Fight Club - Round 122: Results are in!

We've had lulls before. The lack of votes this week is kind of unusual, but also not unprecedented. I think part of the problem is the mixup we had with a couple of the submissions - people may have delayed voting while that was being worked out.

I haven't had time to play this week, and in fact I haven't even really had my camera out since I took the shots for this round. I'm getting a bit antsy (I go in to photography withdrawals if I don't get out with my camera pretty often) but I haven't had the time or opportunity to do anything about it. :(

Fight Club looks pretty different than when it first started. Originally it was a weekly event that always took place at the same time on Sundays, and the topics were posted in a thread and everyone had an hour to post their shots in that thread. That's how it was working when I joined TPF, and it sounded like a lot of fun, but the time was really bad for me and I never got to play. When it was changed so that the one hour time limit "floated" according to when you started, I was able to start playing. Even then, the game was limited to the weekend - the topics became available by email on Thursday night and you had to have them turned in by Sunday night, and then voting would last until Thursday. That was proving to be a lot of work for Joe though, so we changed it to the week-long cycle we're using now.

I think each change along the way affected who participated. Folks that used to play when it all happened in one thread may not like having to use non-TPF tools (i.e. email or a separate web site) to participate. They may have preferred the "instant gratification" of seeing all the other results coming in at the same time instead of having to wait until Thursday. Personally. when we went from a weekend format to a week-long format, I tended to put it off because the deadline was more flexible and I just figured I didn't need to squeeze in the time for it because I could just do it later in the week (and then of course, didn't have time for it later in the week either).

We've had a lot of "new blood" recently, but not a lot of old-timers. It might be worth taking another look at how Fight Club works to see if we can come up with something that would bring in some more participants without alienating those that have been playing, and if we could make things easier on Joe at the same time (or at least spread the responsibility out) that would probably be a good thing as well.

I love Fight Club, and as I kind of hinted at earlier, sometimes it's the only time I manage to get my camera out of my bag. I think it's really easy for those of us that love it and play often to get frustrated when participation slows down, or when there are delays. After all, waiting for Thursday is hard enough when participation is high and everything's on time! Maybe there's a way to fix that, maybe there's not - either way though, I'm going to keep playing as often as possible, pimping it in the Beginners' Forum, and keeping a positive attitude, because it's worth it to me.
 
Howdy guys, been a little swamped this week, hope to get my submissions in tonight before I have to ship my camera back to Canon for some repairs :-(

My votes cat 1-5 = ME jk...

Shrubbery - Orionsbyte
Over there - Amandalee
Up close - Photomagic
Personal - Jwellman
Tragic - Amandalee

Gig em!

Brian
 
1. Shrubbery -OrionsByte
2. Over There -amandalee
3. Up Close -amandalee
4. Personal -OrionsByte
5. Tragic- JWellman
 
Shrubbery - Amandalee
Over there - Orionsbyte
Up close - Amandalee
Personal - Amandalee
Tragic - Amandalee

Have to say that Amanda's tragic is awesome. Like it on so many levels.
 
We've had lulls before. The lack of votes this week is kind of unusual, but also not unprecedented. I think part of the problem is the mixup we had with a couple of the submissions - people may have delayed voting while that was being worked out....

I love Fight Club, and as I kind of hinted at earlier, sometimes it's the only time I manage to get my camera out of my bag. I think it's really easy for those of us that love it and play often to get frustrated when participation slows down, or when there are delays. After all, waiting for Thursday is hard enough when participation is high and everything's on time! Maybe there's a way to fix that, maybe there's not - either way though, I'm going to keep playing as often as possible, pimping it in the Beginners' Forum, and keeping a positive attitude, because it's worth it to me.

I think the inconsistent nature that fight club has taken on the last month and a half has caused players to stampede away. No one likes to show up to be told to come back later or worse, not be told anything at all. My wife played once, was excited to play again then got frustrated by the delays. I can't convince her to even want to try again because she sees me constantly checking in and waiting. I might give it a rest myself until fight club either dies or gets it act together.
 
Scoody: I've bitten my tongue for long enough. I know I'm often late, especially in the Summer, and I apologize for that, but it's really tiring to come into the forum each time it happens, and see some rude message about me or the contest. This contest is a real time commitment, and unfortunately, this means I cannot always get it all done right on schedule. I should be more vigilant about it, and I'll get back to some ideas on how I can make it better later in this post.

I do this contest, not because I have to, or because TPF compensates me in any way, I do it because it’s fun, and because at least a few other people seem to like it as well. However, nothing can suck the fun out of something more quickly than someone who is ungrateful. Trust me, I welcome constructive criticism, and am always receptive to ways of making this contest better, but I would ask that those requests be asked in a fair and respectful manner.

I also welcome you, any of the past or current players, and anyone else to keep joining in and having fun!

OrionsByte: I agree. Everything done to change the contest is a double edged sword. If you make it shorter, then it motivates some people, and excludes others. If you make it a fixed time, it's a lot more exciting, but it means that very few people will be able to join in. From what I've seen, the current website based contest has been the most consistent in terms of both operation and participation. By the end of the email based version, we were lucky if we had 2 players in a contest, but we've been hitting pretty near 5 people each round recently. The other part, the operation, is way better than email. I've only had 1 complaint that either the submissions or getting the topics simply didn't work since the website (in its current revision) went up, and with all the images hosted in one place, you never have the problem of someone's flickr not working, or someone not knowing how to host an image.

I think the lull is due to these 3 things:
  1. It's the Summer, and people are outside or on vacation more.
  2. We, as a group, should do more to advertise our contest.
  3. I agree, the schedule has been lax.
To solve these issues, I propose:
  1. I’ll go into Off Topic and revive the old Fight Club reminder thread.
  2. I’d love to see some of the regulars link to the contest in their signatures, just to get the word out.
  3. I would like to move to a 24-hour window for me to switch rounds. That way, there’s no question about “when will it actually change”, while still allowing me to have a life and such.
The first 2 are easy. The third one requires a bit more discussion. From what I’ve seen, most people are playing between Friday and Sunday. The current schedule (or un-schedule) does make that difficult, as you may or may not even have a new round by the time you want to play. Maybe we should move to Mondays. I'll have between 12:01 AM Monday morning and 11:59 PM Monday night to create each new round, giving me some wiggle room, while still moving the changeover out of the way of most people's playing habits. I’ll keep looking here for any ideas and suggestions, but as far as moving forward, I will commit to the new schedule tomorrow, making all the necessary changes to the rules.

Of course, this is ignoring the “After all, waiting for Thursday is hard enough when participation is high and everything's on time” comment, as I don't know how to fix that. I can think of 2 ways of doing instant gratification: 1 is going back to the old schedule – 1 fixed hour. Of course, that would be silly at this point, because we've already seen all the issues involved with that. The other is to extend the website functionality. It would upload your photos into a formatted gallery, and show everyone's submissions once you finish a round. However, this is beyond my current coding ability, and while I'm sure I could learn it, it seems to be a lot of work to put into something this small.
Finally, there's the issue of help. It would be awesome to share responsibilities with someone, but at this point, I'm not sure how. Here are a few suggestions:
  • Alternating weeks. Me and another volunteer will split the duties right down the middle. We'd only need to do it 1 time every 2 weeks, but we'd be responsible for everything that entails:
    • Bump the OT reminder thread
    • Update the FC website (Don't worry, I have a java program that does that automatically)
    • Post the new round thread
    • Download, resize, and host the images
    • Add them to the thread
    • Tally the votes, and post the results
    • Update the FC account signature, and send the other person the modifications to keep it all in sync.
  • Split responsibilities
    • Person 1
      • Update the FC website
      • Post the new round thread
      • Download, resize, and host the images
      • Add them to the thread
    • Person 2
      • Tally the votes, and post the results
      • Update the FC account signature, and send the other person the modifications to keep it all in sync.
      • Bump the OT reminder thread
If anyone wants to volunteer to help, we'll get together and knock out the details.
 
Results!

In first place this week is amandalee with 10 votes!

Coming in second place is OrionsByte with 6 votes

And in third place, JWellman with 5 votes

The Categories:
1. Shurbbery - OrionsByte (3 votes)
2. Over There - amandalee (2 votes)
3. Up Close - amandalee (3 votes)
4. Personal - JWellman and OrionsByte (2 votes)
5. Tragic - amandalee (3 votes)

Top 20:
1. Chiller - 105.22
2. JWellman - 90.51
3. Chris of Arabia - 87.75
4. mishele - 87.24
5. Clawed - 86.94
6. bentcountershaft - 86.72
7. OrionsByte - 85.92
8. O|||||||O - 85.36
9. Wheels47130 - 83.33
10. misstwinklytoes - 82.6
11. photomagic123 - 82.37
12. leighthal - 82.23
13. clarinetJWD - 72.73
14. RalphP13 - 72.15
15. nowakchr - 71.12
16. Goontz - 70.95
17. da9girl - 68.75
18. soulfusion - 68.25
19. mooimeisie - 67.93
20. ryanlilly - 66.67
 
I've volunteered to help before and would still be willing to do that, however that ends up looking.

I don't think the "instant gratification" thing is all that big a deal - I was just pointing out that it's something we used to have that we don't anymore.

What would it take to update the Fight Club forum description? It still says, "A fun weekly test of speed photography: 5 photos, 1 hour. Every Sunday at 2:00EST Be there!" If that were updated to remove the reference to Sunday that would be good.

Congrats to Amandalee on her victory!
 
I was hoping you would volunteer :D

I remember you offering before, but I didn't want to jump to any conclusions. I'll send you a PM (or email. Probably an email, because I check mine a lot more often)
 
I have no idea why my signature is not showing up - seems to be a common problem at the moment - but I did add a link or two to TPF in there last week, and I just revised it again to be more prominent.

Hopefully the forum folks will fix the sig problem soon.
 
When was the last time Chiller played, and why is he still at #1? :lmao:
 
I have no idea why my signature is not showing up - seems to be a common problem at the moment - but I did add a link or two to TPF in there last week, and I just revised it again to be more prominent.

Hopefully the forum folks will fix the sig problem soon.
It's been really intermittent. My sig line finally started showing up last night but is gone again today.

And congrats amandalee :thumbup:
 
...And congrats to you, JWellman, for making it all the way to #2 in the all-time rankings. I'm not sure if King Chiller will ever be de-throned...lol. It has to be at least a year since he played, and yet, he still sits at #1... :lol:




edit
I just noticed that my sig is MIA too...
 
When was the last time Chiller played, and why is he still at #1? :lmao:

Believe it or not, I tried and I tried to come up with an algorithm that would make some of the old guys beatable, and nothing I tried would (fairly) knock Chiller down. He was just that good.

It may be time to come up with a new algorithm, though. Currently, it takes into account your average score, the number of players, the number of voters, and the number of times you've played. Maybe I should add in a bonus for playing recently. Then again, that would probably knock me out of the top 20 :lol:
 
I’d love to see some of the regulars link to the contest in their signatures, just to get the word out.

There is apparently an issue with sigs right now where if you're not an admin, it won't show your signature if it has a link in it. So for now FC has an honorable mention in my sig, but not an active link. :(
 

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