A couple seeks ago, I discovered that votes were being added instead of updated in many cases because of a bug in the code. It seems that I fixed the bug but failed to clean up all the extra votes until recently. Green Fingered Skinner told me that he seemed to get brain points just by editing his material and… Lo and Behold! It’s true! And the bug I fixed didn’t have anything to do with it. That was another bug I just fixed. That’s Litmocracy for ya, full of bugs. You find ‘em, I’ll kill ‘em. Someday maybe we’ll have a QA team.
Have you received your copy?
If you request a copy of the magazine, I will leave your email in my Inbox until I’ve sent it to you. If I’m out of copies or I receive your request when I’m not home, that’s the queue for your request. I use my Inbox as a reminder of things I have to do. There are some emails in there that I intend to get to “eventually” and so I have gotten into the habit of ignoring them for long periods of time. If you request a copy, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you don’t get it when expected (or even just for an update on when I expect to send it).
Hurry up and Complain
Better register your complaints about this change because otherwise, I might actually do it: Since so much of Poetry is Les, and so much of Mind Change is me, and there’s no indication, despite all the voting, on what is a good mix of poetry, philosophy, and short stories, I’m considering making only one category called “submissions”. It is in the spirit of the site, which is to use technology to help people find quality quickly. I can’t think of good reasons not to do this, and I’m having trouble remembering why I thought it was a good idea to have multiple categories in the first place. Can someone play Devil’s advocate here?
In a voting heirarchy you can’t have poetry competing with short story competing with opinion, etc. What I would prefer is to have all entries automatically repost in the forum for discussion (or at least a one-click option for the author to do so). Also like to see a Litmocracy myspace page, like 3am, Word Riot, etc. I spend most of my lit chat time on myspace; lot of good writers there.
Thanks *very* much for the suggestion. Litmocracy’s MySpace account is here.
You wrote “In a voting heirarchy you can’t have poetry competing with short story competing with opinion, etc.” Is that because one of these categories would crowd out the others or because it would just be too hard to vote, or because of some other reason?
Stick to categorization!
Each of them are unique in their own way. They can’t be competed with each other!
I dont think that crowdedness of one category over other is the issue, rather it depends on the majority of voters having interest in reading only a particular type of writing piece. If majority likes to read Short-stories( which most of the time I’ve found they do!) then poetry or opinion entries will be wiped out of the way…
I think that it is a lot more fun and easier to writeshort stories than anything else, and that fact makes it seem that short stories are what people like reading. However, I recognize the possibility that the opposite is true - we may all like other forms writing as much or more. I see no evidence either way, except for the tendency of members to writeshort stories rather than anything else.
Note that I have not collapsed all the categories, and I am now more doubtful that I will, thanks to you and Stokey - and Deminizer also suggested that keeping the categories is better. I think that I might handle this the complicated way: I will simply make a new category called “everything” and make every submission automatically be added to it so anyone who wishes to vote a poem against a short story may do so.
I’m very interested in seeing how one of my Mind Change pieces would fare against a short story or a poem.
Categories! Categories!! Categories!!! I like to have an idea of what I am about to read. Mostly because an author can’t do any better than his best comedy (in the modern sense); I love to laugh ! I like a good science fiction too, especially when I can laugh out loud with it!
I like the categories. Categories also make it fun to think about what kind of thing to write, next. I do think there should be SOME kind of limit as to how many entries that a particular person can post into a single category… You’ve already got some sort of limitation set up so that one can’t post, GENERALLY, unless one’s earned a certain number of brain points, and unless others have, too, haven’t you? (I don’t remember the exact details at the moment…) I was thinking maybe you could eliminate or minimize the problem of one category being dominated by one person’s submissions, by setting it up so that you can’t submit a second submission to a particular category until at least a couple of other people have submitted something after that, too. Like, kinda?
I know there are some other literary sites and magazines that forbid people from even submitting anything for a year after the magazine has published them, just so as to get some variety. A whole year without submitting seems a bit draconian, but maybe there could be some sort of waiting time per category.
Just musing. I like the idea of being a “regular contributor” and dammit, it’s fun to compete… but on the other hand, it wouldn’t look like so much of an honor if the next issue of Literal Translations was ENTIRELY by me. Odd, but true.
Whups. And by the way, I can’t, I simply CAN’T vote in your poll because there isn’t any way that I could say that I would rather see an excellent piece of work from one category rather than an excellent piece from another. I think you should keep the categories and limit the number of postings per person to each, for some time period, or per Literal Translations volume, or something. (Number of postings per category per person allowed could be a function of how many different people have actually posted, too. If 2000 people post in “Ask G.W.”, then it wouldn’t seem so bad if I posted 10 times…)
I don’t want postings to expire, either, because there is a lot of good stuff by a bunch of people here that I would like to see published, and some of it’s been hanging around in the top ten for ages. Suppose you had a rule where you could only post in a category if you had fewer than (say) 3 postings in the top ten in that category. Eventually you’d either make it into the magazine and be able to post again, or get voted out of the top ten, and then you’d be able to post again. Then, maybe, you could decide between posting something new or reposting your poor old thang that finally got booted out of the top ten! There are other literary sites and magazines to submit to while you were waiting. You could still hang around in the forums and stuff.
I personally don’t think that short stories are easier to write, or that short stories are necessarily easier or more fun to read than other categories. I guess you could provide incentive for people to submit in other categories than their preferred ones, by imposing something like the above limitations.
I do like the idea of a kind of all-out grand prize thingie, where the overall best-rated post from all categories somehow got decided and recognized. How about booby prizes, too? Like, a competition among posts that have been in the top ten for three years and never won, and never fallen out of the top ten, either?
Geeze I’m long-winded.
I just don’t want you to exterminate anything important!
I figured stuff would have to happen as this site got bigger, but it’s really cool and unique and I’m sure it can stay that way.
As always, I very much appreciate the thoughts! I guess I need to quickly and simply state my concern with the suggestion of limiting posts by one member to one category: I don’t want to make it more difficult to post. I want to make it easier for me to justify using stuff from other categories. Now for a confession. A quick one.
Because I choose when to accept a submission, I am able to ignore a category for a long time. It is impossible for me to do this ignoring in a way that doesn’t reflect some kind of bias (in the case of Mind change, we can call it an anti-bias ). This is one of the reasons I wanted to have my Mind Change pieces compete with Short Stories and poems.
Anyway, your arguments have all swayed me and bolstered my sense of having made good changes in the past (because of the lack of protest when I made them ). I will NOT get rid of categories, but I will make a new catchall in which everyone can vote for everything, and I will probably even add a rule that says a piece that stays at the top in catchall *automatically* gets accepted.
[quote author=julianyway]there isn’t any way that I could say that I would rather see an excellent piece of work from one category rather than an excellent piece from another.
I think we’ve all been there even within a category, and I totally understand. We choose between one poem that Les wrote and another that he wrote despite the difficulty. The analogy in my head is a see-saw, perfectly balanced, or so it seems. But they are never perfectly balanced. The reason both ends stay up is because of friction: the heavier side cannot fall because its extra weight isn’t enough to overcome the friction. It is physically impossible for both side to weigh exactly the same, and if we put enough effort into it, we can figure out which side is heavier. Use any reason you want. Obviously, I vote for status-quo changing stuff because the status quo is Satan to me. It is everything about existence itself that I hate. I vote for stories and poems based on how much they might change other people who read them (if the quality and entertainment value is close enough).
There is a school of philosophy that promotes the idea of a single driving goal - an unattainable one at that (because attaining it means your life loses meaning, by definition). If you do identify such a goal for yourself, then you can answer the poll from that viewpoint. Even if you perform a micro-sized task of the same nature - identify a goal for the next hour or relative to a specific person, and use that to answer the poll (of course, that means your answer will change over time, but that’s ok!), then you can answer it.
It is physically impossible for both side to weigh exactly the same, and if we put enough effort into it, we can figure out which side is heavier.
It is NOT physically impossible for both sides to weigh exactly the same! For it to be physically impossible it would have to be incompatible with the laws of physics that they should both weigh the same. It might be unlikely, but it’s not physically impossible.
As a matter of fact, when I’ve read some of Les’s poems side by side, I have been hard put to choose one over the other. Finally, just to get on with it, I’ve sometimes kind of flipped a mental coin. It might just be a matter of the state of my digestion at the time.
I could vote in your poll if it were expressly supposed to be a poll about what I would vote for given the current state of my digestion (a bit billious at the moment… as a matter of fact, for some reason)(Not that you asked!). I just don’t feel that I could honestly choose one of the options over any of the others in a way that would be very meaningful.
About the physics thing… I submit that physics cannot and will not ever reflect the perfect exactness of mathematics. Specifically, there’s Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Generally, there’s the idea that reality is messy. For “all practical purposes,” certainly, the two sides can be close enough in weight to be called “exactly the same” - and maybe that is your point - we have to start relying on “not very meaningful” methods of choosing one over the other sometimes. I agree.
The full-circularity of this discussion can be approximated: If many people agree with you, then we should expect a mix of submissions that would otherwise be categorized apart from each other to appear in Literal Translations (because people don’t / can’t / won’t consistently favor one category over another), rather than a bunch of short stories, a few poems, and a sprinkling of submissions from other categories. For the voting mechanism to achieve that, it has to lump them all together and trust the membership.
Anyway, when I make the code add everything to a CatchAll category, we’ll see how it goes. I’m kind of anxious for it now
I absolutely love the idea of the CatchAll Category. I mean, I had been thinking of it all along. Seriouslyj! I just didn’t SAY anything. Heh heh. No, seriously. I just didn’t SAY anything. Heh heh.
Well, fine. Unfortunately I have forgotten the exact wording of said principle.
It’s interesting to ponder the relationships between Messy Old Reality and Yucky Annoying Mathematics.
I still contend that it’s POSSIBLE for two things to weigh (or be) exactly identical.
It’s never going to actually happen (or if it does, we won’t notice).
So on that score, you’re right.
You’re pragmatic, which is a good characteristic in someone who is trying to actually DO something.
Cheers!
I’m really happy about Couch and Blanky. Now I can die.
I have to take it all back. You’re right that it is possible for them to weigh exactly the same. In fact, I was just thinking that the analogy itself is illuminated by the possibility. There are ways to make the lighter side gradually become heavier, and at some point, it will be changing from being heavier to being lighter. During that time, because reality is messy, it will flip flop back and forth between being heavier and lighter, perhaps at certain moments being exactly the same, depending on what theory of physics you use (continuous or quantum gravity and location). Theoretical and quantum physics aside, for all practical purposes (even selecting the ‘better’ of two submissions), they are the same. At that point, you flip a coin. Fun digression though (at least for me - apologies to everyone else).
We will miss you. Have you spawned? Are they at all (intellectually) like you?
of what I am about to read. Mostly because an author can’t do any better than his best comedy (in the modern sense); I love to laugh 
! I like a good science fiction too, especially when I can laugh out loud with it!
). This is one of the reasons I wanted to have my Mind Change pieces compete with Short Stories and poems.
). I will NOT get rid of categories, but I will make a new catchall in which everyone can vote for everything, and I will probably even add a rule that says a piece that stays at the top in catchall *automatically* gets accepted.
