It's mentioned here (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2006/11/28/avons-fan-lit-ready-for-publication/) that Sara Dennis "was the editorial winner and received $5,000 cash and a 12-month development deal with Fox Television Studios" for her participation in the "Wicked Games" contest.
The article doesn't mention if she still holds any rights over her work. Is $5000 a large sum for a project like this? I really don't have any idea.
In her own blog (http://saradennis.blogspot.com/2006/10/last-word-on-avon-fanlit.html) Sara Dennis hinted that the voting was skewed because many contestants created shell accounts.
One of the rules set up at Avon FanLit was that people were not to create shill accounts, a shill being a duplicate account. Whether that was meant to be for reading the forums, submitting entries or voting on the contest rounds, it really didn't matter. It's right there in black and white, against the contest rules. And the penalty for doing so is disqualification.
And yet, during the course of competition, I was given convincing evidence that some contestants in an earlier round had done just that and were using shill accounts to "stack the deck".
Fan Lit, when provided with this information, chose and chooses not to acknowledge the cheating--because no matter how you spin it, it's cheating--publicly. Thanks to the phrase "sole discretion" in their rules, they don't *have* to acknowledge it. They can pick and choose when to enforce the rules and when to let a contestant slide.
They've made their choice, and so have I.
Here (http://zero.newassignment.net/filed/my_research_i_wicked_games_i") is another article that researched the supposedly skewed voting.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-07-09 01:30 pm (UTC)The article doesn't mention if she still holds any rights over her work. Is $5000 a large sum for a project like this? I really don't have any idea.
In her own blog (http://saradennis.blogspot.com/2006/10/last-word-on-avon-fanlit.html) Sara Dennis hinted that the voting was skewed because many contestants created shell accounts.
One of the rules set up at Avon FanLit was that people were not to create shill accounts, a shill being a duplicate account. Whether that was meant to be for reading the forums, submitting entries or voting on the contest rounds, it really didn't matter. It's right there in black and white, against the contest rules. And the penalty for doing so is disqualification.
And yet, during the course of competition, I was given convincing evidence that some contestants in an earlier round had done just that and were using shill accounts to "stack the deck".
Fan Lit, when provided with this information, chose and chooses not to acknowledge the cheating--because no matter how you spin it, it's cheating--publicly. Thanks to the phrase "sole discretion" in their rules, they don't *have* to acknowledge it. They can pick and choose when to enforce the rules and when to let a contestant slide.
They've made their choice, and so have I.
Here (http://zero.newassignment.net/filed/my_research_i_wicked_games_i") is another article that researched the supposedly skewed voting.