Here’s the final tranche of the stats for 2018-9, or at least the first part of it.
300 Worders -- Year 8 -- 2018-19
It was something of a disappointing year as far as numbers are concerned, with all the key metrics down. We had only
52 entrants in the four Challenges, down from 66 the year before, with
14 newcomers, down from 19, and unsurprisingly that meant fewer stories written, only
121 entries down from 155.
The best month, with
32 entries, was so poor it was actually worse than the previous year's
worst month of 35 stories (the best month for the previous year brought in 41 entries), and two months tied for worst with only
29 stories, a new low.
Some
18 of us completed all 4 Challenges, while
3 completed 3 Challenges,
9 did 2, and some
22 members took part only once, though 3 of those were newbies in the January Challenge.
Voting also saw a sharp decrease, with a total of
420 votes well down from 489, and
144 voters over the four Challenges, down from 165.
Unfortunately, a big drop in entrants didn’t translate into a big drop in “missing” voters, ie those members entering a Challenge and for whatever reason not voting in that quarter, and we had
9 missing votes, only marginally down on the previous year’s 10, spread over
8 non-voting entrants, one established member failing to vote twice.
Perhaps one corollary of having fewer entrants and entries, though, is that some members who didn’t have time or inclination to enter that year fortunately did find opportunity to vote. So the good news is we had many more “extra” votes, ie those from members who voted without taking part, with
32 extra votes, up from 20, from
19 voting non-entrants, up from 16. I’ve attached another Thank You list, and we thank everyone on the list but especial thanks once again to
nixie who voted in each Challenge without taking part, and
Abernovo,
farntfar and
Vaz who so voted three times each. Thank you, all.
The year 2018-9 was dominated by
Victoria Silverwolf and
Phyrebrat – Victoria won twice, becoming the first person ever to win consecutive quarters, and Phyrebrat had one win and a second place that nearly forced a tie-break, and fittingly the two of them came joint top for the year with 36 votes each. I scrambled into third place with 26 votes, and in fourth place with 18 votes were
Cat’s Cradle,
Luiglin and
mosaix.
Rafellin was seventh with 17 votes,
Shyrka eighth with 16,
LittleStar ninth with 15 and
M. Robert Gibson in tenth place had 13 votes in his first year of entering.
A few note-worthy and praise-worthy feats for the year 2018-9:
- As mentioned above, Victoria’s consecutive wins, the first ever -- her coming joint first capped three previous consecutive years of second place, showing just how excellent a writer she is
- Victoria and Phyrebrat‘s first and second place in April gave them a joint total of 33 votes, which is the second highest total since the 300 Challenges began (that's disregarding instances of joint second place, which makes it too complicated!)
- DEO had the best votes-per-story average after grabbing 10 votes with his one and only entry where he made the tie-break
- M. Robert Gibson got an incredible 9 votes in his very first 300 worder!
A very belated welcome to newbies who joined in the year 2018-9, and congrats, too, not only to
MRG as noted above, but also to
Daysman with 5 votes and
elvet with 4 votes in their respective first entries.
A cumulative look at the eight years of the 300 worders to follow shortly. (I hope...)
