Voting competition #1 - Cycles - The Votes

True - but that's part of the point, isn't it - voter impartiality until polling day?

Let's break 'everybody else' into the three camps, first, because each has clear needs and involvements at various stages:

Actual Participants - on a normal compo, they post an image, and wait a 'while' (week/fortnight) for a judge to decide what the outcome is. Beyond the actual entry, there's no emotional investment after that - just waiting and hoping (and seeing what the latecomers are doing to 'beat' your image, potentially using your inspiration as their jumping-off point...)

Potential Participants - on a normal compo, their only 'emotional investment' is looking at the photos and deciding whether they think their chances are any good. "Can I beat that?" or "Hmm, maybe I won't enter, because I am clearly no good!", or "yes, I reckon it's worth my bothering because they are clearly all rubbish..." And all shades between those extremes.

Non-participants/Voters - on a normal compo, they get emotionally involved from the point they see the first image. Judgements are made, forgotten, changed, got-bored-with, and re-interested with each newly arriving entry. But in the normal compos, luckily, it's only the judge who has to exercise caution and sift through the changing feelings he or she has had during the week of changing entries. The rest of the non-participants are just hoping their favourite wins, or the judge comes up with good crit.

The crux is, imho, in the new-style compo, only actual participants may be worried about emotional involvement. Potential participants still need attracting, but it could equally be said, the negatives which prevent them entering, are gone. And as for voters, really, we don't want them to have any emotional involvement, until every photo-entry is on display together.

True, I totally agree - the 'trick' to all this, is in keeping the competition 'alive' during the submission phase, and garnering interest, and more entrants.

But maybe the person collating the entries can mitigate that by keeping a 'chatter' thread alive? Maybe saying how there are "x-many entries so far", and that they are "covering subjects as diverse as 'blah, blah'", or that we have "10 entries from K-7 users, but nothing from the K200 owners yet! Now's your chance to represent your set!" and so on. Just to tickle interest.

Or maybe the collator could put up tiny, weeny 100px-wide 'teaser snapshots' into the thread, so you can see *something*... but not enough for voters to get toooooo emotionally involved yet!?

Yes, it's more work... but personally, I really think the idea of a 'cold vote' from a mass population, on a platter of images presented all at once, is a really good facet that separates this from the potentially very subjective nature of a 'one-judge' compo. That's not to say I have anything against the 'one-judge' compos (far from it)... but this whole 'Vox Pop' spin is, I think, a great idea worth nurturing.

Unlike Flickr, and random other photo-sites that have everlasting polls, or 'ranking-by-viewing-figures' type 'polls', this forum has a good proportion of very insightful, experienced, and skilled photographers whose 'votes' really are worth hearing, plus a lot of newcomers to the art, who, even if not 'top grade art critics', share our brand and feature-set, and work with the same medium and tools - and are hence still a zillion times more worthwhile hearing from than a random selection of plebs in Facebook album comment-boxes.

Thank you Neil for putting so much effort into this. What you wrote is precisely what I think as well.
I'm getting it off easy here

Thank you Neil for putting my thoughts far more eloquently than I could

Thanks for the kind comments, peeps. Greatly appreciated.

Cutting to the chase, what do we think of the ideas I proposed for improving visibility / keeping the pot boiling? They were:

(a) 'tickler' thread - giving a sort of running commentary on entry quantities, qualities, highlights, etc.

(b) 'teaser' thumbnails - with enough detail to titillate, interest and engage, but not enough to give too much away.

Or both together?

And would you, Stefan, be prepared to be 'collator' a second time, with potentially extra work, if the ideas above get any support? I would totally understand if you said no, though.

Well, I would have voted, but just wasn't around in the time period to allow me to. From that perspective, it seems to have been a competition that's been going on for a while, then things appeared and it was over with before I knew it.

That's not a criticism, just an observation, and it was a good experiment to try, but I'm not sure it's been a massive success. The idea's sound though, just the implementation that needs tinkering. Perhaps a longer voting period? But then is that going to drag on?

Dan

Yeah no problem, unless some says I didn't do a good job with the support.
Already did tickle though but didn't help much

We now had a voting time off a week, more then long enough I think.

Well done everybody, ohhhhh, thanks voters. I think I voted for the Native Indian cycle but surreal Bikes in the Garden nearly got it. I must admit being synonym blind and didn't think of life cycles!

Its an image from the archives so a slight cheat this time, I mostly try and shoot fresh , even for the weekly. Its from A level coursework and the theme was bikes. I'd spent a few weeks and shot several hundred really, really, really boring photos of bikes and then took a new tack. Also somebody left a newly built, freshly painted footbridge for me to use.

Anyway, its an example why I really liked the GX10, the kit lens and the jpegs straight out of the camera!

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I've just got in and will digest the full thread.

I don't mind having the collating, teasing and tickling job next time if a volunteer is needed.

So it was! I know I've had a busy week, but I'm astounded I managed to miss this thread until now.

Dan

For got to congratulate you Doug, I hereby do.
Gwyn set no time frame so you were allowed to use an old photo.

you truly had a busy week ^^;
Maybe I should have trickled the voting as well

a=yes
b=yes

both together would bump the thread as entries come in and keep people aware of the comp.

the voting thread also needs to bump along to encourage people to vote.

If Stefan wants a break I'll do the job.

What's a quorum in these circumstances?

I'm happy continue to provide the necessary support.
If you think thumbnails would work then I'll provide them, that will also be a conformation for the ones that entered that their photo is processed and accepted.

So Doug you can start a new competition and we will try to keep it interesting along the way.
Two weeks to enter and one week to vote would be good enough I think and wouldn't put too much strain on the other comps, 3 weeks where simply too long to keep it interesting.

bang, bang, bang.