Writing Contest 2002 Voting
VOTING CLOSED - Results To Be Announced Dec. 31

This is our first try at online voting for a Writings competition. We are a little worried that ALL the entries may not be viewed by all the voters. Balanced judging requires that. It may not be a problem. Our goal is to get honest, accurate feedback from Pusanweb Writings' regular audience. We ask individuals to vote only once in each category (even if they have more than one valid email address) and to avoid asking others with no interest in the stories for supporting votes. We reserve the right to void ballots that appear to be of dubious origin.

We appreciate any comments you have concerning your choices as it helps us understand voters' thinking and provides feedback to the authors. Thanks.

On-line Voting Guide (also, see the voting form below)

1. All the contest entries can be found at this address :        http://www.pusanweb.com/writings/contest2002listing.htm
2. The broad judging criteria are listed below.
3. You can vote in as many categories as you wish.
4. If you vote in a category, please try to make three choices, then rank them.
5. You can only vote once in each category. This will be checked against e-mail addresses.
6. 50% of total scoring will come from online voting. The other 50% will come from the Pweb Writings Panel of Judges

How To Use The Judging Criteria

The judging criteria below should be treated as a checklist, not a collection of points to add up. This is because different stories or poems have different strengths, and also because different readers respond according to their own personalities. However, please do remember that you are voting for the overall quality of a piece of writing, whatever 'quality' means to you.

Judging Criteria

a) Literary Skill. Was the writing well-crafted ? Hey, it doesn't have to be Nobel Prize material. However just as rock music and a classical concerto (for example) can be well done or awful, so writing from any genre can be good or bad.

b) Interest Level. How well did the story or poem hold your interest? A writer can make almost anything interesting if they are clever enough. They can also make almost anything uninteresting. Note: the title of any piece of writing has a big impact on the number of people who read it. That is not enough though. A writer wants readers not just to start, but also to finish reading their masterpiece ! Yes, we know that sex sells, but at least for the purposes of Pusan Web, that is not enough either. We are not prudes, but anything a bit fresh should be able to justify itself by the other criteria too.

c) Insight. What did you learn? Insight is rather difficult to define simply, but the general idea is that readers should go away from a piece of writing with some new bit of understanding. Of course, there are stories which are so entertaining that new insights may come low on the list. Usually though, narrowly prejudiced writing, or ruminations on the writer's own belly button will neither entertain nor inform too many people.

d) A focus on East Asia, especially Korea. We don't want to be too parochial about this, but there are millions of web sites out there dealing with the world in general. Pusanweb's best value is bound to be as a resource on Busan, Korea and East Asia (in that order). That is why readers generally come to visit us, so we have to favour material which is relevant to that mission.

Voting Forms