The SDMB Poetry Sweatshop, Jan. 2010 - slightly different this time? Logistics thread.

Cafe Society
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Hello, everyone. Happy New Year and welcome to the logistics thread of the Straight Dope Message Board Poetry Sweatshop for January of 2010. Here are links to previous logistics threads -
October of 2009
December of 2009
and anthology threads -
October of 2009
December of 2009.

These Sweatshops have been quite fun, and there have been some great poems written.

As in previous Poetry Sweatshops, the poets will be given three randomly selected words. They will then have one hour to write a poem. An anthology thread will follow, and there will be a couple of days for any and all readers to vote for their favourite poem. The author of the favourite poem receives the respect of the entire message board and the honour of being known as the Poet Laureate of the SDMB. (tracy jo, Maserschmidt - please take a well deserved bow!)

I’d like to propose next weekend, Jan. 15 - 17, and I’d like to suggest a slight variation for this one. In the past, interested participants have agreed on a certain hour and the Sweatshop has happened ‘live’. This meant that some people were unable to take part because of other commitments, things that came up, family, work, life. Because of the worldwide nature of the message board, no matter what hour gets picked, it’s somebody’s bedtime somewhere. So -

I suggest that I pick the words sometime after 1 PM, EST on Friday, Jan. 15th. From that time until 1 PM EST on Sunday, Jan. 17th, any time that an interested poet sees that I am online, (little green button beside my name in any thread that I’ve posted…) that poet may send me a PM and I will send you the three words via PM or e-mail. That poet then has one hour to write a poem and send it to me, either by PM or e-mail. The time stamps will be used to verify that the poem has been written within the hour. After the 1 PM Sunday deadline, I will cut and paste each of the poems into the Anthology thread, set up the poll, and we start the voting.

I’m hoping this will help a few interested poets who weren’t able to make the last couple of Sweatshops be able to contribute. I’m also open to some more tinkering - heck, that’s the point of the logistics thread. Please, let me know what you think, and above all, I hope you may be interested in participating.

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Fine by me.

On balance, I liked the first contest better, with the unusual-but-not-impossible words. Seemed like more of a challenge. Although “transubstantiation” killed any idea of a limerick, which was disappointing.

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I’m in - life made me miss the last few, but I totally want to take part in this one! :slight_smile:

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Very creative way of dealing with the time thing!

Would it help to have a second person available to send people the words? As a fan-of-the-sweatshop/moderator/non-participant/person-who’s-around-way-too-much, I’d be happy to help in any way I can. (OTOH, I can see that being too confusing, so I won’t be hurt if you say no.)

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Oooh - this sounds like fun! Count me in!

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I’m in.

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I’m in. Assuming I remember. And, to be fair, this setup’d help that greatly…

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Wouldn’t it be easier to spoiler the words, and trust that people take only one hour to write their poem?

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Ooh, I want in, too. I wanted to do one of the last ones, and indeed the hour fell during a time when I had other commitments.

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This would be my vote. Are we really concerned about a rash of unscrupulous people taking the full weekend to write their poems, for no tangible reward? I think we can get by on the honor system, here.

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I’m getting married on Saturday! That’s one commitment I can’t work around.

I’ll be in for February’s sweatshop. This method would work soooo much better for those of us who tend to have to work.

I look forward to February’s.

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twickster Many thanks for your offer of help - I really appreciate that.

Brynda, Shot From Guns - I’m pondering your excellent suggestion about the spoiler box. It would certainly make the weekend easier from my standpoint, lemme tell you. May I get back to you on that one?

Serenata67 Congratulations, Mazel Tov! I knew your wedding was coming up in early January of this year, I just couldn’t remember if it was this weekend or the next. My apologies for my poor timing on yet another of these. Wishing you every joy on your wedding day.

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Really like this idea. I’m in, either way.

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Hey, that sounds like fun. Count me in, please.

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I’ll try to participate if I’m feeling creative; however, I’m not a big fan of the ‘spoiler’ idea – I for one wouldn’t trust myself not to rationalize taking a bit more than an hour to write my poem: “Well, I wasn’t fully paying attention, plus the phone rang, and I had to use the toilet twice because of all the coffee I drank, for which I had to get up and get refills, but yeah, if I’d been totally concentrated all the time, I totally could have written this in less than an hour – three quarters, tops! --, so I’m gonna go ahead and submit it anyway”, which wouldn’t be fair to those obeying the time limit more scrupulously, without necessarily being of bad intent.

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Sounds like a hoot; I’m in! I don’t really care how it’s done, either option sounds fine to me.

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I hate the thought of you or Twickster having to hang around all day. I’d be fine with the spoiler approach…

…but if you really want to be sure you’re giving people an hour, one option would be to set up a new Yahoo/gmail/other account (call it something like SDMBpoetryATyahoo.com) and set the vacation/out-of-office feature to respond with “Hi! I’m not here, but the three words are Anglican populist fritter!” Then we can email you (“Hi, I’m maserschmidt!”) to get the words. I don’t know if that’s too much work or too complicated, since I’m not the one doing it. :wink:

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Either option sounds fine to me, too. I’m in.

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Well, it isn’t as onerous as it might sound - I cannot speak for twickster, but it’s not like I wouldn’t have the computer going most of the day anyway.

Here’s how I’m thinking at the moment - it isn’t about ‘cheating’ per se. As Shot From Guns pointed out, there’s no monetary gain, nor is there any guarantee that taking more than an hour would earn your poem the most votes in any case.

There is something of value in the feeling that there is a clock ticking, that your decisions need to be quick and clear. That ‘something’ can be provided by self discipline alone, but it’s easier (speaking entirely for myself, here) when there is something external as well. That’s part of why I’ve enjoyed the live ones that have been done at various bars here in Toronto, and what I’ve enjoyed about the ‘internet live’ ones here.

I really could go any of the ways that have been suggested - I could be near my computer for much of the weekend (as I often am) and still get useful things done around the house.

The e-mail idea is great - would anyone be put off by the fact that I would then know their real life e-mail address, though? (Shouldn’t be any worse than a PM, I wouldn’t think.) Please, let me know.

The spoiler box notion might work out well, also. The words ‘Honour System’ and ‘Internet’ do not combine easily for me, yet if there is any group of internet strangers I trust to keep to the rules of a game, it is a group of Dopers.

I’ll tell you what - I’ll give it a day or so to see if there are any other good suggestions, and then put a poll up for which mechanism the participants prefer. (Of course, there’s no way to keep the voters restricted to just the participants, so I’ll have to trust the honour system. :D)

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Re: My being around – I have no particular plans for next weekend. I do turn the computer off from time to time, but it’s not at all onerous for me to be available to respond to PMs or emails for large chunks of time.

Re: Honor system or not – I don’t get a vote, since I’m not participating, but I do know that I find it very easy to play games with time stuff, and to say “okay, it was 15 minutes here, and 20 minutes there, and another 15 minutes here…” and make it add up to an hour, ignoring the fact that the ol’ unconscious is still working on things during the interim.

That said, the email 1 getting a “vacation” response with the words, and then email 2 needing to be sent within an hour of 1 would be a work-around for that.