VOTING - Contest # 21 "Bad Habits"

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Hi JK again,

You are absolutely right, Karina ran it very smoothly (thanks Karina) and the topic was very interesting. I'm not disagreeing with that.

My main suggestion was that the contest could really use a permanent admin for it to work and to gain wider participation. You may recall that myself and our good friend Superfly ran a pool about it sometime ago. If memory serves, I think the fear of winning was one of the main reasons people don't participate (I'll try to dig up that poll).

As for you volunteering, I don't think anybody would object to that. If there is an objection then that would be great too, so you may have more than yourself to run the contest. If you like, I can run another poll about a permanent admin, just let me know.

What do you think

Hehe... "fear of winning" - sounds like people equate this to winning the lottery where the first prize is a trip to the dentist for a root canal!

I guess the other question is whether people actually still WANT a monthly contest and also what kinds of topics they'd be interested in. Time for another poll perhaps ?(but in the other sub forum - no-one hangs out in here any more!)

[EDIT: Uh, and sorry for hijacking this thread Karina - we should really take our banter elsewhere! ]

You raise very good points, especially the one about having a contest at all.

I'd suggest that we take up the subject privately, and preferably ask Superfly to join the discussion. What do you think.

Just my 2 cents, but I would certainly think that many people may not be so eager to win the "prize" (being responsible for facilitating the following months contest from beginning to end). This month there were just 5 entries. But between the very clumsy interface used for posting pics (took me quite a while to get it all figured out once I was logged in and Im not exactly "computer dumb") and the possibility of having to post endless photos AND make revisions up until the closing date may scare people away. Picking the next topic might be a fine reward, but having to host the following contest may be too much of an undertaking for some people.

I am not complaining but then again, I only had 5 pics to post and 1 revision. However, I do recall saying....."I kinda hope I dont win b/c then I have to facilitate the next one from beginning to end."

There used to be alot of enteries in the contests so I don't think its a matter of not wanting to host the next one so much.

Perhaps "CONTESTS" should have its own subform. Then more than one contest could be run from that. The forum has more than one contest happening now.

Oh buy the way my pics are.
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Karina that is precisely why I don't enter the contests here. I don't want to have to run it if I win it. There should be a way to create a gallery which the last winner could decide on a topic and create a password and if you want to enter, PM the last winner and they will give you the password. Load your own images. The only problem I can forsee is more than one person trying to access at once. Solution? Create a thread where the contest is announced and the subject declared. If I want to load something, I PM the last winner for the password and then post "I am uploading" on a new post. When I am done uploading, I delete the message. As long as there is no "loading message" your good to go.

Will this work?

I think the easiest way of running a contest would be for the winner to start a new contest thread into which people who wish to participate simply post their entries. Sure, the anonymity of who submitted what would be gone, but does that really matter ?
Moderators would be responsible for deleting any posts that are not contest submissions. Then, after 2 weeks, the creator of the thread posts an "Entries are now closed" message at the end of the thread and that's it! Another voting thread is created and the winner is determined as per usual.

Easy!

Congratulations to jmjmotorsport and tannerb, who tied for first place in Contest #21!




Well done!




Typically, as the winner, they would get to pick the next topic plus also get to run the next contest. Since the contest itself is kind of up in the air at the moment, I guess we will wait to see the discussion's outcome (especially since this one was a tie).





Congratulations!!

PS Tanner is my 11 yo son who picked his subject and created the composition with no help from us. In fairness, neither myself nor Gary voted in this contest.

Alright, my first contest win! Or tie.. whatever. I would have liked some more entries though, I must admit. Which picture was tanners? I was using a Canon Sureshot 35mm P+S @ age 11! He's got some skills in the making then.. BTW, mine was #1. Good job to all.. I'll check back and see what the status on future contests is... I've got plenty of ideas so I'd like to see this continue and get better response than this one. Anyhow, maybe a new system of posting/voting could be in order..

I've been reading this thread,. and I too am saddened to see only 5 entries this time around.

A few points,

This contest has allways been a member operated contest.. no input from mods or admin except for the task of adding "stickies" by request,. I like that personally... get the mods involved and suddenly someone is going to start in with politics and what not... ...the less involvement from mods the better IMHO.

This is YOUR contest,. don't make it Mine or Pekka's..

I am however chagrined at the impact of splitting the sharing forums,. and I agree this has been a major part in the cause of going from 20 some odd entries to 5.

The suggestion to move the contest to another forum is reasonable,. but "EOS" is not the place. The Equipment forums are for just that, discussing equipment and thus image sharing of any kind is "taboo" in those forums

I would suggest either "Talk about photography" or "General Chat" would be reasonable places to have the contests if we move them to an existing forum...

But,.. I will also bring this to the Admin if the consensus is that a "contest forum" in Share is the best solution?

As allways,. you have my full support in this endeavor,. so figure out how, or if there is anything I can do to help, and I will.

i think the main reason may have been that the picture of the year contest runs at same time.

Another that skill tests seem to do better than themes.

Since its a running thing, Contest forum seems like a great idea.

P.S.

Congrats JmJ!

I've been thinking

Karina mentioned that the current administration is a bit clumsy so how about using a different album software to host the photos.

For example this one

This gallery can be setup to handle the voting instead of the manual voting used today. It would also be possible to allow registered users to upload their own photos - disadvantage though is that the name would be visible.

If there is an interest I could setup this gallery to run on one of my domains. I am not saying I would also run the actual contest just the technical setup.

As for my paritipation in this contest #21. I would have submitted a photo if my idea of illustrating how people mishandle fireworks on new years eve worked out. But the weather was foggy so I could not get any proper photos - and to my shock people did not behave as badly as they have done previous years

Of course the site went offline just as I am typing this ....

I think Jeff hit it on the head (ouch!) and that's what I tried to do sometime ago, but no such luck. It's to make loading of the pics the responsibility of the participant, not the winner. However, that's not an easy thing to do. The contest that I'm a regular at has a program to do so. I tried to get a permission to use that program, but, and to make a long story short, the owner of that program is so busy (he is a med student) that it's not possible to contact him.

I think if we can find a way for the person to enter his own pics, then we have solved the problem.

How about if we/somebody contact those photo hosting sites, do you think they would help us with that. The contest I mentioned is hosted by PBase and for free.