Ideas for a more automated photo challenge system

Hey everyone. As most of you know the staff can get a little behind with challenges. One solution would be to automate the system a little bit to make it easier for everyone involved. Unfortunately something like this doesn't exist, so if it did happen it would have to be created by hand for us (kind of like the exif data, but it would probably cost a lot more)

So here's some initial ideas I had on how it could work. Feel free to add your ideas!

1. allow admins/mods to start new challenges with specific guidelines, like rules and start & end dates
2. automatically allow and disallow submissions based on start and end dates
3. users submit their photos to specific challenges with settings to allow for one or multiple submissions
4. display submissions in thumbnails at the top of the challenge thread - allow for setting of how many submissions to display per thread - comments are placed below the submissions like a regular thread, but posting images in the comments is disabled
5. clicking on a thumbnail displays the full size image in a lightbox (user should be able to scroll through the rest of the submissions), exif data on mouse over if available - under the image is the username (links to profile) of the submitter, and in interface to display the number of votes and a voting mechanism
6. allow users to vote for their favorite photos with settings to allow for different situations, like multiple votes per user or not, weighted votes for admins/mods
7. choose winners at the close of the contest based on votes and post to a thread with settable options, like top 3 or top 5, thread title, etc
8. give users icons or points based on winning a contest - display challenge wins and link to the contest thread on a tab in their profile

Here are my thoughts:

Assignments should be limited to one per month. We did have weekly challenges before and I don't think it left us with enough time to explore the subject enough.

We wouldn't have to have a new vote accounting system. If members were allowed to give unlimited amount of "likes", we could just keep the "likes" count and give the ones that gets more the ribbons and points.

From the feedback I read, I think some people would like to have a place to discuss the different entries and express their opinions about them. If we went with likes, then this could then be allowed.

I'm sure others will have valid points to offer and we could greatly improve the Assignment mode AND free the Mods of the judging task.

Just a couple of thoughts.

How about letting users choose a few finalist photos through either likes or votes for the panel to review in depth and select the winning photos from.

Would it be possible to have a monthly assignment album that contributors could upload their photos to and post a smaller linked version of the photos within a thread. That would give everyone the option to browse through the album and also allow the usual aspect of the posts in the thread with comments and likes.

I feel that limiting amount of likes per user does nothing in the end since just because some one may like every submission, the BEST ones will lead no matter what by a good 10-15 likes. If anything, I'd say limit mods' choices to top 2-3 as your decisions bear more weight.

Marcel said:

Here are my thoughts:

Assignments should be limited to one per month. We did have weekly challenges before and I don't think it left us with enough time to explore the subject enough.

We wouldn't have to have a new vote accounting system. If members were allowed to give unlimited amount of "likes", we could just keep the "likes" count and give the ones that gets more the ribbons and points.

From the feedback I read, I think some people would like to have a place to discuss the different entries and express their opinions about them. If we went with likes, then this could then be allowed.

I'm sure others will have valid points to offer and we could greatly improve the Assignment mode AND free the Mods of the judging task.

Click to expand...

I'd like to throw my support behind all these suggestions.

...

As you know ime unhappy with the 5 like limit as i don't think it offers enough encouragement to beginners,I don't see the need to complicate it when like totals would express the feelings of a wider audience about a picture,not sure i see the benefit of comments as this could influence some ones opinion.
I understand this could change the definition of the winning image as it could end up with the image that is technically incorrect winning but it would be the one that had the most visual impact to the most people.

So my suggestion is go with the likes to choose the winners and if it didn't add to too much to the mods plate have one picture chosen by the mod who set the challenge up with a brief explanation as to why he chose that one.

Having been Admin and mod in the past i do see the need not to ask too much from them

Horoscope Fish said:

I'd like to throw my support behind all these suggestions.

...

Click to expand...

Me too.

And maybe a separate thread for discussion opened.

I never really understood the 5 like limit. Seems to me the more likes the better. It may help in your decision. I can imagine the work involved in going through all the pictures. How about reducing the amount of submissions per member from three to two? That'll shave back some of the work.

I guess I should weigh in since my post seems to have started this discussion. I like the idea of "assignments" over "contests" or "challenges" because it is more inviting to all levels of photographers. I do believe that submissions should be limited to between 1 & 3, and in the absence of a judge/moderator critique I believe it would be beneficial if along with or in place of the like or vote option there was the opportunity for open commenting and critiquing of each submission based on the criteria set forth at the beginning of the challenge (though that has been rather wide of late) and the standards set-up for the Critique forum. The problem I see with doing it that way is that it is virtually impossible to make a single coherent thread that would allow critiques to easily be linked to the corresponding photo without having to quote the original photo submission each time.

Now, it would seem that at some point contests here required an upload of the photo not to the thread but to a specific gallery. I'm guessing that became difficult to manage, but if it isn't, perhaps each month instead of opening a thread for submissions the thread instead points to a new gallery for the month and all submissions have to be made to that gallery. Within the gallery already is the ability to give the image a rating, and to make comments, so outside of perhaps making the EXIF data more readily available this might be an easy option? There would be no "winner", but the average ranking would allow anyone who cares to put an order to the images to do so. I'm guessing it's possible to limit the number of submissions per user. Participants should be encouraged to rank all images and comment as they feel appropriate, with submissions being closed out at the end of each month and comments closed (if possible) a week later.

Unless the gallery idea has already proven to be a PITA, of course.

Thanks Jake for your ideas. I think I did ask about a specific gallery for specific assignment, but at that time Jdeg said it wasn't easily done. The important thing is that I think we are all looking into things to improve the assignment idea and it might take some time and trials to get it more interesting for all. So let's take this one step at a time and I'm sure we can make this more attractive to all. Let's say it's a "work in progress" thing.

I'm on a couple of forums that run monthly challenges and both offer the members the chance to score each photo between 1 and 10. Why put the load on the mods? You have to vote or your submission is removed so that encourages voting. Also, on one of them you have to rate a certain percentage of pictures or yours is removed. That forum typically has 90-100 submissions per comp. Those comps are weekly turnaround and the guidance is strict regarding the picture must be taken within specified time and only certain photoshopping can be applied depending on the challenge.

On one of the forums certain members trip out the same old picture every couple of months in the hope that one day it will win. It doesn't as it's just as crap now as it was the first time Personally I would not allow that sort of thing and I don't think it's within the rules here either.

I certainly like the idea coming out of here about Assignments being the name rather than challenge or competition, it offers more of a "sense of belonging" rather than competitiveness.
Maybe from monthly assignments there could simply be a 'photo of the month' for each monthly theme, with achievements given to those who get POTM, and at every 5 or 10 achievements it gets turned into a bigger (super?) achievement so they don't get to many achievements on show. Hopefully it would take any one person a long time to claim 10 months worth of POTM.

And then at the end of the year we can have a poll for our favourite winning photo's from all the monthly assignments.

I also think that a seperate gallery of some kind would be good, maybe easily accessable from the menu bar at top next to "whats new?" sorted by year then month, and comments get opened after the month has passed? people like to talk