We would like to know how the contests work

Exactly. Especially if they have a clear system in place. This makes me suspect they don’t.

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Ah, good point. The lack of transparency is getting bothersome now.

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It’s nice to know what the benchmark is. I would like to know how much the rubric score is weighted in comparison to the retention percentage. Is it 50/50? Or do you need to get over a certain retention percentage to even be considered? And then do they then “grade” all the stories and select the top ones based on the rubric? Or can a story with a lower rubric score (still over 3.0) win if it has a higher retention?

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I’m entering the latest contest. Wish me luck… :+1:t3:

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I assume the latest “tip” not sure if we can really call it a tip, what have been said was already said before… is the explanation that we have waited since end of H&V.

Some things that have been said are very, VERY subjective. Such as originality of the story and meaningful choices. (I don’t really consider dialouge changing choices as meaningful unless they affect relationships. See how subjective it is?) Since every story is graded manually, (hoping every story is read and graded :pray:t2:) there’ll be some personal preferences and beliefs. I’m not okay with this since competions have to be objective as possible as it can be.

And I saw that some questions were left unanswered again. I am disappointed and a bit bitter, since we’ve waited for so long, but received so little.

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Nevermind, just found out that not every story is graded.

They basically admitted that they don’t grade all of the entries.

And this means that more readers you get, more retention you receive. And the only way to be even considered for grading is having a lot readers. (Rip small authors :rofl:)

Press F to pay respects to authors who can’t get more than 300 reads :disappointed::pray:t2:

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For the choices- if you look at the rubric score, a combination dialogue choices and HMU choices will get you a 3.0 (out of 4). I think that’s a little less subjective, but the plot score is definitely subjective. I might find a story to be “slow moving and boring” but someone else might completely disagree with me. I’m not sure how you can make that section more objective though. A contest based on creative writing is always going to be subjective to an extent.

That was in reference to all stories, not specifically contest entries. I wouldn’t expect them to grade every single story on the app (which is what I think Jesse was referring to?). (I’m not saying that they do grade all contest entries, but I’m saying that they never admitted that they don’t.)

It would have been nice if they’d added a bit more to the article and how it relates to contest entries. There’s a lot of unanswered questions that could easily have been answered in that article.

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Aren’t entries also considered being featured on a shelf though? (Jk :see_no_evil:)

I hardly believe they read all of the stories. Even if they did, they would be able to read only first episode. And some stories cant be decided too much by first episode. (And they also lower retention by reading only first episode :face_with_hand_over_mouth::rage:)

I’m not too happy with the directing grading as well. I don’t always agree with the best directing they choose. Infact, I choose my own best directing from the winner shelf.

(Plus, they said that story has to be error free but there were some errors in winner entries. Maybe they scored low in directing but high in others?)

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Yeah- that’s why I shared the last quote that I did. IMO, that makes it sound like they’ll review all entries by default (as they’re “all” being considered for being on a shelf), but I don’t know if they actually do. For DD, the rules actually stated that they would read all stories with more than 35% retention. I wonder if they do something similar for all contests?

Over a year ago, Liz mentioned (on the old forums) that they read at least one episode of every story. I personally wouldn’t expect them to read more than one episode of every entry. It would be a lot and also, sometimes you can at least tell which ones won’t do well (retention wise) or which ones are already lacking in areas.

I sometimes do, I sometimes don’t. Sometimes my favourite entry (directing wise) doesn’t even make the shelf.

With errors: keep in mind the amount of glitches going on. I received a lot of screenshots showing all these directing “errors” in my story but none of them came up when I tested on both the previewer and my device :woman_shrugging:. Also, I’m sure a couple minor issues here and there probably wouldn’t impact your score much.

That could be true as well. Even if you got a 1.0 in directing, you could still get at least a 3.0 overall.

They also said that there’s no way of them giving the rubric score to writers. I think this is a cover up for “We don’t grade all of the entries lol” after all, we should be able to learn why we didnt win.

(At this point, if you send an email about why you didn’t win, you get the generic answer “Not enough bandwith to share, but I can say that personally you didn’t have enough retention”)

Well I understand that with the amount of entries. Individually emailing out 100 rubric scores might be a bit much. Also, can you imagine how many emails back demanding to know why someone’s “super awesome and unique story” only scored a 2.0 on plot or something? :joy: I would imagine that’s part of the reason they don’t do this- the amount of arguments it could start.

Like I said above, I’m curious to know if there’s a retention “benchmark” and if they don’t score anything below it. If that was the case for DD, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case for all contests (and then that’s an “easy” excuse they could give to someone who wanted to know their rubric score- that their story wasn’t scored due to retention). I’ve never personally emailed to ask why I didn’t win- I didn’t even know we could?

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Yeah me and my friend emailed them and we got the same answer. Its a bit disappointing because all this time I thought I lost because my story was bad and no one wanted to read it. It wasnt even graded to begin with :skull:

They probably lowered the retention benchmark for DD because only 3 countries were allowed to enter, Im sure its over 50% or just 50.

Yeah, I would really like to know this. Actually… maybe that’s how the contests work? They look at the retention first, then everything above a certain benchmark gets graded and they choose the winners from there?
Maybe it’s done that way rather than taking the retention percentage, the rubric score marks and finding the “top” stories based on a combination?
I’m speculating of course. I don’t actually know lol.

Lots of really, really good stories don’t win. Like just look at the Thriller contest. I can name at least four stories that I thought could/should have won.

The story I have that “lost” a contest is now one of my best performing in terms of reads. Just because you don’t win definitely doesn’t mean that you have a bad story or a story that no one would want to read.

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Yeah but this brings just another problem… when do they start grading? What if I pass benchmark after I’m disqualified for grading :grimacing:

I’d be curious to know that as well. Like I said- I’m speculating. I really have no idea what they actually do lol. For all I know they do keep the two measures separate, but that would mean that they would probably have to read all the stories, then at the end they’d find the top stories based on both measures (and also the fit to theme).

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I cant believe we are making conspiracy theories about Episodes grading system. I guess we hve no choice but to wait for the retention “tip” post.

[spoiler]The retention tip post be like:
More people continuing, more retention.
Thanks for tuning in for this months tip, see you next month.

I mean, it’s basically what happened with grading [/spoiler]

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And now the forum text effects hate me… Great!

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:rofl: It’s all we can do when we don’t have facts hahaha.

Apparently they’re working on a way for us to be able to see our own retention? That will be very useful.
I’d also like to know if they have any way of figuring out who “quit” an episode due to glitches. I know I have a story where a lot of people can’t even get past the first episode :rofl: and there were some issues with other stories for the recent Thriller contest too.
Also- does someone replaying your story add to your retention? Or does it need to be unique readers?

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Many things are still uncovered… And it took more than “a few weeks” D:

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Bump!