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11/21/2007 09:10:39 AM · #26
Has anyone considered moving the times when these challenges are announced? Quite honestly, I get all excited and my brain starts to think up ideas on Wednesday when the open challenges are announced, however by the time I get a chance to take some pictures (likely on a weekend) I have lost some interest in my idea(s).

Perhaps if the challenges were announced just prior to the weekend then this would generate more entries. People may be more inclined to act on their ideas while it is fresh in their minds rather than having 3 days to stagnate before they get the chance to do it.

Message edited by author 2007-11-21 09:12:57.
11/21/2007 09:11:29 AM · #27
Originally posted by swhiddon:


5. Users tired of seeing sequel challenges. (II, III, IV, etc.)


I disagree with this one, since some of us were not members during the original challenge
11/21/2007 09:12:04 AM · #28
Originally posted by CEJ:

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

What (if anything) is this telling us?

R.


Maybe the challenge topics have become/or were too vague/not interesting/too discrete to stimulate more people to enter??

Personally, I have been very disappointed in challenge topics the past months.


Challenge Suggestions - I wish the forum category page could be sorted; by 'Creator' would be fun. :-)
11/21/2007 09:15:00 AM · #29
I think it's called "Market Charting" (Just made this up) but it seems like logical to me. It's like market, goes up and down. When we complained about "too many entries" people actually (under-consciously) listened.

What's next? well, it will regulate itself back to 150 - 200 per challenge until spring. and summer time, again we have complains (I sure do sometimes) about why on earth having 600 entries per challenge!

It's like a "Steam controller" valve :P start turning faster, lets less steam in to control the rotation.

(I am sooo philosophical today)
11/21/2007 09:31:20 AM · #30
Originally posted by PhotoJeff:

... Perhaps if the challenges were announced just prior to the weekend then this would generate more entries. People may be more inclined to act on their ideas while it is fresh in their minds rather than having 3 days to stagnate before they get the chance to do it.

I prefer having a few days to give it some thought. For me it doesn't "stagnate", it gets stirred and improves with time (hopefully!). :-)
11/21/2007 09:39:33 AM · #31
Comparing last year to this year


Last Year This Year
(M)Postcard II - 265 (M)Stop Motion IV - 138
(O)Perspective IV - 316 (O)Book Smarts - 63
(O)The Year You Were Born - 102 (O)Street Smarts - 62
Total Entries - 683 Total Entries - 263

Entries are down this year compared to last year same week before thanksgiving by 420 entries.



This time last year gas prices was at a high, the same as this year.
Time change did happen one week earlier this year.
Travel is expected to be up this year.
We had monthly free studies last year at this time.

So I really don't know what to say other than maybe personal motivation.

Maybe it is time for a little change in challenge start and end dates as suggested. Or more "Technically" oriented challenges instead of subjective challenges.

One other thing I've notice, there seems to be more side challenges not associated with dpc challenges. Maybe more attention is moving in that area. Not saying the side challenges are bad. Maybe users feel they are learning more interacting with each other in that venue than the current challenges.

Just some more thoughts.
SDW

Message edited by author 2007-11-21 09:39:58.
11/21/2007 09:48:17 AM · #32
Ok let's analyze this challenge by challenge.

"Postcard II", first of all there was a "postcard I" so there is a sample people can look at and have an idea. Also, postcard is much more fun thing to do than stop motion, and easier too.

"Perspective IV", again there are some samples to look at, "book smart" is not that attractive subject at all.

"The year you were born". I am surprised only 102 entries. There should of been at least 200+ again "street smart" was kind of difficult challenge to find out what exactly "street smart" means.

So, last year's comparison wouldn't justify the drop... it looks normal to me.

Message edited by author 2007-11-21 09:49:06.
11/21/2007 09:50:13 AM · #33
My main thoughts are that it is because of TWO main reasons:

1. The Holidays with preparing to have or travel to family.

2. The 2007 challenges were difficult to come up with something satisfactory.

Although it was interesting to see if those two reasons played out in the previous years. Looking back at previous years were the submission dates were roughly a week before or included Thanksgiving:

2006

Bond, James Bond (Advanced Editing)
Nov. 27th 2006 - Dec. 3rd 2006
Entries 91

Famous Last Words (Basic Editing)
Nov. 22nd 2006 - Nov. 28th 2006
Entries 110

Diagonal (Basic Editing)
Nov. 22nd 2006 - Nov. 28th 2006
Entries 344

The week after or a few days AFTER Thanksgiving had

Death (Basic Editing)
Nov. 29th 2006 - Dec. 5th 2006
Entries 224

Life II (Basic Editing)
Nov. 29th 2006 - Dec. 5th 2006
Entries 159


2005


Collections (Basic Editing IV)
Nov. 23rd 2005 - Nov. 29th 2005
Entries 202

Industrial (Basic Editing IV)
Nov. 23rd 2005 - Nov. 29th 2005
Entries 222

Adulthood Without Adults
(Advanced Editing IV)
Nov. 21st 2005 - Nov. 27th 2005
Entries 105

The week after or a few days AFTER Thanksgiving had

Knife Fork Spoon (Advanced Editing IV)
Nov. 28th 2005 - Dec. 4th 2005
Entries 161

Too Late (Basic Editing IV)
Nov. 30th 2005 - Dec. 6th 2005
Entries 166

Too Early (Basic Editing IV)
Nov. 30th 2005 - Dec. 6th 2005
Entries 105

2004

Lucky 7 (Basic Editing I)
Nov. 24th 2004 - Nov. 30th 2004
Entries 260

Low Tech (Advanced Editing II)
Nov. 16th 2004 - Nov. 29th 2004
Entries 177

Humor II (Advanced Editing II)
Nov. 22nd 2004 - Nov. 28th 2004
Entries 112

The week after or a few days AFTER Thanksgiving had

Landmarks (Advanced Editing II)
Nov. 29th 2004 - Dec. 5th 2004
Entries 143

Yellow Revisited (Basic Editing II)
Dec. 1st 2004 - Dec. 7th 2004
Entries 393

2003

Soft Focus (Classic Editing)
Nov. 24th 2003 - Nov. 30th 2003
Entries 99

Scents and Aromas (Classic Editing)
Nov. 19th 2003 - Nov. 25th 2003
Entries 188

Surprise! (Classic Editing)
Nov. 17th 2003 - Nov. 23rd 2003
Entries 57

The week after or a few days AFTER Thanksgiving had

Money (Classic Editing)
Nov. 26th 2003 - Dec. 2nd 2003
Entries 153

Shapes (Advanced Editing I)
Dec. 1st 2003 - Dec. 7th 2003
Entries 125

You can draw your own conclusions from the info - or you can go back and see what the activity level was a week BEFORE those challenges that had Thanksgiving near or in the submission deadlines to see if it was high or low:-)

Message edited by author 2007-11-21 09:51:57.
11/21/2007 10:00:38 AM · #34
I submitted to street smarts but unsubmitted one hour b4 deadline. Fear of DNMC.
11/21/2007 10:05:18 AM · #35
Difference might have been WPL....no WPL OR DPL now.
11/21/2007 10:28:25 AM · #36
Scoring doesn't weigh too heavily on my mind, but pehaps people are being turned off by the scores. I was surprised to see that 1st place in the for Foreground Bokeh was only 6.6 (that equates to a C+ photo in school terms). Going through the previous challenges the average winning photos seem to be around 6.5-7.5.

In retrospect, I'll be the first to admit, that I think my scoring is not an accurate reflection of my like/dislike with a photo. Perhaps we should ease up on judging so harshly. Many of the winning photos from the challenges I would consider very good, or 'A' quality, not C+.
11/21/2007 10:40:15 AM · #37
What if you count all the entries posted in the unofficial "side challenges"? Is the number of photos "entered" decreaseing? Or are they just going somewhere else?

Also with comments? If you count all the comments made on all the photos, not just those in the challenges, are comments really decreasing? Or are they going somewhere else?

Seems like the old timers are looking at the side challenges as a way of deepening their involvment both at DPC and with photography. Maybe the challenge model needs another aspect added?
11/21/2007 10:48:57 AM · #38
- lots of side challenges going on
- vague/complicated/uninteresting challenge topics/not enough technical challenges
- more and more shoehorned or low-quality images scoring high in challenges lately
- by far less votes than entries in the challenges (example: Free Study October 519 entries, 117 votes)
- low number of comments (example: Something Old, 1 comment for 20th place)

Just my 0.02 €
11/21/2007 11:34:14 AM · #39
It might even be a good thing, in a way...

Street smart and Book smart are concepts, not things. You can't take a picture of street smart per se, you can only take a picture which conveys, or with which you try to convey, the idea. This is what the challenge asks you to do.

A picture that is designed to explain an idea is probably going to be literary. The quality of the picture as a picture is secondary to the function of whatever symbols, icons, signs or coding that it contains. The picture tells a story. The story is the raison d'ĂȘtre of the picture. Once the story is received the picture can go in the out tray, as it were.

All this is an entirely viable thing to try and do with a picture and it's actually very hard to do well - out of my league, frankly. A lot of entries try to be funny in the way one does when covering up embarrassment. When you see through that it's embarrassing to watch. Maybe it's just a little too abstract an idea for most of us to attempt.

All this that I've rambled on about may or may not vie for significance with factors such as eating turkeys, but if people would rather take pictures of things than ideas and/or would rather that the picture were evaluated as a picture than as a vessel to frame a concept, then I can see a good side to that.

11/21/2007 11:40:02 AM · #40
[quote=swhiddon] Comparing last year to this year


Last Year This Year
(M)Postcard II - 265 (M)Stop Motion IV - 138
(O)Perspective IV - 316 (O)Book Smarts - 63
(O)The Year You Were Born - 102 (O)Street Smarts - 62
Total Entries - 683 Total Entries - 263

Entries are down this year compared to last year same week before thanksgiving by 420 entries.



the problem isn't on stop motion but on the open challenges. the subject are vague, the photos aren't very interesting and the average scores declared in the forum are very low. Will be interesting to see the next week if the number of photo go up, the subject of the open challenges are perfect for recycling some ideas, this means that the people will be bored and will vote down. I am sure of this.
11/21/2007 11:44:14 AM · #41
Um, wasn't the brouhaha last week about too many entries to vote on? :)
11/21/2007 11:45:50 AM · #42
I seem to remember that as well - I think it has everything to do with the challenges and nothing to do with DPC as a whole

Originally posted by L2:

Um, wasn't the brouhaha last week about too many entries to vote on? :)
11/21/2007 11:48:41 AM · #43
Originally posted by L2:

Um, wasn't the brouhaha last week about too many entries to vote on? :)


eheh too much or too few :D the problem isn't the number of submissions. the problem is the satisfaction level that come from the challenge. how many interesting it is?

11/21/2007 12:24:39 PM · #44
My big problem with some of the challenges is the fairly narrow topic and that I often took the perfect shot for it LAST WEEK. But seeing how others interpret a challege is helping to get my creativity flowing.
11/21/2007 12:29:20 PM · #45
I didn't enter this week because I couldn't come up with anything good, I just couldn't get the juices flowing on book or street smarts. I don't think it is even worth trying to shoehorn in a shot, because I already know it will do bad. I just didn't like either of the subjects this week. It is hard when they are so similar, unless it is a good, fun topic. Because if you don't like it and they are both basically the same you can't enter either one.
11/21/2007 01:23:00 PM · #46
Maybe people had trouble relating Flowers,Birds,Drugs,Knives,and all the other continuouse subjects to Books & Streets, and actually had to be creative in the challenges.:):) So it was put in the too hard basket.:)) Type Error

Message edited by author 2007-11-21 13:24:29.
11/21/2007 01:28:23 PM · #47
Originally posted by hywind:

Maybe people had trouble relating Flowers,Birds,Drugs,Knives,and all the other continuouse subjects to Books & Streets, and actually had to be creative in the challenges.:):) So it was put in the too hard basket.:)) Type Error


hehe
11/21/2007 01:35:36 PM · #48
Originally posted by fotomann_forever:

Originally posted by hywind:

Maybe people had trouble relating Flowers,Birds,Drugs,Knives,and all the other continuouse subjects to Books & Streets, and actually had to be creative in the challenges.:):) So it was put in the too hard basket.:)) Type Error


hehe


Don't forget sunsets :-) I was tempted to enter a sunset and title it "The Sky is an Open Book We May Study Seeking God", but I thought better of it and punted...

R.
11/21/2007 01:35:56 PM · #49
Originally posted by hywind:

Maybe people had trouble relating Flowers,Birds,Drugs,Knives,and all the other continuouse subjects to Books & Streets, and actually had to be creative in the challenges.:):) So it was put in the too hard basket.:))

Cute. :)

Actually, I think it was challenging in the sense of needing people for whichever of the two challenges chosen. Not everyone has models readily available.

When it comes to specific people type scenarios there have been some other challenges this year that were light on entries:

Group Portrait Challenge - 85 entries
Crossdress Challenge - 71 entries
11/21/2007 01:41:09 PM · #50
Maybe there are too many challenges to enter, and we can't make up our minds which to enter, and then before you know it, the deadline has passed!

I prefer to try and enter member challenges, but with a lively baby here, I don't have the time to devote a lot of time to entering, as much as I'd like to.
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