I wouldn't call it miserable, but it was certainly tougher than it needed to be. I only really had trouble working my way through the writing, but I'm not very good at reading large amounts on a screen. I did like the quick turn-around on the voting; by the end I was seriously impatient for the results. Without the extension, the voting would have fallen on a Friday and Saturday, so it's a bit unfortunate that that had to happen therefore shifting voting to mid-week, particularly for users who only really get free time at the weekends.

There are a lot of requests for pagination, but the best solution might be to have users select how many entries they'd like to see per page (like on the pet page), so the display can suit people's needs and connection speeds (I know I'd rather not have to sift through multiple pages if I don't have to). Keep voted-for entries at the top of each page for easy comparison/switching of votes.

HAs really needed some form of explanation, even if it's just a 40 character title. A lot of the nuance and creativity gets lost when it's just the image. This might also help prevent some of the low-effort entries no one likes.

I don't have any solutions for writing. Selecting winners for a writing contest is always going to be time intensive and a bit of a slug, regardless of formatting. Allowing titles would be a bonus, though.

Randomisation is an issue. On one hand, it's absolutely necessary to stop the people listed at the top having an advantage, but it makes it very difficult to make sure you've seen everything in a large number of entries if the order changes every time you reload the page (especially so if pagination is introduced). I'm not sure how possible it is to make sure every user sees a different arrangement of entries, but it might be the best solution.

I think for next time there should be a pre-voting by the stuff and then we will have to choose between 10 choices..

I'm going to disagree, because in the past, staff went with really classic choices for things that required user participation. Like, all of the names for the Zentu were really asian inspired, and the businessman HA challenge was no better, as most avatars really looked similar

A prescreening would have given us some things that I fear looked and felt very similar, because it was what staff felt fitted the theme the most

yes you are correct!

Do you think that if an outside jury (let's say friends of stuff or family or hired random people for this one day) would make a change? people that have no clue about the site..

As yet another person who wrote a story, I was also really disappointed when the voting came round. I worked very hard to write something I thought was decent, and I don't know if anyone even actually read it. It was even daunting for me to try to read the entries, knowing that many of them were probably really nice and the authors had put a lot of time and thought into their submissions (unlike some of the HAs I saw).

Also something that always bothered me, even in previous contests, it's sufficient to submit a naked HA/blank photo/one word to get the participating prize.. I think there should be a control on that..

I agree that there should have been more time to vote. I voted, but that's because I was not busy.

That being said, I only read like 5 writing entries. Titles might help too, in that area. Maybe a synopsis. Actually, titles for all entries would be good.

Pagination is another one that I'm glad to see staff is already working on for further events. My brain wanted to shut off about halfway through the non-cw HAs just because there were so many of them.

I also have to say that there were several HAs that were obviously incomplete (missing faces, only wearing a sleeping bag, etc) or clearly not even remotely related to the event, and it'd be cool if there was someone keeping an eye on the entries as they came in to make sure they A) fit the theme/met requirements & B) aren't just half-naked HAs that someone submitted just to get the participation prize.

As someone who worked very hard on my entry for the writing contest, it's hurtful to hear that many people simply didn't bother reading and voting for the Writing category. I understand that the formatting was hard but I know I took the time to go through every category completely.

As for suggestions for the future, I believe that the writing should be broken down into short stories & poetry since some entered that way. I also believe there should be a minimum character count since it was painfully obvious that some people tried harder than others.

In addition I think that it would be helpful to have titles as well as a summary for the stories that people can click on to read more of the story if it catches their eye.

I would have loved to caption my av as: saving kitties from the laboratory

because I'm pretty sure I was one of those wtf is that supposed to be an adventure of avatars out there lol

Other things: pagination please, better dividing of written entries as it was hard to see where one ended and the next one began

otherwise the voting process wasn't that bad, just killer on the computer for a minute or two until all the avatars loaded ouo

I read through every single entry since I submitted a story as well and I wanted to see what I was up against. Honestly, there were probably a good 20 or so entries that I thought were fantastic enough to actually win and I think all three winners were a part of that 20.

A lot of the problems with voting for written entries isn't on Subeta itself, I feel. Admittedly 2 days was too short, especially since voting for moved to weekdays. I was reading stories while walking around stores running errands in order to get them all read in time. But reading so many stories is a daunting task, especially if you want each one to come off as their own. A lot of stories were great, but it was really hard to read yet another story about Wesley or Esther and Emma and read it like you weren't just reading about them kissing moments before.

One of the things I thought about is if it would make sense to only be able to vote in you're own category or at least have more power in there. It would prevent others from just voting for themselves and I think would help votes be more spread out. You could tell a lot of work was put on plot and descriptors for a lot of stories and so it honestly makes sense that the winners are stories that broke through that and kind of gave a refreshing break from the monotony, but that doesn't mean other entries were less deserving of a win. The other idea was that an exclusive writing competition would need to take place over the course of a month to really give people the time to appreciate and go over all the entries. Submitting would take a week and then people would for over the course of three weeks. The problem with that, though is that after a week people tend to forget something exists so something would have to be done to actively encourage users to read the entries.

Ultimately, though, there are some things you can't change. I think a competition with a voting period longer than any we've ever had would help, but no matter what a writing competition is going to take a lot of time and effort from the voters in order to vote fairly. The best you can really do is maximize the chance for people who really do want to put forth the effort to read and compare them all and minimize the want and ability to people to just randomly vote or scroll through and only read the ones that catch their eyes at first glance and core for those.

But yeah, thinking about it. I actually really liked how everything else was and I didn't actually have a problem with HAs. imo the main problem is clumping writing with general creativity competitions. The other categories were like Tinder, you have the potential to only look at it for a second and swipe left or right before moving on. The written section unfortunately kind of had to be treated the same way due to time. So I wouldn't blame and would actually hope that writing doesn't come back in general creative competitions. Even if you shorten the entire section to haikus, after you read your 10th haiku, unless you're trying really hard to focus and look at everything with new eyes, it just starts to drone on and so most people prefer the the entries that they first read. It isnt fair for writers and it isn't fair for voters to have to deal with them.

I agree with several of the already mentioned points:

• the time for voting should have been a bit longer, esp. since it took place during the work week
• the reading section would benefit a lot from titles and perhaps summaries too (and a font that's easier on the eyes)
• HAs could have used titles as well
• (optional) pagination would have been lovely
• blank/naked/broken HAs should have been screened out before voting
• I get that randomized order doesn't favor any entry, which is good, but instead of randomizing each page view (which was super annoying when I couldn't complete a category in one sitting), would it be possible to randomize the order for each player or each login session?

What I did was read a part of all the writing entries, vote for all that I thought had potential (20 or so), then read through all of them and eliminate entries by un-voting them until I had 5 left. It felt a bit like work, but, to be fair, I did it at work while waiting for client feedback, so technically I got paid for it :D

I'll be honest, I did not enter this contest at all, because I kind of just... knew the voting would be bad. Like, I wanted to do a Writing Entry. I have the idea and everything. But there was very little explanation for how the characters worked, and then the character error just went unaddressed for sooooo long. And I knew, that if /I/, someone who was very motivated to enter the writing category, could not muster effort to read other stories, then the voting was just going to be rough. And I hate to say it, but I just had zero faith that the entries would be shown in a well-thought out manner. People could have 5000 character long stories (which is a pretty good amount), and there were a lot of people entering... I just kind of knew it would be a wall of text that would be hard to sort through. I knew I would never end up voting for any (due to time). And I knew it would have felt like a waste of time, so I just passed on entering. I sincerely wish I had been wrong. I wish I could have looked at the entries page and seen something magical and been all 'Damn, I should have entered!'. But that isn't what happened. I AM glad that things will change in the future. There are a LOT of good suggestions out there that could help in the future (such as Titles, Pagination, and Longer Voting Period that is NOT during the middle of the week). Subeta has done of lot of contests like these, and the problem always comes down to the voting process. Hopefully we can get it right next time.

It's really disheartening to see so many people say they couldn't be bothered to read the writing entries. What's to stop this from happening in future events?

I think this has been our best competition yet, some hiccups along the way but it's an improvement over the last. Writing will always be the least-voted-for category because it requires an effort that a large group of people, myself included, just won't give towards something with no rewards (sorry, people are selfish) The writing category could probably use a few of the ideas mentioned on this thread (probably) in the next contest to make it easier to read for the people who do want to read them all.

I feel like the writing section could've been so much better if the stories were organized with spoiler tag things like on the forums. Title inserted into spoiler bar, click it, there's the story. Click it again to minimize it.

No need for pages or anything. :(

I also did not like that pet names couldn't be used in stories. My story sucked after I changed everything to 'she' and all the space lost because of formatting. Hopefully next time shall be better!

" best competition yet" ? im sorry hahahahahahahhha i will have to disagree

man if this was the best competition yet, this is a really low standard. but then again maybe i expected too much... honestly it seemed to me like staff didnt even bother to look at the design mess that was the writing section from a user's standpoint.

(variety is 10/10 though, not gonna lie, i loved the various categories! but this topic is about voting and not the contest as a whole)

I ended up voting only for some sculptures and art and the first two HAs I saw that looked "adventurous". While I would have liked to read through the writing section, I was busy during voting. Two days just isn't enough time if you expect users to actually go through the hassle of browsing tons of randomized HAs or reading a Subeta novel.

I really enjoyed seeing some of the creations, but I think in the future there needs to be some changes.

• HAs need to be vetted before hand. At least half the page seemed to be HAs with little to no connection to the contest at all.
• HAs should also include a description so that we know what the hell we're looking at.
• Either don't randomize the entries or give us an easier way to tell what we've read.
• Longer voting period, please!
• If we're going to have writing contests, it might work better as a separate event.

I really appreciate these contests especially creative ones such as this one and it's great to see a variety of categories in one contest. But I do feel this was all pretty rushed in the sense that the voting period was very short.

I like to look at all the creations to get a good sense of judgement but I'm sad that I couldn't look at all in the writing category as I find that's the hardest to judge at the short space of time. The HAs were pretty difficult as well with the long scroll list to go through and I do wish that we had a little description of the HAs to make more sense of what they're about. Some staff control with the empty/broken or unrelated HAs would be helpful as well.

Overall, the concept of the contest is lovely but I feel the voting time should be a lot longer (at least 5 days min), put writing in its own contest in future as it becomes undermined compared to more visual works and if the entries in some of the categories become a strain put a spoiler tag or paginate them.

I liked the idea of this contest overall, even if when it started I was kind of bummed there wouldn't be a camp plot. With that being said, it was fun to see all the entries (the ones that showed up, anyway) and what everyone came up with. I already mentioned ideas to how it could improve later, titles/descriptions for HA's would have def helped as 's was one I did see and I got excited because cats! but I had no idea what was going on, but I was interested? And if a SHORT description/title had been allowed, I could have been swayed probably for some and probably would have used up more of my votes. Writing I'd suggest what others have and maybe have different writing categories.. or limit the word count. Have it be short story, short poem, Haiku, something like that. The other suggestion I thought of wouldn't be met with friendly opinions at all, but maybe limit the amount of admissions per category, too, if it becomes too much for the category to handle. That would limit how many people would get to join in, though, and not everyone can submit something right away or want to right away. I, myself, took a while to actually realize I could just submit an HA and smacked myself on the forehead because I had taken so long to enter then. Having so many per page might help, too, when it comes to writing, but not so much at voting. It was overwhelming to see all those words and either not have the time or patience to go through it. That really sucks for those that took their time writing stories and I do still feel as though the writers overall got screwed in this event.