h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This sounds very good to me. I don't have to much to contribute except that if you wait tell after summer I have a lot of teacher friends who can help spread the word. Also on a very diffrent but still nut&bolts related subject I want to help set this up but I also want to enter. How involved can I be in making this work and still be able to enter.

Judges will obvioulsy be ineligible to enter the contest. But I don't think that participating here in the conversations and making suggestions concerning the format and rules would disqualify someone. Nor would helping with promotion.

Do any of you have thoughts about this?

Everything here is very preliminary. When I arbitrarily suggested length requirements, I did so because I have sponsored both short story and poetry contests at the library. When I didn't specify a word count or line count, people asked for them. I also thought that if we get a lot of entries, the judges might appreciate not having 12,000 word articles to plow through. But we can remove the length restrictions if that is what the majority of you want.

Perhaps rather than a restriction, have a guideline? It's less dogmatic - and some people may write brilliant 12,000 words.

I agree that judges shouldn't enter. Very poor form if a judge wins But I see no problem with future judges helping to organise the contest.

My

Fb

Future judges are perfect candidates to help with the nuts and bolts.

I think some of the nuts and bolts things come down to what exactly it is we want this contest to accomplish. I believe it originated out of an effort to bring new people to h2g2 - which I believe it could accomplish. But the way I've seen it explained, it could also do quite a bit to encourage quality writing for this site by current writers. Another admirable goal.

Some thoughts on the nuts and bolts, meant as points for discussion-
1. If we have left-over prizes, we could have another category as a tribute to Douglas Adams. The award would be given to the person who submits the best piece honoring DNA, or a simple EG-type entry written in his style.

I realize that DNA is widely and poorly imitated. However, in terms of luring new people here, I think this would be the most marketable category. While there are writing competitions elsewhere, what makes h2g2 different is our connection with Douglas Adams. I'm imagining promotion with something targeted to DNA/HHGG/SciFi fans to the effect of "Win [x] prize for writing the best article for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the style of Douglas Adams'.

2. Perhaps diversify the prizes a bit more. So if you want to have three big prizes, maybe something small for runners-up, or in lesser (niche?) categories.

3. No length restrictions. No maximums, and I'm a little shaky on minimums. Maybe a minimum for poetry and fiction. In the EG, bigger is not always better (as I have so ably demonstrated over and over again) and in fact, the small entries are sometimes the best. I like what F/b said - use length guidelines, but not restrictions, so no submissions are disqualified for the lengths.

4. Only one submission per category per entrant (did someone else already say that?)

5. I do think a submission period should be longer than 30 days. Since we can't really start promoting this well before submissions are accepted, we have to leave room within the submission period for people to actually write or refine their pieces.

I love the 'in the style of Douglas Adams' idea.

The number of prizes isn't carved in stone. Nothing is yet. So we can adjust. This is why it's important to go slowly enough to have things really thought out. But not so slowly that we lose the interest in doing it.

Not to rush things along, but I already have a potential contestant interested. He really likes the 'style of Douglas Adams' idea, and I think he could do a good job.

Then might I suggest a twist or two? In ultra-simplest mode, I can set up a WordPress thingie on that site, to receive entries that may prove 'early'. The first post being a few simple guidelines such as define your 'category' and provide a well-discreted e-mail address to be contacted at? (Again, a useful actual web-site layout may need to be built by someone else, and I just thought of a candidate for that)

And simnply set a closing date, not an opening one. Because what-ever propoganda might get to various quarters may not give some really good talent a enough time to polish something up.

Better put a maximum in it, Pinniped. You could wind up with 70,000 word entries.

I can offer an e book, a fantasy/comedy published by Daverna Enterprises, in the near future. Or a gift certificate from them, if you like.

Oops. Daverana.

Also, get researchers with a blog to link their blog to the word press blog with the contest posted.

Really a lot of excellent ideas. I'm getting ready to go out of town for a few days. I'll consolidate all of the ideas so far when I get back, unless one of you fine folks wants to do it in the meantime.

It would probably be helpful to discuss the suggestions separately so we can arrive at a consensus. We need to move with this before we lose interest.