Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-10950063-20140404145452/@comment-4971819-20140405130727

Noothgrush wrote: LOLSKELETONS wrote:

Noothgrush wrote:

I see what you're getting at, and it could honestly be a good idea to have an honorable mentions section. But one of the big problems still is that PotM is still largely a popularity contest. For example, when my story was nominated it got like 2 reads, Skelly considered taking down that month because a super duper low quality story nearly won. Like it was nearly trollpasta quality. Basically, it was only that story and one other that anybody really read. My story didn't get any increase in attention because of the nomination. It wasn't until Cym's blog that I actually saw an increase in traffic. Which due to the huge amount of positive feedback I've gotten, had anybody even read my story I probably could have stood a chance. It technically did win, but when I saw the poll at the very end of the last day, it was tied with The Cell Phone Game.

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/index.php?oldid=619796

As for the honorable mentions tag, it could work, but we'd have to exercise a lot more discretion when selecting the actual PotM candidates (the ones that go up on the voting page). And even then, I'm not sure if it's necessary. That looks like the right poll but my story isn't on there. Weird. I remember being worried because there are some fucking amazing stories right there. I mean, Milkers, The Bleeding Ceremony, Dogscape, The Comfy and Cozy Cabin, The Black Dog and The Goat, they barely even got a second glance, they all got beat out by a story that didn't even scientifically make sense, that ended up being deleted because it didn't even meet the quality standards at the end of the day.

And don't even get me started on The Devil Game, that won like the next month. Another one that's ok as a story, but massively formulaic, massively hyped, kind of cliche, a very typical example of a ritual pasta. Another popularity win.

I actually thought about it and I disagree with an honorable mentions tag. Because, once again, as in the above example, Milkers and Bleeding Ceremony are ridiculously good pastas, they wouldn't have made the cut of "honorable mentions" because they didn't really get voted on at all. Would there be like a minimum percentage that they'd be required to meet? This just seems like an even bigger shit show. See, there's this slight problem where people feel like they have to go with the flow of the crowd. "The crowd voting on a crappypasta? Then there must b something good there because everyone else likes it!" *click!