Yahoo Forum Archive

Hey guys,

Frankly, I'm a little bewildered as to why this issue is such a
problem. Having the word count available would be nice, but I don't
think it's strictly necessary. On the other hand, it's really not that
big of a burden. As Isabeau pointed out, lots of archives have
word-count features (FF.net, HASA, and TFF that I know of). If you want
an exact count and your archive/word processor doesn't have this
feature, there are even websites and programs that let you
copy-and-paste in text, hit a button, and it gives you a word count.
And I think most people out there have an idea of roughly how long
their stories are, certainly to within 500 words or so.

(One such website:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/countwords.shtml ).

Moreover, I don't think *not* having the word counts available will
hurt a certain piece that much. It's not like anyone is going to
specifically not vote for it because the author didn't put in a word
count. If anything this feature will allow people who like longer
stories to pace themselves and read more long stories earlier. Longer
stories are at a natural disadvantage during "crunch times" like the
end of voting because they take longer to read.

And for the record, I have absolutely no problem with wide estimates.
Even just knowing that one story is 5,000 and another is 30,000 and a
third is 70,000 would help me make voting decisions. I don't care that
one is 68,500 and another 72,500 .

So I guess I'm having a hard time seeing why this is a problem. To me
it seems like a non-issue, something that's nice but not necessary and
certainly not controversial. I don't think it's the problem that we're
making it out to be.

But if this is such an issue that people disagree over it, I'll be glad
to set up a poll. Or discuss it further. And I apologise if it *is* an
issue and I'm just not seeing it.

I'll try to reply to some of the specifics later.

Cheers,
Marta

I'm not sure why it's gotten quite so out of hand anyway, but because I'm
desperately avoiding thinking about other things, I went ahead and made a
table which shows why I'm rooting for word counts. If you think I can attach
it as a file, I will, but it's in word, not excel, because for some reason
excel doesn't want to work on my computer, so all the calculations were done
by hand.
Whether or not we use word counts to create voting categories, I think we
need them in order to refine the definitions we use to describe stories.
Right now we have three filters which roughly assort by length.
Drabble
Vignette
All Story Types
Each of these filters is further broken down into subtypes. The numbers in
parentheses are the number of stories in each subtype.
Drabble (141)
Drabble Series (12)
Drabble Ficlet (7)
Drabble Short Story (1)
Drabble True Drabble (78)
Vignette (129)
Vignette Drabble Series (1)
Vignette Ficlet (25)
Vignette Short Story (160)
Story (28)
Story Epic (8)
Story Ficlet (6)
Story Novel (25)
Story Novella (69)
Story Short Story (363)
Now, I haven't calculated the mean or the median's yet, but it's easy to
look at the table and figure out the modes (which, for the non-mathematical
among us, is the number of reviews which the largest number of stories in
that category recieved).
True Drabble: 4
Drabble: 5
Drabble Series (all): 6
Ficlet (all): 4
Vignette: 5
Short Story: 4
Story: 4
Novella: 5
Novel: 4
Epic: 7
There are two main points to consider here. The first is that both ficlets
and short stories appear in all three filters. The second is that the modes
for longer stories are similar to the modes for short stories.
By using numbers, as accurate as we can get them, we can define "ficlet"
and "short story" in a manner which will be consistent across the board for
the purposes of the contest. I prefer ficlet to mean a story of fewer than
1000 words without a formal word count limit, myself, and would rather use
"short form" or "counted forms" for drabbles and the like. (Or formfics,
which I just coined and will probably despise come morning.
I don't think that the evidence suggests that any bias against longer
stories is stronger or more encompassing than preferences for hobbit stories
or elf stories. But, as I said, I haven't done the medians or the means yet.
If anyone wants a copy of the table, I've attached it to this. If it
doesn't work through Yahoo, just ask me to send it directly.


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