User blog:Banningk1979/Jeff the Killer Re-Write Idea

Hey folks, Banning here, with a proposal for a proposal, essentially.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about Jeff the Killer. This still seems to be a sore-spot for a lot of people, and while the majority of our regular users, myself included, agree that Jeff was taken down for the right reasons, we, as community leaders, cannot simply ignore the voices of others.

With that said, let me make a couple of things clear from the start about this proposal.

First off, this is not an opinion poll to bring back the original Jeff the Killer story. That story doesn't fit our Standards, and as such, should not be posted on this site. I understand there has been chatter about bringing the page back with locked comments and such, but honestly, I think we can do a bit better than that.

My first thought on this was to propose and host a Jeff the Killer re-write contest, giving the community a chance to re-tell the story in a means that fits our Standards here. It would be Jeff 2.0, done right. Then I got to thinking, do we really want a dozen or so Jeff re-writes flooding the site in the name of the contest? Clearly we don't.

So, I thought about it a little further, and came up with this. We elect somewhere between 3-5 writers here to take a shot at the story. We, as a community, would agree on those authors, maybe by vote, maybe on a volunteer basis, maybe everyone writes an application to write the story, and we decide from that. Who knows, as we aren't to that phase yet.

So, once we have our pool of writers, the challenge goes to re-tell Jeff the Killer. They can stick to the original plot as a basis, but write the story with their own flavor. In this way, it's not a matter of Jeff spin-offs hitting the site, but rather a Jeff re-make, done by our talented members here. If we keep the number low, and only authorize the people selected to write the stories, then we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with violations of spin off rules, as this would be the exception.

Another idea would be to open the contest up to everyone, and post the stories on Pastebin or something like that, with only the links being shared on the contest page. That way, only the winner would be uploaded to the site.

As I have said though, this blog is NOT a contest proposal, but rather a crowd-sourcing project to see how the community would feel about such a project being green-lit. Personally, I could see myself taking a stab at re-telling Jeff in my own style, just to see how it would come out.

So, let's look at the PRO's and CON's of this idea:

PRO's:

Would challenge writers to take an existing work and improve upon it.

Would allow the community to revisit a very popular part of our genre, with a fresh new approach.

Would likely increase traffic and participation on the site, as Jeff sort of sells itself.

Would put us back in touch with a large part of the Creepypasta community.

Would allow us to have Jeff the Killer done right on this site, something to be proud of rather than something that brings a cringe to much of the community.

CON's:

This matter was closed when the pasta was deleted, this would re-open many of those doors, and may bring some of those rabid fangirls back into our midst.

Selecting the writers may cause some to feel left out.

This could cause the lines to blur a bit on our spin-off policies.

It could be redundant to bring Jeff back in any form, since fangirls may likely only want the original back up, not a quality remake.

Conclusion:

I think this could be a fun and fresh project for our talented writers here. Personally, I would love to see Humboldt, GreyOwl or Blacknumber take a shot at Jeff the Killer. Hell, even I might have some fun trying to tell the story. Right now, this is just in the opinion gathering phase though. Again, this IS NOT A PROPOSAL. This is just to get a feel on how the community, admins and users alike, feel about this project. I won't be offended if the idea gets shot down, but I do want to see how everyone feels.

So, please share your thoughts, all opinions are welcome. Please try and refrain from just demanding the orignal story to be re-posted, as that is not the point of this blog. The idea is to re-tell the story with talented writers at the helm. Feel free to support or oppose, tell me about who you think would be the best authors for the job, and what you, as the community would want to see in this.