*** Monthly Photo Contest Announcement - Please Read ***

[Junior]

OK, gang, it's time for me to fire up my writing stick and try to keep this thing exactly what it was intended to be - a friendly excuse for friends to share their photos with each other. There have been so many hard feelings lately, and it's time to bring it back. I've gotten a number of PM's on the subject, and have had a number of conversations about it.

Problem #1: Visibility. Folks have commented that they never saw the voting thread in time to vote.

Problem #2: Multiple voting threads. Having a First Round thread and a Final Voting thread has always been something I tried to avoid. It's not that the process is confusing, but it ties into #1 - "OH! I didn't realize it was a different thread."

Problem #3: Campaigning in general. This has been the biggest PM generator by far. People don't like it, and I don't either. More hard feelings have stemmed from this one than anything else, and I want to do something to curtail it, short of making another rule with no way to enforce it.

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So here's what I'm planning to do, to address these problems:

1) We will make a banner announcement on the Portal page when the voting thread is ready - and it will be there when anyone logs on - it'll be the first thing you see. There will be no need to make a thread "in case anyone missed it". It will be similar to what we're used to seeing for the LXOM nominations and LXOM voting threads. There will only be one announcement, and it will be to announce that the voting thread is up.

2) There will be only one voting thread, and it will be open longer. No runoffs (except in a tie, as in the past). The top vote-getter will be the winner.

3) The poll will now be "Multiple Choice" - which means that you can vote for as many of the photos as you like. You can't vote for any photo more than once, but you can vote for multiple photos. This one took some consideration and deliberation, but I like it. You no longer have to pick only one - if you have two that really stand out, you can vote for both of them. If you like five particularly well, vote for all five. The top vote getter will still be the top vote getter, but it takes some of the pressure off of making the tough choice.

The problem with this, in theory, is the potential for a multi-tie - if every voter likes the same few photos, and each of them gets a vote, the possibility exists for an even tie at the top, with a tapering off from there. In practice, however, I don't see that happening. I think it's highly unlikely that even the winner will have gotten a vote from everyone who voted. There will be dispersement of votes, and I believe a tie is no more likely than it has been in the past (and we did have a three-thread tie, back in June).

One other thing that has been talked about, and I just noticed Fondy has his up already - if you want to make a signature to announce the contest, please feel free to do so - just follow the forum-wide guidelines for sigs.

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I think that these will help streamline the process and take some of the clutter out of it, while keeping the focus on what's important, and also keep me from having to run around chasing "violators" which would suck.

There will be no rule against campaigning. But if you do it, you're going to look like a butthead. In fact, I think I'll find a good butthead picture and post it in any "Get out the vote" threads I see.

I want to keep this light, folks - it doesn't need to be something that makes people grumpy.

Here's to the next round.


If you'd like to comment, please do so on this thread: Monthly Photo Contest?



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