[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.