Weekly competition #519 Wheels

Traffic may be up John, but are there any comparisons for the number of posts or the numbers of people posting?

My perception is that activity, in terms of posts or threads, is slower.

That's a different issue Barrie, and there are no readily accessible figures that I'm aware of. Hopefully people only post when they have got something worth saying, so I guess that depends on what is going on in the wider Pentax world. In that context, we saw quite a bit of posting about the KP and no doubt something else will cause another flurry of activity quite soon. Hopefully more lenses!

I would think a major issue is that it requires a bit of confidence submitting a competition entry if one hasn't done so before, and then fear the risk of having to judge a set of others' efforts without feeling qualified to do so.

Another issue maybe that at one time it was usual to add a post about each competition in the main forum so more users would become aware of them and drum up supported if needed. That practice is not often done now by most competition setters (last week excepted, i.e. this thread.)

I've just trawled back through the competitions to find the first one I judged - September 2008 - as a brand new member of PUF. There are 39 entries still in that gallery but in my judge's commentary I refer to more than 40. This may be because some time back when a number of members left PUF they emptied their portfolios as they went.
It was a joy to see the top quality of all the entries and I think I gave a large number of HCs. But for a first time judge it was a nightmare. Having done detailed comments on each submission I then lost the lot when I tried to copy them into the competitions section as I posted the winner - Darkmunk. I had to write them all again and it took me ages. Since then I've developed a better system where I do a write up as the entries start coming in and back it up on my hard drive and on a memory stick. GlynM, Womble and John Riley were among those taking part in that competition.
David

I loved your winning bridge picture David. It was fantastic. Your skills were much better than mine. You must have got your first win in quite quickly. My first win was a couple of competitions later and I had been a member of this forum since late 2005, with a *ist DS, and think the first competition I entered was weekly #6 in July 2007. Hopefully I have got much better at this photography lark since then.


Glyn

Having a reminiscent look at those early competitions my entries were really dreadful and I am amazed how polite the reviewers were with their comments .

Glyn

Like most of us your photography has progressed since the early days Glyn but I don't think they were dreadful even then.
I think I joined PUF in July 2008 and entered and won my first competition in the September.
David

I wonder if part of the problem of late has been the weeks/months where the 'judge' hasn't bothered to come back and do the necessary, or even if a winner is selected has not bothered with anything further. Personally I may put these entrants on a mental blacklist and not enter a comp they set should they win again as it seems they can't be bothered to do what they basically agreed to do by entering.

I've never really looked at the competition side of things unfortunately. This is something that I will try to sort out for myself.

I generally use the forums for the discussion and marketplace and have bookmarked the forum index rather than the website homepage. This may be why I wasn't as exposed to the photo competition as I needed to be.

The Telegraph and Argus have recently started a new initative on Facebook with their camera club. They select good images and publish them in their print newspapers daily. They also run a competition where the best entrants receive a small prize as well as being published on a larger feature. We obviously cannot replicate that here but it may be worth a look. People like fame and exposure.

The comps are not something that I usually go in for either, for some of the reasons already spoken of, nervous of having to set and judge a comp if you win being a big one.
I have entered this week's one, maybe it's because it has been so prevalent in the forum this week. So all the talk may have been a good thing.
IS the fact that there is no talk or chatter about/ between entries, entrants a good or bad thing.
Is there a way to generate more conversation between entrants?

As David did with this competition it was normal for the judge to start a separate thread so that comments could be posted on it. But, by tradition, once the first entry was in the judge did not visit the comments thread to avoid being swayed.

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As far as I can work out, yesterday there were 18 posts in 8 already running threads. With no new threads generated, that out of a membership of 207,811, suggests one hell of a lot of lurkers.