Iron Quill Preliminary Round Voting!

[edonil]

Alright, so here's how this is going to go. This poll is open to everyone. Please vote! We've got some great stories to share, and the writers have done some great work. Please comment as well, we all love to hear from readers! The winner will be announced once we get all the tallies from the judges and authors.

Authors:
Please PM to me your weighted votes. You've got three of them to hand out, and it'll follow a 3,2,1 format. So, your top pick will get three votes, second will get two, third will get one. Also, submit a vote here in the poll. Please remember to leave feedback to everyone!

Links to the Stories:
ThePandaDirector The Wind and the Leaves
Mako The First Move
Chucklemonkey The Morning's Life of Diego Salazar
Fetid Strumpet Flames of Madness
Hardlec The Green Faery
Absolution Black I Don't Like Mondays
SilverChocobo Death's Servant
UberGruber Morning After
Thechosenone The Wolf in the Fog
Grantt To the Governor With Love

[ThePandaDirector]

How long will this be open?

Oh and I give my 3 points to The, my 2 points to Panda and my 1 point to Director. Some damn fine work between the three of them ;)

[nilus]

I'm sad that my work schedule exploded and I didn't get a chance to write anything :(

[UberGruber]

Could this thread be stickied until voting is complete?

[Mako]

Will take me a few days to get time to sit down and read them all, things are chaos until midweek! But I'll try to get it done as soon as I can, so I don't hold up the process.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Same. I'm about to enter Tech week for the first of my shows. I'll read them all as soon as I get a chance.

[edonil]

Well, at least I'm not the only one life is smacking upside the head as far as these things are concerned...

The plan right now is to leave this open for voting for at least one week.

And Nilus, I'm sorry you didn't get anything done either. Hopefully when the next round starts up, life will be more cooperative.

[UberGruber]

Given there's around 25 000 words for people to read, inwardly digest, review (if also authors) and vote on, I'd say 10 days (that would embrace two weekends) would be a decent minimum period. On the other hand, any longer than two weeks (which makes the round 5 weeks in total), then say a week to start up the next round (would be six week intervals from one round starting to the next) and the whole thing might become too drawn out to maintain sustained interest.

So perhaps a format of:

21 days to write and submit stories
14 days to vote
7 days 'recuperation' during which the next round's theme is put forward.

is a six week turnaround.

or

21 days to write and submits stories
10 days to vote and
4 days 'recuperation'.

for a 5 week turnaround.

[ThePandaDirector]

Just had an idea.

Give 2 weeks to write the story, making it a bit more brutal (if Iron painters can manage it then so can we), but then have an extra week allowed for edits. That way people can edit after receiving feedback, but if, by the end of the 2 weeks, we all state we have no edits to make then we can go straight into voting. so:

14 days to write and submit
0-7 days to edit (no more submissions)
10 days voting plus extra days from edit week
4 days recuperation

And I think we should have a more prominent side project similar to ITIC (maybe call it WFM - Wait For Me), that way people who can't produce something in the 2 weeks can submit something anytime within the 5 weeks and if they submit something each round then they can also win. To encourage feedback we can then have a reward for best feedback (as voted by authors).

I mean we're trying to balance a competition (which is designed to push people) but also nurture the community and encourage writing and feedback. I think that to maintain momentum we need to place pressure on writing, support and reward feedback while offering incentives to busy people to submit.

Just my thoughts.

[UberGruber]

I like the look of that.

Personally I think a fairly firm structure will help those with limited time. If you know every round will be (say) five weeks then you can think 'oh, okay, I won't be able to do this round because of x, or that one because of y, but the next one I should be free.'

In some ways a monthly turnaround would be easiest because then you could have:

starts on the 1st
entries close on the 14th.
edits done by the 20th
voting and feedback by the last day of the month.

and then everyone knows exactly where they are in any given month with regard to the competition. It does make things more hectic for the organisers at the start and end of each month though.