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The screenwriting sites have many comparable offerings. For its second contest, Project Greenlight is holding separate competitions for screenwriting and directing, so some candidates have been submitting short film scenes. Similarly, the Zoetrope site will hold a short-film contest in the first half of 2003, and the Trigger Street site will run three or four short-film festivals a year, Mr. Spacey said.

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Others argue that what participants bring to the sites in terms of personal contacts and constructive criticism is more important than whether actual movies result. For instance, the Project Greenlight site has nearly 26,000 members, and its message boards have allowed filmmakers to find collaborators in their own cities.

Mr. Kidd said inexperienced screenwriters would benefit from having their scripts ruthlessly reviewed by others. "The earlier you knock a script off its pedestal and get down and dirty, the better," he said.

Of course this also means that the sites are only as good as their members allow them to be. Mr. Croney learned in the first Project Greenlight contest that not all reviews are worthwhile. And with a sizable budget at stake, there have been allegations that some Project Greenlight contestants purposely gave low scores to other scripts to enhance their own odds.

Fred Gonnello, project manager of Project Greenlight, said that problem was not widespread. He added that judges in later rounds would look at finalists' reviews to make sure they had not unfairly undermined their peers.

But allowing a site's visitors to identify the best scripts raises another question. As much as one despises the formulaic nature of most Hollywood fare, should creative decisions be made — or at least influenced — by an online democracy rather than the industry's power brokers? An answer probably depends on personal philosophy. Does one use the Zagat consumer survey or a newspaper's skilled restaurant reviewers to decide where to dine?

Mr. Croney said he was planning to submit his script to Mr. Spacey's site. Pamela Kay, on the other hand, no longer needs to care about such ventures. Ms. Kay, 33, an aspiring screenwriter in Spokane, Wash., wrote her first screenplay in 2000 to enter the Project Greenlight contest. She stopped using that site for feedback, she said, "because everyone was at each other's throat trying to get ahead." Instead, she set up a private site where she could exchange criticism with eight friendly writers. She also tweaked her scripts after receiving helpful comments from Zoetrope members.

Last month Ms. Kay's script for a film, "Nude and Naked," about a conservative woman in a life-drawing class, won a screenwriting fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She has also landed a manager, who is showing her scripts around the industry.

Now, Ms. Kay said: "I can do things the traditional Hollywood route. I don't have to try the new, unproven Internet."