Utah Wordwar - 2008 Edition (Rules Discussion)

I haven't decided yet if I'll participate in NaNo, but if I do, a good ol' wordwar is always in order. You set the rules, because you know you're going down, regardless of what the rules are :-)

Edit: unless the rules include no trash talk, in which case I can't participate.

This is probably a silly question, but I figure I can't get an answer unless I ask.

Because I am finishing last year's novel, rather than writing a new one, I cannot officially participate in NaNoWriMo. However, my goal is still to write at least 40,000 words (which should just about finish my novel off) and I plan on participating in every other aspect of NaNoWriMo, aside from turning my novel in. Can I participate in the Word War if I'm not 'officially' participating in NaNoWriMo?

Thanks!

So, there won't be a limit on the number of words we update each day like last year?

That's an interesting question. I don't see any problem with it, but I think the other MLs will have to weigh in with their answers.

I don't think so. I'm not a fan of that restriction either. It didn't have much of an impact on either team in the end.

I just had an interesting thought. Let me know what you think:

What about instead of using a straight mean of all participants, we discard the outliers. (Anyone more than a certain distance from the straight mean of the whole group.)

This encourages those who are average or below average to keep writing. Those who are outliers on the upper side are still encouraged to keep writing, because they drive their team's mean higher, meaning they can drop more low wordcount people from the bottom of the average.

As a simplistic example, suppose team 1 had these four people:

Person 1: 127,000 words
Person 2: 57,729 words
Person 3: 53,782 words
Person 4: 123 words

With the old method, the average would be: 59,658
With the new method, it would be: 55,755

This evening, I'll take a look at 2006 and 2007, and see what it would have done to the results of those years, and fiddle with the numbers. The basic idea is to keep things fair, while also reducing the impact of a small handful of outliers on the results, especially since we may be having some small teams this year, with 4 regions now.

Okay, I moved to Utah this year, so I don't know what this whole wordwar thing is all about... Can anyone fill me in?

For the past 2 years, Utah::SLC and Utah::Elsewhere have had a contest to see who could get the best average wordcount. It's an opt-in contest, and once we have the teams, we track the stats. For example, here's the stats page for last year: http://devel.kydance.net/nanowrimo/wordwar_2007.php

It's a lot of fun, and helps to motivate the participants to write more.

Welcome to Utah, by the way!

Yay the wordwar!

So are we breaking down the war between, SLC, Cache, Odgen and Elsewhere? I don't think Cache has that many people to make a large count.

oh and signing up of course ;) I have three outlines ready and waiting.

Sounds great, I'd love to participate. I know it'll give me at least some motivation to keep going!

~Aura

Cache can have their own team if they want... otherwise, I'm willing to just include them in Elsewhere.

Also, just a note: This isn't the signup thread yet. Just figuring out the details of how we want to run it this year.

So far, here's what I'm considering:

1. No limits on update frequency or words per day.
2. Team scores are the averages of wordcounts that fall within one standard deviation of their overall average, to remove outliers from the score. (Note that they still have an impact, just not as strong an impact.)
3. Signups will close on the 7th, at Noon, local time.

If there are any objections or additions anyone wants to make, let's make sure to discuss them. I want as many people happy with this as possible.

I think last year's rules and math worked just fine. I don't think that you should penalize somebody because they're writing much more than everyone else, or reward a team because some of their players gave up early in the month but not early enough to drop out.

I also think that the no ambush rule should stay. Last year, nobody was kicked out of the competition for ambushing. It encourages people to keep their word count up to date and it gives the other team a fair chance to know what they're up against. Part of the reason for the word war is to encourage people to write more. So if some people are writing in secret only to upload a high word count in the last week, how can the other team be encouraged to write more when they aren't seeing a word count that they have to keep up with?

The only thing i worry about with the ambush rule is if the site goes down and you can't get into to update a word count for a couple days (for me that could be a large count to post at one time) and lately my net's been wacky I might not get to the site for a few days. (as it is i can hardly get to yahoo and gmail.. grrr)

Hey there! I'm back for my second year, and yes, I will be in the word-war

I think that there are about 4 people in Cache altogether, so unless you lot want to stay apart from Elsewhere, I suggest we join their forces... just my input on the matter. And I would love to war, if people give me adequate motivation and support, I'm sure I can finish this year, unlike last year. My first year, I did finish and I exceeded the goal by about 20,000 more words, if memory serves. Just shows that I can do it if I put my mind (and time) into it.

Oh, and before I forget. Welcome welcome to Utah!

I have a hard time getting too worked up about any of the rules, so whatever y'all work out is fine with me. Except I'm with monotreme: if there's no trash talk, I'm OUT. otherwise I'll show up to help stomp Elsewhere into the ground.

I have posted a poll on the new local forums here: http://www.utahwrimos.net/index.php/topic,7.0.html

Please go vote, so that we can figure out which method we'll be using this year.

It got pretty depressing last year to see some of the wordwar participants never wrote anything. It would be nice if we could eliminate the dead weight for both teams. Where the line is drawn for being eliminated I leave up to you.

Can I be in the Word War too? I never really got into it before, but I think I'm going to need the extra motivation this year.

Anyone can be in the wordwar, as long as they live in Utah. :)

Sign me up, please.

Last year's rules are cool with me.

Hi utoxin!

I'm definitely interested in signing up for the Wordwar. Let us know when you're ready to sign us up!

I'm ready to roll; I have no idea what I'm going to write about, but I'm ready for it!

See you all on November 1st.

Xena

I would like to sign up, please!

Cache Valley, woo-hoo!!!

I agree, there should be a way to prune the dead wood so the rest of the tree can thrive.

FNORD!
It could be that the only purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to other.
If at first you don’t succeed, maybe failure is your style.
If you don’t see the fnords they can’t eat you.
FNORD!

It just sounds wrong to put it like that...

2007 novel: Crimson Megami - 50,048 / 50,000 words
2008 novel: Reality: PARADOX - 0 / 50,000 words

Truth hurts.

FNORD!
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to other.
If at first you don’t succeed, maybe failure is your style.
If you don’t see the fnords they can’t eat you.
FNORD!

Can anyone who has done this before point me in the right direction for going into NANOWRIMO as organized as possible?

I have wanted to write a novel for a while, and I have an idea for a story that I have been kicking around for a year or so.

Thoughts? Links? Resources?

Thanks in advance - I'm nervous, but excited.

Justin