I tried to talk to Morgfyre about this then I died in a raid, but forums seem to have a more immediate result anyway.

Could we please have the points for every prestige entry? It is truly frustrating seeing works which are acknowledged to be ground breaking or well written lose with almost no account of why or how much by. I respect that Catarin and Vionne are damn good writers, but it would be nice to see how others compared or even how those two did in the recent one. My only book had several spelling errors in retrospect, but I was dying to see how much I lost to Kalodan by and the divine commented on no books that I was aware of that year.

Could this be changed so we have an idea of how well we're actually going? Magnagora only has its books right now so we could use some signs of where we're going alright.

Edit: I really can't spell sometimes, could a mod please edit transparency?

Agreed.

The quality of a given prestige work is, of course, an entirely subjective attribute. What is good and what is bad is entirely up to the personal views of the individual divine scholars. Some may be more preoccupied with matters of presentation, spelling and grammar; others with cogency of argument, or a free-flowing plot; others with the aptness of the piece to the tag (scholarly/literary) attached to it, and the extent to which the piece fits with the Lusternian mythos; and so on. Each scholar scores a piece according to their own individual criteria. The mean of these individual scores is then what determines the winner.

You can spot what does well and what does badly by looking back through the announce posts to see what books win, and comparing them to those that lose. There are definite trends there, and if you can pick out the things that a winning book does well which perhaps your own doesn't have, then your chances are going to pick up.

Now, personally, I think that is sufficient. I am not in favour of posting the scores of the losers, and I'll give you my reasons why:

Firstly, if a given divine scholar doesn't like something and wants to grade it appropriately, he shouldn't be worried about hurting the author's feelings.

Secondly, the score an individual work gets is subjective. That's just the way literature is. There are several criteria that can lend a quasi-objectivity, and by having a panel of judges we hope largely to eliminate excessively anomalous views, but art is inherently subjective. Eventually it just comes down to whether or not the judges like it, and given that art is subjective, decisions may be controversial. The last thing we need is a long and painful post mortem on the forums every month about why a given score was wrong, and why the divine scholars are idiots.

Thirdly, these things get judged once a month, and consequentially an individual piece will inevitably be judged more in the context of the whole set of submissions that competition than in the context of decisions made every month for years. What does this mean? Well, it doesn't mean that the decisions that are made aren't consistent, or that they aren't fair, or that there are shifting criteria at play. However it does mean that the scores are not necessarily wholly consistent month on month.

Anyway. There you have my views on the subject. They are probably by no means representative of the administration as a whole.

It could also be shown how several aren't the best in those regards and still win. As much as I would like to believe the divine scholars are always neutral it doesn't come across that way if you go over the prestige entries over time and I'm not just talking about the well known writers. Some topics have a greater success rate and certain rp topics never win, for instance it is has been some time since a book about the demon lords won that wasn't a semi philosophical work that delved into propaganda elements.




Even if they are subjective it would be helpful to understand what the divine scholars were thinking during the month, people would likely complain on forums like I am now, but that is harmless for all good it will do (much like the lich debate). I would hope there is more than just a quasi-objectivity as people are not always objective, even when divorced from the organisation they were once in, which could raise the issue of scoring along city lines if there is no criteria to hold them too. Results can be consistent for the time they were in, but that is all that is being asked not a long term review of the results. People do invest time and effort into what they write and would no doubt appreciate some feedback, as not everyone is a pessimist who will pounce on a low score. This is my view anyway.

This is my point. Yes, it could be, and it's not an argument anyone needs.

I could write you a several thousand word post on why I loathe Wordsworth's Daffodils. I regard it as banal and mediocre, but you will note that it is nonetheless vastly popular and there will be a great many people who disagree with me. People have different views. By and large, these views are equally valid, and while the Gabranth school of English cricitism is no doubt an extremely viable one, it is not one I personally subscribe to. Critically, it does not appear to be the one that the Divine Scholars subscribe to either.



If it is easier to believe that Magnagoran books lose out on prestige because of divine bias rather than because another book in a given competition was better, then by all means, believe it. However, I see nothing to support any allegation of bias or prejudice.

Hmmm

Scholarly Prestige:

Glomdoring 13
Magnagora 6
Celest 5
Serenwilde 4

Literary Prestige:

Glomdoring 10
Magnagora 8
Celest 6
Serenwilde 5

Glomdoring total wins: 23
Magnagora total wins: 14
Celest total wins: 11
Serenwilde total wins: 9

I could see from the numbers that there could be some concern over the voting process given how big the gap is between Glomdoring and everyone else. It could be argued that Glomdoring just has much better writers or librarians than the other orgs I suppose which very well could be true. If Glomdoring focuses a lot of time and energy on their library then they'll do better than orgs who do not focus as much. I know in Celest the library is not the focus.

Oh and for the individual author's:

Catarin's works have been submitted 7 times and won 4 times (1 scholarly, 3 literary). 60% success rate
Vionne's works have been submitted 8 times and won 5 times (5 scholarly). 62% success rate

I can't see any kind of obvious favortism for particular writers from these numbers.

Taste in writing is extremely subjective. Just because we might think a work submitted by our library is far superior than the work that ultimately wins, it is quite possible there is some bias on our parts as well going on there. Besides the curiousity of Glomdoring's success, I don't see any real obvious imbalances at play.

Interesting numbers! I don't think there's any bias towards Glomdoring (or for or against any other org) It could be that some orgs just attract a certain type of person, or a certain type of writer rather. Glomdoring's feel does kind of lend itself to prolific writers - at least that's the impression I get from it.

Or some organizations might offer more reward or prestige to its writers, or might have Librarians who more actively pursue publication.

Very true... people do love being rewarded.

We used to have a very significant prize for authors just having works submitted for Prestige (went the way of the dodo recently, but maybe it'll come back). We also had a time when we had very light opposition and a number of excellent writers, but we've not won anywhere near so much recently.

I'm just here 'cuz Arel linked me...

A bunch of Glomdoring's wins for scholarly were probably mine. I think every scholarly book I ever wrote was submitted and I know most of what of mine was submitted won (thanks for the credits, Glomdoring!) - at least the scholarly stuff, not the literary stuff, I don't consider my "literary" work worthy of having been submitted and I don't know why it was.

However, I'm in my senior year of undergraduate school, majoring in philosophy and minoring in religion, and I'm a very good writer - that's not bragging, it's a statement of fact. I write good papers.

As an interesting note, though, the first book I ever wrote here was in my first couple weeks of playing, and it was a thing I did for a contest in Glomdoring (the scroll was about humans) - came in second in the contest to a book that was one of the first books in ages to ever be declared a sub-par publication.

The scroll I wrote later won prestige.

Go figure.

Pish posh Vionne, you won because of Glomdoring favouritism.

Though it makes me extremely hurt that my stuff doesn't win with all the divine pulling for Glom. I must suck terribly

Noola, start writing books!!!

I did! But I'll prolly be starting another here in a bit.

I'm trying to find some good works, especially recent ones, but there has been one scholarly book published (it's still being reviewed, I think) and no literary works published since I started as Librarian...

Need to get Skyle to polish up that story of his.

(And no, no prodding me to polish mine!)

He did! ...well, technically he disappeared and I finished it for him, but that counts, right?



To think I'd completely forgotten about that...

On an unrelated note to people of Glomdoring: BOOKS! I NEEDS THEM!

I think my original point was kinda lost after Fain's original reasoning, but I'll be content with just working my way up the ladder of most vocal ranters.

Edit: I also concede Catarin is right and the librarian and resident authors do play a part, but it would be helpful to compare the mood of the divine scholars, although the reasons Fain mentioned would factor in.