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 11/19/2004 04:27:42 PM · #1
My suggestion for reducing the high number of submissions goes liek this. After around 100 votes have been given to an image in a challenge, what if we were to remove the ones that are scoring below a certain low score (say below 4.5, or below 4...) That way, +/- 2 days into the voting period, we would see a big drop in the number of entries, with no considerable loss (eg macro shot last week would drop from 530 to 400).
i myself see 2 problems with this (1. complaints from these people, 2. percentage would become insignificant), but i still wanted to suggest to see what you all think.
 11/19/2004 04:30:55 PM · #2
Well another problem with this method would be that people would wait until after the "cut-off" date to vote so they would not have as many entries to look at. Essentially, no one would vote for the first 2 days.

Additionally, one could argue that the sub-4.5 submissions are those which could benefit most from the comments they would not receive due to being dropped.

Message edited by author 2004-11-19 16:32:10.
 11/19/2004 04:36:22 PM · #3
I agree there is a need to reduce submissions, but if you penalise lower votes, how can they be judged on their performance. Surely they should be able to go the whole challenge to learn from comments and the fianl finishing position.

A possible way, and it has been suggested in past threads, is to have challenges aimed at different levels, cameras, time as members, average votes, etc.

When a new challenge is posted, i.e: B&W II, why not have two or three challenges running side by side on same subject but with different qualification standards. The 600 submissions could then be split into 3 challenges on same topic with 200 entries. Level 1, All ribbon winners/or DSLR users, Level 2, Those with P&S cameras or members more than 6 months. Level 3, P&S users or members with less than 6 months membership.

I know this is not that simple, but we have members and open challenges, so perhaps some or all of these suggestions could be adopted.
 11/19/2004 04:37:26 PM · #4
No offense, but this is a horrible idea.

I'd much rather see each voter given a slice of the photos to vote on; for example a 'block' of 100 random images.
 11/19/2004 04:43:09 PM · #5
How about instead:

We have two identical challenges A and B. We assign random numbers to people. Even and odd.

- Even numbers go to Challenge A and can only vote on Challenge B
- Odd numbers go to Challenge B and can only vote on Challenge A

Comments can be made in either challenge.

We give ribbons to the top three in each, or we can have a bake off vote of the 6 ribbon winners at the end.

Just a thought...

11/19/2004 04:46:34 PM · #6
[quote=nshapiro] How about instead:

We have two identical challenges A and B. We assign random numbers to people. Even and odd.

- Even numbers go to Challenge A and can only vote on Challenge B
- Odd numbers go to Challenge B and can only vote on Challenge A

Comments can be made in either challenge.
We give ribbons to the top three in each, or we can have a bake off vote of the 6 ribbon winners at the end.

Now, this is the kind of thinking we need. We are looking at 600 submissions to one challenge, soon it will be over 1000...who is gonna want to vote on that many, who has the time! or the inclination/interest...so the votes will be lower, everyone who submits will suffer as a result.

I don't like segregation, but something will need doing, and soon!



Message edited by author 2004-11-19 16:49:41.
 11/19/2004 04:56:14 PM · #7
Originally posted by nshapiro:
We have two identical challenges A and B. We assign random numbers to people. Even and odd.

Because the forums will then be filled with comments like: "Just my luck! I got stuck in group A with BradP, scalvert, ericlimon, jjbeguin, ... wish I was in group B, my photo was a lot better than the shot in that group!"
 11/19/2004 04:59:29 PM · #8
I liked the non-masters thread last week. It gave all of us something fun to do and there seemed to be a lot of feedback. And it made it less painful not being able to enter.
So my thought is, run the challenge but also run a study group on whatever the previous weeks challenge was or maybe something more on the technical side. You could choose one but not both on a weekly basis. That way people will get the attention they want, might not feel they "have" to enter the challenge and perhaps cut down on the number of entries. Plus, if it's moderated like that thread was, people could learn a lot.
 11/19/2004 05:00:53 PM · #9
My guess is most sites only WISH they had this many participants.

If we're restricting stuff, why not just have the first 250 people who submit count? Or whatever number you choose..so a first-come first-serve sort of thing.

Anyway, I'm sure that has its pitfalls...
 11/19/2004 05:01:10 PM · #10
Originally posted by EddyG:
Originally posted by nshapiro:
We have two identical challenges A and B. We assign random numbers to people. Even and odd.

Because the forums will then be filled with comments like: "Just my luck! I got stuck in group A with BradP, scalvert, ericlimon, jjbeguin, ... wish I was in group B, my photo was a lot better than the shot in that group!"


That's why it's random. And done each time, not just once. And you won't know who you are with until the end.

And I forgot to point out it solves another problem: it won't do you any good to vote low because you can't vote in your own group.
 11/19/2004 05:29:17 PM · #11
i think the easiest and most fair way would be to have 2 challenges (pick one) you cant vote on the one you are participating in.

sounds easy enough and it would make the voting more fair

and also for those people who are ubhappy with the particualr challenge can pick the one they like better...

so i think this would help out in several different aspects....i know this has been mentioned before i think it is worth mentioning again

also i dont think one challenge would have 550 submissions and the other would have 50, because i know i would probably lean towards the one with fewer entires to increase my odds as i am sure alot of other people would do this as well
 11/19/2004 05:37:50 PM · #12
How about this:

we have 3 challenges per week.

1) Advanced editing for members only
2) Basic editing for members only
3) Basic editing for registered users and members (open challenge)

this will (I think) slim up the challenges a bit. many members will be more tempted to post in the Basic/Advanced challenges instead of the open challenge. Maybe it will help to pull more registered users in to upgrade to member status.

Just a thought. I think it would help.
 11/19/2004 05:40:24 PM · #13
I think that it is a horrible idea to limit how many people can enter a contest. I also agree that 1000 pics would be very difficult to judge. Already with 600 is is easy to spend 10 hours on the judging. The way I would encourage less pics would be to have more contest each week but only let an individual photographer enter one of the contests. Anything that discourages comments, or reduces the confidence that your votes/pictures/comments count will reduce the participation in the site, and in my view participation is one of the real strong points of the site. It appears that most of the work for a contest is automated(or should be) so it should be easy to have many more contests.
Also cost is a great break on participation, so we could think about adding a new member level that costs less than the current one,(which is pretty cheap already).

just my 2 cents
 11/19/2004 05:41:19 PM · #14
Originally posted by ericlimon:
How about this:

we have 3 challenges per week.

1) Advanced editing for members only
2) Basic editing for members only
3) Basic editing for registered users and members (open challenge)

this will (I think) slim up the challenges a bit. many members will be more tempted to post in the Basic/Advanced challenges instead of the open challenge. Maybe it will help to pull more registered users in to upgrade to member status.

Just a thought. I think it would help.


not a bad idea
 11/19/2004 05:52:51 PM · #15
I've seen people complain there are too many entries a few times. Can someone explain what the problem is? That's not a rhetorical question - I genuinely don't know what it is. Doesn't more entries mean there are more voters and commenters as well?

If there were 5000 entries for each open challenge but you had to vote on at least 2% instead of 20% wouldn't that be better? Imagine how good the winning photograph would be from that many entries!
 11/19/2004 06:04:36 PM · #16
Originally posted by Steve___:
I've seen people complain there are too many entries a few times. Can someone explain what the problem is? That's not a rhetorical question - I genuinely don't know what it is. Doesn't more entries mean there are more voters and commenters as well?

If there were 5000 entries for each open challenge but you had to vote on at least 2% instead of 20% wouldn't that be better? Imagine how good the winning photograph would be from that many entries!


I personally feel that if we only vote on a small percentage of the photos in the challenge, it means we might be missing some amazing entries that wouldn't get the 10s and 9s they deserve. I think voting on 80% or ALL entries gives the challenge submitter the best overall judgement of his/her photo and I think the 20% should be increased for this reason!

However, with as many entries as there are, I really like the ideas that Formerlee and ericlimon had (see above). I would be happy with either of those, especially Formerlee's. I like the idea of NOT voting in the challenge you are participating in until the tie/breaker at the end for the top 3 ribbons out of 6 or even 20 (10 from each side A & B to vote on for top 3). Yes, it would stretch out the challenges longer, but it would keep people coming back here!!!

I really am discouraged about voting in these challenges. I always try to vote 50% to 80%, but if i don't think i can do it, then I don't vote at all.. I just can't give someone a ribbon based on the randomness in which I saw their photo (the first 200 i see). I would prefer to vote for 80%, or even 100% to fairly judge and rank the photos in the end from best to least favorite.

That's my 2 cents.
 11/19/2004 06:13:03 PM · #17
Unfortunatly I agree with that. I've only been a member for a few months so I don't know what it was like before these mega-challenges, but I think if you limit your vote to a certain percentage, then you miss voting on some pretty amazing (or aweful) shots. You wouldn't really know, unless you scanned them all and then voted on select ones. Even then, you would skew the results by only voting on a few. I think, again - unfortunatly, that it's best to vote on 100% of the images when possible (i'm only at 70% so far for B&W but have more to do tonight) so that you have a true idea of what you think deserves the best and worst scores.
 11/19/2004 06:23:58 PM · #18
I see your points, if you only voted on 2% then you'd rarely vote on the pic that won that challenge. Maybe you wouldn't even vote on any of the shots that ended up in the top 10! It would be frustrating.

However, the best photos would still be voted to the top by a community effort - they'd still get the 9s and 10s they deserve, and everybody could still see and comment on those pics at the end. I can see why people think they have their own voting style and feel it would skew the results if they only vote on some of the entries, but i believe the hundreds of voters work as a team to fairly score the entries, even if nobody votes on all of the pics. I personally think this is better than limiting the number of participants
 11/19/2004 06:39:09 PM · #19
Can't we have a longer voting time?

If we push the voting push the voting period to two weeks, leaving the submission period at one week, that will give more time for people to vote and contemplate what they are voting on. Now, that will mean that there is a slight amount of growing pains (there would be a week where we didn't learn any results, but that's just one week), and then we would be back to a new challenge every week, new results every week, and another challenge that we can vote on.

If the problem is that people are rushing through the photos, maybe more time is the most fair answer.
 11/19/2004 06:41:57 PM · #20
I would rather divide the challenge into A & B of the same challenge then limit the participants. After all entries are in, you'd get an automatic email telling you which challenge sector A or B you can vote in, with a link. This can be automated. It would randomly divide members (paid or non) into equal groups of 500 & 500 (or however many members we have total divided by 2). Then, they could vote. And i know with people logging into the site, it always told me (when i was a non-paid member) that i could not vote in the member challenges when i tried to click on them. So, I know that technology is available.

What do you say admins? Want to work on programming this for us, even if it takes a few months to implement?
 11/19/2004 06:58:48 PM · #21
Look at the negative effects of large challenges...

Sure, I started that thread, but you know, it is still interesting stuff. I still think more voting time will be easiest fix to the problem and will allow all of us to enter and vote as we see fit.

Anyway, doesn't anyone go out on Friday nights anymore?
 11/19/2004 07:01:47 PM · #22
Originally posted by w24x192:
Anyway, doesn't anyone go out on Friday nights anymore?

I am still at work, it's only 4pm here! I am going out later :)

Thanks for the thread link...
 11/19/2004 07:05:28 PM · #23
Originally posted by mirdonamy:
Originally posted by w24x192:
Anyway, doesn't anyone go out on Friday nights anymore?

I am still at work, it's only 4pm here! I am going out later :)

Thanks for the thread link...


lol, it's gone midnight here - i got back from the pub an hour ago!
 11/19/2004 07:08:47 PM · #24
Where are you?
 11/19/2004 07:08:54 PM · #25
How's about two challenges of each type at one given time, but we can only enter of each? (Open, Members...) That would narrow the entries.
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