24 replies to this topic

[Ruinus]

You're talking about the CBUB Monthly Challenges?

[bigballerju]

My god do you whine and complain. You take CBUB way too seriously.

Enough already.

Edit: What you said about the Judges was not a smart move on your part Anu.

[Lunacyde]

Reason's you are a whiner...See topic Title^.

[Shoggoth breeder]

[force_echo]

You're completely right about everything Anu. Everyone on this site is a huge power-abusing bully that crushes the little guys under their feet. There's just not enough love going around the forum. and worst of all, everyone seems to be against you. You're so oppressed, that even non-sentient BOTS are after you (I'm talking to you Castillo). You're the only one in the history of the site that gets called out on, I mean, it's not like anyone else on the site has ever been made fun of for their writing, or their grammar, or their debating, or just for being an idiot. It's completely the responsibility of the mods and admins to make sure no one gets their feelings hurt on the internet, I mean, it's not like they have better things to do right?

After all, what kind of writing website, or real life institution, ENCOURAGES criticism of its members? Outrageous. Whatever happened to the good old 1st grade when everyone told you you were perfect? Whatever happened to "there are no such things as stupid questions?". Whatever happened to your parents telling you you were beyond failure? I too, think Electricferret should become a site promoting self-entitlement, that way, no one will ever get their feelings hurt ever again, and everyone will be happy all the time! Everyone always rails on my opinions! They're MY opinions, which means they are beyond criticism! Giving your opinion on my opinion is blasphemous, what is this, a socialist country?! I too, want to make dozens of stupid highly intelligent topics that everyone will post on. Why doesn't everyone on this website think I'm a genius? Why doesn't everyone comment on MY insightful, highly intelligent topics with an in-depth discussion? Why do I get graded down on my matches for things I don't think are important? Because I don't think they're important, they shouldn't be important to anyone on this website, I mean, it's not like everyone has the right to grade however they want to right?! My criteria are the only ones that apply, and anything less than an B obviously means that the grader hates me! I bet this is the ONLY place on the internet where this happens. Something must be fundamentally wrong with this website.

All in all, I completely agree with Anu. Electric ferret is a self-depreciating, bully-filled, shithole of a website, and something needs to change. F*ck you guys. Me, Anu, and RedemptionX are the only intelligent people on this site. Everyone else is an idiot.

[kainboa]

7. Grammar...We should not get judged on how well we write but how well we create the story and the setup. This is NOT a grammar course or a study in how to write english in the best way possible! This forum should think twice about saying that you are going to take off points or what not for a very creative battle simply because a comma was in the wrong place. This seriously kills the fun and from what I see a lot of people who were here even since I came along don't post anymore. People just want to have a good time and constantly telling them that this or that is not written well when NOBODY gets paid to write anything doesn't sound right to me. If its FUN then let people HAVE fun no matter how well or poorly they write. Its not fair to say that my battle was not as good as another battle simply because one noun or adjective was used better. Just seems wrong.

It is stated in the Challenge post, that the matches will be graded based on "creativity, uniqueness and all that writing mumbo jumbo."

Now, since I didn't write the initial post, I can't be 100% certain, but I'm guessing that "all that writing mumbo jumbo" is stuff like grammar etc.

[RakaiThwei]

[LoneWolf]

I think if you submit a well-written story this month it will be graded fairly. I am one of the judges and I have no bias toward any member here.

[silversurfer092]

Anu, there is a reason you get no respect around here. It's because of shit like this.

[Ruinus]

Ok, since this is about the Monthly Challenges, I'll try to respond to this as best as I can.

1. The Judges...the main reason i won't enter a cbub challenge is because the judges for one already have some people in their pocket. Now that is not to say that they are corrupt yet there are some "favorites' around here and they are the apple of plenty an eye. The Judges scrutinize these battles in a lot of cases depending on who the person is and I am not convinced they look at the battles objectively. Also the judges have an idea that they already know reasons your battle is good or bad and honestly, what makes it so bad when its more your personal bias than the actual objectivity that should be used when judging? That isn't fair when you know that the judges already feel that they know more about the characters or battles than you would ever know. They already feel that they have the authority to judge your work on their OWN view which again isn't the best way to look at it in all cases. I can't see how they truthfully are objective and keep their emotions out of it..

Speaking for myself (and since there were only 3 judges prior to these last two months that's a pretty big portion f the judges) I can say that this is false. In fact I'll go through each of my results so far:

CBUB May Challenge

CBUB April Challenge

CBUB March Challenge

Is there any bias towards the contestants in that? I'd say that there isn't-hell some of those people I gave high scores to I don't even know. JohnnyChanny and Shadowflesh come to mind. Really though, most of those contestants I only vaguely know through some mibbit chats. Also, I've abmitted several times on this board that I don't read comics, watch cartoons, or read several of the books that most of the characters on this site come from, so there's no possible way I could have a pre-conceived notion about the characters or the match based on the contestant.

2. Characters..if you don't pick the right characters that people feel need to be in a certain battle then the people looking at the battle are going to look at it as if the battle was not the correct one to even choose. I have seen way too many situations here where if its a character that people don't care to research or don't know well, they will automatically reject your story just because of that. You don't see people win these challenges that are using characters that people don't know that well. You shouldn't win based on what character is chosen, yet again those judging it know that this is a reason they view it how they do.

This is blatantly false. Let's look at the winners for each CBUB Monthly challenge so far.

CBUB May Challenge > Lonewolf > Carnage vs Spider-man

CBUB April Challenge > Shadowflesh > Jack vs Korra

CBUB March Challenge > DSkillz > Santa Claus vs Apokolips

Are they all well known characters? Yes they are. Did they win because they used well-known characters? No. Now I admit that my descriptions of two of these is rather weak (a simple one-line sentence), but that's my judging style. I'm not judging people on a rigid metric of grammar, paragraph structure, pacing, etc (though I do keep that in mind) but rather as my impression of the story. And so far the winning posts of each challenge have been incredible and I didn't feel the need to make long winded posts about how awesome they are.

The idea that less well known characters can't compete in these challenges is wrong too. Go back and read my results for each month, there is not a single time I scored someone low because I didn't recognize the characters nor was any entry ever rejected becaues it featured unknown characters.

3. Rewards...what are really the rewards but getting your name put somewhere? All that thinking and having a few people say ..good job isn't much different when the judges get pleased with battles that you write on a daily basis. So what are you really gaining from it except some bragging rights that you really can't take with you outside of the forum? There are so many people that don't even know this forum or what you do so the only thing you can do is be pleased with yourself and go from there. This forum has been around for a long time and they can't come up with something better to offer you than a posting? Look, no offense intended yet can't even win a poster or something like that or even a downloadable comic? I don't see it as a big deal to offer something for the challenges if people are going to work hard.

This is your own personal opinion here that is based on the "merit" of the "reward", so that's fine. Yes, to you it might not be a great reward to have your name put up on a banner on an online site or to have your entry put on a thread for all time on this website. And I can totally buy that.

However, obviously some people don't care if the "reward" isn't a physical actual trophy or $20 bill they can spend somewhere. This is shown to be true by the fact that some people enter the Monthly Challenges. Clearly they are fine with their reward being their entry being praised and read over by people whenever they want and having their story put in a thread for everyone for all time (as long as the site exists I mean) to see.

4. Respect....this of course goes two ways. You have to give it to get it and in this forum you are expected to respect way more than you ever get back. People who are leaders here on the forum want you to kiss up to them. I am sorry there are some that REALLY stand out as horrible people to deal with and I won't mention names yet when you have arrogance abound and then people cursing at you and calling you things when you have a right to make a post and then expect you to write your BEST for them in a challenge and expect you to not REMEMBER how you were treated just doesn't fly with me. You are really treated like you are stupid and regardless of my writing skills I am not. You don't just say someting and NEVER apologize for it and thinking that somebody wants to be a part of what you are doing when you are nothing but a number to them. Doesn't work. So why be a part of a writing challenge when if you write anything sub-par after that you have negative or smart comments coming from people later on. Not fair and shouldn't be brushed aside.

I'm positive I've disagree vehemently with some of the admins/mods/character judges(?)/authority figures on this site over things before. Knowing my posting style I'm sure I have. Have any of them ever asked me to kiss up to them afterwards or blacklist me if I didn't? No. Hell, I was made into a Judge of all things. Now, are there some members that other posters on this site take the mickey out of on a regular basis? I know there are. But, AFAIK, that's because those posters have repeatedly posted subjects or set ups of subpar quality or have a debating style that people genuinely find obtuse and idiotic. Those posters aren't being hounded on because they are daring to disagree with some imaginary Electric Ferret elite circle.

To respond to the claim that we keep this idea about posters in our mind and then write them off forever, this at least I have one example against this. Lonewolf wrote the Angela vs Illidan entry in the March challenge. I gave it a 3.5 because I felt the justification for the two combatants wasn't there beyond basic "I'm an angel and you are a demon rar!". In my mind it was a pretty weak set up, not terrible, but not great either. Did I expect mediocracy from him from now until the end of time? Fuck no. Hell, Lonewolf came back a month later to win the May Challenge with Carnage vs Spider-man which completely blew me away.

5. Expression..You say something on this forum that people see as out of the norm or not expected out of a member and you get blackballed. People are so dumbed down in society today that they think that any time you have more than a sentence to say about something you are crazy or over emotional. Whatever medications they have you on may work for you but this is what is killing creativity in the first place. You can not express yourself and you can't release yourself anymore without getting called out for it. If you can communicate all your life in one word at a time then you do that yet I can't and for this to be a forum that seems to expect good work, the people here don't know how to handle it when a person is outspoken and instead of support they bash.

Now I know this is wrong. I've argued on this site for the implementation of same-sex marriage, for pro-abortion stances, I've argued that religion is an old superstition that needs to die and have argued in favor of atheism. I've flat out told Hayesmeister5651 that he had a fault memory with regards to a ghost story he once told, I've called people morons and made fun of their arguments, I disagreed with treacherous (I think it was?) about the nature of time. This was all when I was just some member and not a Match Judge as I am now.

Have I been blacklisted? The fuck I have.

[Ruinus]

6. True leadership...A true leader does not pick sides and a true leader calls down BOTH sides when you are treated badly by somebody that is their buddy or friend. Regardless of the rank of the person WRONG is WRONG even if its a judge or whomever. People get away with talking to other people however they want and even get teamed up on. When i see judges and mods around here saying the same thing to the people that dive in the situations to add flame to the fire then I can feel better about a contest here. You never see that. You can get attacked and nobody who has any authority around here tell that person to leave you alone or back off with the harsh comments. Leaders should call everybody out who is wrong and not agree with an attacker because this forum needs to understand that here today and gone tomorrow should mean something. Treat your members like gold. They should be shown empathy and the mods and any other leader should step in to put a stop to the attacks.

The hell? I think I'm one of the only people who actually bothers to respond to your threads in a reasonable manner (and by that I mean actually responding to you instead of posting videos or shit like in this thread). Beside that, are there times when an authority figure on this site teams up and adds flames in a thread? There probably are (I wouldn't be 100% sure, since I don't read every single post in every single page in every single thread on here), but ok... so what? What's the context? Is the person teaming up and adding flames just to troll and get away with it because he can, or because the person that people are teaming up against actually deserves it?

I could be wrong, but as far as I know no one on this website is under some obligation or has to follow some rules on behavior. How people are going to respond, what language or tone is used is entirely up to the individual poster. Obviously some things aren't accepted (the ban on the R-word is the major one). Now, if there are some rule violations then any sort of flame war could be easily solved by pointing out which rules were broken.

7. Grammar...We should not get judged on how well we write but how well we create the story and the setup. This is NOT a grammar course or a study in how to write english in the best way possible! This forum should think twice about saying that you are going to take off points or what not for a very creative battle simply because a comma was in the wrong place. This seriously kills the fun and from what I see a lot of people who were here even since I came along don't post anymore. People just want to have a good time and constantly telling them that this or that is not written well when NOBODY gets paid to write anything doesn't sound right to me. If its FUN then let people HAVE fun no matter how well or poorly they write. Its not fair to say that my battle was not as good as another battle simply because one noun or adjective was used better. Just seems wrong.

I'm guilty of this, I think all the judges are. Because, as kainboa pointed out, in our posts we say that entries would be judge based on "creativity, uniqueness and all that writing mumbo jumbo." Now, its true that this site isn't a grammar course, we aren't your English professors demanding perfect grammar in your entries. But it IS a writing contest, the idea of a writing contest taking no need to grammar at all is absurd. Literature itself is a creative process, yet even in straight up "real literature" (by that I mean actual books, best sellers, etc) have editors cleaning up grammar mistakes or fixing the flow of some stories. Because it looks ugly and it's off-putting to be reading anything that doesn't meet proper grammar standards.

And I KNOW I will get called out of my name and attacked for this because nobody can look at this like me just expressing my view. Its not an attack its the TRUTH and many people dont want to accept that about themselves. I know who I am, I know what I have done on the forum yet you come on here cursing me out and calling me names just for speaking on this and you prove me right. I didn't put any curse words in this at all and watch what happens. I know this won't make me popular yet I just want to see REAL fairness here and I don't believe it truly is here. The monthly challenges or any challenge here will never be handled in a true and fair way in my view.

It's fine. You think there are some problems in the process, it's fine to point them out. However, before you do make sure that the problems are supported by evidence in the system themselves. Now, maybe you can point to examples of judges rejecting matches based on unpopular writers/characters, maybe you've got an example of a judge being "in the pocket" of a contestant. If you do the post those examples, doing so will help your argument alot.

[Pseudonym]

They always do this. They always accuse us of nepotism, as though all we want to do is make competition so that we can elect ourselves winners. Like we have some sort of secret cabal simply for the purpose of winning competitions that it creates. Just why? To make the noobs feel bad about themselves, I guess. Screw that noise, it's dumb and it's got to go.

Grammar? It's a writing contest. Being good at writing is part of it.

Complaints about us being assholes: Eh, it's true. We are. Now what?

[sirmethos]

-childish rant-

Another "I want attention" from Anu. Just ignore it and move on, responding just provokes more similar rants. It's like poking an agitated monkey.

[KibaxHinata]

Okay, I'll play the devil's advocate here. I see the arguments on both sides. I enjoy the challenges because they add a degree of creativity but will admit it seems odd in certain aspects. However, I'm not the type to feel its too biased. I'm used to being looked over especially since I use characters not used often on CBUB and as a result the comments are rarely seen. However, I have seen from the result of the previous challenge; there was critisim to help me with my writing from being too lazy especially since I plan on being a writer in the future. Overall, I can understand why Anu has concerns but at the same time I'm not overly worried over it.

Edited by KibaxHinata, 19 June 2012 - 03:58 PM.

[Darkender]

I really don't see who is bias among the judges. I know I barely know the participants most of the time. I may recognize someone from way back when but most of the CBUBers I do not know nor have anything against.

And of course using unknown characters puts a writer at a disadvantage, but if the writing is good, it's good.

[Z451]

Yawn...

[leroypowell3]

Brutha.. just right some stuff, post them , check for comments or questions and go on with your real life. It's just a website. And we all know, people can be pretty tough-guy on a web site. None of us actually know eachother (maybe a few people). For all I know, you could be my next door neighbor.

[Marvel Man]

Woo! It's about time somebody stood up to Treacherous and his crew! Always trying to judge writing contests based on grammar.

They'll tell you I was too lazy to write anything for the last monthly challenges, but I did! I did I tell you! I decided that my submission would be cubism inspired surrealist painting, which I painted. When I told Treacherous to come to my house and judge it, he refused! Oh, the bias!

Anyways, really glad you posted this Anu. I too feel that this monthly contest should give me a free comic book download or at least some sort of cash price. How am I expected to write something online without there being some reward. Culwych, I know you're good at drawing, draw me a picture or something. Somebody send me a big trophy!

[Hayesmeister5651]

The challenges are just for fun. Calm down.