Introduction

I created this chapter nearly a year ago and never posted it, but having completed another year, and supported both peers and the judges to the best of my ability, it now seems a good time to publish.

A the time the 2018 POTY contest was held, it was, without doubt, the most significant contest I'd ever been part of and only got in by the skin of my teeth, courtesy of winning my first and only competition.

I have no idea of how competitions are judged, but one thing for sure it's not exactly transparent, so out of interest, I thought I'd generate some statistics of my own. I was halfway through and finding it nauseous and wishing I hadn't started but persevered. A feeling that was enhanced by the knowledge that the statistics would not be an exact replica of those at event closure, having been gathered several weeks later.

Having taken the time to do this it makes me glad I'm not in the position of the judges who have to take way more into account than statistics which primarily look at popularity, by considering fulfilment of challenge content and the intangible things that make poetry unique. Please don't misunderstand me I'm not suggesting it's wrong to be popular, because poets work hard to earn their followers respect, it's just that statistics can favour them in a contest.

On a personal note, I gave it my best shot, at reading, voting and commenting on all of my peer's entries without exception, but failed where it mattered, impressing the judges.

However, over the month of December 2018, I had the opportunity to engage with all my peers via the comments, a great and valuable experience. It's not mandatory to read vote and comment, only to react, but I do it out of respect for my peers, something I did again this year. Having learned how hard it can be just doing this I frequently extend my appreciation to the judges and of course commended the worthy winners.

I'd considered creating these stats for all the contests but as I've already stated extracting the statistics and entering them in the spreadsheet is a bit nauseous. I don't have complex algorithms to help me, so for now, I will stick to my writing, it's a lot more interesting and rewarding.

It would, however, be interesting to read what you think, as they say, it's good to talk.

Finally congratulations to the 2019 winners @Gadralnuere, @AwSprite and last but not least @MichaelTyger who was on the leaderboard last year, using my favoured acrostic form.

SLIDE 1: This slide shows the formal finishing positions of the winners and their reading statistics, calculated after closure.

SLIDE 2: Determined in the same way this slide shows the formal finishing positions of the winners and their voting statistics.

SLIDE 3: Similarly this slide shows the formal finishing positions of the winners and their commenting statistics.

SLIDE 4: Finally this slide shows the formal finishing positions of the winners and the average of all the statistics, to be honest, I can't see that it has any real value other than they are transparent.