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 04/05/2011 01:43:20 PM · #1
I'm scratching my head a bit... I entered the free study this time around and I'm a bit amazed at the low number of votes I have received compared to the number of entries in the challenge. I got a total of 227 votes in a challenge last week that had 110 entries. This challenge has 324 entries and I have received 109 votes so far. Maybe people have lost interest in the free study idea. They haven't lost interest in entering a photo, but they have lost interest in voting and commenting on those photos. I guess I can see why though... As I looked through the photos, a large majority of the images presented are leftovers from other challenges during the month. Maybe folks are tired of looking at the same ideas over again in a free study.

Do the participants here at DPC only shoot for challenges and don't have any other interests in photography where they can come up with a free study photo to showcase those interests?


04/05/2011 01:50:14 PM · #2
I think that it is the opposite. With such a huge number of entries to go through and vote on, it can be quite a daunting task. Some wont vote at all, whereas others may vote in more manageable chunks.

Give it time, I'm sure the total votes will go up as it gets closer to the deadline for voting.
 04/05/2011 01:51:47 PM · #3
I've heard many times that some folks do not vote on challenges they are entered in.
 04/05/2011 01:54:02 PM · #4
Interesting point. Myself, I'm doing a personal first and entering all the FS, but I don't personally vote on challenges I enter. But if I did, I would definitely say that I grow tired of seeing duplicated entries from one challenge into the other, and I share your depression. Often it manifests as extreme shoe-horning, which really bums me out.

The challenges are great for motivation from time to time, but I'm totally with you in hoping people can put up something they've taken for the month as a quality photo. Perhaps people are hesitant about the harder voting, and don't want to put up a personal gem to the demolition derby of voting?
 04/05/2011 01:55:26 PM · #5
The "Birds in Flight" challenge was an open challenge; any registered member can vote. The Free Study is for paying members, and they are the only ones that can vote, so the voter pool is much smaller. Add to that the fact that "Birds" is a VERY popular topic ΓΆ€” people like to view them and vote on them ΓΆ€” and there's your discrepancy.

That said, this month's Free Study does seem to be really short on votes, for a Free Study.

R.
 04/05/2011 01:57:02 PM · #6
I dunno... when the free study first came to be, the whole idea behind it was to showcase some work that the photographer did that was outside the scope of the normal challenges. Now, it seems like its just leftovers from normal challenges. Sorta self-defeating... I'd love to see a movement put forth to fix that problem :)
 04/05/2011 01:57:30 PM · #7
I believe it is the interest level to the challenges during the week. If there is something most people interested in entering and enthusiastic about the subject, people spend more time to take and process pictures more than voting... and leave the voting for the last day of each challenge. It's nothing that I researched, totally my own experiences and feelings about it.
 04/05/2011 01:58:22 PM · #8
One thing I will note... the overall quality of the images in a free study is superior to an average challenge...
 04/05/2011 02:11:00 PM · #9
When I first voted in FS as a brand new member I found voting a very daunting task. There was a big number genres and styles, and I could not see how to score them. So I devised an approach where I picked my top photos for each genre e.g. my top portrait, my top landscape etc With a few hundred entries it took a long time but I voted on every image and commented on quite a few. Now I vote on only about 20% of entries (just over minimum) and comment less. It is much quicker and I can pick FS genres I prefer to vote on. But that means there are less votes overall.
 04/05/2011 02:25:14 PM · #10
Originally posted by marnet:
When I first voted in FS as a brand new member I found voting a very daunting task. There was a big number genres and styles, and I could not see how to score them. So I devised an approach where I picked my top photos for each genre e.g. my top portrait, my top landscape etc With a few hundred entries it took a long time but I voted on every image and commented on quite a few. Now I vote on only about 20% of entries (just over minimum) and comment less. It is much quicker and I can pick FS genres I prefer to vote on. But that means there are less votes overall.


I think a lot of voters make things too complicated. I still don't understand why we can't look at an image and evaluate it on a 1-10 scale with nothing else being considered. Look at each image as an individual image instead of trying to compare it to something else. I have always voted this way and it makes life simple. It's not my job as a voter to pick the winner of the challenge. That happens on its own. It's my job to give each image a score of 1-10 as I see it. When it comes to voting on a free study or another challenge with a lot of photos, I just break it down and vote on 50-75 images per day so I don't get burned out.

The burn out in a free study comes into play when you have already voted on a previous challenge topic and then come to find 30 more images on that same thing in the free study :)
 04/05/2011 02:36:53 PM · #11
Originally posted by jmsetzler:
Originally posted by marnet:
When I first voted in FS as a brand new member I found voting a very daunting task.


I think a lot of voters make things too complicated. I still don't understand why we can't look at an image and evaluate it on a 1-10 scale with nothing else being considered.


We are all individuals. This topic will never go away, if it does, we are in trouble!
 04/05/2011 02:42:41 PM · #12
Originally posted by jmsetzler:
Originally posted by marnet:
When I first voted in FS as a brand new member I found voting a very daunting task. There was a big number genres and styles, and I could not see how to score them. So I devised an approach where I picked my top photos for each genre e.g. my top portrait, my top landscape etc With a few hundred entries it took a long time but I voted on every image and commented on quite a few. Now I vote on only about 20% of entries (just over minimum) and comment less. It is much quicker and I can pick FS genres I prefer to vote on. But that means there are less votes overall.


I think a lot of voters make things too complicated. I still don't understand why we can't look at an image and evaluate it on a 1-10 scale with nothing else being considered. Look at each image as an individual image instead of trying to compare it to something else. I have always voted this way and it makes life simple. It's not my job as a voter to pick the winner of the challenge. That happens on its own. It's my job to give each image a score of 1-10 as I see it. When it comes to voting on a free study or another challenge with a lot of photos, I just break it down and vote on 50-75 images per day so I don't get burned out.

The burn out in a free study comes into play when you have already voted on a previous challenge topic and then come to find 30 more images on that same thing in the free study :)

Yes, absolute voting is a great idea but the similar entries are a great example of how difficult it is to achieve. Almost always a similar entry in another challenge introduces a "suspected outtake" bias. My entries in FS and B&W are good examples. I consider them almost equivalent, neither is an outtake of the other. I like them both and hence used them in two concurrent challenges. I believe they should get a very similar score but they don't. A similar entry in B&W (in my view slightly better) is scoring 0.5 lower. The scoring on B&W started after FS. To me this is the proof for the "suspected outtake" relative scoring.
 04/05/2011 02:44:13 PM · #13
Besides the other reasons mentioned, voting may be lower because there are extra challenges available for both voting now and entry later this week -- people's attention may be more spread out more than usual.
 04/05/2011 03:50:43 PM · #14
I'm feeling quite overwhelmed with the number of entries to vote on. We have high entries in both the free study and the B&W challenge plus two others to vote on. I haven't finished with the free study or the B&W but plan on getting to them before the challenge is over.

I'm guessing most people are feeling the same way.
 04/05/2011 04:03:06 PM · #15
Originally posted by sjhuls:
I'm feeling quite overwhelmed with the number of entries to vote on. We have high entries in both the free study and the B&W challenge plus two others to vote on. I haven't finished with the free study or the B&W but plan on getting to them before the challenge is over.

I'm guessing most people are feeling the same way.

Yup, at present there are 4 challenges open to voting, totaling 769 entries overall. That's quite the monumental undertaking.

Message edited by author 2011-04-05 16:27:23.
 04/05/2011 04:08:05 PM · #16
This thread just shamed me into voting through the whole thing :)
 04/05/2011 04:44:50 PM · #17
Originally posted by jmsetzler:
One thing I will note... the overall quality of the images in a free study is superior to an average challenge...


Though I don't enter challenges very often, I have entered one free study in the past. What is quoted above is true and it keeps me far from that particular challenge.

#1 - I can't compete.

#2 - I have no comments or anything to offer to the images entered because the free study participants, as a general rule, are largely the best of the best on this site and they are using uber advanced post processing which I am largely not yet able to do.

#3 - Now I wonder why I pay my $25 every year...
 04/05/2011 05:51:36 PM · #18
Originally posted by UrfaTheGreat:
This thread just shamed me into voting through the whole thing :)


Funny, I hadn't had any votes on my FS entry all day, then this thread starts and I've had 7 votes since. ;-)
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