[Orion Elder]

Well, I had to disqualify a few stories due to violation of the rules, this time. I also entered this contest as a means to test if the 2,000 word limit was too rigid. All the judges agreed to increase the limit, myself included.

At the last minute I had to replace Ember (she dropped out of contact for a while). As such I was the third judge. My score is the average of the other two judges (I refrained from judging my own story ).

And here is the break down of the rankings of the top five:

Winner
Aiy'i's Manipulation by Noximist

1st Place
The Sane Sorcere by Fifi

2nd Place
Three Women by Molly O'Hara

3rd Place
The Dragon's Tear by Orion Elder

4th Place
The Modenoites Do Not Sacrifice by Fifi

For those not listed here, you should be receiving an e-mail (or already received it) today with details about how to find out about your ranking. Thanks much, and congratulations to all of you.

[Dulan]

3rd place sums up this competition nicely.

Note: I took no part in MUDcon, nor did I take part in any aspect of MUDcon. I'm just a cynical bastard that knows Ntanel's when he sees them. ^.^

[Orion Elder]

*shrug* Believe what you like.

Also, please don't pretend you know me, Dulan. You don't.

[Noximist]

Thanks so much for suggesting that three women couldn't possibly have created excellent stories without bias helping them; it's very pleasing to put a lot of work into something, only to have the experience cheapened by someone who wants to pin it on gender rather than ability.

Meh. I'm not even just saying this because I'm one of the listed people - I'd be speaking up regardless, trust me. You have no idea how bothersome it is to have people suggest that something was achieved based on breasts rather than effort, no matter how often I joke about the fact (see: MUD-Con ). Especially in the MUD community, where supposedly, guys generally -want- women to participate more?

[Molly]

I think you can rest easy, Noximist. It seems pretty obvious that Dulan's attack isn't directed at you, Fifi or me, but at Orion, and as far as I know, he is male.

I suppost Dulan has some private grudge that makes him air his opinions about something that isn't any of his business and that by his own admission he knows nothing about. If any complaints were to be made, they should come from the contestants, not him.

In any case, the stories will be posted shortly I believe. So, people, why not read them yourself and form your own opinions about them.

I have no doubt that Noximist's and Fifi's entries will be excellent - congratulations to both of you, by the way.

[Fifi]

Recently, there has been a lot of conversation in the literary community (which is a lot like the mudding community but with more MFA's) about the New Yorker. Apparently, some writers were posed nude (####, now I wish I'd paid more attention.) I suggest we all send along nude photos to be published with our stories...No... wait. Never mind.

I look forward to reading the stories of Noximist, Molly and Orion...and seeing the photos.

[Noximist]

Nude photos of random MUD-frequenting writers... it might get our hobby some exposure (har har), but more in that train-wreck sort of way.

Congrats to you two! I'm also anxiously awaiting the chance to read everyone's work - even the ones penned by lowly men.

*flees*

[Delerak]

Well if the other two judges were female then I simply must say to you 'maam, Bah!

[Noximist]

As it is now 7 PM and I'm actually awake (as opposed to 9 AM, when I am not), I've realized that my entire post had nothing to do with the issue at hand. Sorry for my lack of comprehension; I don't know the story behind the real problem, but at least I see what it is now.

*chat -noximist*

[Ntanel]

I do not understand Dulan's remark, was it an attack on Orion and I combined?

[Molly]

It's been well over a month since the result of this competition was announced, and still none of the stories have been published - let alone any from the competition before, which was what? - a year ago?

You arrange a competition, you get a lot of people to put down several hours of work to write a story for it, you get other people to put down the effort f judging it for you. And then you cannot even put down the effort yourself to have the stories converted to HTML, so that you can publish them for people to read?

I think that shows disrespect to both the contestants and the judges.

I think most people don't care much about the results. What we want is to READ those stories, so we can form an opinion of our own about them.

I think you should put all the stories up on your Webpage ASAP, and from BOTH the contests. I for one am getting very tired of waiting to read them.

I also don't think I'll bother sending in any entry for the next competition. It's not really worth the effort.

[Delerak]

I think you should be patient, tis a virtue. The competition is fairly new, and just because the stories havn't been put up yet doesn't mean they won't be. Some people have real lives.

-Delerak

[Orion Elder]

To put it simply, I have quite a bit to do in the MUDding community as well as my real life. I work on things when I get a chance. I didn't intend to post the stories from any of the contests, but after the first competition someone mentioned it and I figured 'why not.' The main point of that contest was to bring in interest on the MUD-Con event itself, give some notice to writers (hence the little graphical award they could post wherever), and a way to give away free advertising for MUDs who would like it for showing some interest in MUD-Con.

The main problem with this is that I do 99% of the work required on MUD Planet, ALONE. I have help from Samson on moderating the forums, and Chris Fewtrell (previously known as Trax) on working out the PHP at the rare times when I need it, but otherwise I do it all by myself.

I also do a number of other things which I really see no point in listing here. I also have a story from a couple of authors called Cold Desire, you may have heard of it, that I'm nearly two to three months behind on posting because I simply do not have the TIME to get it ready to post it with everything else I have to do.

Then I have a real life on top of all of that, in which I am currently trying to land a job and have spent quite a while working on resumes and all that fun stuff. Yes, I volunteer to do everything that I do. No one forced me into it, I do it because I've enjoyed this hobby for a number of years.

Now, I don't particularly care about the recognition, but I do expect patience when I'm doing something that no one else has volunteered to help me with (and I wouldn't take it, now, anyway... would feel like I guilted people into it), aside from Samson and Mr. Fewtrell.

You want the stories posted... that's great, and I'm glad there is interest in seeing them posted. When I get the chance to format and post them, I will. Until then, you will simply have to wait.

Never in my life have I seen a community which so much believes that it has a right to someone else's time.

As for the story competition, Molly, be my gues. After this, I don't even know if I'll run another one. It's not worth the bullsh*t.

[jornel]

I have to agree with Molly on this point.

Two of the winners of the previous story competition are busy, active, dedicated immortals on our mud. After they were informed that their stories won, they were promised a free blurb for our mud on mudplanet and a little graphic to put on our webpage. The blurb was put up clipped and poorly formatted to a very narrow 10 column width, and the graphic was never delivered. When one of them tried complaining, all he got back was insults and excuses about how busy Orion is in real life etc.

We decided not to participate in future mud con competitions and are curious whether others have had similar experiences.

[Orion Elder]

Well, let's go ahead and put out the whole story, since you seem to be putting out a clipped version to make me look bad, leaving out a number of the facts involved in this 'story'.

After the end of the competition, I asked for the adverts to post on MUD Planet. I received a response about it in which I was asked some questions about it. I waited quite a while (nearly a month after the first reply to my request for ads), and had to remind your immortals about sending it in. Once I posted the ads, I noticed my mistake in the wording of my request. Thus, I informed your immortals about the problem along with a request for a properly formatted advert, in which I went beyond (by a good bit) what I'm currently offering to the winners, as well as extending the advertisement quite a bit.

I then waited some more (again, nearly a month), on one of your Immortals. The other didn't even seem to deem it worthy of a reply. During that time I left up the clipped advertisement. I asked for new versions the day I noticed the problem, and I left the clipped adverts up the entire time to give MORE exposure to the sites they linked to. Those advertisements EXPIRED and I still had not received a reply.

So, I sent a final offer. Get me the advertisement by a certain time or I would assume they had no desire to have the ads posted. One of your immortals responded late, and at the time I took the way the post was worded to be offensive to my offer (whether you may or may not agree, I don't really care), the other never did.

So, your MUD received 30 days of clipped ads, and because they couldn't even deem it important enough to send me a reply on time, I clipped the time on the new ad to 15 days. That's 45 days of advertisements, over all, that your MUD received.

As for the graphics, I wait until at least one of the contestants asks about them. The story competition set mentions 'if they want the graphic.' No one ever asked. When your immortal asked, I delivered. Your claim I did otherwise is a blatant lie as the graphics are posted on your page, quite plainly for everyone to see.

So, let's recap, shall we? I asked for the ads. Your immortals made me wait nearly a month, before I lost patience with them and asked again. I made a mistake in the request for the adverts, which I admitted. I offered to make up for it by upping the ad to 45 days instead of just 30 and almost doubling the length of the ads allowed to current winners. To which one didn't even deem fit to reply, and the other made me wait again for nearly a month, while your ad remained to give you added exposure. When I lost patience a second time, and requested it by a certain time it was then blatantly disregarded that I set a time limit on this ad, then sent one in, in a way that to me seemed offensive. Not to mention that I took the time, regardless of how busy I might have been, to get the banners ready for them as I said I would.

In all honesty, had your immortal deemed fit to ASK me if the offer still stood, I would not have taken issue with their response. Instead they gave me an 'I hope it doesn't matter' and then tacked their ad on. That, to be quite frank, royally ****ed me off. But, I kept my response under control when I was to the point that I was about to be quite rude, to which I was told I was being 'holier than thou.'

I don't really give a #### if your immortals got a bad impression of me. I was rather patient with them. Unlike me now, they weren't facing the prospect of formatting a number of stories to get them posted. They had to write a 200 character advertisement. I'm sorry if my heart doesn't bleed for you and your obviously wounded immortals.

In any case, I'm done with this conversation. I've got better things to do at the moment that argue with people who seem to believe they have a right to my time. This is my explanation, and if it's not good enough, that's just too damned bad.

Added:
Just in case anyone is wondering, the page with the graphics on it, which Jornel claims I did not supply, are here and should be quite obvious:

http://crimson.wolfpaw.net/stories.html

[Sereina]

This is exactly why I just quit MUDding.
Jesus ****ing tapdancing christ, you people are petty assholes.
Don't bother sitebanning me, I'm out of here.
I hope that you one day have a decently mature slew of peopel to deal with, Orion.

[Darkenvai]

Well, seeing as how the gloves are off and tap dancing quickly over Sereina's charming little missive, let us fill in the bits that Orion overlooked, shall we?
After the competition you made a request for the ads. The request you made was very unclear and I sent you several emails asking for clarification on different points. You replied to just one of those emails. I also asked you about the icon in one of my emails and, if my memory serves me well, someone asked on TMS about them, too. In any case, you wrote on TMS that the icons would take some time as you wanted to prepare something special. Fair enough in itself, but it lends the lie to your claim that no one ever asked, we did ask and you made a promise which you did not keep. Never at any time did you say that we had to guess when these special time-consuming icons would be ready and then ask you for them or that you would assume that we didn't want them at all. This is what you claimed in your email to me and what you are still maintaining in your last thread to Jornel where YOU have the gall to call him a liar. You did eventually send the icon, after I had repeated my request and, if anyone cares to compare the icon on our homepage and graphics on the Mud-Con page, they can draw their own conclusions as to whether you really did spend time on making something special for the winners of the competition...or not.

It is true that we made our submissions late. This, as I explained, was partially due to us being busy, and not discourtesy as you repeatedly claimed, later exacerbated by my computer being forcefully and unexpectedly reformatted. It was also partially due to the lack of information provided vis-a-vis the receipt of prizes at the outset, as well as you changing things halfway through. It wasn't helped either by your nitpicking over me being over with my word count by one word(! when, in fact, you hadn't even run the ad through a word checker and I was inside the originally allotted amount. You said that you counted it twice by hand. If you are so very busy why on earth are you checking word counts by hand? Anyway, each time, my mails came with apologies and certainly didn't contain anything that could be considered offensive by somebody who sprays expletives around with the frequency you do! The apologies were given unconditionally until the end, when your rude and offensive manner and the utter hypocrisy of your mails got the better of me. Only then did I ask you how - and this is especially true when seen in the light of your mail to Molly about being busy - you could adopt such a tone towards us. Why is it that only you are allowed to be busy? Why is it that when we can't make a deadline because of RL concerns we are being discourteous, or if we don't see an email in an in tray that's overflowing with them, we are being rude but that, for you, these are perfectly plausible excuses? Once again, I remained within the bounds of decency at all times with my mail.

You did offer us an icon and advertising on Mud Planet. But the icon was an age in coming, and you made us trim our advert to microscopic proportions after leaving the first advert hanging half-cooked and looking like a real amateur's job. You say that we got longer advertising, I say that a half-baked, truncated advert is worse than none at all. It makes us look like chumps. And, one thing that you have forgotten all the way through, be it in emails to me, or posts to TMS, is that you aren't doing us some big favour by awarding us these things, you are merely giving us the prizes winning the competition. Why is it that we have to go cap in hand for them?

You have stated that you don't know whether you will bother with another storytelling competition or not. Neither I nor Cywry will be there nor will others, it seems. Most competitions manage to anger and alienate the losers. You, on the other hand, have the remarkable distinction of even alienating your winners! We are all busy sometimes, and those who want to excuse themselves for being busy should have the good grace to excuse others in the same way. You have lacked that from the outset. The way I see it when you are busy, it's all about priorities. It's obvious that your priorities don't lie with the competition or the participants. You should at least give it a good hard think before you attempt another competition.

[Darkenvai]

Please excuse the stray emoticon in my last post.

[the_logos]

deleted

[WarHound]

After reading this thread, I have the strangest urge to do harm to myself, and others....

BUT, hurry it up Orion I wanna read everyones stories!

I'll leave you all with a quote, that I feel is very fitting:

Originally Posted by Tarantino wrote: Don't think, you're a ****in' idiot.

WarHound

[Sereina]

And it never occured to anyone besides Orion to act like an adult?
So your story didn't get published. Orion told you why it was not done yet. Believe it or not, the man doesn't exist to meet your every need.
It is now time to move on.

[Molly]

I seem to have opened up a can of worms with what I thought was a rather modest request, that the stories from both competitions get published on the Website. Below is a small selection of quotes from the different reactions:

Originally Posted by Delerak: I think you should be patient, tis a virtue. Orion: Never in my life have I seen a community which so much believes that it has a right to someone else's time. Journel: When one of them tried complaining, all he got back was insults and excuses about how busy Orion is in real life etc. We decided not to participate in future mud con competitions and are curious whether others have had similar experiences. Orion: I don't really give a #### if your immortals got a bad impression of me. I was rather patient with them. Unlike me now, they weren't facing the prospect of formatting a number of stories to get them posted. They had to write a 200 character advertisement. I'm sorry if my heart doesn't bleed for you and your obviously wounded immortals. Sereina: This is exactly why I just quit MUDding. Jesus ****ing tapdancing christ, you people are petty assholes. Don't bother sitebanning me, I'm out of here. Darkenvai: Most competitions manage to anger and alienate the losers. You, on the other hand, have the remarkable distinction of even alienating your winners! Warhound: After reading this thread, I have the strangest urge to do harm to myself, and others.... BUT, hurry it up Orion I wanna read everyones stories! Sereina: And it never occured to anyone besides Orion to act like an adult? So your story didn't get published. Orion told you why it was not done yet. Believe it or not, the man doesn't exist to meet your every need.

This all leaves me with a rather bad taste in the mouth.

To start with Sereina, whose reasons for posting these rather offensive comments are not very clear to me:
Do you have any secret knowledge, as the foundation for your cocksure statements about Orion being the only ‘adult’ person around? Because it doesn’t really seem to be founded on the content of the thread.

As Darkenvai so aptly put it; most competitions tend to alienate the LOSERS. Here the people that are complaining are all the WINNERS. Shouldn’t that at least have made you THINK a bit, before posting those sweeping insults, concerning matters you really don’t seem to know much about?

About patience:
Sure, patience is a virtue. I am usually pretty patient. I waited patiently and silently about a YEAR, for the stories from the first contest to be posted. Then a second competition is launched, and still no sign of any stories. And judging from Orion’s statements it seems rather dubious if they’ll ever be posted. So how long do you think we should be patient, before at least raising the question? Isn’t a year a rather long time to wait?

About the competition:
Isn’t it reasonable to assume, that when you enter a Storytelling contest, the winning stories get published somewhere?
I think I can safely say that most of the contestants had two reason for entering.
1. We like to write stories,     and
2. We expected some positive exposure for our Muds.
And I am not talking about a 1 month’s ‘blurb’ on a not very frequently visited Website, and even less about some graphic to put up on our own Website. I am talking about the publicity you would get from people actually READING your story, and possibly liking it enough to take a look at the Mud where it emanated from.
I think this is the reason why we all are feeling a bit disappointed now – (I won’t use the stronger word cheated)?

About Orion:
We all have a real life to deal with. We all have to make priorities. My own priority, outside RL, is the Mud I am managing. That’s why I don’t run any public competitions, or put up any Websites with the ambition to be of public interest for the Mud Community. I think that if you do, you also make a commitment to the Public to finish what you started. If you don’t have the time to follow through a competition you arranged yourself, then I don’t think you should have started it in the first place. And the same goes for maintaining a Website, actually.

I don’t claim to have a right to anybody’s time. Except of course when they START something, on their own initiative, that makes me invest my own time, and then not follow it through, making me feel that my time and effort was wasted.

Maybe you should also consider that posting those stories might actually bring some more visitors to your Website. Is it really that much work to format a few stories? And isn’t that the main reason for running a Website – to attract visitors?

[Orion Elder]

I had chosen not to post to this thread again, but Molly's reasoned statements have given me the impression that at least SHE deserves a reply. Molly, it's like this. In 2001 I quit college. Since then I've been running my own business. I'm not exactly making a fortune doing it, but I do what I can to get by.

For the past several months, I've been working on getting a 'normal' job. When something like that is weighing heavily on your mind... MUD-stuff just doesn't rate very high up there. Hence, I've done very little on ANY of my projects. I have done quite a bit as far as coding, but that is because it helps me take my mind off of things... everything else was more or less put on hold.

Before that, I spent most of my time working on the business I mentioned before. I worked on my projects when I could. It took me a long time just to get MUD Planet and the other sites to look how I wanted.

Formatting one story takes me half an hour or so (if I don't get distracted for whatever reason). I read the story, fix the typos in it, format it, then post it, add the calls to it so it can be called. If the author hasn't ever had a story posted, I have to also set up the author directory for the author, put in their bio, etc.

Now, as I mentioned, I never PLANNED to post the stories (I think that is reflected in how I worded the information ... I said something to the effect of 'I can post them if I want to&#39. After the first MUD-Con, I was busy working on my business, and posting those stories simply was not a priority... whenever I had a bit of free time, I never felt like I had enough to do the job properly.

MUD-Con II came along and I was still working on what I could, when I could. I started work on formatting those stories, but I only managed to make it through one of them (which is posted, by Noximist). Then I got caught up in working on everything again.

Every time I think I might have enough time, I find I have something that is a bit more important to worry about. This is speaking strictly of my real-life matters, as well.

During my free time I work on a ton of MUD related stuff. I work on MUD Planet (the HTML, content, PHP, etc), Chronicles (the HTML, PHP, content, snippets, codebase, building, prepping for releases), MUD-Con (the HTML, PHP, content, prepping the codebase, and running it) which is hosted by Samson, MSC (I find the judges, I check if the stories fit the rules, I give out the prizes, I prepare the results, and I post about it), WGC Trivia/Chaos bot on I3, *nix (the I3 router I've been working on), The SAFE (most people don't know about this yet), several ideas that people have mentioned needing/wanting, The MPMF bug lists (maintain and update, with help from Samson), moderate the MPMF (with help from Samson), and I also help out on other MUDs when asked.

Now, I'm not listing this for the recognition, as I'm sure someone will get that impression. I'm listing it so you'll have an idea of just what I do. And that is just the MUD-related stuff. I do all of that alone, except the bit about hosting MUD-Con, moderating the forums, and of course when Mr. Fewtrell helps me out on some code now and then.

I generally try to avoid complaining about it because it's not something I was asked to do; it is something I volunteered to do. But, I get a bit angry when people expect something from me when they've done nothing to help me with it.

You complain about the stories not being posted, and say it can't take long to format them in HTML. Have you ever offered to find out my formatting rules and do it as a voluntary thing? No. None of the authors did.

Today I received a reply from one of the companies I sent my resume to. If the next few days go well, I might finally have the time to worry about those stories. If not, it's back to looking for a job. I work on what I can, when I can. Those stories are simply not a priority to me, when I have other matters on my mind.

I understand some of you may think I'm being unfair in expecting people to send me those ads when I haven't posted those stories... but I'm not. I have nine stories to post at 30 minutes per story, or there about. Those ads should take no more than 10 minutes, one time (100 something character ad). I have to spend about 30 minutes, nine times.

Do I think my time is more valuable? Of course I do. I'd be lying if I said my time is not more valuable to me than others is to me. Does that make me hypocritical? No, it makes me human. My things are more valuable to me, than other people's are to me. It's that simple.

But, I am not attempting to force anyone to do anything. I provided an either/or situation. Either get me the ad, or I won't take it later. Yet I'm being given 'post the damned stories'.

So, to me it's a simple matter of priorities. I will do what I need to, how I need to, and if that doesn't satisfy everyone else... well, I'm sorry. But I'm not going to change my position on it. I will post the stories, but it will be when I have the time to do it, not when others think I should.

Hopefully everyone can accept that, because that is how it will be done.

---

Suffice it to say that I and Darkenvai obviously have a different impression of how our events went, and I'll leave it at that. As I said, I really don't give a #### about their impression of me... one thing I've learned over the years is that you can't please everybody, so don't bother trying... and I'm not going to.

---

Ok, hopefully this will clarify it to everyone. Later, all.

[Fifi]

A little off topic here, but I'm wondering about first north american serial rights and the possibilities of selling these stories later. When the stories are posted does this count as published? Is it possible at this point to opt not to have one's story posted in hopes of attracting a print credit with said story later?

[Iluvatar]

You authored the story Fifi and a copy of it would indeed be 'published' if Orion posted it. It's your copyright though and you can do what you please with it.

[Delerak]

I can see both ends of the spectrum here. Molly makes a good point in saying that if someone commits to a public contenst, stating what the winners will get and it isn't what they thought it would be, could get expasperating. And I also see Orion's side of it, in that he doesn't have the time to post it. I want to stop and question why he bothers to use his time to respond to everything here then. If it was me and I was that constrained I wouldn't post at all, I would focus on getting it done, while at the same time looking for my job.

-Delerak

People, calm down.

Heaven knows what's going on but I sense a clash of egos here instigating a battle not worth fighting.

Besides, ****ing of Orion is my job! (joke, don't get mad about this one señor Orion)

[Samson]

I for one can vouch for his situation and know that he's really got very little time to be dealing with much of anything lately. Real life has a tendancy to catch up with people, and it's caught up with Orion. I would simply suggest that everyone involved calm down and just let this pass. If and when he's got the time to do it, I'm sure he'll be happy to format and post the stories. ####, I'd do it myself if I knew exactly what it was he wanted done to them, or if I had them in my possession.

As for whether or not there will be another competition, the topic is being discussed among those of us involved. Chances aren't looking good though since the reaction always seems to be less than positive once it's over.

Now for a sugegstion to the winning authors:

Why not put your stories up someplace on your own, and then forward some links to them to either myself or Orion. Seems like that would at least solve part of the problem. You could even write up a short bio for yourself and have that handy as well. Linking to them would take up far less time for him to handle and it just might put this issue to rest