Hey, remember those terribly acerbic rants from me about PotM after discovering that multiple people were cheating the polls, socking votes, having their children/friends nominate their stories for them, and generally being terrible? Also remember when we did away with Pasta of the Month in favor of spotlighted pastas? About all that…
Let me open with an apology, the idea of bringing back PotM was floated around a couple of months ago and I was opposed to the idea. I figured the Spotlight was an adequate replacement. Unfortunately after seeing the drop in participation around May and June as well as the fact that many users weren’t reading/commenting on stories that won, I’ve come to re-think some things and will now go about eating crow.
The entire purpose of PotM and the Spotlighted Pasta is to highlight users’ hard work and give them the attention they deserve. I got so caught up in preventing people taking advantage of the polls and cheapening the award, that I lost sight of what was important and as a result, a lot of good stories didn’t get the attention they deserved. Unfortunately, I think a lot of this lack of focus is due to users having less input in what stories win as the admins ultimately decided everything. You could nominate, but you couldn’t vote and that really seemed to dissolve interest in the stories that should have been getting the credit and attention they were due.
As apology, these are the stories that won the past five months if you want to show them some love now:
The Final Fate of Mary Ford by Creepy Thomas O.
The Children Found a Flower by SkullMunch
Dinner with Vivianna by Banningk1979
Mantle by ShawnCognitionCP
She Was Asking for It by SirTobiasWade.
TL;DR[]
- Pasta of the month is back.
- The 1st-20th of each month, nominations will be open to users.
- The 20th-end of month, there will be voting on a poll.
- This will start at the beginning of August.