The polls are closely monitored to be sure that everyone who votes is a dgrin member who is legit. If you recall, the rules state:

Challenge Round Judging
Voting is open to any registered member of Dgrin. Please note that members who register at the beginning of a voting round may not have their vote counted in the final poll.

Since there is a question of validity of several voters in this round, the winners will not be announced until the voters are sorted out manually.


To those who do not know this already, please check the Etiquette on Public Voting.

EDIT: SEE POST #17 OF THIS THREAD FOR UPDATED RULE WORDING.

Hmm... well, I know I breach the etiquette rules a little when I vote for my own photo, which doesn't happen all the time, or even often, just when I've put time and thought and effort into it and actually think that it's genuinely in the top 10. For that matter, I don't always vote for 10 photos, only the ones I think are particularly outstanding... or occasionally more than 10 when there really are that many outstanding photos (and a large enough field to justify it). Thanks for linking to the rules, it's good from time to time to re-visit why we're here and the true spirit of this competition.

Thank you JAG for going through all the votes by hand and getting to the bottom of the questionable votes. It means a lot to me to be part of the competitions, and to be able to vote on the photos that I like. Plus, returning to the old method places a heavy burden on the judges.

If you have to resort to registering your friends or new aliases to vote just for your photo, that means it's not good enough to win on its own, and besides skewing the results, dilutes the pool of voters who care about photography and learning about the process. If you don't win (and I never have) you can still improve. I know I've improved a lot since I started entering competitions. Even when I can't compete I do like coming in and voting about what I like and don't like - it keeps me thinking about photography and technique.

There really is not rule against voting for yourself. But as the etiquettes state, if you are voting for yourself or someone elses entry because you know them and are not basing you vote on the quality and theme at hand, then you have missed the point of the challenges! (totally paraphrased by me).

Since we have gotten in influx of new people entering, I just want this to be a reminder:

NEVER SOLICIT VOTES. This is not a popularity contest!

I must admit I hadn't seen this yet when I cast my vote in the last two challenges, nor did I think anything of it. I just assumed everyone votes for their own and then non-participants cast the rest of the votes. Sorry!

I've never voted for my own. I've been tempted, but didn't feel it was right. It really stinks when I've lost by one vote and I voted for the person that beat me out!

I have to admit that one of the things that I like about dgrin is the way people try to make sure the voting process is fair. I read what Greensquared shared about public votes months ago and took these two sentences to heart: "First of all, voting for yourself is a statement that you are in it to win more than to learn and appreciate the photography of others. Secondly, it is a tradition of fair sportsmanship to cast your vote toward an entrant other than yourself."

As JAG said, there isn't a rule about not voting for oneself but I like to focus on the merits of the other entries rather than comparing them to my own. It is also not a rule that you have to vote for 10 images. One always has the option to select fewer images. However, voting for fewer images gives your votes more weight than if you were voting for 10 - assuming that most people are voting for 10. (Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong about this, but I think that's the way it works mathematically.) So I generally try to vote for 10 entries unless there are relatively few entries.

Just sharing my way of looking at things. I know there are other perspectives on this and I respect them.

I have actually told friends no, you can not go vote for my picture in this. I have encouraged people to come and participate, but they seem too intimidated.
As for voting for yourself... I can't, the guilt of it is too much for me. There have been a couple of time that I wanted to, simply because I truly felt mine worthy of a vote... that if it had not been mine, I would have voted for it.
As for how many pictures I vote for, that depends one challenge to the next. I go through and pick the ones that really stand out to me. Sometimes that is 10, sometimes it is 7 or 8. In a recent challenge where there were about 11 entries, it was only about 4 or 5.

I have voted for my own and I see some others have too. If you think yours is worthy then I see no problem with it, if you do it just to win, well thats another issue. If in this particular contest if the rule is don't, I won't do it any longer. I had never seen that one until this thread.

As far as your friends voting for you. If you get them to come to the site and they follow the contest, which has some really great photos, and they want to vote for your stuff I think that is more than acceptable as long as they are doing it on merit and not because there was some pushing them that way. FWIW none of my friends are aware of my participation here and don't vote in the contest.

When I vote I have never voted for more than 10 but I choose the ones that stand out to me, I've learned I have a different vision than the masses here and don't always pick the winners, most of the time I think I vote for 6-8 images.

It appears several, and I guess many, didn't know about the rule of self voting. Maybe a link to etiquite for the challanges would be good too and just under the rules?

WOW........yes, you all ain't gona like this!

Sure if your running for office vote for yourself. When your submitting an image here there ain't no money, or trips to Paris with a supper model, so why? (It is a rhetorical question, please don't answer.)

I wouldn't even think about voting for myself! I would never ask friends to vote for my image!

This is supposed to be a fun place where we openly share and honestly discuss a variety of photographic topics. This isn't American Idol of facebook where the goal is to have 9 trillion friends.

Yes I know the world will keep turning, but if people can't maintain some standards when nothing is at stake, what happens when it really is important?

I guess it's a sign of the times.

Going for the whiskey cabinet.................

Sam

Very well said Sapphire and Sam! I don't have any friends....

Haaa Seascape$ I have no firends and I'm obviously a bad person for my votes Some harsh judgements takes some of the firiendly feeling out of the challanges. Maybe a spectator position would be best for us self voting people that have been bad.

I don't think voting for yourself was the point of the original post. Like has been said, it isn't against the rules.
What is frowned upon is asking for votes, asking people to sign up to vote for yours, asking and/or advertising for votes in other areas of dgrin or something along those lines... I have a feeling that is what JAG was getting at.

edit... having more than one account to vote for yourself, now that would be a huge problem.

Originally Posted by dnie I don't think voting for yourself was the point of the original post. Like has been said, it isn't against the rules. What is frowned upon is asking for votes, asking people to sign up to vote for yours, asking and/or advertising for votes in other areas of dgrin or something along those lines... I have a feeling that is what JAG was getting at. edit... having more than one account to vote for yourself, now that would be a huge problem.

Yes you have it right!

As for voting for yourself, it is fine as long as it is fair. If it comes down to you voting yourself in and another image that is better than yours, you should always first think of the better image. Only because that will make these challenges fair.

Let me tell you all I had entered every challenge since DSS 1 till the last challenge before I became a Moderator (Something like 50+ challenges?). I would only vote for myself if I really felt my image was stronger than the rest of the images after I had already chosen 9.

I can tell you, there was one time I had lost the mega round because I didn't vote for myself. It was a horrible thought. Both images were awesome! They both were strong images technically and his image was not any better than mine, they were equal, it came down to which was your favorite.

However, because I didn't vote for myself, it ended in a tie and had a fast 24 hour sudden death round. Several had said that it was a eenie meenie minie mo type of vote. I was glad that ghinson won! But then I also realised that I wouldn't get that awesome grand prize that I had strived so long to attain (as it would have helped me financally) by learning to better my photography and participate in the challenges. But I was and am ok with that. In the spirit of the challenges, it was an awesome round and fun!

So the issue here of to vote or not vote for yourself will have to be one each person makes. The real issue that I posted about is those who are trolling for votes or have other nicks or family/friends who are not participants on dgrin but are members voting just for the one image. That is what will change.

I will soon be posting the new wording in the rules.

Thanks Joyce for explaining it, it had a feel as the thread went on it was going another way. I will no longer vote for my own if the group feels it's not right.

I really appreciate the challanges and how they push me to do things outside of my comfort level. Then the comments on the merits of a photo good and bad are more valuable to me than winning or loosing the contest. Big thanks to all those who comment.

Personally, what I find somewhat sad is that when you finish a voting round and you see how few people overall voted. Dgrin is a great site, there are thousands of users.... why do so few participate in the challenges?

I wonder if the Moderator couldn't post a link at the beginning of every challenge to all the boards, and then one more when voting commences....

Hearing the opinions of a wider audience would be even better than the relatively small group of the 'regulars'.....(all of whom I admire greatly, don't take this the wrong way)...

As to voting for your own....well, so often I find my interpretation of a topic is way outside the box to other viewers, but that the photo in question does truly fulfill the requirements well...and sometimes, I submit a photo because it's Monday night, and that's what I do Monday nights.

A link already exists http://www.dgrin.com/index.php
Look at the side bar announcements. Posting on every single board would not increase much. Other boards have their own challenges too, but I do not think they have any prizes other than bragging rites.

The rules have been reworded as follows:

Challenge Round Judging
Voting is open to any ACTIVE* registered member of Dgrin. Please note that members who register at the beginning of a voting round will not have their vote counted in the final poll. The voting will last for 72 hours. In the event of a tie, there will be a sudden-death vote off! A new 24-hour poll will be opened immediately to select the one winner from the tied entries. Please read the Etiquette on Public Voting.

*ACTIVE: member must be participating in a dgrin forum on a regular basis. Final decisions are at the discretion of the Moderators to maintain the integrity of the voting.

I will be posting a warning on our next challenge for those who do not read the boards except for the challenge thread.

How about voter photo ID required?

Sam

I have a question about the "ACTIVE" requirement. What exactly defines participating in a forum? I mostly lurk. I post occasionally. I have only entered two DSS challenges and two or three minis. I follow several of the forums on a regular basis, especially the DSS challenges, but again, I don't post much. I enjoy seeing and learning from others' interpretations of the challenge theme even if I am not entering. Does this mean I can't vote or that my vote won't count if I do? Really not feeling the love...

In another group I was told not to vote for my own photo, so I didn't do it here either. None of my actual real life friends is really into photography so none of them are members. I would hope that I might have made some friends among the regulars here but I would not have considered trolling for votes.

Also I agree with endurodog that my view of what constitutes excellence is quite often at complete odds with what everyone else seems to think. I actually went and read the rules - I see that I misinterpreted the rule about voting for myself. There have been a couple of Challenges where I thought that most of the entries were off the mark but I guess I'm just an outlier as everyone else seemed to think that the winner's photo was terrific.

While the aim seems to be improving one's photography, I hesitate to make critical comments.

Is it OK to criticize ones own work in the Challenges?