Why do we vote for authors?

Why is the workshop poll usually "Who wrote the best story," instead of "Which workshop entry was best?" By polling on the author instead of the story, you create a few problems.

First, the author byline sometimes does not display when you mouse over the story title on the front page. Going back to the story's full page just to find out how to vote for the story you want to vote for is a small but real annoyance.

Second, polling by author name can make things feel more personal. It can already be heartbreaking to pour yourself into a story and then have it fall flat in front of your intended audience. At least when the poll is by story name you have a bit of distance - they're not voting against you, just your story.

Third, I feel like workshops should be judged in isolation. I shouldn't be looking at the workshop and saying "I love Michelle's Meteor Memento, I'm going to vote for Njae to encourage him." Nor should I be thinking "Oh, this other author writes awful degrading peril stories on another web site, this story is great but I'm not going to vote for him." Anybody who *REALLY* wants to make their voting personal and vote for or against a particular author can do so, but I don't think it's the intended purpose of the workshop, and the polls should reflect what we are really supposed to be judging - the merits of a small set of specific stories.

I hate to nitpick, but I just cannot see any advantage to polling by author instead of by story title.

I know it's not possible to prevent people from voting based on an author's previous work, just like it's not possible to prevent an author from having his feelings hurt if his story doesn't do as well as he hoped or expected. My point was just that voting based on author name would tend to enable and encourage such things, where voting based on title would make it at least require a *LITTLE* effort to link the author name to where you vote in the poll, and would supply at least a little distance for the author when his story isn't a hit.

Thank you for the response, I hadn't realized the subject was discussed before or I would have sent it in a private message.

I don't have a horse in this race, so I would like to make a few comments. I definitely agree that we should vote by story and not by author. But there is one other point that I would like to bring up, and that is which story is best vs which one did I like the most. That is a dilemma that I suspect other voters may run into as well, and I am curious how other folks handle it.

How do we define "Best" your idea of "Best" may be different to my "Best", I normal vote for which story I like, this has it's own problems as depending on mood my vote may change.

ace191 wrote: I don't have a horse in this race, so I would like to make a few comments. I definitely agree that we should vote by story and not by author. But there is one other point that I would like to bring up, and that is which story is best vs which one did I like the most. That is a dilemma that I suspect other voters may run into as well, and I am curious how other folks handle it.

I highly doubt that many run into that conflict. We had a discussion about literal quality before and it was clearly stated by some that they don't expect a literal masterpiece, but a story that gives them what they want.

About the original question, I hope that the people making the votes based on their favorite authors are a really tiny minority. Because I can't see any point in the workshop if people wouldn't take the stories qualities into account - and in worst case not even read them. In the chat someone wrote that he wouldn't be surprised if half the votes were based on the authors instead of the stories. That was one of the most depressing statements I read in a long time.

First off, I think we all agree that Fats, and everyone else who organizes the workshop stories and the polls, deserves a big vote of thanks for their efforts.

That said, I have a suggestion of my own.

Instead of asking who wrote the "best" story, how about asking who wrote your "favorite" story?

"Best" implies an objective standard of quality; "favorite" implies a subjective preference -- which is what I think most of us (myself included) base our vote on.

Given a choice between a well-written story that contains, say, too much gore for my taste, and a less well-written story that pushes my buttons, I'll generally vote for the latter.

That's why I try to post feedback -- to let an author know that while this or that aspect of his story wasn't my cup of tea, I still found things to like about it.

argonaut wrote: First off, I think we all agree that Fats, and everyone else who organizes the workshop stories and the polls, deserves a big vote of thanks for their efforts.

That said, I have a suggestion of my own.

Instead of asking who wrote the "best" story, how about asking who wrote your "favorite" story?

"Best" implies an objective standard of quality; "favorite" implies a subjective preference -- which is what I think most of us (myself included) base our vote on.

Given a choice between a well-written story that contains, say, too much gore for my taste, and a less well-written story that pushes my buttons, I'll generally vote for the latter.

That's why I try to post feedback -- to let an author know that while this or that aspect of his story wasn't my cup of tea, I still found things to like about it.

Your point on "best" vs. "favorite" is very good. "Best" carries a whole lot of baggage that I don't think is necessarily relevant to workshop entries. If the writing is not going to qualify the work as an eternally beloved classic of literature, that just doesn't much matter, as long as it's good enough to tell the story without seeming jarringly bad to the reader. There is lots of room to argue about what standards should apply for judging which story is the "best," and we haven't even begun hashing out what those standards should be. "Favorite" in this case is much less ambiguous. It can change over time - I've had stories I truly loved when I first read them, but which seem horribly shallow and uninteresting in hindsight, and stories that didn't grab me at first and have become favorites as I think back on them. I would thus like to ask for the ability to change votes up until the poll closes, if that is not a serious technical hurdle to implement. That way, I can vote when I first read through all the stories, and if nothing changes over the period of the poll, I don't have to remember to go back at the last minute and vote, but if my opinion changes later on, I can still change things.

Not a serious issue, just a minor wish.

Dru1076 wrote: I must admit, for a while I thought perhaps there was some rule I didn't know about along the lines of 'Thy shalt not maketh comment about thy brotherses workshoppe submission until the poll be completeded.'

Over 30 readers have voted, and yet very little feedback has been offered. Perhaps the ban on publishing during a workshop is a bit redundant.

If there was such a rule, then the ban on publishing would indeed be useless, but the truth is that is should encourage commenting on the workshop. And as the current exception confirms this doesn't really go that way. The lack of feedback has been commented on several times already and personally I doubt it will change for the better. At least it improved compared to last time. One more reason why the idea of the votes being towards the author instead of the story is so dangerous.

Dru1076 wrote: Here's an idea. Why not wait a week before putting up the poll next time? This way Noobs like me who think they're in and discover they're not have a chance to get involved, and maybe people would offer more comments if they weren't rushing off to vote.

If you're thinking off telling me how stupid this idea is, go and write a comment about one of the stories instead...

Waiting a week may be helpful and was practiced in the past, but right now we are still a bit behind schedule and the deadline extension didn't help either.

@Jabbrwock
The current polling system doesn't support changeable votes. Those have to be deleted manually in the backend - which only works for those who have given a second name since the forum nick is not displayed there iirc.

I don't know what this "ban on publishing" is, though I admit I haven't always been following the forum closely in recent months.

Does it mean that no new stories will be posted while a workshop poll is running? I ask because I sent in Chapter 4 of "Baker's Dozen" a couple of days ago. Will that be posted after the 25th?

argonaut wrote: I don't know what this "ban on publishing" is, though I admit I haven't always been following the forum cosely in recent months.

Does it mean that no new stories will be posted while a workshop poll is running? I ask because I sent in Chapter 4 of "Naker's Dozen" a couple of days ago. Will that be posted after the 25th?

Yes that would be the case. The reason is simple focus on the workshop during this time. Dru's story was an exception since it was supposed to be an entry.

Okay, thanks.

Readers who want to know how Bobby uses his third wish, and what happens at 3:20, will have to wait a few more days.

argonaut wrote: Okay, thanks.

Readers who want to know how Bobby uses his third wish, and what happens at 3:20, will have to wait a few more days.

Btw, I just checked the backend, but there's no sign of your story. You sure you submitted it?