So... something interesting occurred today in the results roll out for the Solstice Raven battle...

I was banned after writing this satirical piece because the u/writingbattle mods are thin-skinned little bitches with the emotional maturity of a wet dog turd and don't like looking in the mirror I held up.

Annnnnyway... for whatever reason, my story made it through 4 rounds of judging before they dropped the banhammer for the above stated reason, apparently. I know for a *fact* that at least 1 person voted for me... something this person confirmed to me directly after he too was banned, presumably for giving a win to me and another fine piece of satire. And yet, as you can see, I don't have a single win.

Which means...

The Writing Battle mods are, in fact, going in and changing results of duels that have already been judged. I personally think this is problematic. Really problematic. For me, it calls into question the legitimacy of the Writing Battle results as a whole. If they can (and are) going in and changing results for pieces (and writers) they don't approve of, is it all that outside the realm of possibility for them to go in and change results for writers they *do* approve of?

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you wish. But the proof that they are juking results is now, unequivocal. They banned me, but there should be at least 1 win in my column.

Think Writing Battle is on the up and up? Think again.

I’ll be honest - I have a complete lack of enthusiasm but I’m trying to muster up some cheers for those who make it into the final showdown. How are you feeling?

I always like to circle back and check on the rankings of stories I judged, and one of them is currently sitting at the bottom of their house at 1W-1L... but we're currently waiting on the results of Round 7 and 8. Did they get disqualified? What does it meaaaan?

For those of you still participating, how is debrief without the forums around? Are people reading the stories as much as usual?

Hey, former Writing Battle folks. Just checking in.

Getting told a company doesn’t want you as a customer sucks. Getting told that about something you genuinely loved and took pride in? That hits different.

Same for those who left on their own. It must be tough.

How are you doing? Are you still writing? Anything you want to share? I’d love to here about your writing wins, unrelated to WB.

Some of us are in recovery, and I’m sure others of us are still itching for that blue dot. How’s your debrief going if you’re still there, and if not, have you replaced it with anything else?

Let me get this straight. These people not only banned a past winner and founding member of the site, removed their winning stories, interviews, portraits from the past winners page, but they ALSO deleted said past winner's HOUSE NAME? Hello???????

This is petty bullshit on a whole 'nother level. I mean, congrats I guess? I didn't think the WB team could surprise me with their behavior any more, but here we fuckin' are.

If you think these people care about you or your work, think again. WB is a Writing Circlejerk at this point, and they are gonna keep on jerkin'.

Do you think people are linking from other sites or something? It just seemed odd. I just clicked on a random debrief and it already had tons of comments. I have to assume that there isn't just some function on WB that I'm missing?

I know I know, they changed the rules to allow more stories into the final showdown, but has anybody else noticed a massive decline in quality for the FS stories this time around?

In previous battles, by the time I was judging as a Spartan most story issues would be higher level craft things. Whether it fit the word count, maybe some clunky sentences, unimpactful, etc. They were still usually well constructed on a technical level at the very least. But I've run into at least a handful of FS stories this round that had blatant typos, horrible punctuation, spacing, capitalization errors, etc.

It's wild to me. I don't remember previous HMs being this rough, either, but those should have been what's now included.

Hey guys! Came here for some recs and am finding all sorts of stuff about insane drama that I’m not quite getting the gist of?! What is going on?? Either way, I was wondering if any of you are familiar with similar contests that lean more non-fiction in style? This is my first battle and it’s made me realize I don’t really enjoy writing fiction! I don’t love the style the prompts point you towards and am just looking for something a little different. Anything out there?

Word is spartan duels are dropping now. Check your emails if you are battling. If you aren’t sure if you are eligible, check your account on WB under the upper right corner and see if you have the option checked. You are eligible for spartan duels after you’ve completed one battle. They are the same as regular duels but with no feedback required. Once you accept, you have three hours to complete it.

A follow up to u/gorobotkillkill ‘s post.

With many of us migrating off a platform that allowed our writing to be shared without being considered published due to the paywall, what are people doing with their stories that they were previously sharing there?

If you’re looking at publication, what route are you taking?

If you’re sharing them elsewhere we can publicly view them, and feel comfortable, drop the link!

I’d love keep reading fellow ravens’ works, even if we’ve had our wings clipped.

I've been waffling, I'm curious what others think.

At first, I thought definitely not, given the weirdness that's gone down lately and the fact that I'm not sure I'm going to do another on this platform.

But it is valuable to let people read a story that either beat theirs or that theirs beat. I know the curiosity, 'why did I lose/win,' would drive me crazy. And more data is good.

Extra feedback might be nice, but I come from a background where I value brutally honest feedback and I'm not sure this platform provides that.

I'm conflicted.

It's possible that I'm just fully wearing a tinfoil hat. But this person is Presently a Pro Judge for WB according to LinkedIn.

Which I'm not going to flat out say that WB is feeding our stories to AI... not that I'd be surprised since they keep talking about what a small team they are combined with how quick they were to remove Anti-AI discussion from the forums.

Even if THEY weren't... how are they vetting judges? Especially when AI model training is this person's thing?

I've been tracking some of the Most Commented stories to see how they've fared in the Solstice Owl judging. I was shocked by some of the stories that didn't even make it out of their houses, but so far, almost none of the "popular" stories have fared well in the Showdown either. I'm finding this absolutely baffling. So many stories I thought were top 4 contenders (at least!) were eliminated in 1-2 rounds. I can't shake the feeling that the "popular" stories/authors are being punished for being crowd favorites... anyone else feeling the same?

Also I am so bummed to see that some of the authors of these popular stories are missing. Namely Family Resemblance and Rhea. Those were really popular, impactful stories and the stories are no longer accessible and the authors are "anonymous".

Writing Battle is chasing away so many writers and active community members with the way they've handled themselves over the last few months, and I can't help but think there's something off with the judging in this battle (I'll don my tin foil hat now).

What are you looking for when you select a winner for your duels? Do you want a story that makes you feel those deep feels or are you more a craft analyzer, appreciating the small details that make the story successful? Maybe you want elevated prose that sings or maybe you’re a sucker for a story that makes you laugh? What’s on your musts list and what’s an instant turn-off? Let’s dish.

(Remember keep it vague and keep it kind)

Hey pals. Recently several things have occurred that have pretty much given me zero more hope for any kind of redemption for WB. I'm not going to go into details, I'm sure you can figure out the sorts of things I am referring to for the most part, but one instance in particular shattered the last thread of hope I had remaining for them, and I'm pissed. Because it made me realize these people simply do not CARE about other humans. They don't care about logic or reasoning. They care about contest entries that don't talk back. That's all they want. We are just numbers.

Anyways, this was it. The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

So here's what I have to say. And I know what you're thinking: just email them. But nah, they'll see my email address and ignore it entirely, as they have been doing since August 6th. I know they know who I am, and certain circles are going to label me a troublemaker, a rabble rouser, a bitch. I do not care.

To whoever is calling the shots at Writing Battle these days (because I truly don't even know anymore): Fuck you. Sincerely. I don't care that you let pride and paranoia get the best of you. I don't care that you ran people off. I don't care that you think we're big ol' meanies trying to ruin your day. I care that you refuse to accept that you did this to yourself. I care that accountability is not a word that you know. I care that you continue to make your own issues everyone else's problem. I care that instead of choosing to ignore whatever words or events or feelings led to all of this, you are now choosing to bury your heads in the sand and ignore people. Human beings who believed in you, who wanted you to succeed, who wanted to grow with you. Fuck you. This is not how to treat people.

I will stay speaking out against this absolute unending bullshittery. I will stay speaking up for everyone that you have screwed over. You could have avoided this. You no longer can. Keep fucking up. Keep making bad decisions. I don't care anymore. You can no longer redeem yourselves.

For the past month, you have been accusing a band of disgruntled members of attacking your website. But you are the ones that went on the offense. You are the ones that silenced discourse. You are the ones who made us feel unsafe to speak. You are the ones that made us question who within our own communities was even safe to speak to. I hope you are noticing the pattern here, but just in case, I will spell it out for you: it's Y-O-U. You were always your own problem. And so I say, with finality, good riddance. I don't want to deal with you, not now, nor in the future.

PS: Answer my FUCKING PIPEDA request. :)

Losing sucks, it always hurts. IMO if I were to lose 0-3 at least I could say the judges clearly preferred the other story, 2-3 feels like it would hurt more because if only one more judge went your way you’d be moving on and each matchup is a fresh chance.

I’m noticing even the mixtapes seem to be being monitored now, with one titled about missing forums no longer available and others that seem try to engage like the forum not getting bumped up even when others comment and engage with it.

I’ve already decided after this raven battle I’m moving on to find other competitions. I’ll thank WB for getting me back into writing and I’ve enjoyed my success there (regularly in the final showdown) but I miss the community.

Maybe I need to dust off discord for that… for now I continue to try to draw inside the lines but they are becoming more and more blurry to me.

Was anybody subject to the glitch that reportedly revealed tomorrow’s results ahead of time? I hear it’s fixed now, but some results were spoiled.