Suggestion: vote for challenges - DPChallenge Forums

03/19/2016 06:10:54 AM · #1

Members of this site need a louder voice on the challenges that are ultimately selected.

Here is my proposal:
* I suggest that at least one challenge per week (or other regular interval) is nominated by majority vote.
* The leading challenge would not be visible until a rollover.
* We would see the score distribution for the challenge in the same way as we do for photos.
* Losing topics can be resubmitted for next iteration. Winning entries cannot. The latter may be self moderating.

Things that would need to be determined:
* How would challenges be proposed and nominated?
* Would there be pre-nomination phase? (Like caucuses before the real vote?)
* For members only or registered users? I prefer a liberal stance on participation.

pixelpig

Sony Alpha a55

Sony DT 1.8/50mm SAM

03/19/2016 09:00:35 AM · #2

Wild idea. If anyone is going to vote on challenge selection, it should be SC. Because you need 100% participation.

But...

Voting on a challenge selection removes Langdon's participation--that can't be a good thing.

03/19/2016 09:38:29 AM · #3

Excellent! Someone could start a thread each week for members to make suggestions .. that lasts a week ... the choices are put up for voting for a week and voila!
Yes, there's still the issue of who makes the choices from the pool. I think three to pick from would be good.

Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM

03/19/2016 10:03:55 AM · #4

Originally posted by pixelpig:

Good point about 100% voting participation. I think that's sensible. It Doesn't need to only be SC because it's trivial to programmatically scrub incomplete participants. And participation in challenge nomination might increase submission and voting participation. Maybe.

Langdon nominated the car and pencil challenges himself. if my idea would give fewer of these, get rid of him permanently I say ;-)

pixelpig

Sony Alpha a55

Sony DT 1.8/50mm SAM

03/19/2016 10:33:34 AM · #5

Originally posted by NiallOTuama:

Originally posted by pixelpig:
Wild idea. If anyone is going to vote on challenge selection, it should be SC. Because you need 100% participation.

But...

Voting on a challenge selection removes Langdon's participation--that can't be a good thing.

Good point about 100% voting participation. I think that's sensible. It Doesn't need to only be SC because it's trivial to programmatically scrub incomplete participants. And participation in challenge nomination might increase submission and voting participation. Maybe.

Langdon nominated the car and pencil challenges himself. if my idea would give fewer of these, get rid of him permanently I say ;-)

I meant, you'd need 100% of the members to vote to avoid creating a clique or even the suspicion of one. And SC is already a clique (in a good way).

JakeKurdsjuk

Canon EOS R5

03/19/2016 10:56:51 AM · #6

Members suggest challenges now. You can see from those threads how much interest there is/isn't in participating in the decision making process around what the challenges are. Making it a vote just further complicates things because now you need to be involved in multiple steps. We can't even get people to vote on entries, so I fail to see how this does anything to boost participation on any level, and likely causes a single set of the voting public to sway challenges towards one set of opinions rather than others.

Samsung Galaxy S21, S21+, S21 Ultra

03/19/2016 11:21:25 AM · #7

Originally posted by JakeKurdsjuk:

I believe it would benefit the community.

Note, I am not interested in debating whether it would or not so please don't respond if you want to. I want to keep this thread on topic. If you want to debate, PM.

Message edited by author 2016-03-19 11:33:20.

Bear_Music

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

03/19/2016 11:31:27 AM · #8

Originally posted by NiallOTuama:

Originally posted by JakeKurdsjuk:
Members suggest challenges now. You can see from those threads how much interest there is/isn't in participating in the decision making process around what the challenges are. Making it a vote just further complicates things because now you need to be involved in multiple steps. We can't even get people to vote on entries, so I fail to see how this does anything to boost participation on any level, and likely causes a single set of the voting public to sway challenges towards one set of opinions rather than others.

I believe it would benefit the community.
Note, I am not interested in debating whether it would or not so please don't respond if you want to. I want to keep this thread on topic. If you want to debate, PM.

Seriously? How is discussing whether this proposed change would be beneficial to the community NOT "on topic"?

03/19/2016 11:34:11 AM · #9

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Originally posted by NiallOTuama:

Originally posted by JakeKurdsjuk:
Members suggest challenges now. You can see from those threads how much interest there is/isn't in participating in the decision making process around what the challenges are. Making it a vote just further complicates things because now you need to be involved in multiple steps. We can't even get people to vote on entries, so I fail to see how this does anything to boost participation on any level, and likely causes a single set of the voting public to sway challenges towards one set of opinions rather than others.

I believe it would benefit the community.
Note, I am not interested in debating whether it would or not so please don't respond if you want to. I want to keep this thread on topic. If you want to debate, PM.

Seriously? How is discussing whether this proposed change would be beneficial to the community NOT "on topic"?

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm happy to discuss definite problems (like those pixelpig raised) but I think discussing hypothetical feelings about the possible benefits is wasted effort. Perhaps I'm too eager to suit my own agenda?

Message edited by author 2016-03-19 11:46:42.

03/19/2016 11:45:27 AM · #10

Jake makes several excellent points, Niall.

* Challenges are selected from a list of suggestions made by the membership, even the "lame" topics.

* Challenge appeal is tested via suggestion threads

* A 100% voting pattern has rarely been seen for anything on DPC

In addition, with tastes, photographic preferences, etc., it is highly unlikely that we would be able to generate enough - if any - topics that would receive 100% support or interest, especially for the number of challenges we have per week.

SC has become more involved in the past year in trying to keep "joke" suggestions out of the queue. On the other hand, what might be one person's joke may make for someone else's interesting "challenge". So we need to strike a balance that addresses everyone's needs and tastes.

A different approach to this suggestion might be to convert the challenge suggestion thread into a simple poll. And rather than a 100% response, we add a suggestion with a simple majority response. However, there is still the issue of how many of these suggestions per week can we generate via this method.

Message edited by author 2016-03-19 11:46:36.

03/19/2016 11:46:33 AM · #11

OK. Regarding JakeKurdsjuk's points:
* members suggest challenges. Yes. But there is no transparency in what is in the list, and what is not.
* You can see form these how much interest there is. I'm jumping ahead to your last point about cliques. Those who reply to these threads also form a clique. How are we now sure that we aren't following their feelings more than we aught?
* making votes further complicates: Nobody would be MADE vote. It's no more complicated than voting in a challenge.
* can't get people to vote: you have nothing to gain from voting in challenges. you may have something to gain by voting for a challenge - increased thinking time, downvoting the challenges you do not want, upvoting those you do, there would be a forum for your preferences to have DIRECT impact.

See, I feel that by directly tackling these points, the rest of the thread might degrade to dissecting my opinions. All I want to say is that none of these points are clear cut. And one can easily look at it as having a net benefit to the community.

03/19/2016 11:49:21 AM · #12

You posted while I was typing!

In terms of transparency, one need only go to the challenge suggestions forums to see what has been suggested. You can see from the number of replies which ones generated the most interest. Those tend to get added to the suggestion queue.

03/19/2016 11:50:58 AM · #13

Remember, I am suggesting a "one challenge every so often" mechanism here. Not a complete overhaul for every challenge.

Originally posted by tanguera:

A different approach to this suggestion might be to convert the challenge suggestion thread into a simple poll. And rather than a 100% response, we add a suggestion with a simple majority response. However, there is still the issue of how many of these suggestions per week can we generate via this method.

Good idea. You could define an arbitrary quorum (say 30 affirmative votes or so) and those that fall below are not considered.

03/19/2016 11:54:13 AM · #14

Originally posted by tanguera:

How about something more like this, then.

Say there are 100 items in this queue. They are now either ordered alphabetically or by suggestion date. You could prioritise this list based on community preference to a priority queue (CS folk know what I mean!). The SC/Langdon would still make final decisions, but at least the preference of the community would influence the order in which the candidate challenges are viewed.

Message edited by author 2016-03-19 11:55:05.

03/19/2016 12:52:07 PM · #15

Originally posted by tanguera:

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, but I only see 2 of the challenges on the front page mentioned under the recent Challenge Suggestions. I know I, for one, don't bother posting challenge suggestions anymore because they either get ridiculed or go unnoticed. I think Niall's suggestion would be a definite improvement. At least then everyone who actually shoots for these challenges has an opportunity to suggest/vote on what to shoot for. So far as transparency, it'd be all out there.

03/19/2016 12:52:20 PM · #16

To be clear, I'm not sure any of these things can be implemented. However, the poll is easily doable since we already do them.

On the other hand, what is the mechanism for choosing the topic to be polled. Who chooses THAT topic?

Sony Sonnar FE 2.8 35mm ZA

03/19/2016 12:54:39 PM · #17

Originally posted by PennyStreet:

I know I, for one, don't bother posting challenge suggestions anymore because they either get ridiculed or go unnoticed.

That is the nature of the popular vote, Lyn. We might think our idea is fun/cute/interesting/inventive/challenging/different, but nobody else does. It is not a failing of the current system. It is an example of popular vote at work.

jagar

Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+

03/19/2016 12:59:46 PM · #18

I must admit that I am useless at thinking up challenge ideas so I probably shouldn't have any say in a thread like this. It would be nice though to be able to vote on a selection of challenge topics. Does Langdon actually decide which one is chosen at the moment ?

03/19/2016 01:04:02 PM · #19

Originally posted by tanguera:

Let's ignore technical details here for now. Of more interest is getting a good idea!

03/19/2016 01:07:04 PM · #20

Originally posted by jagar:

Good question.

03/19/2016 01:12:59 PM · #21

Originally posted by PennyStreet:

Originally posted by jagar:
I must admit that I am useless at thinking up challenge ideas so I probably shouldn't have any say in a thread like this. It would be nice though to be able to vote on a selection of challenge topics. Does Langdon actually decide which one is chosen at the moment ?

Good question.

My understanding from previous threads is that a list of potentials are provided by the SC, and Langdie selects the actual challenges from this.

03/19/2016 01:14:29 PM · #22

Originally posted by tanguera:

Originally posted by PennyStreet:
I know I, for one, don't bother posting challenge suggestions anymore because they either get ridiculed or go unnoticed.

That is the nature of the popular vote, Lyn. We might think our idea is fun/cute/interesting/inventive/challenging/different, but nobody else does. It is not a failing of the current system. It is an example of popular vote at work.

I contend that those forum threads are not nearly the same as what Niall is suggesting. Anyway, so far as i can see, nobody from the populus suggested Pencils ... or Autos.. so how is that a popular vote.