Attention Writing Competition Entrants

This message is directed to Alucard, opda, Judgement, Leo, DigiDigi, MangArmand, and Acefire.

You all SICKEN me. I am APPALLED at each and every one of you. It has nearly been two weeks since I began this competition, and only THREE of the entrants were accepted. THREE OUT OF TEN. I had four other, pitiful submissions that I am VERY DISAPPOINTED in even calling it poetry. Barely ANY of the requirements were met. Hell. Did you idiots even read the requirements?

The three entrants that entered their were barely passed. While there was mistakes, they were minor ones that did not take from the overall poem. The best one was a submission yesterday by a late entrant who completed his poem in TWENTY NINE MINUTES.

There is no excuse for this. I gave you all the most simple, basic form of writing I could think of that still posed some sort of challenge. THIS WAS AN EASY COMPETITION. EASY. There is NO ACCEPTABLE EXCUSE.

You have two days to submit your poems. If you are not going to submit your poems, you must send a PM to me with the following message:

"I am sorry for wasting your time. I do not have the mental complicity to write such a simple poem. I have zero creative skills and I am a lazy sack of shit. This poem, that could have taken me no less than ten-twenty minutes if I actually put my effort into it, was too difficult for my small mind to comprehend. I have no talent in the arts of writing, and never will. Instead of sticking my thumbs up my ass, watching porn, or acting like a child on Xbox Live, I should have spent the time working on the poem I signed up to do. I, [insert name here], am terribly sorry for wasting your time. I am a dumbass."

For those who did complete their poems, you get a gold star. Seriously, a gold star. Put this in your signature. I will grant the user any wish. Whether it be help on an assignment, to psychologically tear apart a WDA member, or whatever is reasonable, I will try to forfill it.

Fish, Nour, Unforgiven Pretender; good job. Everyone else; fuck off.

If I do not get all entries, I may not do another Writing Competition.

I'm intimidated yet proud
That I got this gold star, even if it was given so loud

Maybe you were a bit harsh on those who didn't finish their writing
But I guess they just need to be motivated by something frightening

I suggest that you guys use these two days to regain your pride
Otherwise you'd be so ashamed that all you can do is hide

This little poem should be proof that your rhyme doesn't have to be very good
But just make something that gets J.J. back into a good mood

I'm sorry but this is not how any situation should be handled, when you have issues with people when you're running an event or a competition you don't publicly belittle and abuse them by calling them idiots, saying they sicken you and telling them to humiliate themselves by sending you a message like the one you have mentioned above. People have lives and not everyone is as good of a writer as you like to think you are, there has been plenty of time when people have signed up for things on WDA or even back on TWA and I am sure this happens on other academies and then they don't see it through to the end and guess what, people don't abuse them they simply take them out of the event and if they have a big enough problem with them they then don't let them sign up for the event in the future.

Act your age J.J and show some respect by not insulting and abusing people publicly and maybe people might be more inclined to join and complete your competition.

J. J. Knight wrote:

Spoiler:

Welcome to WDA.

I, quite frankly, do not really care. This is my way to show how piss off I am. Not only toward my competition, but everything else here. They sign up, but then don't want to compete for duels because they have to duel a certain opponent, so they try to back out. I am not bottling this up and adding it to my own personal frustrations bottle. There is absolutely no excuse for not submitting a poem in a week. They had nearly two weeks to work on a simple poem in which I am sure you could do in about five minutes. I worked sixty plus hours this pay period. If I can find the time and energy to come online and work on a book, then so can they. While I can understand blockage to internet access, that is the only excuse I will accept unless a family member of theirs died. I will not accept school as an excuse. Fish and UP were/are taking exams. Let's face it. I'm sure they'd be on WDA anyway or doing something else on the internet. Fish and UP took out a few minutes of their time to actually complete it (UP took twenty nine) and send it to me. Everyone else, I had to get on their ass about it. I should not have to. It was a simple poem; not Shakespeare. As for insulting them publicly, it's better what I would have done individually. First message I would have sent would have ended up being a vent.

Did I overreact and make this post a little too insulting? Maybe. Is this something they should hear? Definitely. Will it make people give me their shit? Truth is, probably not. I have my doubts. I want them to prove me wrong. Now is their chance to do it.

Yes, JJ was harsh on this but it is not a matter I will go into. To give one reason as to why I will not, it is because writing competitions are his, if he wishes to kick someone from it, not allow someone to join the next one(s) or stop them altogether, there will be no interference out of extreme cases, and in this case, again, while the way it was expressed is not something I will get into, he is justified for all the aforementioned courses of action (kick/blacklist/cancel).

There is a difficulty for hosting a writing competition higher than the one needed to host a tournament for some simple reasons. As many of you have noticed, he did not give out what exactly you would be doing during sign ups but waited until the competition started. Now you may regard this as bad planning for the following reason: if people don't know what they'll sign up for, they won't know whether they can do it or not in the end. There are only so many things that are easy for you, so if you are given one of them at random, the chance you'll get what's easy is low, so when you join you don't know what will happen, you may be dealt with something possible, you may be dealt with something impossible and not be able to do it, it's uncertain. However the writing competitions need people to sign up to start, even with the fact there is a low chance for you to be dealt with something "possible" once it starts. So in order to join you figured out a simple solution: "I will join and if it's something easy, I will do it. If it's not, all I have to do is not do it.".

But if you combine the factors that the chance for one to get something easy are low (the things you are good at are limited, the spectrum of things you can be dealt with is vast though, giving you a low chance to get something possible) and that most people have the same thought, in the end the writing competitions have the issue we came at: people won't turn things in and the writing competition that started won't work at all. Just a few fools will work for it and it will be for nothing because everyone who felt the task is too great will give up.

Now some of you may have figured out an easy solution to all of the above: "Then all he has to do is give us a sufficient description of what the contest will be on during sign ups. That way we will know what we sign up for and people will turn their things in."
If you realize why the above is wrong or have been told already, kudos to you, and if you don't, here's why. The competition has a time limit, if he gives off a description beforehand in most cases (e.g. "For this month's competition you are to make a short horror story"), then naturally nothing would stop people from prepare during sign ups and before the competition starts thus violating the time limit and/or severely limiting for how long sign ups can remain open.

So given this issues JJ has only one option for this. He has to make sure that whoever signs up also delivers, because if he does not there is no competition. That means that at the same time, entrants should realize their responsibility in keeping the competition alive. In short, if you don't compete, no one can, simple as that. Even if it may seem unusual, unfamiliar or just seem hard to you (I will admit that some of you are too young, some of you don't have English as their primary language, some of you just can't comprehend words put next to each other after a certain point and for example have not managed to read this far into this post, etc.) you still should try to do what you can, good or bad, and not be ashamed of it. You have excuses for not doing well at this, most of you are children and are still going to school with subjects having the exact purpose of teaching you how to express yourselves in writing, the very fact you are still learning means it's ok. You don't have many excuses for not turning it in however. Even if you have exams or homework, someone didn't just hit you with exams out of the blue, you knew they would happen when you were signing up, and you still said you would stay in the competition, knowing your own life; you signed up so it's your responsibility after that. If something unexpected happened that's again okay, but in most cases I find it very hard to believe you did not have 1 hour to spare in all this time. I am lazy too and I understand why you would not turn it in even if you had the time, honestly, I do, but please carry through with your responsibilities if you choose to take them up.

Most of you can't write, of that I am certain. It's not an insult, doing routine things is expected but being able to write a story is not a necessary skill in life, and even if you consider it one, you have excuses such as you are too young still (as you grow up your ability to write goes up as well, don't worry), some are just not cut for writing, some find the procedure to tiresome etc. Writing competitions are not necessary, I will have no issue if JJ decides you just can't do it, I will have no issue if you decide you just can't do it yourselves and pass on it. if you do however want writing competitions to happen, join and see them through. They don't have to be 10 people, for something like a writing competition 5 will be fine, but that needs to be 5 works submitted, so if you do want them it's your job to enter then, your job to sustain them.

On another note, that's mostly directed to people who didn't turn something in or turned in something they barely tried to do in 5 minutes or something. However if it comes to trying to salvage the competitions maybe we will have to go through standards again and alter the basic "point system" itself that is just vote based now if I remember correctly. For example, making things more lenient and easy to pass, but them going through an initial evaluation by JJ for the parts they had right and for the parts they didn't, so for example if you did not include a character in the poem of this writing competition you'd get a 2 vote reduction from the final result, and your goal would be to resend until you got a perfect score to have a chance at the competition or you'd leave it as is and accept the penalty. Alternatively the standards could be lowered and judging be left entirely to the voters. However for one both are undesirable solutions, for another, that's JJ's territory so unless he decides otherwise we won't intrude.

The Joker wrote:

Act your age J.J and show some respect by not insulting and abusing people publicly and maybe people might be more inclined to join and complete your competition.

-> People join competition
-> People complete competition
-> Lots of people don't complete competition
-> JJ gets mad

While I don't like to interfere with his own stuff, I have to say, your argument makes no sense. You're saying that his actions after the competition was basically ditched by half of the entrants caused the entrants to ditch the competition in the first place.

~~~~~~~

Now, as for how harsh it was, I don't think it was necessary but I understand how he feels. It's incredibly annoying when you, and a few others who complete the competition, put all the effort in because you think something will work, and then it doesn't on account of the fact that other people didn't complete the competition.

There are some good excuses and stuff, school, etc., but I've just completed what, 8 of my life's current biggest exams? Over the time that the competition was set. Because it wasn't anything, a poem is literally 15 minutes or so of thinking and typing, and it's actually quite enjoyable. Then it's fun to read through, make changes, read through again, and let it strike you that you like what you just wrote.

As Al said we're not going to interfere and J.J. will do what J.J. will do, but before you get the immediate reaction of OH MY GOD THAT'S SO HARSH AND IMMATURE AND STUPID, J.J. put a hell of alot of effort into doing this for you guys and he didn't get much out of it.

Well, personally, I enjoyed the challenge he set me, so there's something for you, mate.