Purpose of the IFComp web app

The IFComp web app (henceforth "the app", until someone thinks of a better name) automatically manages a number of tasks core to the Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, providing important services for entrants, judges, and organizers. It also serves as a year-round informational website about the competition, with a browsable gallery of past IFComp entries.

Tasks that the app automates

• Schedule management. The organizer defines the dates when different phases of the current year's competition begin and end. The app takes it from there, modifying what information and controls it makes available to all users based on the current competition phase. It transitions between phases all by itself, based on the real-world clock and calendar.

• Self-service entry management for authors. This is phase-dependent:

  • During the accepting-intents phase, authors can freely register, upload, and modify entries. They can have up to three entries registered at once.

  • After intents close but before the entry deadline, authors can modify and withdraw entries, but not register new entries.

  • In between the final deadline and the start of judging, authors can't modify their entries at all. ("Pencils down.") This gives organizers time to review and prep all the entries without them changing any further.

  • During the judging period, authors can modify entries, but need to provide publicly visible justification in text if they change the game file. Authors can neither withdraw nor add entries.

• Self-service ballot management for judges. During the judging period, judges have two views of the ballot, and they can return to update their ratings as often as they wish.

  Ballot views include:

  • A minimal view, listing only game title and author information, and with AJAX-driven menu-based rating controls.

  • A full view showing every game's complete information, including cover art, blurb, and play/download/info links. Judges can sort this view alphabetically, randomly, or using a "personal sort" that uses their username as a random seed, so that they always see the same (but initially unpredictable) entry-order.

• Rating summaries for organizers. During (and after) the judging period, organizers can see summaries of the current state collected votes, presented in various tabular and graph formats.

• Presenting public competition results. Based on collected ratings, the app automatically builds a permanent, public, score-sorted list of every year's competition entries, including a bar chart of every entry's ratings distribution.

Tasks that the app ought to automate but doesn't

• Prize collection and distrubution. At this time, the organizers are responsible for manually updating the prize table in the database, and then overseeing the distribution of pooled prizes after the contest ends by way of laboriously handwritten (or anyway repeatedly hand-pasted) email connecting prize-winning authors and prize donors.

Other stuff the app does

The app runs a federated login system that allows the same user accounts to authenticate with other websites in the IF community, namely [IntroComp] and [the XYZZY Awards].