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Boardwalk :: Forum List General Iron Mountains Discussions
Korderellin
Admin
Posts: 529
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 Althing Proposal Discussion: Prop 1 - 2009/10/27 15:37 Proposal #1: Tournament Written Entries Change
Change the following sections from:
18.B.a.3. Composition - 5 pages or less. Persona histories, short stories. Must have 5 copies.
18.B.a.4. Factual writing - 5 pages or less. Essays, how-to articles. Must have 5 copies.
18.B.a.5. Poetry - 5 pages or less. Poems, songs, free verse. Must have 5 copies.

To:

18.B.a.3. Composition - 2500 words or less. Persona histories, short stories. Must have 5 copies.
18.B.a.4. Factual writing - 2500 words or less. Essays, how-to articles. Must have 5 copies.
18.B.a.5. Poetry - 2500 words or less. Poems, songs, free verse. Must have 5 copies.

Rationale: With the current limitation of 5 pages, an entry that includes images, but may not have a significant amount of written words, e.g. an illustrated children's story or an instructional with diagrams, is penalized by this limitation when it isn't actually a lengthy read during judging. Also, an entry that is 5 pages but may have had its font type, font size, line spacing, letter spacing, margins, and kerning altered could have significantly more than 5 pages of information and be a much longer read than its 5 pages initially suggests. A 2500 word limit was chosen because when many documents were reviewed, they averaged a word count between 1500 and 2500 words per 5 pages of length.


Discuss. Kord
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Grendel
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Posts: 2066
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 Re:Althing Proposal Discussion: Prop 1 - 2009/10/27 16:10 sounds good to me Strike First. Strike Hard. No Mercy.
Hús Vetra Skald
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Talisin
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Posts: 567
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 Re:Althing Proposal Discussion: Prop 1 - 2009/10/27 17:54 I like the idea behind #1 a lot, but I'm not sure I agree with the word count. In Word, 2500 words (I pulled a random sample from the middle of something I wrote, which included paragraphs of varying lengths plus dialog) with one inch margins and Times New Roman 12 type only took up a little over four pages. Five full pages was a little over 3,000 words. I tried it again with something I wrote for work and five pages was 2,887 words. Of course, the same docs in Arial 12 type took up a little more than five pages, but not much.

Hrm. Like I said, I like the idea a lot, but I have a hard enough time sticking to five pages under the current system sometimes. If I get fewer words but more pages, that's not really going to help as much.

ETA: I really like the idea because it would facilitate double-freaking-spacing, which will make a lot of entries easier to read. I think I'd be happier with a 3,000 word limit, though. Tal
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Korderellin
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Posts: 529
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 Re:Althing Proposal Discussion: Prop 1 - 2009/10/28 14:38 Hmm. Interesting. I tested it on a number of documents that I have, and I was running into the 2000-2500 word range for that page limit. None of the documents that I tested came in over 2500. I wonder if I played with the character spacing on those documents to extend them (as I was wont to do in my undergraduate courses).

So the question is, do we want to pass this to get the edit into the corpora, and then add an amendment later to increase the word count to 3000 words? Looking at the way it works now, I think that, even though there might be a temporary decrease in the length of written entries, the benefit received by doing away with the space limitation appears to still be an overall positive. Kord
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Talisin
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Posts: 567
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 Re:Althing Proposal Discussion: Prop 1 - 2009/10/28 15:39 I think it's probably fine the way it is for now; the benefits outweigh the one minor question that I do have. If it causes issues down the road, someone can always put in a proposal to increase the number of words.

I've perfected the fine art of cramming as many words on a single page as possible. Tal
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Boardwalk :: Forum List General Iron Mountains Discussions

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