Alright, guys. It's been a while, but we had such a solid turn out last time that we are doing another team contest. Hopefully, we'll get to see some awesome new additions to the site in our new…

SCP GROUPS OF INTEREST CONTEST! YAYYYY!

This contest is fairly simple, but it will require that you form a team. Within this team, you will create a small group of stories for a Foundation Group of Interest and a selection of SCP Objects for them. This means that, in addition to writing tales about the GoI, you and your partners will be making a whole new method of classification for things and trying it out.

The Entries

Tales

The contest requires that at least three or four tales be written about the GoI in question. These tales can be related (telling a story arc of some sort) or completely separate. They can even contain different perspectives on the GoI being written about. However, the group of tales must meet certain qualifications:

At least one tale must have your GoI encountering another GoI (Not the Foundation!),

At least one tale must feature a character, location, or event which happened in another tale on the site,

At least one tale must cite one of the objects your team is going to create.

For example, you might have three tales about the Chaos Insurgency, with one being about a mission to recover a new object, another being about their origins and how Dr Bright was involved, and another about a run in they had with AWCY. The idea here is to make this vision of the GoI as interesting, diverse, and inventive as possible, while including other elements of the site to create a feeling of continuation.

Objects

The contest requires that at least two or three objects be written from the perspective of the GoI you were assigned. Note: This does NOT mean to take the SCP Format and try to put a fun, neato little twist on it. The SCP Format is used by the Foundation. Therefore, it was written for use in the Foundation.

You will be expected to consider the GoI carefully, consider their goals and motivations, and come up with a new, creative format. For example, Are We Cool Yet? might write a poem to classify things. The Factory might have production and product testing notes. Marshall, Carter, and Dark might have an auction list with nice, long write-ups. Get creative.

As with the tales, the Objects have certain requirements as well:

At least one object must be a re-imagining of a Foundation object.

At least one object must be entirely new.

Group Selection

You will form your own team (see the rules for details) and after doing so, your team captain will send a Wikidot PM to TroyL with the names of your team members.

With this list, send your top five GoI choices, in order from top choice to bottom.

Once all teams have formed, GoI's will be assigned to their groups. With luck, all teams will get their top choice for GoI. If two or more teams have the same top choice, then the team getting the GoI will be randomly determined. After all top choices are exhausted, secondary, tertiary, etc. choices will be selected. This is being done as fairly as possible, so make sure you plan for all your choices — not just one.

Rules

The basic rules of the contest are as follows:

Your team must consist of three to four people, all of whom must be announced. You may only be on one team. Each team will have a captain, but the individual members are responsible for posting their own work. Please pick someone who is actually around to be Captain, as all communication and questions about the contest should go through them. Any other responsibilities the team chooses to invest in the captain should be discussed among the members of the team. Your team must produce three to four tales and two to three objects which encapsulate the Group of Interest in question. The tales should be substantive and long enough to show that you've invested some time in them. If you really want a word count, feel free to message me. The objects must have a structure to them which is interesting, fun, and capable of being emulated. You're not just making these for the contest, after all. You're making them for the site. If you chose to include short vignettes to connect your tales or form a framing work, this is allowed. You will create a HUB Page (the formatting of which will be provided) to post your entries to, which must include a handful of things: A short, front piece which details the GoI in question. You are very strongly encouraged to adapt, expand, rewrite, and clean up the GoI entry on the actual Groups of Interest page for this.

A section detailing the sources which inspired you to write the things you did, explaining what you pulled from them and how you used them.

A section in which you explain, as clearly as possible, how others could create objects similar to the ones you produced for the contest. You may not delete or edit a tale once posted, regardless of performance. Tales that dip to the deletion mark will be subject to normal deletion practices, but they will not be removed until after the contest has ended. This should encourage everyone to work hard with their teams to have a superior product. What's posted is posted, people. Small corrections are fine, but significant edits are not. Small corrections are defined as: fixing minor sentence wording, correcting grammar usage, changing spacing, etc. Large, substantive changes are not allowed until the contest has passed. No "Joke GoIs." If you're planning on doing pure comedy and lulz, then this isn't the contest for you. Each entry must be posted by its primary author, and each author must contribute at least one (1) tale or object which was mainly written by them. If you rewrote someone’s work entirely, it's not really theirs anymore, and it wouldn't be fair for them to post something you spent four hours revising when they only invested ten minutes writing it. This does mean that one or two people will be writing more than one entry. That is expected. For this contest, a panel of judges will be selected from lists I have made of staff and non-staff members of the site. This list has been randomized, and judges will be selected from it after teams have been formed (in case someone I have slated for judging ends up joining the contest). The only judge set in stone at this time is me. Because I am the most handsome, as proven objectively by the recent site survey . No whining. Points will be deducted for whining.

If you have any further questions, feel free to send me a wikidot PM. Just click here: TroyL. As usual, asking me questions in chat will result in severe punishment (or being kicked and told to read this page).

Judges? What the hell, Troy?

Yeah. Sorry. I guess I should explain that.

Previous contests have been marred by several accusations of malicious downvoting, organizing upvote brigades, complaints of spamming in chat, people shouting 'if it hadn't been for this one god damned poorly rated tale,' etc. I'm going to get around that by simply appointing judges. The judges will choose the winner based on a number of qualifications, primarily:

How well does the final collected product encapsulate the Group of Interest chosen?

How easily and cleanly can the style of the objects be emulated and reproduced?

How well written were the tales? Were they done well? Done poorly? Mischaracterized?

Will the rating of the entries be taken into account? Of course. But it will not be the sole determining factor anymore. All judges will, as they are human, bring their own feelings and ideas to their determining of these things .

When Do We Get Started?

Feel free to go ahead and form your teams. However:

All teams should be formed by June 6, 2014 at 11:59 PM, American Central Standard Time. Teams will be informed of their GoI on the following day. Planning too much before this point might be dangerous, so watch out. Late Teams will be allowed, but they will have to choose from whatever GoIs are left over. No teams are allowed to form after entries have started to be posted. No entries should be posted to the site before June 20, 2014 at 11:59 PM, American Central Standard Time. This is to give teams time to think, plan, and begin writing. No entries will be accepted after July 7, 2014 at 11:59 PM, American Central Standard Time. As usual, this is because I'm the one running this contest and that's when I go to bed. The winners will be determined on July 12, 2014 at whatever time of the day I get around to it.

After posting your entries, tag them "GOI2014" and link it to your team's HUB page. The winners will have their work featured on the frontpage and possibly other prizes, if it’s awesome and I’m feeling generous. Runners up will be rewarded by having an article of theirs (my choice) featured on the front page.

Additional Questions

If you have questions, send a wikidot PM to: TroyL. Just… just click the red name. Click it. If a question is good, I'll answer it here as well for everyone else.

So for the contest, I was hoping to get my hands on Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting. In the event that I do, would it be allowed to construct like, posters inspired by old-timey circus stuff as the "articles" for them? it seems very appropriate, thematically.

That is a really cool idea. It works well and sounds very interesting; just make sure that it's something other people can emulate. Maybe have a sort of formula (including whatever circus font you use or filters) so that people can see what you did and how you did it.

Do I understand correctly that the teams are limited to 4 people? Rules say, "Your team must consist of three to four people," but I just wanted to double check that that meant the limit was 4 people on a team.

Always better to ask. Yes, there is a cap of four people. Any more than that would be tricky to manage well, I feel.

is there any sort of deadline for when a team roster change can be made?

You can always drop someone from a team of four into a team of three. Totally allowed. But I don't think it's very fair to add people after postings have started.

The contest hub says "at least three or four tales" and "at least two or three objects," but then bellow in the actual rules it says "your team must produce three to four tales and two to three objects." Are we limited to those numbers, or can we go beyond? Like, if we ended up with six tales, is that okay? I could have sworn the hub mentioned that, but now I can't find it.

You can write as much as you want. Go absolutely crazy.

Teams Which Did Not Post Entries

Team Name: Judo Kickstand, Kungfu Chopper: Cyclists of the Apocalypse

Members: Athena Grey (Captain), Salabasama, Crimzure, SirPendragon

Group of Interest: Alexylva University (AU)

Team quote: "Name still under discussion."