Fortnightly Competition - Do we want it?

Neither of the current competitions have a rule that the judges must provide detailed comments. People do it as a courtesy, because they like it, and because of peer pressure! Occasionally a judge provides rather skeletal comments, or just for the place-winning entries. For me, that's fine... once in a while. I think we should ease up on entrants from overseas, or people with shaky writing skills, once in a while.

I agree. Also I can't see a way of balancing the "I won't enter to judge and comment" side with the "I always want comment" side.
The best I game up with is in the pilot proposal:

9. The competition winner will select winning entries 1-3 (and award ‘Highly Commended’s, if so desired), and post the results as soon as possible after the finishing deadline (though this will partly depend on time zone).

Plus

Judging there are no rules for judging, apart from selecting 1, 2 and 3. The basis for making a selection is down to personal preference. However it has become common practise to offer a short comment on each of the entries.

I know this is going to sound all out of proportion for what is friendly competition with no tangible gain for the winning judge. If we made it a rule that the judge had to comment on all entries, what sanction would you apply if they did not.

An interesting thread. My thoughts:

I have always thought of the fortnightly comp as more challenging than the weekly one, after all, it is harder to shoot pictures for a specific subject than to simply scan through past images to find something to conform with the weekly criteria. The only thing that has prevented my fortnightly entries is lack of spare time, but I will be keen to join in when circumstances allow.

I am not convinced that going monthly will help, because as has been previously pointed out, there will still be a tendency to wait until the last week before posting.

The judging. This should not be an issue; simply accept that your opinions will not be shared by everyone and get on with it. We are fortunate that our forum does not get into protracted discussions over the 'quality' of the winning entries.

Lastly, I think that if it were as easy to post on the fortnightly comp as the weekly, it might encourage more entries.

That isn't the case in other monthly comps that I enter.

These other comps:

1. do they attract a good number of entries?
2. how are they run?

As a % of the 'small' number of people on the forum, yes they are usually well attended.

Winner picks a monthly subject, voting by all members not just participants, in the event of a tie the 'convener' selects the winner, very simple and off you go. You can make these as simple as you like or as convoluted as you want, I believe the former attracts more entrants but both work !

Thanks Kevin, It's the voting that stumps us here. I presume no comments on the entries under a voting system?

I can see both good and bad points with having a voting system.

On the plus side it involves more users with the result so making it more inclusive.

On the negative side it would delay the announcement of the next competition while the voting takes place for presumably around a week or so.

One way a voting system could be made to work here is if the top three chosen by the convener are put head to head in a standard poll, but I'm not sure if there is any real value in doing that. Maybe for Qdos, have an end of year poll of the winning 12.

John

I like it I think you would have to start a thread containing the 12 images with a poll included.

I think we need advise on if it is feasible

Let's worry about that one later! It may be feasible, if a little unwieldy, but I can see a few technical issues that might need sorting.

Ok one thing at a time.