I'm pretty sure that's against the rules.

People can do whatever they please, as far as making submissions to the Archive goes. It's up to the person running 'the challenge' to decide whether or not to count a person's reviews towards the official total or not (of course, if a person shows that s/he is very inconsistent about this, they probably won't be selected to be the spot man next time).....but a review written during a stockpile period is just as good as a review of similar quality written during the 'official' window, as far as its capacity to better the Archive is concerned. I suspect that, over time, people have somewhat lost sight of the original challenge's spirit and come to fixate on a secondary aspect of it....though I suppose it's all the same in the end, as I just said.

I suppose you're right. It is for the betterment of the site after all. Carry on then...

It's officially Monday here, so I'm gonna start writing and submit them in the morning.

Fine.

I'll take the official Before reading at midnight, site time.

Why would it be? People have 7 days to write the reviews, and my unavailability during the last 2 days of the Challenge would put me at an unfair disadvantage with 5 days to write. Now, I have exactly as much time as everybody else.

Again, in the interest of bringing light to as many previously unreviewed albums as possible for the betterment of the site, I concede.

You're assuming everybody but you has all seven days of the official challenge, as if life stops for everybody for this one week.

No, I don't necessarily assume that, since I still work and whatnot during this coming week, but for those two days of complete absence I gave myself a bit of leeway before the challenge.

Too bad you weren't smart and just submitted the stockpiled reviews at regular intervals over the course of the five days you did have without saying anything about stockpiling. No one would ever have realized and your concience would be fine with that nice excuse you made up.

Too, too bad... for you!

I'll have a big stack (Well, by my low standards) of them come in on Friday night, but that's just because I don't have the ability to submit reviews midweek, only to write them.

This will be the first challenge where I did not give myself a 2 hour head start and will be starting the writing process right at the stroke of midnight. I don't have high expectations for myself this week given a lot of obligations that I need to keep, but my hope is to do better than the 21 review slump I had last challenge.

Good luck everyone.

I've really dug myself into a hole here as I don't think I have any virgins. But I say that every contest and still manage to somehow pull something out of my ass so...let's just see what happens.

Good luck guys.

Too bad I'm too honest to do something like that. Had I really been cheating I'd have kept it quiet... easiest thing to do, ever. And I guess you'll find out whether I'm lying about not being there during the last two days if I submit any reviews or not...

Question is whether it is easier to believe that you are that very particular level of honest where you are dishonest enough to cheat but not quite dishonest enough to keep it under wraps, or that you are just a dimbulb.

Yep, that's a real brainbuster.

so has this begun? Just double checking before I start writing.

Yes it has.

Hmm...there's 127 possible reviews I could do for the challenge, taking only physical releases into question and not what I've downloaded. Unfortunately, I only see myself doing one at the moment...I'll have to see how the rest of the week goes, and if I can polish my writing style a bit.

You're a fucking dumbass. He could have lied and pretended he took 5 days to write reviews which really took him seven days, but instead he decided to tell the truth because he's at an unfair disatvantage due to a camping trip, and yet you still have the ego to tell him he's breaking the rules because he's starting two days early? I don't even feel like explaining how stupid that logic is, because I suggest you figure it out for yourself. Good on you, MaDTransilvanian, most probably would have lied, but it's good you didn't. Pay no attention to this moron.

5 singles down.

Now to the full lengths.

Damn, if I didn't have two assignments due this week I'd be able to pull out a very decent number of reviews.

Estimate for total for me is 23

I've only got 18 on the list. 19 if I can be arsed tackling a double album. Won't be getting in any more CDs before the end, so unless I grab a couple of demos off the net I doubt I'll be breaking 20.

Even if you don't count MaDTransilvanian's lame-ass cheating it seems to be going quite well already.

Fucksake, you guys are all a bunch of faggots. "Unfair disadvantage", "breaking the rules", "cheating", bla bla bla. It's not a contest. There are no prizes. It's a collective challenge for the archives to improve the review content. It's really getting to the point where I'm thinking we ought to abolish personal scores altogether and just post the overall numbers. The QUALITY of the reviews is much more important than the QUANTITY. I don't give a flying hardstool turkfuck how many reviews each of you guys write, what I do care about is that people put effort into writing good reviews for releases without any. The challenge is a means to that end - anything else is purely secondary.

It's not a contest, but it's a game. The enjoyment of the game may be secondary to improving the Archives, but "secondary" is not synonymous to "irrelevant/unimportant." It's more fun when it's fun, and it's more fun when it's played with fairness, sportsmanship, etc.

So? Don't count him if you don't want to, then, you're running it this time around. But it's retarded to get all bent out of shape.

You're the one who seems to be taking this too seriously. For me it's all in good fun, and to remain fun I think people shouldn't get so obsessive about their standings in the results that they resort to breaking the fair and simple rules, that's all.

Here's my summary on the matter: Stockpiling reviews (writing reviews before the start of the challenge) is not permitted. There's no way to check, of course, and in the end it doesn't matter because it's for the betterment of the Archives after all, but in the spirit of the game it is not permitted. If the challenge happens to intersect with a period of time you are out of time then big whoop, maybe you won't win this time, but remember that a) it is only a game, and b) there's one (roughly) every six months.

I wasn't talking about you in particular. It just seems to me people are more interested in numbers and contest rules than writing good reviews, and maybe I am taking it too seriously, but the challenge these days seems to be more about the "game" than it is about the reviews themselves. Why not reward people for writing quality reviews? Maybe you should add a "best written" category in, just based on your own favorite picks. I'll certainly talk about mine.

Oh, and just to be clear, I'll let MaDTransilvanian's thing slip for this time, since there seems to have been some confusion on the matter of stockpiling. If I am to run the next one in half a year, people who submit pre-written stockpiles (again, there's no way to check, so it would depend on someone admitting it in the spirit of fairness and all) won't be counted in the individual score (but nonetheless those reviews will be counted in the total).

Okay. Sorry about all the fuss this has caused.

No harm done. Except that I won't review the Isengard demos for this challenge anymore, since they're not genuine virgins anymore. I'll review them some time afterwards.

Bit of an early push from me, I'm rather proud of myself. Although considering timezones I do seem to get more out of the early part of the day than a lot of you folks, judging from last time. And I hit a couple of little'uns counting a split and an EP. Sleep and work beckons, then I'm wading back in.

This.


Well, anyone remember the very first edition of the Challenge? Almost every contender had begun writing reviews during the preceeding weekend, because that's when most of them had time to do so. Same the second, the third time. No one really cared, because there was no "competition" to begin with. There wasn't even an individual counting back in the days (I think I introduced it with the second edition, where I "officially" took up the counting duties, and even then it was largely anecdotal). I agree that, sadly, with time it seems the individual contest has definitely stepped over the collective challenge... That's another reason why I'd always said as long as I'd be in charge of the challenge, they would never be any kind of reward saved some little "witty" comments for the three first "winners", why I recently added the five-singles rule or why I regularly considered suppressing the individual counting altogether.

I can't really say I'm pleased with the current evolution, but as Nightgaunt says, as long as the quality of the site is improved... why not. With the growing number of users, it had to end up this way one day or another anyway. I for sure don't want to sound like the old bitch complaining about how everything was better back in the day, about having lost some kind of so-called spirit and blah blah blah - as long as people have fun, because for sure I've had fun animating and writing for these challenges in the past, and as long as the reviews quality is improving, I don't see any need to complain.

Best wishes to my lucky successor, and may this 10th edition be a success as well, rid of all those little pesky polemics

What, this does not come as a surprise, but maybe the spirit can still be preserved somehow. I am not really motivated to write at the moment, so I think I let this edition pass.

Same here, the motivation isn't pretty high. Well, there's tons of reviews I really want to do, but I don't feel like it at all. I'll still try, but I doubt I'll contribute as much as I usually do even I never wrote that much reviews. I don't to do half-assed jobs either.

I for one like very much how the challenge has developed. Then again we Germans have a reputation that rules are our favourite part of a game. Having everything spelled out and organized simply makes it so much more enjoyable for someone like me.

I'm off to a pretty slow start here myself, I managed to churn out one before passing out for the night. When I get back from my band's rehearsal this evening I think I may be able to get a few more in, but for me things won't really get going until Wednesday.

Having played Skat a fair amount myself, I can attest to the truth of this.

Virgins I plan to do:

Scum - Purple Dreams and Magic Poems
Ellipsis - Imperial Tzadik
Sabaton - Coat of Arms
Ethereal - Towers of Isolation
Kaledon - Chapters 2, 3 and 5
Southern Cross - Down Below

Just keeping track...

We always discuss which ones were the favourites of the users after the contest finishes. Although having it on a board would possibly be nicer, but I'm not sure if adding more elements to the contest would really help out in the way you like. In the one contest I put any effort into, I got mentioned by one of the regulars as a favourtie review, which was cool, but seeing my name in the post whenever these contests come up seems cooler. And to think it was for 12 reviews

Ah, Jon, I see you already hit the new Mael Mordha. No worries, as I plan on adding my own review to that release. Maybe I'll write that one today.