***Rules Wording change***
JAG
Super Moderators Posts: 9,088 moderator
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.:thumb
EDIT: SEE POST #17 OF THIS THREAD FOR UPDATED RULE WORDING.
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.:thumb
EDIT: SEE POST #17 OF THIS THREAD FOR UPDATED RULE WORDING.
0
Comments
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.
Jake
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!
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine
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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.
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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.
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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?
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. :cry
Going for the whiskey cabinet.................
Sam
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine
http://sandizphotos-seascapes.smugmug.com/
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Sam
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?
You have posted regularly enough. Since you do participate occasionaly in the challenges, I know who you are thus you are concidered an active member.
Everyone, please realize these changes are not big, its just clarifying a rule that was already there so that people will stop and think twice about joining and voting just for their friend. We are not looking to complicate, rather just to keep things fair.
its ok to have constructive criticism on any image including your own. This is how people learn too, not only for their own image, but to give constuctive critiques for others. Helps us to get out of our own comfort zone and stretch our ability to learn why we like or dislike something.
I have competed on here on and off for a few years, I used to have a old name and site. One thing I personally feel and know some of my fellow photographers feel, is that the Dgrin contests have turned into a popularity contest. It seems that the votes and comments stay within a particular circle of people. Instead of voting on the quality of the photo and the criteria of each new contest, it seems people just vote for their online friends. When you look at the comments, a few people comment on every photo with no bias. But then a majority only comment on the same photographer's photos each round. Maybe it should be a requirement to prove that you're looking at each photo and having to comment on each one before you vote, to show that you're actually looking closely at each photo before placing your vote. Maybe just a title is put up and not the username so that people don't know which photographer's it is. If this is supposed to be a contest that we can win prizes in, then maybe there shouldn't even be an option to post various photos and get people's opinion on which to enter into the contest. Unfortunately, it's not a trip or anything but there's a lifetime of SmugMug Pro on the line that's worth a lot.
Again, just my opinion.
The problem with saying what we think about photos that are entered in a Challenge are two-fold
a) In the mini-challenges it is really hard for me to figure out how to post a comment
b) After one has posted a photo in a challenge there is no option to improve it if someone makes a comment. If this is supposed to be about improving our skills (or maybe it is not - I don't know), then if we have a question about how we can improve there is almost no other option than asking people's opinion.
Here is why....
IMNSHO every photographer is an individual with specific strengths and weaknesses. Each one also develops a specific personal style (meaning we often know who has taken a photo before we see the credit). These challenges can help individuals grow by pushing them (us) of of their (our) comfort zone and, at the same time, that stepping out can be a powerful help in strengthening their individual style. So while we may not like someone's choice of subject (style), we should not use that as the basis for judging the quality of their photograph but instead provide a critique based on their intent combined with the "rules" of photography. To provide such critiques post-contest would remove the all-too-normal nervous incentive to try to pander to the masses via pre-vote threads.
PJ.
"Where beauty moves and wit delights and signs of kindness bind me; there, oh there, whe'er I go I leave my heart behind me." (Thomas Ford, 1607)
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I find that there often isn't much constructive criticism posted to photos to the gallery. I haven't entered very much, but when I have, I don't recall anyone ever posting much criticism of my photos in the gallery. occasionally an attaboy, but nothing very constructive, nothing to tell me why the voting went the way it did. The only time I can actually recall a critical comment was in the mega, and when I tried to have a dialogue about it, to explain why I did what I did, i think the commenter felt attacked, and that shut that down, even though I was just looking for a more extended dialogue and wasn't didn't mean to be contrary. For that reason, I think posting in the pre-submittal threads is useful, especially when someone is trying something new. For a lot of us, the challenges are about the process, not the final vote, although the free hosting does help out a starving student
I don't really track the comments, but my impression is that people do feel more comfortable posting comments to the 'people they know' or the people they are more attached too. no clue if that translates into the voting.
I am reluctant to post strong critiques in the gallery for a couple of reasons. The first is that after the challenge closes, there is not much to be done about it. The second is that a strong critique may influence the voting. When I have time to critique, I will do it more in the forum than in the gallery. That said, I welcome critque anytime I can get it as it is the best way to learn.
I am more likely to strongly critique someone's photo if I know that they will react well to it. I do not want to scare off new posters. So until I get to know someone, I will mildly critique.
My feelings for a poster has no influence on voting. I base my votes primarily on the quality and appeal of the photo and secondarily on fit to theme. I prefer to see people come up with unique ideas than limit to a narrow interpretation of the theme. Appeal is personal taste. Some subject matter is not very appealing to me.
I agree. My criteria for voting is strictly on the image and how it fits with theme not by the user name that goes with it.
The photos with the most comments often times don't even make the top 5... so I don't know how commenting during the challenge changes anything. Commenting afterwards IMO is useless... I have yet to see one comment posted after the fact. Once a challenge is completed it's forgotten and it's off to the next.
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