It is neither inherently better to write a short nor a long entry. In the Perspective contest, for instance, there were two long entries (around 20 pages) and the rest were mostly short; as it turned out, one of the long entries won, but the other long entry came seventh, and both second and third place were among the shortest (only about two pages each). What matters is that the fic is effective at telling its story and presents an interesting interpretation well. (But part of being effective at telling its story, of course, is that it neither rushes through it nor drags on unnecessarily.)
That said, when she got the entries Negrek commented, and I agree, that we might want to place an upper limit on length in the next contest. A forty-page story is generally an entirely different beast from a five-page one, which makes comparing them to each other a bit of an apples-and-oranges situation - in very short stories you can only paint a picture of characters as they are, for instance, and mostly have room to express small, self-contained ideas, while longer stories start to generally be more about plot and character development. That's not to scold anyone for writing long entries for this contest - it was explicitly allowed, after all - but it does pose something of a challenge to grade them on the same scale. Hence, please be patient.
And you shouldn't all be worrying so much about placing last! Somebody has to place last - that's just mathematically inevitable with a finite number of contestants. Even if you place last in one contest, it's not some kind of eternal judgement of you as a writer - it just means others did better in this particular competition. And hopefully, you'll be able to use the judges' advice to improve your writing further. Think of this as a learning experience - seeing what both you and others got right and what you could have done better, with five different judges offering their perspectives on every entry, is an immensely valuable thing. Long before I ever judged a contest, I read all the reviews for every contest when the results were posted, and I learned a lot from them.
InsaneTyranitar said:
Good lord my entry is going to be eaten alive. Especially by Dragonfree. ._.
starliteevee said:
Aww, you're making me feel bad. I will do my very best not to be a mean old grump. D: