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. ^.^

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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:

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.

Please excuse the stray emoticon in my last post.

deleted