JUDGING FOR AUGUST CONTEST "MUSIC"! PICK YOUR FAV!

[Lee White]

We have some winners to announce! These are the three. I'll write up a separate post on these over the weekend. Great job guys! It is really cool to see how this played out with the voting. I realize this forum isn't the greatest for it (weird image loading), but overall it got the job done. : )

[Christine Dion]

@jabbernewt Mine too. Someone else ended up reposting it for me but it was no where near the other entries. Sorry it happened to you too.

[KathrynAdebayo]

Perhaps @Jabbernewt and @mrsdion should earn a free month's subscription or some sort of other recognition for not having their entries equally available to be voted for? @Lee-White probably already has something in mind, but I have an annoyingly deep sense of justice that won't leave me alone unless I suggest something.

[Jabbernewt]

sigh

SVS isn't to blame, I think. I doubt the creators of the forum software intended to have large-scale gallery-style voting threads, however, so if any blame can be placed it's simply on the incompatibility of the forum with the intended... well, forum-like function.

...I will admit, being in college would make receiving a free month of SVS great, but I wouldn't feel able to ask for such a thing, really. The forum functions independently of the classes for the most part, it seems, so it's okay.

[Lee White]

@kathrynadebayo We were just discussing this here in the office. We are giving them both a free month due to the mishap. : )

i did like the idea of you guys voting, we we are looking into ways to do that again but have it work a little more smoothly.

[TessaW]

@lee-white Perhaps a combo of the slideshow and a poll? Not sure how the poll functions work in the forum, or how many poll categories you can have here, but if we looked through the slide show, selected our top 3, and then voted on a dedicated poll that had the names of the artist who entered?

[Chip Valecek]

Maybe I could add a number to each of the slides and then create a surveymonkey poll. Then people can vote on that poll based on the slide number. I could easily add the link to the slideshow so people would know where to go and vote. What do you think about trying that out for "Fall" @Lee-White ?

[Miriam]

@heidigfx That's true. Hopefully no one did anything like that!

[Miriam]

@tessaw @Chip-Valecek & @Lee-White
I was thinking a poll-type voting system would be good, too. But that's basically what the up-votes were. It would be nice if we could have the images in the same place as the voting. I think you can add images on the Google Forms surveys. But with polls/surveys, someone would have to copy each image over, and that's part of the problem we had this time...

...Unless you give everyone access to the Google Form and have the official method to submit your image for the contest be to add it as another option on the form...? This might be too complicated for some people.

** thinking about this some more... **

[TessaW]

@miriam Yeah the upvotes are basically a poll, but if you had one centralized poll, while referring to the slideshow that Chip already makes every month, it potentially wouldn't be as unwieldy as it was for the Music contest. But I agree that having the images in the same place as the voting is ideal. Perhaps there's already an online voting tool that's available for contests like this?

[Chip Valecek]

@tessaw There is but there is a cost in place to use it. I am looking into some other options, one is building a voting tool myself for it.

[Miriam]

@chip-valecek & @TessaW
Chip, if you could create one, that would be great!

I was just trying out Google Forms.
If we use this, we would have one link for submitting an entry, and another link for voting.

Technically, each person would be helping build the form when they submit their entry, by using the 1st link to go to the page for editing the form, and adding their name & their illustration as an "option" to the one "question" on the form.

Once everyone has submitted their entries, we would make the survey available, and people would use the 2nd link to go to the survey, where they can click the check-box(s) next to the ones they like & submit the survey.

Here's the link for the sample survey I created: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XFb_ju6gnfdpULR8Hm7LOm6L3RsWjboO8mxFxI0RzhM/edit

If you click on the icon that looks like an eye (on the upper right side of the page), you can see what the survey would look like for voting.

It's not ideal, but it could work, and no one would have to copy images over for people.

[TessaW]

@miriam Huh, that looks very promising! Cool!

[Miriam]

@tessaw & @Chip-Valecek
Thanks Tessa!

I just did a Google search for "free online photo contest platform" and there are some free ones.

I'm looking at http://hostphotocontest.com/.
Pros:

• You can make some fields mandatory (so people can't forget to put in their name & SVS name)
• You can limit the number of entries, if you wish
• Should be easy to have people submit to the contest, and to vote
• It looks like you aren't able to vote until after the entry period is over (but I'm not sure how that part works)

Cons:

• It's supposed to let me upload a photo for the contest, but it's not working (so I kind of wonder how well the site works)
• To enter the contest, you need a log-in that requires you to submit your email address
• There is space on the contest page to enter text, but it doesn't link web addresses (so we can't link back to SVS or the forum--we can only type the address for people to copy & paste)

[demotlj]

@lee-white Although it was fun to vote and I'm sure it was a nice change for you, I missed your "Honorable Mentions" choices. The winners are usually pretty obviously a "cut above" and clearly deserving of top honors but in the Honorable Mentions segment you often point out pieces that though they may not have everything the winners do, have something that has captured your artistic eye. I often look at pieces differently after you have explained why you included those in your Honorable Mentions and have learned a lot by your ability to point out what people have gotten right even though they may not have gotten it all right.

[TessaW]

@demotlj Good point. I'm afraid with a new voting system, some people with great concepts who might normally be given an honorable mention, won't ever make the cut!

[holleywilliamson]

What about @Lee-White choosing top 10 or some number and then everyone voting on those ones?