- I wish the challenges were judged in a manner that I thought more impartial. That's a rather tricky thing, I guess. As I understand it, both the weekly and monthly challenges are “voted” on in a manner that is likely to predominantly be done by those of us who are participating in the challenge. As a matter of practice, I rarely “Like” anything in the challenges; I want to win, so I'm not going to vote for my competitors; and it feels inappropriately self-serving to vote for my own entry. I wonder if there's any way we could attract the attention, to the challenge threads, of large numbers of people who are not participating (and perhaps not even regular members of the forum as a whole), to vote on the challenges, who would have no motive other than their honest, unbiased opinions of the merits of the images themselves.
I've always viewed the challenges as an opportunity to promote both growth and the appreciation for a good photo rather than to promote a "winner". Don't get me wrong, winning is nice, but I have never not clicked to like an image that impacted me as being "a notch above" just because I thought my photo should win... and that's what I define as "impartial". (impartial:
treating all rivals or disputants equally; fair and just.) As far as voting for your own photo, why? If you post it for consideration, I'd assume you liked it enough to do so already.
There's no prize, other than your name in a "TOP 5" post, so why would/should there be that level of cut-throat competition? The other entrants are not your competitors, they are your fellow entrants,
fellow Nikonites, and if a challenge spurred each and every one of them to push for better than before, or to take a photo they felt was worth sharing, everyone wins!
If it's just the pure competition, I can recommend a few sites where it's ALL OUT competition, where rivals will purposefully undermine and sabotage photos when they think the pic might be better than their own... and trust me, the angst is real. Funny, though, because the votes of those who are interested in honest evaluations and/or critiques are still the most important, even there.
BTW, sorry if this comes off in an irritated way. I've word-smithed, and RE-word-smithed several times to try to avoid that feel, and it's not my intention at all to direct anything at anyone in particular, but I did want to address the actual ideas presented.