December Photo Challenge - Comments

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

Yes congrats I voted for both the winners WELL DONE

[firstlight (Tony)]

For my 2 cents...

I have been interested in the Monthly Challenge since Anne-Louise pointed it out to me several years ago. In that time I have not had much success in the comp, although Anne-Louise has had several wins... Prejudiced as I am, I believe they were all deserved wins.

Just a couple of points about some comments posted:

1. If competitors were ruled out of the vote, the comp would be decided by 10 or so people, not a fair or realistic outcome I would think.

2. Rules state that competitors should not vote for themselves, so there should be no conflict of interest anyway.

3. I have no problem how the comp is conducted, but as has been stated before, there were only 2 or 3 entries in the alternative format, again not a fair or realistic outcome.

4. My final observation is that even if you vote for your mate/s, you often have 3 or 4 votes... surely one of those other votes are for a deserving entry?

I like interpreting the theme and taking images, but I can't help admiring and voting for the other talented people who enter the comp, be they friend or stranger if their entry enrich the competition.

[firstlight (Tony)]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that I had a tough time to narrow the field to only 4 votes. Most of them were crackers and I had expected Baz to take the honors with his clever though somewhat risky image .
Other special mentions in my opinion were RB's car that rocked, Tricks entry, and Humayun's as well.

[RB (Andrew)]

I like interpreting the theme and taking images,
but I can't help admiring and voting for the other talented people who enter the comp, be they friend or stranger if their entry enrich the competition.

Well said Tony.

And if we do assume that people vote only for their mates we can surmise from these results that H and I have the same number of friends and poor old Al Sheeny has none.

Now of course that's not true, Al is a good friend of mine as he very well knows and so are others that entered, but like Tony, I vote each month for the images that appeal to me, it's a friendly challenge, what benefit is it to me if I vote for my friends only, as if I'd get a kick seeing them in the Hall of Fame or that I can brag that I'm friends with a 'real photographer' that has won x amount of times in the monthly challenge ?

Yeah right.

There's only a hand full of entries each month anyway and basically it's the usual crowd that enters.

It's just for fun and deep down we know each others capabilities so really it's just a simple Challenge to see what clever photos we all can come up with for this month's theme, big deal.

Just enjoy.

[Octane (Humayun)]

No-one mentioned anything about hanging out with a "real photographer" or anything like that, at all.

I thought the suggestions that I made were quite valid with regards to fun and excitement. I figure that's how it works elsewhere.

The system I proposed won't/doesn't work here, that's quite OK. They won't be mentioned again. Understood.

I have some really nifty ideas for challenges that I'd love to share (accessible to all), but, ah well.

Congratulations Tony and Anne-Louise. And, well done, Baz -- close runner-up.

H

[Photo Challenge]

Originally Posted by Octane

I thought the suggestions that I made were quite valid with regards to fun and excitement. I figure that's how it works elsewhere.

The system I proposed won't/doesn't work here, that's quite OK. They won't be mentioned again. Understood.

I have some really nifty ideas for challenges that I'd love to share (accessible to all), but, ah well.

H

The suggestions you made were not unreasonable and as I mentioned had already been discussed by the admin team a long time ago.

What was 'puzzling' was your timing.
Bringing up the matter soon after the poll opened when votes were starting to come in, when some entries had already received some votes and some notables had not.
I don't know what prompted the questioning of the voting process at that particular point, when there was so many other times this matter could have been brought up during the month.

Originally Posted by Octane

Can the person in charge of the challenges please explain why these aren't anonymous anymore?

It really takes it out of the voting. People will always have favourites.

I, personally, feel that these would have more merit if all the entries were anonymous like they used to be.

H

It really wasn't the time to question the validity of the voting process then.
It would have been more appropriate to either wait till the voting finished or discussed the matter privately so as not to detract from the voting process itself.

As for your ideas for themes for the Challenge, you'll get to choose a topic when you win just like everyone else does.

This is all I would like to say on this matter, I don't wish to continue this discussion any further here.
If we see that Anonymous voting would be a benefit, rest assured we will give the matter our fullest consideration again.