Sajha is blessed to have so many talented writers among us. They have spent lot of their time and effort in sharing their literary pieces with sajha visitors, even tolerating responses which could be far from appropriate. Their perserverance and effort and their personal interest in sharing their stories is highly praiseworthy. In order to appreciate their skills, we will be giving a small token of appreciation - a $200 gift card from Amazon.com to the most popular story posted in the month of March, 2013. The writer will be selected on March 31, 2013.

To be considered for the prize, stories should be posted to the "Stories / Essays / Literature" category and have at least 1000 words, and posted between March 1 and March 30, 2013. The stories need to be original and not posted anywhere in the past.

If this proves to be a good encouragement for writers to post their stories, then this will be a regular feature in sajha, ie. monthly appreciation.

Thank you everyone for spending your valuable time in sajha.


EDITED/ADDED:  Only postings that are deemed to be STORY (not essays), will be eligible for the March recognition. The ones that are eligible will be marked as *** Story *** by sajha.

A story envolves a narrative about one or more characters. It has a plot, and some sort of conflict.

An essay is an explaination about a topic or is a presentation of the authors opinion in an effort to pursuade someone else.

I have decided to change the evaluation mode to a more democratic voting process so that it is fair for everyone. The most popular story will be selected by means of online voting in sajha from April 1 to April 7th midnight EST.

Previously, stories posted in advance would have more time to accrue views and likes than the ones submitted later. Since I want to dedicate the whole month of March for the writers, the new set up will allow people to submit stories till the end of March, and all the stories will have the same grounds upon which the votes will be cast. Thus it will be fair for everyone no matter when they submit the story. So we still have 2 more weeks for submission.

Another reason is that initially we had asked that the stories should be finished in one part so that stories having multiple parts do not generate an advantage on views. This seemed to be unfair to many story writers who prefer to write in parts, yet their stories are appreciated fully without any doubt. In the new voting system, even their stories will be able to participate in the voting, thus making it fair for everyone.

Besides that, not having to consider different variables in scoring will make the process more democratic. 

Thanks to everyone who have taken time to share their ideas and for giving valuable suggestions. It has been amazing month so far in sajha, being able to read all these fascinating and outstanding stories. Many people in Sajha Chat have offered excellent advice and I am grateful to them. (If you haven't visited Sajha Chat, please take a moment to click HERE, you will need to be logged in to sajha to be able to get in. Sajha chat is inhabited by a very diverse intellectually stimulating crowd, who are very fun loving, critical at times but good at heart. Many people who may have had relationship problems or lonelyness due to foriegn land, have quickly found lifelong friends in the chat room. So if you have too much time in your hands, and want to spend some time in the company of some fun loving people, you are invited to join the Sajha Chat!)