[keiferski]

I’ve thought about this for awhile and my solution is something like this:

Have multiple groups that each choose a winner for each contest. As in, every contest has 5+ winners, not just one. For example:

- One winner decided by public poll

- One winner decided by volunteers that review the stories to help us out

- One winner decided by the sponsor

- One winner decided by a network of related experts. E.g. a bunch of biologists review stories about biology

In this way, I think the worst a sponsor could do is choose a non-negative winner for their own selection. The other 3-4 winners would not be under their influence.

Of course, this may scare away potential sponsors, but in my experience most scientists welcome debate, as the usual state of affairs is getting no attention at all.

[aardvark179]

The public pole will be gamed, I’d drop it unless you want to deal with a Sad Puppies style situation.

I’d say go for two awards at most, let the sponsor choose one and have the other be a jury award. If you can’t persuade some good authors and critics to be on your jury you won’t persuade them to submit stories either.

[HWR_14]

Your site itself makes it seem that the judging criteria is very biased towards positive stories. I'm not sure if that's really your intent, but that was the impression it gave me. If that's wrong, and you want to try to fix it, I can spend a little bit of time trying to identify why I got that impression.