Why were the valentine photo contest pictures

[pyrxtc]

all moved around for voting and not entered in the way they were added to the contest as they usually are?

they were all moved around and we have some that are the same subjects in the same contest and some that could have one in the group if they were entered in order of submissions but now they won't cuz they were moved around.

Now, before anyone starts in on anything, I know this contest takes work to put together but I'm sure it takes mroe work to bounce around to get the links than to just go down the pages and put the links in as you cross each picture.

 

[Anewman]

Just a guess seeing as the first photo is Aladdin and the second is Beast(alphabetical order).

Photos(or links) were probably all saved into a folder and then Windows alphabetized them, and then typed into the post.

 

[pyrxtc]

I would have agreed wiht you but there are Beauty and the beast pictures all over the place, not just in wiht all the B stuff.

 

[Anewman]

I would have agreed wiht you but there are Beauty and the beast pictures all over the place, not just in wiht all the B stuff.

Windows does not know the subject of the image, it alphabetizes by file name.


again just a guess, the copy and pasting may have just gotten out of sequence.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Perhaps they have been randomized to prevent people from timing their entries for competitive reasons.

What difference does it make?

 

[rtphokie]

Perhaps they have been randomized to prevent people from timing their entries for competitive reasons.

What difference does it make?

Entries are ordered roughly based on the number of times the photographer has won previous contests. The idea is that frequent winners will be going up against other frequent winners rather than newcomers in group voting. 1-2 winners from each group (depending on how many groups there are) will then go on to the final vote.

The goal is to encourage participation and see as many newcomers in the final voting as possible. Regardless of how they are grouped, I still think the same 3 photos will finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd but it's good to see others getting some acknowledgment for their work.

I'd seen enough comments from posters about the same posters winning week after week (which isn't strictly true but I get what is being expressed) that we needed to try something different.

FWIW, posting of the contests, group voting, and the final vote as well as keeping the sticky post with current voting and past results is assisted by some Perl scripts I wrote. I dont know how andromedaslove did it as long as she did doing it by hand. Even with the scripts to collect up entries and keep track of all the threads involved and winners, it still takes a significant amount of time.

 

[jann1033]

actually i never enter the contests(no disney photos ) but i think that is a good way to do it...i've often thought how it would be nice to have dslr vs dslr, point and shoot vs point and shoot just cause it's kind of different things coming into play, ie point and shoot is basically compostion, dslr is comp plus technique

 

[MICKEY88]

actually i never enter the contests(no disney photos ) but i think that is a good way to do it...i've often thought how it would be nice to have dslr vs dslr, point and shoot vs point and shoot just cause it's kind of different things coming into play, ie point and shoot is basically compostion, dslr is comp plus technique

I respectfully disagree....

a lot of people use dslrs as p&S, and a lot of P&S users change settingslike on a dslr,

if you break it down that way, then do you go a step farther and break it down by entry level dslr,advanced, pro, then by brand..???

I think mixed is better

 

[jann1033]

I respectfully disagree....

a lot of people use dslrs as p&S, and a lot of P&S users change settingslike on a dslr,

if you break it down that way, then do you go a step farther and break it down by entry level dslr,advanced, pro, then by brand..???

I think mixed is better

actually that is a good point i hadn't thought of so in the words of the late great Gilda Radner..."never mind"

 

[JR6ooo4]

Perhaps they have been randomized to prevent people from timing their entries for competitive reasons.

Shhhhhh, don't give it away!!!!


Mikeeee

 

[steery1]

What difference does it make?

Yea, I'd like to know what the difference is too?

 

[Cdn Friends of Pooh]

Entries are ordered roughly based on the number of times the photographer has won previous contests. The idea is that frequent winners will be going up against other frequent winners rather than newcomers in group voting. 1-2 winners from each group (depending on how many groups there are) will then go on to the final vote.

I am another who feels that the entries should be voted on as they have been posted.


Bonny

 

[AndrewWG]

I guess I am undecided on whether or not this makes much of a difference. I don't win anyways, my DD8 does! However, I think that rtphokie is making more work for themselves by re-arranging them. Personally I would leave them in the order that they were submitted (just for the ease of it), but I'm not running the contest and I'm glad that someone is. So I guess to make a long story short, do whatever you want with them so long as all the pics make a voting group one way or another.

Also, thanks for your work on this and all contests!

 

[emmabelle]

I also want to thank Rtphokie for putting together the contest. I think that if your picture is really good it's going to win no matter who it's grouped with.

 

[jann1033]

ok i never enter so i doesn't really bother me either way but and this is going to sound mean probably... but i would rather have a mixed bag...if they are all going to be voted on for the same characteristics isn't that a little unfair to weight the deck by putting non winners with non winners and vice versa? i mean shouldn't they really all have to meet the same criteria to win? a lot of times i've had to decide between 2 "good" photos in a group...it seems this way that would happen even more or maybe allow not very good photos in the final poll while keeping very good ones out of that same poll?????. if they are judged on merit of the photo is it really fair to penalize someone who might be somewhat better cause they take better photos, i mean isn't that the point of a contest? ( and lots of times i don't think it's necessarily the most 'technically correct " one that wins anyway) from the thread on those who have won the contest it seems like it's pretty much different people who have won it with way different skill levels

but that's just my 2 cents, not my contest, i have no photos to enter so i guess i should just mmob

 

[Gdad]

I was wondering how the semi-finalists are chosen. Are they the 10-12 shots with the mosts overall votes? Or are they the most voted on 2-3 in each grouping irregardless of overall votes?

 

[rtphokie]

I was wondering how the semi-finalists are chosen. Are they the 10-12 shots with the mosts overall votes? Or are they the most voted on 2-3 in each grouping irregardless of overall votes?

The final voting is made up of the top 2 (depending on the number of entries therefor the number of groups) from each group. If there are more than 6 groups, then the top 1 from each group moves on to the final.

The one caveat is that on occasion, if I screw up and leave someone out of the group voting accidentally, I'll give them a by and put them in the final voting.

 

[rtphokie]

This board limits polls to 12 options. This is why we have the current group then final voting process.

Background:
The order photos appear in the group voting shouldn't matter but it does. Looking back over the group polls, the first and last groups tend to get the most votes, the ones in the middle (especially the next to the last group, usually group 3) tend to get the least votes. I cant believe that the photos in these groups are consistently uninteresting to voters. Are voters getting tired of voting in all these polls? Each week we submit a photo, vote in 4 or more group polls and then vote in a final poll. It's almost as much work to participate in the photo contests as it is to run them even if you never enter one.

Another idea:
What would you folks think about doing just 1 round of voting instead of 2? This would require moving the voting process off this board. Instead of posting a group poll, I'd post a link to my website which will display all entries and allow voting in one step. Once voting is complete (folowing the same Monday to Sunday schedule), winners would be posted on the board. We'd still use the board for posting entries, photos would still be hosted by individuals (using photobucket, smugmug, etc) just the voting location would change.

Doing it this way would make voting simpler and faster, less work for me (it takes a minimum of 30 minutes to post all those polls due to board restrictions) and give us the ability to vote on some superlatives as well (best representation of the theme, best use of color, best entry from a Canon camera (just kidding), best entry by a newbie, best entry by a kid, etc.)

What do you folks think? Is this worth trying for a while or are folks happy with the multi week, multi thread voting? I'm happy to do whatever the consensus is.

 

[Sorsha]

Personally, and it's just me, I look forward to the voting each week! I enjoy the process as it is now, and faithfully vote in each round each week, even if I haven't entered. I usually have my favorites chosen by the time the polls go up, and I love seeing if my choices make it into the final polls! I think things are great as they are right now, but again, that's just *my* opinion. I would hate to see things change.

The only suggestion I have would be that if two pictures are very very similar (right now in the Pooh contest, there are a couple that are almost identical) be sure that in the initial voting phase those pictures are not going head to head in the same poll.

Thanks for all your hard work in maintaining the contests! I look forward to them very much every week.

 

[fitzperry]

The only suggestion I have would be that if two pictures are very very similar (right now in the Pooh contest, there are a couple that are almost identical) be sure that in the initial voting phase those pictures are not going head to head in the same poll.

FWIW I disagree with this. Seems to me that if two pictures are very similar, they should go "head to head" in the preliminary voting so that the "best" one is the one that proceeds to the finals.