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

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.

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:

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?

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?

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.

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)