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FICTION RESULTS   POETRY RESULTS

Results

Chinese DecorationThank yourself!, all who wrote, read, voted, and commented. A fantastic accomplishment: hundreds of writers collectively contributing their manuscripts and opinions to reach these final results. Together, we found the best manuscripts to award and publish with an all-inclusive, equally-voiced, transparent voting system. Everyone created Sixfold. And, going through the process of reading, commenting, and voting on your three sets of six manuscripts, as well as having received votes and comments on your own manuscript, hopefully has given you insight into your own writing and appreciation of others'.

The highest-voted manuscript of the final round in each genre wins the first-place prize of $1,000. The 15 highest-voted short-story manuscripts and the 30 highest-voted poetry manuscripts will be published soon. Issues are free to read online, and to download as PDF and e-book for iPhone, Android, Kindle, Nook, and others. Paperback book available at production cost, including shipping, for about $10.

As you can see from the results, the process works extremely well. With 12 fiction and poetry votes now completed, it's clear that Sixfold's editorial selection process is by far much, much better than any other editorial. The 3-round process is extremely thorough and precise: In round 1, up to 6 writer-voters compare your manuscript (and everyone else's) to 5 other manuscripts, then rank-vote them as Best, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th. (So, each manuscript is compared to as many as 30 others by up to 6 different readers.) Each manuscript's voting score average is calculated and compared to all others, and then the highest-voted one-third of manuscripts advances to the next round. Round 2 manuscripts go on to receive up to 18 readers and 90 comparisons, and the highest-voted one-third advances to round 3. Round 3 manuscripts receive up to 54 readers and 270 comparisons. Each manuscript completing round 3 is read and rank-voted by up to 78 different writer-voters, with a grand total of up to 390 comparisons to other manuscripts. See the Worst-case Voting Scenarios section below for a discussion of how the process works extremely well even in the worst of voting circumstances.

The result of so much reading and comparing is that no high-quality manuscripts are missed in a vote. Only the highest-quality manuscripts are selected for publication. In each vote, you and everyone else can see on a transparent results page that voters' relative preference for any manuscript translates to the overall quality of the manuscript. Enjoy!

Additional benefits of open-voting editorial:

Though all results will remain as-is, you can help Sixfold's process refine and improve: Was there a manuscript (not your own) that you read in the course of your voting that should have ranked higher in your opinion but did not? Or, is there a manuscript you read in the overall final rankings that should have ranked higher but did not? E-mail in with the file name to sixfold@sixfold.org. Editors with the experience of reading many manuscripts for publication are invited to write in about the process and/or results.

Please enjoy these issues, consider entering the next vote, and e-mail in to sixfold@sixfold.org with your comments and suggestions.

How To Read and Understand the Results

Voting follows these conditions:

Reading the results page

During voting, manuscripts are ranked by each voter as Best, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, so that scoring the best manuscript is straightforward and intuitive. On the results page, Best, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th translates to 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, with the best manuscripts' averages tending toward 6 and the lowest toward 1, so that the final rankings can be easily read and compared as numerical averages.

Per round, ranking scores are averaged; the top one-third averages from each round advance to the next round. A voting average from a previous round does not factor in to the next round's voting average.

Click open each row to see each manuscript's complete per-round voting results.

Manuscript scores are color-coded for review:
Red: the manuscript's voter did not vote in Round 1, 2, or 3 and so was auto-withdrawn from voting per the voting rules.
Blue (appears only in Round 1): the Round 1 manuscript received auto-advancement into Round 2 for further voting per the voting rules because the manuscript received 1, 2, or 3 voters in Round 1 instead of the 4, 5, or 6 voters which all other Round 1 manuscripts received (see the Worst-case Voting Scenarios section below).

Worst-case Voting Scenarios.

Very few! The system works extremely well at gathering everyone's opinion and agreement to find those manuscripts which all writers consider the best.

How to see that the manuscripts are judged and ranked extremely well:

1. Sample and read manuscripts from the top, middle, and bottom of any vote to see how voters’ overall ranking of any manuscript accurately reflects the manuscript’s overall quality. Any reader will probably disagree with any final ranking by 5 ranks or fewer because each reader's opinion varies slightly; very few readers will disagree with any final ranking by more than 10 ranks. (About up to 2.5% overall disagreement but rarely more than about 5%.)

2. Check out the blue ones! Manuscript results colored blue in Round 1 represent those manuscripts which received 3 or fewer votes (15 or fewer comparisons to other manuscripts), and so automatically advanced to Round 2 for further voting per the voting rules on the assumption that these manuscripts were not read and judged well enough. We might assume that these blue Round 1 manuscripts are not as well judged as the other Round 1 manuscripts because all blues received 1, 2, or 3 voters in Round 1 instead of the 4, 5, or 6 voters which all other Round 1 manuscripts received. However, when we track the progress of any Round 1 blue which would not have advanced to Round 2 because its rank was not within the top third of Round 1, we see that nearly all manuscripts would be judged very well without the auto-advancement rule in place. When we track any blue which ranks below the top third of Round 1 and also advances into Round 2 and Round 3, we see that these blues comprise about 1% of all manuscripts. This suggests that the overall process works extremely well: 99% of all manuscripts would have been judged very well had the failsafe auto-advancement not been in place. However, auto-advancement makes the overall process incrementally better: it happily benefits those 1% of manuscripts which would not have been judged well and not advanced to Round 2 and then Round 3.

There are these elements of chance within the voting process:
• Per round, a manuscript may receive fewer than 6 votes/comments in round 1, fewer than 18 in round 2, or fewer than 54 in round 3 because the number of votes a manuscript receives depends on voter participation. Participation is very high: most manuscripts in round 1 each receive 4, 5, or 6 votes to calculate the manuscript's rank average. Those round 1 manuscripts which receive 3 or fewer votes each will automatically advance to round 2 so that all manuscripts will receive at least 4 votes / 20 comparisons to other manuscripts. Previous votes show that manuscripts which receive as few as 4 votes in round 1 are judged as well as those which receive 5 or 6 (and see the above discussion of round 1 "blue" manuscripts for confirmation of that). Four votes means that 4 readers each compared 1 manuscript to 20 others, which is a very good comparative assessment (no other journal organizes 4 readers to closely compare one manuscript to 20 others); 6 votes means that 6 readers each compared 1 manuscript to 30 others, which is an extremely good comparative assessment.
• In the unlikely event that there is a tie among any of the prize-winning manuscripts or published manuscripts, the tied manuscripts will be randomly selected to establish their rank (i.e. if two manuscripts tie for first place, one is randomly selected for first place and the other for second place).
• Per round, equally ranked manuscripts "on the threshold" of advancing into the next round's top one-third may be randomly selected to advance. For example, if 10 manuscripts receive an average rank score of 4.00 and only 5 can be included in the top one-third of total manuscripts calculated to advance, then the system will randomly select 5 of those with a 4.00 to advance into the next round's voting.
• The system may assign a very small number of randomly selected manuscripts one more or one less voter per round in order to assign voters to manuscripts as evenly as possible.

Post-voting FAQ

Where are my manuscript's voting results and comments?
Results and comments are where you voted:
Log in at https://www.sixfold.org/login Go to Dashboard. Click into the Fiction or Poetry section in which you participated.
In the right column: "Final Voting Results" section and "Your Round X Results" section. 
To find voters' comments: In "Your Round X Results" section: By your manuscript's numerical score is a little black triangle for any voter who wrote a comment. Click triangle to reveal comment. No triangle means voter did not write comment.

Why are manuscripts scored as Best, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th during voting—but then scored as 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in the final results?
During voting, manuscripts are ranked by each voter as Best, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, so that scoring the best manuscript is straightforward and intuitive. On the results page, Best, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th translates to 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, with the best manuscripts' averages tending toward 6 and the lowest toward 1, so that the final rankings can be easily read and compared as numerical averages.

How do I choose my privacy settings?
Log in at https://www.sixfold.org/login Go to Dashboard. Click into the Fiction or Poetry section in which you participated.
Left column, "Your Submission" section: choose whether or not to allow your account name and profile to display publicly and your manuscript to download publicly.
"Display Real Name" button: Click the square to green to allow anyone to see your account name and profile along with your manuscript's voting scores. Click the square to red to not allow.
"Allow All to Read" button: Click the square to green to allow anyone to download your manuscript from the voting results page after voting is over. Click the square to red to not allow.

Why can't I see my name and/or manuscript displayed on the voting results page?
Your privacy settings may be set not to allow the public display of your name and profile and/or your manuscript. (See above How do I choose my privacy settings?)

 

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