Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello everyone.

The question has been bought up about how best to implement the voting system for the photography challenge.

As AceAceBaby mentions, only the first few favourites amount any number of votes, and often there are a few that get none in each competetion, usually.

To have a poll that allows multiple votes, each with an equal value would be problematic, I think. I'll quote myself from the other thread to stop me actually having to think...



With this in mind, Dimrill suggested Eurovision style voting, where we could all dress up in sequins award our top three(?) or five(?) entries points in order of preference (so, award your favourite five points, second favourite four points, third three points, etc...) Unless Grim... knows of a way to insert numerous polls into a single thread (GRIIIIMMMM...??!!!) it would mean me compiling people's votes from their posts in the thread (where I'd ask everyone to put their votes in bold, or red, or something, just so that I could easily see the information among any chatter), the only other option being to actually option three or five separate threads with polls, which I think would be far too messy on the boards...

So... I will list these options in a poll. Vote for your favourite option in the poll, please. The poll will run for four days and end on Sunday at midnight. If anyone has any further ideas on how to run an effective poll please say so and I will add that option to the poll. Because of this you may change your voted for option at any time during the duration of the poll.

OK, I think that was just about everything. i am sorry that the above post may seem a bit long, but I wanted to try and be as clear as possible.

Poll ends at 22:45 on Sunday.

As i'm fucking glroious and stuff of thnking about the eurovision voting stuff n shit, that one.

I voted for GLORIOUS DIMRILL's Eurovision-style suggestion (3 nomination variant), as there are always at least 3 pics that I quite like.

Hmmmm?

Methinks Dimrill has been sniffing of the Galloways syrup...

3, unless we start getting 50 entries.

I'll go with a Eurovision style with 3 votes, but like Dudley says the number should probably be tied to the number of entries.

I think one vote is perfectly adequate.

I like the 3 vote eurovision thing. I'm a bit less keen on the lack of anonymousness.

I was torn between two this week, and didn't decide until after the deadline had passed.

Perhaps we could PM our votes to Mimi. Our voting would still be mostly anonymous, and Mimi would find it easier to collate the votes from a PM than from a thread where it would be intermixed with Chatter and Banter.

The only problem with 1 vote is that with 14 entries last week, I think only about 6 or 7 got votes at all.

Yes, this would be quite fine by me and probably easier to collate in the long run if people did want anonymous voting.

What are other people's opinions on this?

I guess people could do either. If anyone particularly wanted their votes to stay anonymous they could PM them to me, otherwise they could just stick 'em in the thread because I know that some people like to discuss why they are voting for one entry, it's merits and why it grabs them, but some people just like to choose and be done. If nobody minds me alone seeing their votes for collating then I do not mind receiving any anonymous ones via PM which will, of course, be private.

I'd suggest both. All votes must be PMd to you, for your convenience. No point you trying to tally votes from lots of different places, you're doing enough work on this stuff already without making it any harder. Then people can post their votes into the thread for discussion as well, or not post them, as they wish.

As you say, I think it's nice to discuss why you voted the way you did; this way people could have the option.

I guess. I only worried that if it was insisted that people PM me then some people may not bother. I know it doesn't seem like a big thing sending a PM, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't one of those things that people just couldn't be bothered to click on. As ong as people posted things in bold, or red, or bold red to make it easy for me I would collate them as the competition went along and add up the final few from the last day before actually anouncing the winner.

Thinking about it, though, if everyone did PM me their votes it would be interesting to see if there was any difference in trend voting, and if the voting would be more, or perhaps less evenly spread... Hmm... Actually, maybe PMing me the votes is a good idea - it would make announcing the winner more exciting, that's for sure. What do people think of this?

Oh, and I meant to say, if I am to collate votes I ask if it would be okay to end voting at midday on Monday morning, just so that I do not have my sleepy head on, to avoid any potential mistake?

I vote for PMing votes.

In the Eurovision styleee?

Oh yes. Indeed.

Do we need to have funny accents and wear silly clothes while sending the PM?

I think one vote is fine though - there's bound to be a few to attract no votes but that doesn't mean that their photo was bad, just that people preferred the others. It's not as if there are prizes at stake - it should just be a bit of fun.

Not necessarily silly. Normal clothes will do, as long as they are covered in sequins.

Maybe something like this:

Hmm.. they're pretty hard to get in my size.

Yes. See. Just because my, I mean, someone's photo got no votes doesn't mean they suck and will die alone.

We need a Dimlie for "sulky strop". Actually, covers it.

I'd end up looking like the Tron guy.

I hadn't thought of that bit -- actually I think that would be aces. Also, yes, I think a midday closing would be good (and allow even work people to check the forum over lunch for the results).

Euro-vision-style voting by the end of the day, if you want it.

The mighty codehammer swings again! Can we please do it with a drag-and-drop rearrangable list, so people drag their top three to the top of the pile of entries, in order? And can we be dragging and dropping with thumbnails of the pics instead of just text? And can we keep the vote results secret and have the board post as 12:00 to announce the third place, at 12:05 to announce second place, at 12:10 to announce "the winner will be announced after this commercial break", and then at 12:15 to announce the winner? And it should all have rounded corners, drop shadows, and be built around AJAX for 100% Web2.0 buzzword wankery compliance.

And can I have a pony?

It does. I'm still a bit bemused that the actual photo's aren't stored by the forum, TBH.

All of that is a lump of piss, tbh (except for the pony, although my ma probably has a couple of Welsh Sec. D's for sale, I'll ask her if you want).

You're a champion, Grim...

'Twas naught but a bandaid, that. It'd be neater to have them over here, I agree. If you wanna resolve all this I don't think anyone would mind. Make my Joomla-phpBB user account bridge work first though, as that may be the best bit to put the photos in (Joomla seems to have tons of image gallery plugins, although perhaps there are loads because none of them are very good).

There's the makings of a decent phpBB plugin here. Wonder how many other community forums run photography contests. What's the plugin structure like? Are you hacking straight into it or is there a reasonable API?

No-one likes a smartass

That would be just great, Grim...

Thankyou

Right, I hesitate to suggest this, 'cos I know a lot of effort and thought has been put into the way this is run, but I'm getting a sense of overkill, slightly?

To explain, I occasionally take part in photo competitions on other forums. Even won on a couple of occasions.

The rules are simple:
The organiser picks a topic and specifies any conditions. People post their photos. The organiser picks a winner and maybe a runner up or two. Then the winner becomes the new organiser. Repeat once a month in a new thread, and that's it.

Perhaps it's just me but I find that a much more amenable system, especially as I'm essentially lazy and don't like jumping through extra hoops.

I think you're right to ask it. I personally am a huge nerd who has beenb know to shave yaks from time to time. But, whilst there is a lot of high falutin' conversation going on around what we are going to do, once we make the decision the process won't be hard. It'll be:

1) upload a pic to a place (currently eggwan)
<< wait for closing date of competition >>
2) go to a thread on the forum
3) pick your favourite three in order

So don't confuse this (admittedly convoluted) discussion with what we're going to do once it comes out.

I really like the idea of the voting being from the whole forum, and not just the winner of the last competition; for a start I think nynfortoo would just be the permanent judge and secondly I think with something this subjective I don't think it should be down to just one person to pick the winner. I also like the fact that the submissions are anonymous; I think knowing who had taken each shot would have coloured my voting.

So I hope the process won't be too complicated. I think there is a bit of an attitude, in the forum in general, that we procrastinate a little -- put perhaps a few too many things up to the vote which could be just as easily resolved by someone taking charge -- but that's because we're all just a little sensitive. That's no bad thing in my book, and it's heartwarming that everyone holds the community in such high regard.

I hack it straight in - there's no API really.
Most 'plug-ins' require you to make changes to the main forum code.

I think Kalmar meant that the person who wins chooses the next picture subject, not the next winner.

Mimi has won twice — pick on her!

I suppose I'm just used to the other way. The judge explains *why* they liked your photo, rather than simply "you won the outcome of the voting process". It's a bit more personal is all, and you get a different set of criteria every month, which keeps it fun (and actually makes it less likely for the same type of photo or person to repeatedly win).


I honestly have never understood that bit. I think people are grown up enough to vote based on aesthetic criteria rather than who they do/don't like. Especially as there is no prize. Really.



Yes indeed. It does seem like a fair bit of work for someone to implement though. But if it really will be as painless as you say then fair enough, I'll give it a try

I'd like more discussion. I'd like this, now, to become a rollicking great big thread where everyone talks about all the photos. Ideally I'd like it to be to busy we'd have to create a entire thread dedicated to each photo and have a nice discussion around the pluses and minuses of each photo. That wouldn't work outside of a subform though, with the previously noted drawbacks.

I'm a bit immature mind Seriously though, I think it's nice and clean to not know who owns each photo and to judge it on it's individual merits. Plus it adds to the fun when people announce which photo was theirs. And because that happens all at once, like today, you get a really stimulating thread, rapidly updated, like this one is now.

It may be a reasonable amount of work for Grim... and Mimi and (to a lesser extent) me (I try and help Mimi out adminning the gallery) -- but we don't mind. You are correct, though, to keep us focussed on it being as easy as possible for the forum members to submit and vote.

Grim..., some suggestions to try and prevent further work:

Can you make it so that people don't have to vote for a top 3? There are a few people that have said they'd just like to vote for one photo, and if you could just vote for one photo (or two) then that would appease them as well.

Is it possible to set the max number of votes to something that Mimi (or whoever) can configure when they setup the poll? So if we start getting a lot more entries, people might want to vote for the top 5 or whatever (and if we ahould get less entries, then 3 might be too many).

I've no idea how hard this stuff would be to do, but in my experience it would be easier to put it in at the start rather than try to cram it in after the fact.
Good work anyway.

I just like how the photo contest has grown into something that appears to be now something of a forum institution.

No, I do mean that the "judging" role passes on to the new winner as well. It does work well in practice and it's fun when you get the chance to pick the subject and winner for that month, before handing the torch on.

There are a couple of reasons why I do not think this is a good idea. Firstly, maybe the winner does not want to have to put forward the time and effort (and it does take both) to organise it, so perhaps won't bother to take part. If you are 'essentially lazy' then this would make no sense. Secondly, I think people enjoy voting, it gives them reason to look at each and every photo properly and as people asked for an anonymous vote in the interest of fairness it would seem strange to retract back to just one person's vote having any worth. I think people enjoy the voting as part of the process. I do.

One third thing - It might as people have already mentioned end up as only a few people becoming judges and setting the topic each time, and I think this would detract from the community spirit f the photography contest.

Sorry if everything that I said just then had already been mentioned - the shopping was being delivered and as the woman who not only tried not to give me £18 worth of the goods I paid for just stayed in the van and made me carry every single item myself, it took a while. Anyway, that is for another thread, but I am just saying, sorry if i just repeated anyone.

So do I! And it works really well on the site, too. It's great to get this content creation going.

I don't think this is the case. It's almost no effort to think of a subject, state it, and then pick a photo later. If you don't want to or don't have time then you can always say so and a runner up could take the job instead.

I guess it is taking a lot of time and effort to administrate the way it is now, which is one reason I've suggested an alternative. Although I can see the new system Richard describes would help that anyway.


Definitely not, I've never been put off entering at the prospect of winning and then having to pick the next subject. It's not a chore, and you've only got a small chance of winning anyway.

I have been a bit put off the one on here, because it means signing up to new things and remembering to go back and look at the photos and think about voting and stuff. It's a lot easier if it's all in a thread, interspersed with nattering about the photos.



Yes, it is good to have participation and feedback like that. In the way I'm describing, that happens in between people posting pictures in the thread - if you particularly like a picture you can say so and why. Again, this to me is a bit more engaging than anonymously clicking a button and adding to a counter.

Anyway, tis just a suggestion

[edit]

You mean like a photo clique of some sort? Well, it's just a bit of fun after all and I'd like to think better of people than that.
If anything I think it has better community spirit to give everyone a chance at running it.

No, not like a photo clique (sorry, but that's not very helpful ) - but if two or three people consistently turn out the best photos then they are always deciding the current theme, it's not people colluding to keep it among themselves that I was suggesting at all.

You do know that I do not decide the theme each fortnight, don't you? I have never decided the theme, in fact, all I do is gather the URLs after they have been submitted and compile them into a post.

I am most confused because you said that you thought it would be nice to give everyone who enters a chance to 'have a go at running it', although you said that you felt too lazy to even cast a vote. I am not running it for any personal benefit, but I've tried to get a system together that works smoothly, is fair, and includes everyone. I have tried to ge people involved and ask people's opinion in a democratic way in every aspect of the contest. If people think that I am somehow taking something away from everyone by running it then please do say. I have done it each fortnight because I have taken the time to organise the galleries, the contacting of a random person to pick a theme, the compiling of the entries and the poll, and sending the sign-in data to everyone, but if people would rather that it was not I that did so then please do say because it isn't something that had occurred to me before now and I didn't actually consider that this might have put anyone out.

I think he was just having a little joke about the clique thing, Meems...

I do agree with you though that if the winenr gets to choose, it's entirely possible that the mantle could be passed between a group of people not through any collusion but through them being the better photographers. I quite enjoyed picking a topic, as I'm sure did everyone before and after me, so it's nice to get chance to do it even if you're not any good.

I know, sorry, it's just getting a bit tired now



I thought that was perhaps why it was best to have it chose randomly. Actually, that was the system before I started to help organise it, but I think it works well, and the choices have been enjoyable and varied so far.

I'd hate to be the person adding up those votes manually.

Are you suggesting some sort of thread scraping automated vote counting machine, Craster?

Yeah, what kind of poor sucker would spend a week doing that?