Objectivism Website Contest


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Im not sure if this is the correct place to put this but here it is.

Objectivism Website Contest

To promote the growth of objectivism on the internet and the knowledge of website creation i am launching the objectivism website contest. Your goal is to create the best Objectivism related website possible. Accepted entries will be hosted on a subdomain of the creators choice on objectiscan.com and creators will be given an an ftp account to access their subdomain.

Here are some materials for you to start with:

  1. A high quality free webpage creation tool
  2. The w3c website an organization that creates web standards and provides reference information and tutorials.
  3. HTML and CSS, javascript, and php video tutorials.

The requrements for entry are:

  1. The website must be related to objectivism.
  2. The website must have unique content or provide a unique service.
  3. The website must not contain illegal or malicious content.
  4. The website must be decent quality; consistent theme, good amount of content or good service, use of css, not spammy.
  5. Website must not be extremely demanding on the server (you shouldn't have to worry about this.)
  6. The website must be less than 10 gigabytes (will not apply to exceptional websites.)

Right now we only have 80 gigabytes of storage to give away, but this may change.

Leave the files of your entries, questions, or comments below.

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Is that capital O Objectivism, Ayn Rand's philosophy? Or small o objectivism, not Ayn Rand's philosophy?

Small o is fine, but it must stick to the main principles of Objectivism.

The name of Ayn Rand's philosophy is spelled with a capital O because it is a proper name.

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The deadline is 7/29. One month from now.

Lemme think. I should invest some days or weeks of my time to upload content to webspace owned by a stranger, to win a contest?

If you got in then you would have search engine optimization bonuses that come with being on an objectivism site that hosts other objectivism sites. You could use your own host but sites coming from general free webhosts have poor features and/ or may be looked at as spam by search engines, and even if you use a payed one you still would not get the seo advantages.

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Correction: a stranger who didn't know who Dimples Williams was, nor the punchline about a contest.

"I'm not sending any entry."

"You're ... not? Not at all?

"I don't enter competitions."

"Why, for heaven's sake?"

"Come on, Peter. You didn't come here to discuss that."

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I know that's why when i said "Small o is fine, but it must stick to the main principles of Objectivism." I capitalized Objectivism.

quoting with comments in square brackets:

I know that's why when i said "Small o is fine [could be not Ayn Rand's philosophy], but it must stick to the main principles of Objectivism [must be Ayn Rand's philosophy]." I capitalized Objectivism [You didn't in your first message in this thread.].

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Executor,

I wish you luck on your contest and I hope it provides some good sites.

I have tried in the past to encourage things like this, but the results I got generally stayed the same over time. I will talk about this a little, but please don't take it as trying to diss your efforts. This is merely what happened so far and my conclusions about what I observed.

If we take people who are familiar with Rand and put them on a line for measuring approval of her work, we will find what I call Rand lovers on one end and Rand haters on the other. If we generously put 10% as lovers and 10% as haters, we are left with 80% for the rest.

I soon found out that the extremes, although they far were more vocal and prolific about Rand than the 80%, produce very poor quality work. They tend to place agenda before basic quality matters. For instance, if they are writing a fiction work, they tend to have poorly developed characters, rather obvious plot-lines, no metaphors to speak of, and when there is some symbolism, it tends to be ripped directly from Rand's works, and so on. Don't even think about emotional richness.

The Rand lovers preach her message as a narrow string of opinions and attitudes. The Rand haters are the opposite agenda-wise, but identical in all other respects, especially quality. The most damning thing I can think of about the productions of these poles is that they are--in the vast majority--boring beyond belief. There are exceptions, especially with nonfiction, but I have yet to see a shining genius appear.

Among the 80% (which is more in line with the tenor of OL), oh... there are the disinterested and slackers (and there are degrees of familiarity with Rand), but there are also a lot of high quality productions. But you have to allow for flexibility in ideological purity to see the real influence of Rand on the culture. Take a look at any list of high achievers and/or best-selling authors who claim they were influenced by Ayn Rand and you will see examples galore.

Over time I have grown rather fond of the stuff from the 80% and less interested in the poles. I now lean toward a view where a person should learn how to do something well and successfully--especially with respect to craft and skill--before worrying about adding an agenda from another author (even Ayn Rand) to the mix.

For example, my current interest, fiction writing. Education-wise, I prefer to absorb the lessons from McKee's Story, Truby's The Anatomy of Story, Paul Gulino's Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, etc. (and believe me, there is an incredible library of great books out there on story-writing), before I try to apply what Rand herself taught in The Art of Fiction. And then there is the following step to develop the different skills, reverse-engineering what successful authors have done. Everyone good says do that and you should.

Interestingly enough, this is also among Rand's advice and I consider it to be one of her better suggestions. She meant it, too. One of the examples she used in The Art of Fiction was a passage about unicorns and toadstools! (See p. 125.)

Anyway, the world is made up of all kinds of people and I am pretty sure there are plenty out there who fit the profile you seek for your website contest.

I hope you find them and I hope they do good work. I mean it.

Michael

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