Summing It Up...

The Challenges are a nice place, a good idea, and all it needs is certain shifts in its concept to work properly. This means the investment of effort in getting rid of problems which plague the site. So let me refresh in a nutshell what has previously been discussed in thousands of Forum posts:

The rewriting of general and specific Site and Challenge behavioral rules to make them precise and to-the-point is probably the first thing required.

The proper Host picking system should have to do with a lot more than just a Challenge-hosting request.

Mandatory politeness must be mantained across the Site; every flaming and trolling should be sanctioned in a way that repels repeaters.

No Challenge Host should be chosen from within people with less than 6 months of membership and Challenge experience, also with no prior votes, entries, or other activity in the Challenges.

DPR should remove Hosting privileges / duties from those Hosts which perform inadequately.

The forming of Host privileges to use some effective cheater-detecting and -barring tools is only fair. Without it, the hosting work exerts more time and effort than normally required, and that's a lot.

There should be a dedicated Challenge moderator available for contact, with reaction time anywhere between 1/125 and 24 hours.

The swift and total removal of proven Cheaters and Multiple account holders should be normal, no questions asked.

It would be nice to have a Hosts Forum, (read-only to Members), for dealing with problems arising in everyday Challenges run.

Things may run more smoothly if the Challenge program was changed in a way that allows / stimulates for more voting:

- maximum Challenge size - 100 slots; in sizes of maybe 50, 75 and 100.

- all Entries to be voted upon (including own!*) for Voter's votes to register;

- 0.5 - 5.0 Voting scale reserved for image quality / impact value only,

- misalignment and ignored rules judged separately; (radio-button with explanation field)

*Possibly useful as a sort of character firmware

Finally, the worst thing any correct photographer worthy of this activity could do is give up on Challenges. It actually leaves the site to the wrong kind, and that should not be allowed.

Thus, thanks for everyone's effort, equally to DPR people and Members alike.

--
Fil