Any interest in an SDMB photography competition?

Cafe Society
19

If we can use any photograph we have already taken, I’d say two weeks is plenty.

20

Agreed. I got over 20 years of pictures I need to look through, so this would be a good excuse for sharing and weeding out. Some were taken with some decent SLR camera I had.

21

I would be interested, but I’m more inclined to participate if we restricted it to photos taken recently or during the time of the competition. Perhaps alternate current and portfolio rules every month?

I’ve got 200,000 images that I just uploaded to online storage, but I would be more interested in a contest that encouraged me to get out and take new photos rather than comb through my archives.

22

What’s a good photo hosting site?

23

I’ve found Google Photos easy to use and link to here on SMDB.

24

Hi everyone. It’s great to see the interest in this. I’ve been a bit busier than than expected in the last couple of days so I haven’t pulled together all the rules yet, but I’m working on it. Here’s where I think I am:

  • We’ll definitely allow “archive shots”, since that seems to be the majority preference by miles.
  • We’ll definitely have themes. I’m reserving the right to pick the first one, and after that the winner will get to choose the next one.
  • I’d rather keep it monthly for now, partly because I think there’s going to be a certain amount of management overhead on my part and partly to allow those of us who do want to try and take fresh images for each theme time to get out there and do so.
  • The mods have asked me to include a handful of points in the rules (around privacy and the like) which I will of course do.

The biggest thing to be settled is how the voting will work. In my head, I had an idea that we’d each vote for our first, second and third favourites, with 3, 2 and 1 points awarded accordingly. I don’t know if the polling system on here can cope with that. I’d welcome comments in this thread about how scoring might work, both in terms of the points awarded and how it could be implemented (Discourse polling, SurveyMonkey etc).

The other thing we could do with is a guide to hosting and linking to photos, since we can’t actually host them here.

25

I’m so in! Especially if we can use portfolio pics.

26

I’m in!

27

Me too

28

Hi everyone, just to give a bit of an update, I’ve drafted up a set of rules for this. @engineer_comp_geek and @puzzlegal offered some advice, and asked to see the proposed OP before I posted it - I’m just waiting for their feedback.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about the mechanics of the voting. I’d like to make it so that we can each award 3, 2 and 1 points. I don’t think the polling system here can handle that, but it was be very easy to set up in Google Forms (which would also make the tallying up easy). Any objections to using Google Forms for voting? No Google account is required. The downsides are that there would be an element of trust, since there’d be no way to prevent people voting more than once.

29

Just asking: Would it be so difficult to simply vote in a thread dedicated to each month’s contest? I can’t imagine that there would be so many votes that it would be too overwhelming to tally.

It would also be more transparent (unless there is a reason we want votes to be anonymous?).

Another thought: I’m assuming that anyone can vote, not just contest entrants?

Here’s how another site runs their monthly photo contest.

mmm

30

Could you not run 3 separate polls each for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places in the same thread to keep people honest?

31

Wouldn’t a single poll easily show which photos are first, second, and third?

32

Agree with @Galactus. Keep it simple. One poll, maybe allow three votes to keep it interesting. Set a date for poll to close. Awarding first, second, and third place would be as easy as (pumpkin) pie.

Ties would result in a run-off poll.

mmm

33

Great initiative - let’s do it!

34

Hi everyone.

We’re pretty much good to go. The mods are happy with the proposed rules (thanks @engineer_comp_geek and @puzzlegal for the useful feedback).

I’m keen to allow allow everyone to award three, two, one points to their first, second and third favourites. The reason is that this will spread the points around a bit and prevent runaway winners, which makes it more fun for everyone. It plays into my main goal for this, which is that it should be inclusive for everyone.

To that end, we’ll keep the voting on-board, with three separate polls each month - one for your first choice, one for your second choice etc.

I’ll try and get the inaugural thread going at some point today. As I said upthread, I’ll pick the first theme to get us going, and after that the winner will pick the next one. We’ll be going monthly so the first one will officially start on 1st December - but no harm in launching early to iron out any kinks and deal with any questions.

Thanks for the patience and continued interest!

35

Sounds great, looking forward to participating.

Thanks for suggesting - and implementing - this project.

mmm

36

Yep, looking forwards to it!

j

37

Can’t wait to see what the bots enter…

38

Hi everyone. We’re go!

Here a rolling discussion thread. The idea is that we’ll have:

  • A new thread every month for each competition. You can find the first one here.

  • A single rolling discussion thread where we talk about the competition, themes and entries. The first post in that thread details the format and rules - please read that before posting your entry! :grinning:

One thing to note - after playing with the Discourse polling options a bit, I’ve decided it will be simpler to abandon the 3 points, 2 points, 1 point format. So now, we all get three votes to allocate, and that’s it. This makes the polling and tallying much easier.

Thanks for all the engagement, thoughts and encouragement. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes. I’d say that from this point on, we should use the rolling discussion thread to talk about the competition, rather than this one, which has served its purpose. See you there!