Judge's Choice Awards: Viet Nam: Everything except portraits

You make a fair point, and I definitely respect those who disagree with my approach.  (If you ore anyone else has a suggestion on how to get 700-1,000 votes on challenges with a max of 35 entries, I'd love to hear it . . . I'm definitely open to trying other ideas.)

But for now; the great thing about the DP challenges is that there are so many of them, with different hosting approaches.  I think I am one of the very few hosts who is asking (sort of requiring, actually) for entrants to vote on all their fellow entries.  I am not the least insulted when people skip my challenges, and instead enter only ones where they do not have to vote.  They are taking a position consistent with their beliefs, and I  respect that 100%.

I'm also toying with the idea of doing a challenge where you do not have to cast any votes, but you have to leave meaningful comments on at least 10 other images.  (positive ones or helpful critiques).  Should not take more than 10 minutes total, and it will be easy to verify that people have done this.  That way, entrants will end up with lots of helpful feedback.  I'm not certain that I'll try this...I'm still thinking about possible downsides and if the good stuff will outweigh the potential bad stuff.  But since these comments will not be anonymous, I hope and trust that people will put on their polite hats before they write their feedback.  We'll see . . . .

--
http://www.pbase.com/santamonica
http://www.strataphotography.com