UPDATE: Writing Contest Voting is now live. New essays will be posted daily. Vote here.
Dear Applicants & Voters,
Starting Monday, December 13th, Yakezie.com will be posting the Writing contest essays once a day for Members and readers to vote on. There are a total of 14 applicants for December’s HowtoSaveMoney.com Yakezie Writing Contest and there will be three winners ($600, $300, $100) given we have raised over $1,000. In the future, we plan to publish the Top 10, but since this is our first initiative, we’ll go ahead and publish all 14.
The winners are determined by a simple numerical vote where a registered user of Yakezie.com, and only a registered user of Yakezie.com can vote. Applicants are welcome to vote for themselves once. We will be monitoring all IP addresses, so please do not register for multiple accounts to vote for yourself. If you do, we will have no choice but to disqualify you from the competition since we want to make everything as fair and meritocratic as possible.
What you may do is encourage those who you know to register on Yakezie.com and vote. If it so happens to be your parents or siblings from the same household, having the same IP address is fine. However, we encourage voters to provide a fair vote on every single essay and not just yours. Given everything is relative, we recommend waiting after you’ve read three or four essays and then vote accordingly. However, the choice is up to you.
The scoring is from 1-5 and we will tally up the Top 3 vote getters and announce the winners within one week of when the last application is published. As the most objective voters, the Yakezie Members will all also be voting with a heavier weighting. Our goal is to ensure that there is no gaming of the system, and that the most well-written applicants do indeed win. Your deadline to vote for any essay is any time up until the last essay is posted.
Know that you are all winners for taking the initiative to apply. So much of life is about showing up and making an effort. You’ve read the instructions, fulfilled the guidelines, and submitted your applications on time. If you are not one of the three winners, you are welcome to reapply again for the next Writing Contest. And if you are one of the three winners, you are welcome to apply again three writing competitions later.
Best of luck to you all!
Note: To read more about how we determine the number of Writing contest winners and amounts click here. Please also register here to vote.
The Yakezie Writing Contest Committee
Follow us @Yakezie for updates on Twitter.
If I’m reading this correctly, the applicants can in fact vote for themselves? I’m excited to view the submissions.
Yes, an applicant may vote for themselves once.
It seems like the first essays up will get more votes, doesn’t it? Or do you mean we can vote on once on an essay?
I like the prize structure better than the previous, 500,350, 150. :)
Or do you mean we can vote only once per essay?
The first essays will get more votes if:
1) They are deemed better essays
2) You do not come back and vote for the other essays.
You are allowed to vote once per essay of course. “However, we encourage the voter to provide a fair vote on every single essay and not just yours. “
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Yakezie, David Findlay. David Findlay said: Scholarship Voting Rules and Process | Yakezie.com http://bit.ly/hZtBjX […]
I’m looking forward to viewing the submissions. I like how you structured the prize; it’s more helpful for the applicants and will encourage them to submit another essay in the future if they don’t win this time.
I thought people had to be a member of yakezie to register on yakezie.com?
That isn’t the case. We have lots of people who have a user account on the site but who are not full fledged Yakezie Members. The difference is that the full fledged members get access to the private forums and are able to submit blog posts to the site. Regular user accounts cannot.
Another reason to get a user account is that unlike posting comments on a blog post (like this one), non-users cannot comment or interact in the forums unless they have a user account.
Hope this makes sense!
I like how you structured it too- it seems very fair and controlled (no double voting like they do on American Idol lol). I am looking forward to checking out the submissions.
I’m looking forward to viewing the posts.
Hey, you got the BLACK BELT! Awesome. :)
Thanks! Just noticed that this morning. Looks good! :)
Looking forward to reading and I want to wish all the best to the applicants!
The first one is up today. We had some technical difficulties publishing it on the homepage with the voting system, but we will work that out by Wed. For now, click the top banner to have a read.
I recommend folks vote at the end of the week anyway, as everything is relative.
Hmmm… I voted today. So does it mean the vote didn’t count? It looked like it was working.
Yep, it works. People can vote as the come, or at the end of the week so they can get a relative perspective.
We’re going to run the essays on the homepage starting tomorrow for more exposure.
Sounds fun! I can’t wait to start reading them. It would be good to have a day or so after the last essay for voting.
Yep. You can read the first one today by clicking up top. I recommend waiting till the end of each week, and vote accordingly.
I’m so excited the first essay is up! I’m really looking forward to reading them all and love the voting system too. Yay Yakezie Scholarship!
[…] and the 14 entrants essays will be published soon for Yakezie members voting. You can read about this months scholarship here and can donate from the link in the side bar of this page: Donate to the Yakezie. I love this cause […]
I thought only Yakeziers were going to vote? ;) My concern with this is that whoever has more friends or can convince more people to stop by and register will get more votes, or heck, it may turn out that they have a family with 8 brothers and sisters, and that isn’t necessarily the “meritocratic” way to go about things.
Nonetheless, I hope everyone plays fair, and wish the best of luck to the applicants!
All seems fair and good to me…. Holding off on any votes until quite a few more essays are in.
“Know that you are all winners for taking the initiative to apply” <—- Exactly, the entrants should be super proud of themselves.
I think people are going to grow wary of reading these essays after a few. I think we need to establish a word limit of about 500 and/or only put a few essays up for vote. I want to provide my input, but it’s had to devote so many hours to reading and judging these essays.
This is why I didn’t become a school teacher. :)
OK, that’s good feedback, and we’re planning on running Member Articles on the homepage and then Scholarship Essays concurrently by clicking the top banner of the site. The key for us is to balance the right amount of content with the readership.
We can have massive content, but that needs to jive well with the number of readers. We’re also going to either limit to the Top 10 in the future, or just run 20-25 concurrently with Member Articles. I realize that nobody is more interested in a particular article than the author of the article. It’s what you’ll find on your own site one day and get frustrated why not more people are commenting/sharing etc.
I have tremendous patience when it comes to kids and their essays though, so I’m biased and different. I could read their posts all day!
Hum, sounds like you learned quite a lot from this first attempt, FS; here’s hoping that it leads to a smooth and productive scholarship competition in the future. (One untainted by any signs of cheating, to boot.)
[…] It’s Scholarship voting time at the yakezie – We’ve got 3 scholarships to give away and need your votes. Read submissions & vote here! […]
HOW DOES ONE VOTE????? WHERE’S THE VOTING LINK???