reply to this  suibhne (65)     Feb 19, 2007 - 06:34 am I wondered about that as well, but I think part of it may be the lack of calibration in the scale. For example, I looked at 5 as "average" and the highest scores I gave were a few 9's, but I'd guess that a lot of folks (for perfectly good reasons) didn't approach scoring the same way. Anyway, I'm clearly out of step here - most of my high scores were much higher than the average for those pieces, and most of my low scores were much lower. ;) » Login to reply to this  Beefysworld (290)     Feb 19, 2007 - 04:28 am I'm not really one to comment though - I asked a few friends of mine to vote for me and now I'm 14-15 votes clear of the next person.. I didn't think it'd matter that much, but now that I see how many votes people are getting, I rather wish I hadn't. » Login to reply to this

suibhne (65)     Feb 15, 2007 - 07:49 am | Edited on Feb 15, 2007 - 07:50 am

My only concern is that the popular vote favors people who can mobilize online communities to visit and vote for their entries. It would be different if a broad cross-section of FS's readership read through all of these entries, but that's difficult to achieve. Once entries are narrowed down to, say, five or less, I can see a popular vote being weighed much more heavily in determining the final winners. At this stage, however, the field is pretty chaotic; a popular vote is more likely to be people connected with the individual writer than general readers who've had an opportunity to evaluate and compare all of the entries. ;) » Login to reply to this  Dant (697)    Feb 15, 2007 - 09:57 am You'd be surprised how many people have read these. We're talking tens of thousands not hundreds. » Login to reply to this  suibhne (65)     Feb 15, 2007 - 10:14 am Good to know, though possibly a bit intimidating. ;) » Login to reply to this

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Dant (697)     Feb 14, 2007 - 11:47 pm

Yes. FiringSquad judges will always have the majority of the points. The FiringSquad readers who are voting will play a much more important role where the judges scores are close between two or more competitors. » Login to reply to this

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CanadaDave (303)    Feb 15, 2007 - 05:38 am

Right - and to add to what DanT said: There's the second "heat" of round one, too - if you want, you can submit for the first day of the second heat, and drive the page views... » Login to reply to this

Dant (697)     Feb 14, 2007 - 05:47 pm

You are absolutely correct about that. The sooner you post a review the more votes and page views you can collect. However, if you delay you can do a better job. It's all how you want to compete. There is no compensation either way. You still have until midnight Sunday to drive some extra reviews and traffic. » Login to reply to this

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Dant (697)     Feb 14, 2007 - 05:44 pm

You'll have to wait and see what sorts of prizes we can drum up. There are no restrictions on the topics, except as outlined. They must be gaming or hardware related and must be G-rated for general consumption. » Login to reply to this

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