Spring/Summer Contest Comment Thread

[norvbrooks]

Aurilia - from your response, I'm getting the understanding that Harristown, Pleasantview and the Del Mar dam are fictional. I completely bought the idea that you wrote about an actual place and event. Great job!

[Aurilia]

Originally Posted by norvbrooks

Aurilia - from your response, I'm getting the understanding that Harristown, Pleasantview and the Del Mar dam are fictional. I completely bought the idea that you wrote about an actual place and event. Great job!

Based heavily on reality, but not actually real. Thankee!

[norvbrooks]

Agatha - nicely done! I liked it.

[Mkasel]

Really great, love your voice!

[<3Less]

I really enjoyed the theme for this contest, not that I have entered any others as i am still relatively new to this site, but the theme was just so...open.

I can honestly say, when I wrote mine, at first I couldn't tell what kind of story I wanted. I kept writing a first paragraph over and over, and probably spent the most time on the story just trying to get the initial paragraph to spark a story in my mind. I love writing, and i love contests like this.

[Rocker]

I am pretty incredulous... at the time of writing this the combined views of the Prose voting thread is approx 180, yet has only had 7 votes cast!!!
And the Poetry shows the same signs of apathy.. 120 views and only 6 votes cast.... and of that total of 13 votes I've cast 4 of them!!!!

Are people actually aware there is a contest going on, and that they are eligible to vote...or is this forum just populated by disinterested passing perusers?

Yes, I've seen luckyme adding a quick note about the contest and voting to several comments and posts, but that relies on people reading that particular post. And yes, there is a contest specific post directing people to the entries and urging them to vote but, it appears to be hookless..

I know you can lead a horse to water and all that, but perhaps it's time to to grab it by the neck and thrust its head into the trough until it DOES drink!

Can admin not send out a blanket spam message to all members urging them to vote.. and maybe keep sending it at regular intervals until the deadline?

I'm just at a loss to understand why people don't want to participate in this...even most of the entrants, to a certain extent, who have taken the time and effort in the first place to enter have obviously not yet voted... it's all very peculiar.

Good luck to everyone in it anyway.

And for those of you have voted, get across there and do it now!!

[luckyme]

Rocker,
I know where you're coming from, and I do feel the same. So help me out, if you reply, do a crit, give feedback, drop a line about the Contest and urge people to vote, because we do not spam or force our horses to drink.

There's actually people out there who do not even seem to know we have a contest, let alone that any member is eligible to vote.

Spread the word, I like to think it isn't a lack of interest, but merely a lack of knowledge of the existence of out wonderful WBQ and its contests.

Edit:
You do know that you had only two votes for the entire poetry section, did you? As you do for the prose poll. Use them in one poll or divided among the two.

[Tau]

To add to what has been said, and to answer some of your questions.

The view count on the polling threads counts all views, which includes internet bots, members every time they open the thread and quite a few from when we, the staff, make the threads and cheek them and so on. As for the level of voting, often people wait until the last day or two, as they need time to read and decide for a favourite. Also some members simply do not care, while others might not be aware. Hence why we have the announcements and links in place. If people do not read announcements then there is nothing we can do.

We tried mass PM/emails in the past, and while they might get a few people to come and look we got consistent feedback that people did not like the mass PM/email for various reasons.