Welcome to the refreshed Brute Force Challenge for 2023. Same ideals as before, just a lot less stressful for the Administrator.
Participation in this years’ Brute Force Challege is open to any MEW member in good standing, with an account older than three months. The more voices participating, the greater the variety of articles and topics we’ll have on MEW, the more varied and interesting we can make the community. And, while gaming will remain the focus of content on MEW, other subjects can be covered. Entertainment, art, technology, media, software, gadgets, sciences, sport, motoring, and others all have a place on MEW.
If you would like to join in, and haven’t been listed as a Participant yet, drop a note below. You can join in at any time up to the end of May, but any contributions made before you declare your participation will not be counted towards your points score.
There is no obligation on Participants to contribute to the Prize Pool at all. Similarly, any MEW member can contribute to the Prize Pool without needing to be a Participant in the BFC. Contributions and Pledges to the Prize Pool will be accepted through until 29 November. Please only pledge when and if you can afford to, and only an amount that you are comfortable with. If you would like to pledge anonymously contact me directly via PM and I’ll coordinate things on your behalf.
A summary of this years’ rules and procedures:
The Challenge will run for 10 calendar months from 1 February to 30 November. Points will be awarded based on monthly participation on the site and on the forum.
Participants must self-report their published articles and newly created topics under their name on the appropriate monthly sheet in the official BFC Points Tracker Sheet. The Score Sheet will be publicly visible but only Participants will be able to edit and update it. You will need a Google account in order to be given edit permissions to the Score Sheet.
To be considered “published”, articles must be reviewed by any other Participant or Admin member prior to publishing it. Participants will be granted Contributor level access to the Ghost publishing portal. Abuse, in any way, of this access will result in immediate disqualification from BFC and possible banning from MEW.
If you believe your article or topic might be duplicated by another before you are able to publish or post it, you can publicly “call” the topic. This will allow you a 24-hour period in which to produce the article or topic without fear of it being used by someone else. Failure to post within that period will result in a forfeit of any points for that article or topic. You can still post it, but cannot use it towards your monthly points.
Points will be earned in the following ways:
New articles published to the main site will earn 5 points each, with a maximum of 25 points per month. You can publish more, but only the first 5 articles will score points.
Newly created forum Topic threads will earn 1 point each, with a maximum of 10 points per month. You can create more than 10 topics, but only the first 10 will score points.
Forum comment replies will be tallied for each participant each month. This amount will be taken by the BFC Admin at the end of each month. Each participants comment total for the month will be weighed against the combined count of all comments made by all the participants and the appropriate percentage of a total of 25 points available each month will be allocated to the participants.
Participants can earn a maximum 25 additional Referral Bonus Points by referring new members to the site. Each new referral will earn the referring participant 5 points once they have made at least 25 post comments. The new member must indicate who referred them in an introduction post in the official Introduce Yourself topic.
Pledged prize money will be pooled and then distributed to the Participants with the highest cumulative points scores at the close of the BFC period (23:59 on 30 November). If the Prize Pool is under R2000, the prize will be split amongst the top 3 highest points scorers: 60% : 30% : 10%. If the prize pool is greater than R2000, the prize will be split amongst the top 5 highest scorers: 50% : 25% : 12.5% : 7.5% : 5%.
Any disputes will be decided on by the BFC Administrator. Any disagreement with Admin decisions will be arbitrated by The Grand Poobah.
So far, I have only listed the fine folk who specifically said as much in the BFC23 Planning topic. Need participation confirmation by the others from last year - @Beo, @DieGrootHammer. Would also love to see some new names on the roster this year as well though.
Now that I’ve taken the bulk of the admin off your plate @Solitude, you’re finally able to join in as a Participant for a change. How about it?
Oom @Oltman - you’ve got your game review writing chops already. Consider doing that here too?
@Aldyr, you could share your sim racing experiences, technical sim racing equipment insights and car setup knowledge. Or even just put the technology challenges you face living in the heartland of the Cape into a regular column-style contribution.
@Murfle could do the same. And also write about the streaming scene, the art of growing chillis, and what’s happening in the Minecraft Universe.
@DohcWP - you still hold the record tally for article contributions to the MEW site. Come and put your name back onto the byline on some new articles!
Many others who can easily throw together a word salad worth reading. Come on out of the shadows and get involved!
Pretty much the same thing as before, just tracked monthly rather than weekly. No minimum posts or topics required, and no penalty if you don’t post anything in the month.
Oh, and more points for new articles than new topics. And bonus points for comments and replies, and introducing new members.
PS Don’t let the money discourage anyone else from participating. That was the original intent after all. Please join in even if you don’t have money to add to the pot.
I’ve collected everyone’s comment count and entered them as the Opening Count for February. I’ll update them occasionally through the month. (Everyone gets their first comment counted already, just to avoid the divide by zero errors.)
Participants, remember that all you have to do once you’ve published a new article or created a new topic is type it’s title under your name on the appropriate monthly sheet. The spreadsheet and I will do the rest. The points tracker sheet is live and linked back in the OP (or here for convenience now).
Everyone should still have access to edit the sheet from our testing a few days ago, except for @Wyvern (click on the View Only button and send me a request and I’ll sort you out.)
Consider the first few months a Work In Progress period. If you have suggestions for changes to the systems, points, procedures, rules, or anything else, please shout.
Again, anyone else is welcome to join as a participant at any time - just tell us that you want to here, and it will be so.
Go out now and be brutally forceful with your words. Write on!
Good luck to everyone. I would love to say I’d participate but I know myself. I might do one or two and then probably won’t carry on. I just cant keep myself motivated to keep doing anything .
Well that’s my bad then, sorry. I thought you implied you wanted to check through the rules first before committing. No worries. I’ve sorted your spot on the score tracker. And set your opening replies count to what it would have been at midnight.
