[Chris O'Carroll]

As some of you know already from Lois's and Rob's posts in the "updated poem" thread, the New Statesman regards competition entries that have been posted here as previously published and therefore ineligible to appear in the magazine.

To anyone who has had an entry disqualified on that basis, I apologize for having been unaware of the policy. Now that I know, I want to alert everybody to refrain from posting anything that you're going to submit. Unless, of course, your entry is good enough to beat mine, in which case you should definitely post it, and make a point of notifying the NS that you have done so.

I've sent Vicky an email on this subject, and will post an update if there is any further news.

[Graham King]

Thanks for the caution, Chris! Wow... that shakes things up a bit.

As a precaution (a postcaution now, surely?) I feel I'd better not post on Eratosphere my entries to ANY magazine's competitions, unless the magazines concerned let us know they will definitely not be disqualifying entries for having appeared here.

I'll still look in for the comp notices and results, and any updates on this situation.

Cheers!

[Peter Goulding]

As a regular winner, I can well understand your reluctance to post up here Graham.
Personally, I'm quite happy to keep posting. I never bloody win anyway and I find the advice from experts in the field invaluable.

[Ann Drysdale]

Since this is the first anyone's heard of this and therefore it presumably hasn't applied till now, it would be interesting to know what prompted the decision. Keep us posted, Chris.

[Brian Allgar]

Although I've never received any such warning from Vicky, I did notice that before joining this site, I had a good run of winning entries, and that after joining and posting my entries here, my success rate dwindled to the merest of trickles. At the time, I attributed it to a combination of Competitor's Conceit and paranoia, but now I'm not so sure.

[John Whitworth]

It may have been in force for quite some time. Vicky said she just hadn't noticed my winner a month ago.

[Brian Allgar]

So long as she doesn't start asking for the money back ...

[Chris O'Carroll]

At first I feared that this was a policy of long standing, and that I had been derelict in not knowing about it and not warning you all. But Vicky tells me that it's something she instituted only recently. I thought this site had been on her radar screen all along, but it seems that she became aware of it just a short time ago.

Furthermore, it seems that someone has been misinforming her about us. She has formed the impression that we're running a parallel competition -- that when people post their drafts and finished versions here, those are "winning entries" chosen by Eratosphere judges, and that our "winners" then indulge in double-dipping by trying to win again at the NS.

I've explained to her that we're not doing any judging or awarding of prizes here, and that NS entries posted at the 'Sphere aren't even "published" in the sense that they don't have to go through any sort of editorial selection process. I don't know whether she'll rescind the new policy in light of this clarification. In fact, I don't yet know for sure how successfully I've managed to clarify things.

She's also concerned about "copyright problems" regarding my posting of each new competition announcement and the subsequent results. I've assured her that I'm prepared to stop doing that if she says so, and I'm waiting to hear back.

So I may have to discontinue posting comp material as it appears in the magazine. But I'll still be able to post the basic information that will enable you to enter each comp, and I'll be able to announce each week's winners, whether or not I can reproduce their winning entries.

[John Whitworth]

Vicky ought to consider that, by introducing the competition to a wider international public, we are improving the standards of the winning entries and so doing the Staggers a favour. I thought these marxists were in favour of internationalism and against the narrow parochial concerns of benighted Tories.

[Roger Slater]

Maybe the whole problem can be solved if we could get Alex to create a forum category for Contests and render all contest threads invisible to anyone who is not signed in?