Hi all, Although I think the photo of the month competition has been incredibly successful considering it's the first month, and the relative complexity of organising it, as many people have said before there needs to be a better voting system in place. If this is OK with the mods and the rest of the participants in the competition I'd like to code a custom voting system which would cater directly to our needs and not require people to be vigilant for others voting too many times. A few outlined ideas that I've been thinking about: User accounts to allow entrants to log in, post their entries (I could provide hosting for images though I'm sure most people would prefer to keep their photos on their own server/flickr account), and vote on other entries. Possibly the most important feature, monitoring of numbers of entries/votes to ensure that it's impossible for people to vote more times than they're supposed to etc. Other stuff that I'm too tired to remember. Please note that I'm not trying to drag the photo comp kicking and screaming away from the forums in any way, more to compensate for vBulletin's slightly lacking poll features and enhance the way in which the competition runs. Any feedback you have to offer will be taken into consideration. Cheers, Nath
I still say you can submit as many entries as you like, but at the end of the month choose one to go into the vote so everyone has a single entry to vote on. If you have some with more than others it gets unfair This also makes us vote on photo, rather than photographer.
Surely you're contradicting yourself there? You're saying we can enter multiple times but at the end of the month, just submit one to the vote. So what's the point on entering the others in the first place? Then you go on to say by doing this you'll be voting on the photo not the taker. How exactly? If you've only voting on one entry per person, that's more like voting for the photog than choosing one of a selection of pics from any one person. Personally, I think "as many as you like" can get far too big, there should be a limit of three. At the end of the month, all photos go in the vote and you choose which of all of them you like most. Nothing complicated, imo. Nath; you on MSN or something mate? I'd like to have a chat about the voting system.
Yeah, I think voting for the person is a bit silly. I just chose my best pic but then voted for the person that took it. EDIT: nvm
I'm confused. Is POTM photo of the month or photographer of the month. The current voting for the person makes me think the later, but I had originally thought it was the best photograph.
POTM is photo of the month, however in order to keep things fair (as a few people suggested that multiple entries = more chance of winning) it was simplified to voting for photographer, though this isn't an ideal system so I'm hoping it'll be improved upon for August's voting. Hwu, yeah I have MSN. nathREMOVETHIS<at>ANDTHISwebshaped.com
well, nothing is stopping someone from posting 2 entries as opposed to one. Like it was mentioned at the start of this compo, there are approximately 4 weekends to take photos, i'm sure someone can at least take one every 2 weeks but if the only wanted to submit one, then it's up to them. I still advocate, although it is semantics, that names be omitted from the actual vote and we vote on the best photograph rather than the photgrapher, if one person get all the votes for his 2 entries, then that means both his entries where a cut above everything else... can't penalise him for that. I have also seen people vote for a photographer based upon both of their entries, isn't that now just 'best photographer' rather than 'best photograph'?
Well you submit SOME (I was exaggerating at loads), get lots of feedback on them, learn from it, choose the one you want and submit it into the final hat. You choose the best of your lot. I mean, I cant predict the future so I dont know if next week ill take a good shot so ill submit one now, one later, then come the end of the month choose between them. This way everyone gets an equal chance of 1 vote 1 entry. Rather than bias against those who can spend weekend after weekend out there shooting. If the person who shot them chooses which one to submit from the feedback and from their own personal choice, then it also improves the final competition. Just do it not on: This person shot this. But rather, just on the actual photo and then we correlate who shot it later.
That's what I've been thinking about. I was under the impression that the idea behind the contest was to pick the one, single photo that stands out from the others, both technically and thematically. -monkey
It is my opinion that it is the nature of the forum to gain feedback and criticism, NOT the competition. certainly comments and criticism in the photo competition is welcome but you want a lot of criticism on a range of photos then post them in the main forum. For me, the photo competition is purely a display of a photographer's ability and style, a showcase of their favourite shot on that theme rather then a "OOOO HUGS AND CUDDLES PHOTOGRAPH WORKSHOP". It is a competition after all.
I would also have liked to have seen a thumbnail of each shot (linked to the original post) on the voting page
