Poll For Challenge Submissions

[HSH]

Please decide how you would prefer the challenge submissions to be handled.

Would you like to keep them the way they are

or

Would you like to have them submitted through email and then posted after the open period for the judge to choose between them. Then once the judging and voting is finished to have the usual info put above each image so that others would know who that image belonged to. By keeping the entries anonymous it would make the challenge as fair as possible for everyone that enters, and may make the judges feel more at ease by not knowing who the owners of the photos are they are choosing.

[grays]

I think this may have been discussed in another thread but would it be possible to have a public gallery where anyone could upload their challenge entries to? I'd still like to be able to see the other entries during the open period as well as it's useful for inspiration!

[EasyTiger]

I am part of another photo challenge, and the way that works is that entries are posted then the mod takes these and with some clever code I suspect, uploads these to her websites with a specific number. My number is always 52 so i'm not quite sure how it works but anyway. These are then displayed for members logged in, and they vote for the 3 best using their numbers. It works because there are so many members and people entering that if people did want to vote for their friend they'd have to troll all the posts to find theirs, then troll the gallery to get that number, and I suspect most can't be bothered to do that ;)

I'm not sure if this code is widely available or whether the girl wrote it herself, but something similar could be handy? Of course if there's not many people entering then it could be useless and i'm talking gibberish. Just my two cents anyway :P

[CathieT]

Hi Easytiger - not gibberish - quite sensible ..... I've seen challenges where the entries are emailed to one person who enters them into their gallery. No way of checking who they belong to, and with only five finalists per challenge here that would work well methinks.

I do however agree with grays on seeing the competition!!

[HSH]

OK, to give you guys the best of all worlds, I have added an extra poll option. Now you can choose to select anonymous with entry views. May the best choice win! ;-)

[mickeybb]

I want to change my vote to the new option , but it won't let me. :cry:

[grays]

Ditto above. Can you start the poll again Heidi?

[keithbales]

Me too :-D

[Ralph Newman]

Well to me this is a "competition" of sorts. To me if you enter a "best sponge" baking competition, they don't let you see other entries before you submit yours, there by giving you an unfair advantage of seeing the competition before submitting your own. I think each entry should be annonymous untill the comp closes, then viewing should be available to all. But I am only one voice and one who hasn't joined in the comps for a while.

[HSH]

Sorry guys, but I was asked to leave it like it is. Perhaps we can change your votes once the voting is done if you want to let us know which you voted for first.

[Shouchen]

Submit anonymously but be able to see submissions.

Under this option, we will create a forum username called "challenge", then everyone can use that username to login and submit your work. This way, we maintain the same work flow as before (without disclosing author name and camera model), and easier for judge to work on it - only choose the top five.


Ralph, while I agree with your point of view, but I am afraid completely fair in terms of anonymous and SAME time, will put a lot of burden on Judges or MODs. I would vote for a fairly reasonable method which is also practically easy to implement.

[Tbel]

If you create one user name for everyone to enter challenges with will you be able to tell if anyone has entered more times than allowed?
Also how will you know who's pic is who's if they are all under a generic screen name.
Oh yeh, and if you decide to delete one entry and add a different one will you be able to do it.

Just thinking out loud

[HarleyCowgirl]

I think that we definately need to keep the entries open for viewing as well,inspiration indeed!Just wondering with Tbel's thoughts though,how would YOU know whos entries are whos if they all go in anonymously? :bang:

Trayci

[Shouchen]

U r right. It will be subject to abuse. Judge will have to ask after he/she picked the five. That is why I am hesitate to change to anonymous system,while better - too much work.

Posted from a mobile device

[Tbel]

While I voted for "anon. but able to view" I really don't think we need to change.
Can anyone who has juged previous comps honestly say that they were influenced by who's name is on the pic?

I think we've done quite well here.

I tend to opperate on the thought if it ain't broke don't fix.
That is unless there is a far superior option.
That doesn't seem to be the case here.

[mickeybb]

It's a good idea, I think, but it seems to be too confusing now! If it can be easy for the judges I would say go for it! But if it's too hard, then it's not fun anymore, and I want it to remain fun.

[neilp]

Hmm. Interesting discussion, if the pictures were anonymous would people vote differently??

Here's a controversial opinion which I think I've seen before - Personally I tend to bias my vote slightly depending on whether someone already has a medal or not and their amount of experience, am I the only one that does this? The idea being to give the less experienced users a bit more of a chance and to give those that don't have a medal a chance to get one.

Clearly this forum has a fairly wide range of abilities from absolute beginners through to professionals and a lot of people somewhere in the middle. Generally the professionals can create a higher quality image in many ways. If all images were truly anonymous, would the same people win each time?

Well if they are the best images then I guess that is fair and that's how voting should work. The images that are of a lower quality should improve over time.

I think it could be good to try out the anonymous thing for one challenge to see how it works out, then we'd all get a feeling for how it could work out. Though my gut feel is to leave it as it is.

The best technical solution for the anonymous voting thing would be as follows:
- people sumbit to a thread in the normal way.
- BUT when viewing the thread the usernames are not visible to everyone else
- your own thread is visible and editable to you in the normal way.
- maybe each user would be given a unique ID number as they submit images such that it's clear only 2 images have been submitted by each user. This ID would be different for each challenge.
- once the challange is complete a magic switch is changed and all the usual usernames etc are visible.

Though the above would be very complex to implement.

Neil.

[Nomar]

Well I joined a well known forum for PS competitions and I saw some interesting things there. They have anonymous entries and you are, in theory, suppose to vote for all of them on a scale of one to ten and the highest average wins and they have space for judges pic(s). Might be interesting to try the scale voting here because it seems like so few members vote compared to how many are active/registered. In a comp with 5 finalist and twenty or so votes a scale voting system could level out the playing feel when you take into consideration the differences in experience, artistry, quality of camera etc.

It might also help encourage those finalist/beginers that only get one or two votes. There could also be a beginner to the forum comp, competitions for those with the same cameras, head to head comps for all levels. The posibilities are endless when you think about it, it could make things alot of fun.

Just my two cents. Which you can't buy anything with.

And in case anyone else is reading this and is a member of that other forum my sn is basically the same and make sure you vote in that comp. ;-)

[ap2]

The problem with anonymous is that if members can't view the entries beforehand they can't catch a rule oversight and let the person who entered know that they need to fix it. This could isolate new members or those with language issues, that's the last thing we want to do. A number system might work, but as the moderator or judge would be the only ones that know who the actual entrants are this would place a large burden on them to track potential issues. This isn't exactly a high stakes competition here, it's really an ego competition. It's a bit counterproductive to cheat on an ego competition. Like we couldn't change the EXIF data if we really wanted to. There should be a certain level of trust here, we are all adults (or close enough) afterall.

Just my 2 cents - Angie

[Nomar]

Like at that place I mentioned the only thing that is anonymous is the name of the person you can see the image and all the details, the only thing that does not show up is your name, and member info. That could still be anonymous. If we can see the image without the member's name people could still right click and check the properties of the image. With the couple of comps that I have been able to vote on I have always had to struggle with choosing a photo that looked nicer (less noise, what I thought was a better camera) over one that I felt had more of an artistic quality to it.

We could emliminate any burden on judges like this: All entries get rated by members 1-10 and then the top 5 go to next round where the highest rated from the final 5 wins. The judges still could have a judges pic if their favorite did not win. Every member could vote but every member that is in a comp has to vote in the comps they are in. This can eliminate what some people see as the favoritism and level the field for the non pro going up against the pro quality photog.

I agree about the exif data thing though.

This way we could also have a first second and third place. At that place I keep mentioning you get little goofy metalic awards. We could have the same kind of thing but like a golden silver bronze camera. Cheezy I know but seems like fun.