ATS Extended Essay Proposal

The ATS extended essay competition is for members to write about anything they wish in relation to ATS. Your essay is more likely to be fruitful if your title takes the form of a question which requires an answer in your essay. You may choose to contribute to an ongoing debate.

Your essay must be 2000-7000 words in length, no more: brevity is the soul of wit. Better 2000 words, sharply focused, then 7000 words where many are off the point and surplus to requirements. The ideal presentaion is 12 point, double spaced in Times New Roman.

You are advised to write an introduction in which you identify and expore the key themes and scope of your enquiry. It may be wise to suggest why it is an equiry worth undertaking. There should be little need for an extensive conclusion if the essay itself is answering the question posed: you may need only to extract and link the strands of arguement already presented.

Essays consist of paragraphs. When you are planning, and even more importanlty when you have completed the draft and are seeking to highlight the arguement, ensure that eash successive paragraph is playing its part in tackling the issues posed by your question.


Sources and References:

You are not expected to produce anything wholly original; but what you produce must be independant. That is, you must seek sources (in books, articles, the internet etc) which provide you with information on which you can work on. In other words, finding what someone else has dicovered, said, written or broadcast is only the start: you have to engage intellectually with those sources in order to come up with an answer to your particular question.

Merely to assemble other people's material, extracted from books or the internet, would miss the point and be unintelligent. The way to avoid any accusation of plagiarism you must acknowledge where specific ideas and information came from. During you essay you must use footnotes (give numbered references to your sources) and at the end of your essay you must add a bibliography (which is not included in your word limit).

Pursue what interests you and enjoy the exercise and subsequent discussion which fellow members.


Please would an admin contact me to discuss how members could enter, the prixes that will be awarded and who should judge.

[edit on 8/7/05 by GodAtum]

GodAtum, like the idea. Try getting a hold of one of the council members and they might be able to help you out with it.

2000 words? You call that an extended essay?

I'd be more than happy to participate, but my concern would be deciding upon a topic that would be both worthy of this competition, and also compact enough to fit well into 2-3000 words.

Maybe if the limit were upped to 5 or 7000 words?

My feeling is that stating a problem, examining it carefully, coming up with a solution or resolution, and then justifying that would take -- at a minimum -- 3000 words.

Nonetheless, I'm certainly game for it!!

I have to do 4, 3000word essays a week, so it's all good.

Our extended essays over the term tend to be nearer 12,000 however it might take a while to write such which could make the contest last a lot longer then we hoped..

Lets say a minimum of 2000 words with an upper limit of 7000 words. This will give people more freedom as to what to write.


[edit on 8/7/05 by GodAtum]

This sounds like a great idea, although I must comment on the limits as well. Why have an upper limit? I mean, if the essay is interesting enough, it'll be a breeze to go through it even if it should be measured in chapters. If it isn't interesting enough, then it doesn't get read all the way through and the person loses, no matter how short it is. I do like the idea of the minimum though; anything worth writing about is worth taking the time to come up with at least 2K words.

Should we declare the title of our essays so we have no repeats? Any other rules or guidelines?

Better 2000 words, sharply focused, then 7000 words where many are off the point and surplus to requirements.

If an admin can create a new forum members can list their essay titles as a new post, then publish their essay in their thread and others can discuss the essay in the same thread.

Ermmm....you talking something like Collaborative Fiction but Essay style not stories??

Why dont you sumbit an Op/Ed Submission for ATSNN? you can write articles for that...

U2U me a rough idea of what your planning to do and achieve

very interesting idea.

uh anyone willing to teach how the (censored) one writes an essay? i was sick when it was covered in school and was never able to be taught. any time it came up teachers just gave me a give me a break look and insisted that i was bsing them so i just never did one.

Great idea. ATS would be happy to help you with your homework .
Just razzin ya. It honestly is a good idea, and I try to assume that our members are made of finer stuff than what I have jokingly suggested.

I don't know if I'll find time for one myself, but it would be interesting to see.

I have feed back from this; ive spoken to SO about it.

We already have something like this inplace, anything worthy is upgraded to main site content.

Just like this thread which became main site content

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by infinite
We already have something like this inplace, anything worthy is upgraded to main site content.

I feel like a broken record to keep talking about this, but one thing that might be a good middle ground is a member selected article/essay section like the main site content but reviewed/selected by members instead of staff. There may be stuff that the staff doesn't think is worthy of having it's own dedicated page in the main content, but the members think should have some sort of quasi-static position in the ranks.

Handle it like ATSNN, after so many "yes" votes (a reasonably high number) it gets upgraded. So many "no" votes--multiple kinds like ATSNN--it gets pushed to "normal" thread status. And like ATSNN, people submit directly to it instead of making a regular post in a forum.

I know we have the OP/ED function in ATSNN, but this would be more for research-based essays--something trying to expose or prove something--instead of opinions. The research forum wouldn't be appropriate for single-person/non-collaborative research, that's better for trying to get something going with a group of people.

Just my two cents again

this would be more for research-based essays--something trying to expose or prove something--instead of opinions

Definitely. there is currently no place on ATS for a private, researched based essay. This essay should be impartial and try not to have the authors opinions in it which would cloud the real facts.