[Feedback] Word Count Limit?

[Absol]

(...and Card/Deck Competitions should be about the Cards/Decks, not about the writing... there are writing competitions for that.)

No offence, but I do not think people like me or Annele or everyone who wrote a 'story' for his/her entries did it because they are show-offs or in order to reach the 200 word limit. We wrote those stuff because we like it! 

You might enjoy it, but not everyone could write like you.
Word limitation puts pressure on those, forcing them to write a filler.

[Kakerlake]

I don't really see a valuable addition to the competitions by forcing everyone to write stuff. If someone submits a hard to understand mechanic and doesn't add a text describing how it works, then it is his fault for submitting a fail submission which gets slapped hard by the voting process (it's nice though to remember folks that they should write some text). So why forcing everyone to write this enormously huge text of 250 pages words?
50 words would be plenty. It's small enough that every braindead zombie (like a roach or something) can easily write it. At the same time, it makes everyone waste at least a couple of of brainpower on what to write. Wheter that is a 52 Words "my card is so uber awesome! tololol lalala good combined with blobby ... " or an actually usefull text of 150 words will be up to the creator of that submission.

TL/DR:
Stoopid word count. I no like.

[justaburd]

So... we're more or less in agreement of lowering the word count to say... 50?
As in, noone's really saying anything to the contrary?

[Arwulf]

While the implication of 'word count' is arbitrary, so is the 'quality' one would like to see in posts. A word count limit indicates the 'seriousness' of the thread, asking contributers to put more than average effort in their post. Therefore, one way or the other, a word count limit is a quantifiable way of checking the entry threshold.

That said, 250 words isn't that much, really, if you break it into parts. Say you want to get five points across; that's only 50 words per paragraph, allowing for variance. In most browsers, lets say that on average 20 words go in a line. So for every paragraph you only need about 2,5 lines of text. Even the most uncreative forum members can use these following little tricks to reliably produce blocks of text of said volume:

- First write down a minimum of 5 statements/elements(huhu)/pointers you would like to get accross. Make sure these points are described in 10 to 15 words.
- Then, in a sequence you desire, work out each point in three sentences. This should get you near 30 words per point to get across.
- Now, finish up by connecting your pieces of text. You're probably around 200 words now (remember, it's not that simple, it might still cost some time) and all you have to do is embellish, expand or add some clarifications to your text. It's not uni, you are allowed some minor flaws 

Often, after 3 paragraphs, you'll have hit 250 words already.

go ahead, count the above text

[Kamietsu]

As far as I can see, 50 seems to be the most liked number for any competition that requires or uses an sort of word limits(excluding larger word based competitions). But having a baseline word limit for most competitions that require it seems a little iffy to me. Every competition should have it's own minimum word count based on how much a minimum amount should be involved. Something like 250 would be more of the detailed side of say, a deck building competition based on something specific. I'd put up a cote but there isn't much to vote on as it's all based on a per competition guideline. Well, feeling. I wouldn't really say it's a guideline. But having 50 be a bare minimum would be alright with me and I don't see anyone else really arguing against that.

I personally would like 50 words minimum but more is encourage be stated in any rules with a word limit. Such as the competition everyone is talking about the rule could have bene something like "50 words minimum but it is highly encourage to write more." That way you don't have to write more but those who want to write a short novel won't feel as if it is unwelcome by such a small minimum word limit.

Any disagreements?

[furballdn]

Additional feedback. Should competition voting be anonymously done in the way brawl has been done? Contestants PM their submissions to the CO, CO puts up poll with the entries. This way, you can't tell who made what, and serves to eliminate some bias.

[Elbirn]

No word count should be necessary. So long as you can make your point, clear and concise, it doesn't matter how much you type, and voters would certainly prefer simplicity over reading walls of text with little content.

[Kamietsu]

No word count should be necessary. So long as you can make your point, clear and concise, it doesn't matter how much you type, and voters would certainly prefer simplicity over reading walls of text with little content.

How much you type is usually more favored over how little you type, which is what this thread is really about. There's never really been a maximum word limit, only minimum.

[ZephyrPhantom]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. As you can see in Card Idea Decks, we're going to be lowering the wordcount for future competitions for the time being.

In regards to the Brawl-esque suggestion : I've created a topic here for all future competition feedback. Unless your comments pertain to the word count limit please put all thoughts there.