A couple weeks ago, I entered a travel writing contest. I knew that the format was slightly flawed to begin with–the story with the highest user rating wins. While they did limit the number of votes per (computer? IP address?) to one, it was still a system asking to be abused, just as the IgoUgo Photo Feud Contest was abused in June.

I did enjoy reading many of the stories that were submitted, and voted according to how much I liked the story, regardless of the fact that my story was running against them. I didn’t even bug friends for votes. Unfortunately, some people were slightly more unscrupulous, and I found that, even after I and some of my family rated my story, my overall rating was still pretty low. It started out around 3/5 stars, and it slowly slumped, until it ended up at 1.44/5. Other stories boasted even lower ratings, mostly due to the fact that they were posted earlier than mine was. I started to ask more people, but this still didn’t offset the stream of “1″ votes I was getting.

I was starting to feel pretty rotten about my story. It was one that I wrote earlier in the year for Bootsnall that I got some nice comments on; the main reason I entered it in the contest as opposed to one of my favorites was a) it was less than 1,000 words, which was the contest limit, and b) I’m snowed under as the end of the semester swiftly approaches and didn’t have the time to revise/shorten/completely write anew a story. However, the announcement of the winner made me feel much better. Apparently, someone had found a way to constantly vote down all of the other stories, giving them all “1″s, all the while consistently voting their story a “5″. I don’t know who did it and I don’t care to find out, but the eventual winner, Rowena Love, is well-deserving of the $125 grand prize with her story Have Lie, Will Travel. So congratulations, and may the next contest be slightly less dramatic.