I saw that the Halloween contest is on and that 13 stories have been accepted so far.
I know that as a non-premium reader I can't vote... but do we get to read them at some point? When do non-premium folks get to read the Halloween contest stories?
When the voting is over.
Voting starts on Oct 31, with the authors hidden. I don't remember how long voting runs - somewhere between a week and a month. After the voting is done, some time in November, the winners will be announced and all the stories will be available, with the authors visible.
In the meantime, you can check out the entries from previous years.
After the voting is done, some time in November, the winners will be announced and all the stories will be available
The 3 winners remain Premier only for a period of time. Maybe 6 months? I don't remember.
Per Rules 9 and 10 for the contest
9 - By participating in a contest, the author grants World Literature Publishing Co. the right to publish the contest entry on the site in the free area for a minimum of 2 years after the contest end date. (You retain all copyrights, but you are agreeing to keep your entry on the site for a minimum of 2 years.)
10 - By participating in a contest, the author grants World Literature Publishing Co. exclusive right to publish winning entries in the site's premier area for a period of 6 months. Due to this rule, stories previously posted on other sites are ineligible to participate. After the six months exclusivity period, the author can publish the entry elsewhere.
We have our winners.
In Storiesonline's Fourteenth Halloween Writing contest, our winners are:
Do Me a Favor by G Younger in First place.
Hey Mishta by Tantrayaan came in second place.
The Witch's Brew by Charlie Foxtrot landed in third.
Congratulations to our Winners.
Kudos to the winners. Looks like a tight race there between 1-2 and 3-4.
Great job all... Look forward to reading the top 3.
Looks like a tight race there between 1-2 and 3-4.
Is there a way to list all entries sorted by score? Of course 1–3 are, but the rest are listed alphabetically.
I am curious about something, but need to see all the stories listed from highest to lowest score.
The author who wrote the winner has a history of pulling his stories after a while, I'm not expecting him to do that for at least 6 months so the 4th-placed story won't become premier only.
I did not read that many of the offerings because after a few of them I thought "Life's too short for this" but was rather surprised that the story I really liked did not make the podium. The author - Vonalt - had never registered with me before.
The author who wrote the winner has a history of pulling his stories after a while, I'm not expecting him to do that for at least 6 months so the 4th-placed story won't become premier only.
It should be noted that Authors can't directly pull their own stories. They have to put in a request to Lazeez to take them down.
Switching a story to premier only is different.
I'm not certain which you meant to refer to.
In this case it should be obvious, firstly because the "top three" are premier-only for six months as part of the terms of the contest, secondly because you frequent the forums enough to know that the author regularly pulls older stories (ok, he tells Lazeez to do it).
I remember another Halloween contest (2017) where his "The Chosen" was the winner. If you look at the results for that contest now you will see that his story is no longer mentioned and that is because he later removed it, the three stories below his all moved up a place.
I remember another Halloween contest (2017) where his "The Chosen" was the winner. If you look at the results for that contest now you will see that his story is no longer mentioned and that is because he later removed it, the three stories below his all moved up a place.
That was a bug. Fixed.
When I designed the system originally, I didn't have the foresight to make it still work when an author removes a winner 3 years or more after the contest.
The story that became #3 was actually duplicated below.
Now it works as it should. If a winner is missing, then nothing replaces it and the rank is preserved. There are several contests where one of the winners has been deleted. Now the results still work.