New Voting System

Well, after seeing no opposition to my proposal, found here, to the new voting system it is now in place starting with the Hands or Feet challenge. What does this mean to you? Well now instead of voting in the gallery we will be doing the voting through the message board. You will still be able to see the images in the gallery after the voting has closed for a challenge, but all rating will be through the message board. We now have a new section in the Challenges area of the message board called Challenge Entries. In this section you will see a category for each challenge, with the most recent on top. In the category for the challenge you will see a sticky thread on top that has thumbnails for each of the pictures, and then a thread for each submission where you can do your rating and commenting. A few differences here, you won't know who submitted the picture you are looking at, and you can now give the image a 1-10 rating rather than a 1-5. As with the gallery system you are still able to vote for your own picture, but you shouldn't. In order to see the ratings you have received there should be a link under the poll that says view results, clicking on that you can see the results for your shot without voting on it.

Now that things are anonymous. Please do not do things that could tip people off as to who shot the picture. Please do not post your picture on other message boards, this is mostly directed at the 2 Peas crowd, until after the voting has ended. Also try to keep the description limited to things that won't tip people off.

I think this new system is better than the previous in a lot of ways, but it still isn't perfect. I'm still working with the admins for these forums to get the gallery set up the way I want it. If, or when, that happens we will go back to using the gallery, but for now we will run things through the message boards. Hopefully this change won't be too difficult and things will run smoothly. If you have any questions please ask them here.

Well, my photo for the "hands & feet" challenge will probably be obvious that it's mine... but I will keep this is mind for all of the subsequent challenges so that I can remain "anonymous".... oooh, I feel so sneaky, like a secret agent. LOL.

At first, I thought I would like the new system...but now I'm not so sure! LOL It's so hard to decide on a 1-10 scale after I'd decided on criteria for the 1-5 scale. The anonymity is nice.

Not sure I like the new system. I can't go back and change my vote if I decide to - at least I don't see how I can.

I actually like to see who does the pictures. It is nice to get to know someones style and to put a name to the photo. Hopefully when they are in the gallery later we will be able to see who did them.

Not sure I like voting to 10 - it is going to take some getting used to.

Well, you can now change your vote. One of the reasons I didn't just start doing the challenges this way in the first place was because you couldn't change your vote. Last Monday I noticed an option, when creating a poll, to say that vote canceling is allowed. It wasn't working yet, but usually when new features like that show up, and don't work yet, it means forumotion is doing an update, and it usually comes pretty fast. Well, the vote canceling still wasn't working yesterday. I have been asking about it for the last week. Finally today the update finished, so vote canceling works now. I just edited all the threads to allow for vote canceling, and you can do this with any polls you create as well, so you should see a link next to the total number of votes under the poll that says cancel vote. If you click on that your vote will be removed, then you can vote again. If I missed a thread let me know and I'll fix it, but I think I got them all.

The anonymity was something I wish we could have done from the beginning. Although I'm sure people weren't doing it on purpose, when you vote for a picture and you know whose it is, sometimes there is something in the back of your mind that tells you to just give that shot a little higher score. Part of the reason is because you don't want to make somebody you know feel bad. Again, I don't think this was being done on purpose, but I think it is just us trying to be nice. When you don't know who took the picture you don't worry about that as much. Yes, you will be able to see who took what picture when the voting is over. The gallery will be visible, so you can see them there, and I will also update all the threads to show who took that picture.

As for the scale, it just takes getting used to it. 1-10 is hard because you are used to 1-5. I personally think the 1-10 is a lot better, I had a lot of struggles with the 1-5 because I thought a picture would be worth a 3, but I gave other pictures that I thought were better 3's as well, but I didn't feel like it was worth a 2. It was just too limiting, IMO. I think you'll probably learn to like the 1-10 after getting used to it.

Hey, before you could see how all of the pictures were doing with the average score. I liked to know who was ahead - it is just fun to watch that kind of stuff. I don't see anything like that with the new system. Am I missing something?

Yeah, that was one of the cons I mentioned when I proposed the idea. There is nothing to update those automatically. I have been updating them by hand though, whenever I notice that somebody has voted. If you go to the thumbnail page, at the very bottom you should see something that says spoiler, just click on that and you can see the ratings. You can also see when I updated them last.

How do I tell what I voted for the photographs. I guess I should have written down my thoughts and now there are so many votes I am not sure which vote I cast and if I should change any. Thanks ~Jackie

Unfortunately there isn't a way to tell, at least not right off the bat. The only way to do it is to write down, or remember, the votes for that picture, then hit cancel vote, then hit vote results, and then see which vote went away. I know it isn't the best, but that is the only way to do it right now.