Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf

PST (GMT -8). 'Cause that's where I live

I guess you don't know what you have until it's gone, eh?

No sims were disqualified due to low rating. This round of voting only qualifies one sim to be part of the final round of voting for the title of "Top Sim, 2008." Links: Round 18 sims. REMEMBER: This is NOT a popularity contest. Vote based on MERIT, not the fact that someone is your crewmate. Any crews found "stuffing the ballots" or ratings, will be disqualified PERMANENTLY - yes, that means the whole crew.

"Achilles: Dinner and a Screaming Hissy Fit" by Idril Mar wins this round. Her sim will now be entered into the final round of the year for the chance at the title of Top Sim, 2008. Congratulations to her!

For more information, including the rules and contest calendar, please see the Top Sims Contest website. *Note* If you're submitting a sim, please use the name of the author's primary character -- not the "NPC" name, if applicable. The "Topic Description" box should ONLY read, for example: "Tristan Wolf" - PRIMARY CHARACTER NAME ONLY! No RANKS, no SHIP NAMES, no NPC NAMES. Just the writer's primary character name(s)!! That's it! Important Dates: - Round 18 Submission period opens: Mo 10-19 - Round 18 Submission period closes: We 12-31 - Round 18 Voting period opens: Mo 01-05 - Round 18 Voting period closes: Su 01-18 Procedure: 1. Submit sims (from your ship, or another ship -- all sims welcome, member or staff) 2. Rate sims you see in this forum 3. Vote on sims submitted in the last round Notes: - Please find a balance between "too much" and "too little" on the submission end of this contest. Don't submit every post from your crew. But I DO encourage everyone to submit at least one post to the contest whenever they can. Last week there were approximately 300 sims in the fleet - an average of 40 a day. I would expect no more than five or six a day to be considered "Top Sim" contest worthy. - REMEMBER: This is NOT a popularity contest. We welcome submissions of your crewmate's sims, but ALL sims should be rated based on their MERIT, and NOT the fact that someone is your crewmate. Any crews found "stuffing the ballots" or ratings, will be disqualified PERMANENTLY - yes, that means the whole crew. - Want your crewmates to win more? Nominate only the best sims, and encourage higher quality sims! - Tip: If you find yourself relying on e-mail announcements from the "ufop-announce" list to know when a round ends or begins? You'd be best served by subscribing to this forum to receive reminders any time a new thread is started! You'll be notified any time someone posts a new sim, or the voting threads are created. To do so, simply go back to this forum's index page and click the "Forum Options" drop-down box (on the right-hand side, under one of the "new topics" buttons), and click "Subscribe to this forum." It will give you options to subscribe, and you'll never be out of the loop again!

Please use this thread for any general discussion or questions about the Top Sims Contest. Please do not post praise or criticism for submitted sims in this thread. Instead, post those praise or criticisms in the submitted sim's own thread.

Glad to have you!

Glad to have you with us!

Congratulations to Jackford B. Kolk! His story, "Q-uer Aeternus" is the winner of this round! There is no runner-up.

I'll announce the winner later tonight.

Not yet. We should have one soon.

Vulcans are always judging you.

Then change your skin BTW: I forgot to mention I'll be the facilitator of the challenges again from here-on-out.

This is a lightning round! Guidelines: To participate, create a new thread. The subject of the thread must be the title of your story. If it is a Work In Progress, denote that with the heart post icon. If your work is complete, use the horizontal arrow post icon. Items not marked with an icon or marked with the WiP icon will not be considered for judging and will be moved to the "Character Cafe" forum at the end of the contest. Your work must be entirely your own. No co-authoring. You are welcome to create any character you so desire, but they must be from the Star Trek universe. No "canon" characters allowed. (i.e.- No one who has been on a show.) Want to participate, but can't start a new topic? Why didn't you view the "Read Me First!" forum? You'll need to ask a moderator or Senior Member to create a thread for you! Length: No more than 1000 words accepted. Beginning Date: Thurs., Oct. 9th Ending Date: Sun., Oct. 26rd See Also: the Writing Challenge Website Challenge: LIGHTNING ROUND INVOKED! Get out your speed quills for this one, because only 1000 words accepted. You'd better be ready to finish a short story, and QUICK. Like poetry for novelists, you'll be required to pack the most punch into the smallest space! The topic is a TOS title, like every September/October challenge: "Wink of an Eye". Be quick about yourself and get something down on paper screen! Good Luck!

Please use this thread for any discussion or questions about this writing challenge.

Looking for a judge to help wrap up this last round.

Hey folks! This is the LAST SUBMISSION PERIOD of the year! Here's some information about how the end of year stuff is going to work. Last submission round To give us enough time to really focus on culling down our current primary round winners, we're going to wrap up the last two months of the year with just voting. So, round 18 will end submissions in two weeks. Then we'll JUST be voting on these submissions for another two weeks. What about submissions through the end of the year? Unless anyone has any other ideas on how to do this, my plan for now is to allow submissions through the end of the year, after this round, but they will not be voted on until the first two weeks of next year. I'll simply open a temporary form for folks to submit sims in, which will remain there until January 1. Ratings will be allowed. Somehow, we'll cull down the list to 10 sims, and then vote on them in the first two weeks of the year. If you have other ideas, or comments on how this can be done fairly, post here. How will run-offs work? I had to cut out the last planned round of this year to allow for the extra sims as a result of tie votes we've had. In the future, there will be no more tie votes -- just runoffs. (Not sure what we'll do if there's another tie in a runoff, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.) As such, final runoff round 1 will begin voting 11-03. (This info is all available on the Challenge Calendar.) What I will do is list all the sims that have moved into the runoff phase. I will give each of them a number, with the first sim to win this year being #1, and the last sim to win being #20. I will then use the Random.org tool to choose a number between 1 and 20. This sim will be the first option in the first runoff round poll. I'll continue this way until we have ten sims in runoff round 1. If a number is selected twice by the random number generator, I'll simply request another number until a new number is chosen. These ten sims will be posted in a poll similar to what we've done for each round. Links will be provided to each sim. Everyone will then vote on the best sim. The winning sim then advances to the final round. For runoff round 2, I will re-number the remaining sims as #1 through #10. I will again use the Random.org tool to choose a number between 1 and 10. This sim will be the first sim in the second runoff round. I will continue this way until the order of the remaining ten sims have been chosen. (Doing this to ensure there is no bias in the way the sims are placed in the poll.) Again, these ten sims will be posted in a poll. Everyone will vote, and the winning sim then advances to the final round. How will the final round work? In the final round, there will simply be two sims posted in a poll. I will use the Random.org tool to flip a virtual coin. The winning sim from runoff round 1 will be "Heads" and the winning sim from runoff round 2 will be "Tails". The winner will be the first option in the poll. Voters will have the whole month of December to vote on the final two sims.

Please note, in the box above, how the "Topic Description" line should read. No RANKS, no SHIP NAMES, no NPC NAMES. Just the writer's primary character name(s)!! That's it!

For more information, including the rules and contest calendar, please see the Top Sims Contest website. *Note* If you're submitting a sim, please use the name of the author's primary character -- not the "NPC" name, if applicable. The "Topic Description" box should ONLY read, for example: "Tristan Wolf" - PRIMARY CHARACTER NAME ONLY! No rank! No ship! Important Dates: - Round 18 Submission period opens: Mo 10-06 - Round 18 Submission period closes: Su 10-19 - Round 18 Voting period opens: Mo 10-20 - Round 18 Voting period closes: Su 11-02 Procedure: 1. Submit sims (from your ship, or another ship -- all sims welcome, member or staff) 2. Rate sims you see in this forum 3. Vote on sims submitted in the last round Notes: - Please find a balance between "too much" and "too little" on the submission end of this contest. Don't submit every post from your crew. But I DO encourage everyone to submit at least one post to the contest whenever they can. Last week there were approximately 300 sims in the fleet - an average of 40 a day. I would expect no more than five or six a day to be considered "Top Sim" contest worthy. - REMEMBER: This is NOT a popularity contest. We welcome submissions of your crewmate's sims, but ALL sims should be rated based on their MERIT, and NOT the fact that someone is your crewmate. Any crews found "stuffing the ballots" or ratings, will be disqualified PERMANENTLY - yes, that means the whole crew. - Want your crewmates to win more? Nominate only the best sims, and encourage higher quality sims!

Please use this thread for any general discussion or questions about the Top Sims Contest. Please do not post praise or criticism for submitted sims in this thread. Instead, post those praise or criticisms in the submitted sim's own thread. Any discussion about Round 17 should go in the Round 17 Discussion Thread, not here.

No sims were disqualified due to low rating. This round of voting only qualifies one sim to be part of the final round of voting for the title of "Top Sim, 2008." Links: Round 17 sims. REMEMBER: This is NOT a popularity contest. Vote based on MERIT, not the fact that someone is your crewmate. Any crews found "stuffing the ballots" or ratings, will be disqualified PERMANENTLY - yes, that means the whole crew.

"Intensity" by Cura Assanti & Jacen Fanel wins this round. Their sim will now be entered into the final round of the year for the chance at the title of Top Sim, 2008. Congratulations to them! "Klingon Herder" by Tanang will be named an honorary Top Sims Contest winner.

Glad to have you with us!

Well, I went into the database and took a look at who rated the topic, and how they rated it. I must say, the results are interesting. I'm not going to release the names, but suffice it to say that this is not a case of any given ship trying to throw the poll. I will advise this: starting next round, there will be a disclaimer on the instruction thread (if we keep this system), that any and all polling results can be released. I'm not going to make this a habit, since it's a time-intensive search that requires me to match up member numbers with poll ratings and match those to the names. But at least I'm satisfied that it's not a poll-fixing situation, and if it happens again, the perps will be outed. That being said: I do not have the time to look through each thread and add up the poll numbers via comments on every thread. Trying to change over the challenges every other week is already a 30+ minute task. The only possible solution I can think of, under your proposed system, would require perhaps a team of 1-3 trustworthy people who would edit the sub-heading of each thread to show the ratings. (i.e.- Someone goes in, gets the ratings, calculates the points, then changes the sub-heading to show what it is, that way I can quickly assess who has been DQ'd.)

Please be more specific about what you're suggesting, and we'll see if it can be implemented.