Mishele, Overread.... need a few favors.

[JTPhotography]

1. Get the friggin photo competition back on track. There are some fine photographers on this forum, contributing some of their best work. Treat them with respect and follow through with your promises. Or end it altogether.

2. Please delete my "canoe" photo, the winner of the August competition, from the site. On the off chance you decide to finish that one out, give it to the runner up.

 

[sm4him]

It really IS fun when the POTM competition is running and current. While I never got the $25 and membership (I think my membership is already good for about the next two years anyway&#8230 for my win, it was amazing just how good it felt to know that such a talented group of folks had actually chosen of MY pictures as a POTM!
I'd love for others to continue to have the chance to receive that same kind of encouragement…oh, who I'm kidding?!?! *I* want to win again!!

It's actually almost time for the POTY contest, but I'm not sure how many months we have winners for from 2013.

It's a good thing, and I'd hate to see it fall by the wayside. But I also know that mods are unpaid volunteers who can get distracted by other things in their own lives, just like the rest of us.
Is there anything I could do to help get this back on track?

 

[JTPhotography]

I agree it is fun and at the time when my photo was nominated I thought it was pretty cool. The voting occured several weeks/months later so by then I was pretty much over it. At this point I could care less about it at all, I want out of it because it is nothing more than a non event for me, even if it is fixed and a POTY gets going. Consider it a sacrifice for all the current and future winners who should at least be able to hope for the chance of winning something when they are nominated. What would this site be without the awesome photos and good advice that gets shared by the experienced members? Hopefully no one jumps my case for making a stink over it, I am actually surprised no one else has done so already. I completely understand the MODS having lives, but if it is that difficult a thing to keep current, then I say end it, or let some of the members who have time keep it running.

 

[ratssass]

is this why i have such a hard time navigating where it is???between finding where the nominations go,where the voting is,and where the most recents are,i get confused.As a side note,its no big trick to confuse me.

 

[Overread]

Firstly I'd like to make it very clear that aggressive/hostile commentary doesn't help. Whilst it can be respected that you are frustraited with the situation taking an agreesive tone is not the right way to go about it.



As for the competition I'll hold my hands up - I was mostly running this organisation wise on the site; sadly when I headed home I wound up with rather erratic timing online which tends to mean I only get long periods in the evenings where upon the competition slipped my mind.
I'm looking to setup a similar arrangement to how we have the Photo Challenge competition where there are several mods running the show so that if one ends up unable (or has a terrible memory!) another can step in without a worry.


As for the prizes I'm afraid I can't comment; this is in the hands of the admin and from what I understand there was a vendor who was supposed to be sending out a sponsored prize. I'm unsure as to why its not been sent out and I've asked the admin if they can clarify the situation on that front.


Also if any others have not gotten their prizes please say so - barring the two mentions in this thread (of which one is known to me now only from this thread) I'm unaware of any others who did not get prizes.

 

[JTPhotography]

Aggressive? Hostile? Not even close. Frustrated? Of course, who wouldn't be?

Read whatever you like into my tone, if the comp is restored, I'm sure past and future winners will appreciate my bringing this up.

My request to be removed from it completely stands.

Thanks.

 

[amolitor]

I nominate JTPhotography to run it!

It seems to be be "start two threads at the beginning of the month" so it's not very hard. Anyone can do it.

In fact, I don't see what's stopping someone from just going and starting a suitable voting thread right now... Is the forum closed to new threads from unauthorized people or something?

 

[Overread]

Depending on the number of entrants it can take a good hour or so to make the voting thread (lots of links to fiddle with). It also takes remembering to do it in the first place

I'm seeing if there is a way to help promote the competitions more overtly on the site - helping to promote them in general and also keep everyone aware of them. They can end up suffering from being not high profile enough and that does mean that you tend to see the same people taking part over and over.

 

[Derrel]

Firstly I'd like to make it very clear that aggressive/hostile commentary doesn't help. Whilst it can be respected that you are frustraited with the situation taking an agreesive tone is not the right way to go about it.



As for the competition I'll hold my hands up - I was mostly running this organisation wise on the site; sadly when I headed home I wound up with rather erratic timing online which tends to mean I only get long periods in the evenings where upon the competition slipped my mind.
I'm looking to setup a similar arrangement to how we have the Photo Challenge competition where there are several mods running the show so that if one ends up unable (or has a terrible memory!) another can step in without a worry.


As for the prizes I'm afraid I can't comment; this is in the hands of the admin and from what I understand there was a vendor who was supposed to be sending out a sponsored prize. I'm unsure as to why its not been sent out and I've asked the admin if they can clarify the situation on that front.


Also if any others have not gotten their prizes please say so - barring the two mentions in this thread (of which one is known to me now only from this thread) I'm unaware of any others who did not get prizes.

Seems like no kind of commentary has helped. Polite. Impatient. Strident. Disgusted. Every single effort to get the POTM competition has been met with empty promises. Or excuses. Finger-pointing. Waffling. Hemming and hawing.

This issue has been brought up multiple times before today. Nothing has helped. It seems about time to actually get off the dime and stop making additional excuses.

The POTM contest is an utter failure. But, whatever, right? Blame it on a sponsor, or on faulty memory.

So, what exactly *is* "the right way to go about it?

 

[runnah]

I think at the end of the day you just don't like us yanks voting on things.

I'll throw my hat into the ring and do the work, but I need unrestricted access to the nudie gallery as payment.

 

[Overread]

Bacon of course


The Sponsor has nothing to do with the running of the competition - prize handing out was never an area I dealt with so it was never something that prevented it continuing. As I said the running was me forgetting and time fleeting away or other things coming up that required attention before the competition and ate up the time slot instead.

As for overt display of the competition we've honestly not actually tried anything new - we just ran it as was. About the only new approach was adding notices in signatures about the competition.

 

[amolitor]

Seriously, it's something that could be crowdsourced.

Write some posts about how to DO the two threads at the beginning of a month. Then let anyone who wants to do the work. The 'nomination thread' post could practically be automated, if even very slight automation exists within the system TPF is using. The voting thread could be handled with a sticky post going over HOW to create the nomination thread, and then let whomever do it.

This is actually easier than the Photo Contest where anonymous pictures have to be gathered up, vetted, and posted.

Prizes? Eh, I dunno. Do the prizes matter?

 

[runnah]

Seriously, it's something that could be crowdsourced.

Write some posts about how to DO the two threads at the beginning of a month. Then let anyone who wants to do the work. The 'nomination thread' post could practically be automated, if even very slight automation exists within the system TPF is using. The voting thread could be handled with a sticky post going over HOW to create the nomination thread, and then let whomever do it.

This is actually easier than the Photo Contest where anonymous pictures have to be gathered up, vetted, and posted.

Prizes? Eh, I dunno. Do the prizes matter?

If it were me I'd setup a TPF flickr account and source images from there. Also using a BBC template would save time.

 

[Overread]

TPF flickr account won't be needed and would add to the workload since instead of just grabbing the URL of the photo from the thread we'd have to download and then upload the photo to flickr and then grab its URL (which flickr likes to hide anyway).

About the only bonus is that it does mean photos won't vanish, although typically this is rare and if the users photos have vanished and they can't be contacted it oft means they've left the site or are otherwise not present within the community.


As for crowed sourcing its what's being looked into within the mod team itself; we could do it for the whole user base of the site, but that can leave problems when one has such a large potential pool of people dealing with it.

 

[amolitor]

Yeah, if you crowdsourced it the procedure would have to be something like:

- post a short post 'I am doing the nomination thread' so nobody else starts it at the same time
- edit that post into the appropriate format
- update the post with the edited/full version

to avoid overlaps. I suspect you'd wind up with a small shifting cadre of people doing it. The nice feature would be that, ideally, there's usually be someone willing to get on with it without any official baton-passing. One person gets a life and moves on, someone else picks up the slack.