Self worth or Photography?

For many participants - "challenges" here on DPR mean challenges and fun with

photography, the primary reward is that one learns as photographer in the process.

Others view the "challenges" more as "competitions" with the aim of attracting (and

showing) highest attention and approval, thus obtaining the satisfaction of inflated ego.

What is more important - learning photography or striving for one's inflation of worth -

it is up to each who takes part in DPR challenges.

idnab said:

For many participants - "challenges" here on DPR mean challenges and fun with photography, the primary reward is that one learns as photographer in the process. Others view the "challenges" more as "competitions" with the aim of attracting (and showing) highest attention and approval, thus obtaining the satisfaction of inflated ego.

What is more important - learning photography or striving for one's inflation of worth - it is up to each who takes part in DPR challenges.

Click to expand...

Sorry, once you pick winners, it is a competition. It is a fact. If you just want to chitchat about photos, there are plenty of photo-sharing threads in the forums.

So, keeping that in mind, what is it exactly that you are proposing? That people enter competitions but not care how they place? Then why enter them? In the current competitions (called "Challenges") there is precious little feedback anyway, so where is the benefit?

Whatever the viewpoint of the entrant - challenge or competition - there should be an underlying expectation of ethiical and honest behavior befitting a "Professional" association - Professionalism as in behavior, not whether or not you have ever been paid for your photographs. When we walk around with cameras in public and take pictures, we are representing all photographers and should act in a manner that represents the profession well. The same should be said for any "Professional" group's website.

Personally, I don't want to have members here that have no ethnics, morals or conscience - they contaminate the entire group.
Sorry for being a bit preachy ~

I'm thinking it's time to have a charge for membership - could be minimal amount, but it's much harder to create multiple credit/debit card, or even paypal, accounts without your real name - so screening for one person having multiple user accounts would be possible.
--
DK

DK Baker said:

I'm thinking it's time to have a charge for membership - could be minimal amount, but it's much harder to create multiple credit/debit card, or even paypal, accounts without your real name - so screening for one person having multiple user accounts would be possible.
--
DK

Click to expand...

Great idea... Since I enjoy the challenges, I would opt in to a membership fee.

--
Barb

DK Baker said:

When we walk around with cameras in public and take pictures, we are representing all photographers and should act in a manner that represents the profession well.

Click to expand...

+1000

That's why I strongly object to displays of unethical use of our rights here, like "Face you want to punch" challenge with photographs of people in public places. It does tremendous damage to the image of street photographers. The fact that DPR did not shut down that challenge despite many complaints changed my opinion of DPR irreversibly.

No, no, no, it is as if we are going to be penalized because that are some rotten apples in the membership. Now that I have expressed myself it makes sense to have a membership fee but can everybody afford it? I am sure DPR wouldn't mind. Would this limit the membership and thus the Challenges? So many questions and so few answers.

barb_s said:

DK Baker said:

I'm thinking it's time to have a charge for membership - could be minimal amount, but it's much harder to create multiple credit/debit card, or even paypal, accounts without your real name - so screening for one person having multiple user accounts would be possible.
--
DK

Click to expand...

Great idea... Since I enjoy the challenges, I would opt in to a membership fee.

--
Barb

Click to expand...

jmgir said:

No, no, no, it is as if we are going to be penalized because that are some rotten apples in the membership. Now that I have expressed myself it makes sense to have a membership fee but can everybody afford it? I am sure DPR wouldn't mind. Would this limit the membership and thus the Challenges?

Click to expand...

I think DPR makes more money from hits from unlimited membership than they would ever make from membership fees. There are too many free sites on the net. If DPR instituted membership fees, people would just move. I would.

It would create an opportunity for growth for competition.

Membership fees would not "motivate" the site to take measures that assure a decent competition environment. At the moment, the site appears to miss so basic and common sense ruling, that the message it sends to the users is that the site does not care too much about the quality of the challenges outcome. Such behavior is to be expected for a site with so many challenges populated by so many users, regardless the fairness of the environment. This is not even "bad management"; it is simply about leaving things as they are, because the system does work in mass with the actual set up.

In such situation, membership fees would not change anything but the size of accounts. That's simple management.

And, by the way, there are still so many valuable pictures posted in the challenges, even if they miss places within the first 10 against some poor cheaters, so... why would anybody there bother with ethical judgments?

They could have membership levels -

Free - use everything except enter/vote in challenges - certainly could still view the entries.

Minimal fee - The lowest that credit/debit cards(or paypal) would process - US $1.99?

More to control members from creating multiple accounts - not due to the amount of the payment, but you would have to supply your real identity with the method of payment - so, once that was tied to one username, then you wouldn't be able to use a different email account for another challenge account.

For families - with minor children that don't have their own credit, they would have to share one account. There are more than enough challenges that everyone would have opportunities and that would also keep them from being tempted (or pressured) to vote up family members.

I don't really expect "Family Support" is much of a factor in the cheating going on.
--
DK

DK Baker said:

DK Baker wrote:
I'm thinking it's time to have a charge for membership - ...

Click to expand...

Absolutely not. We provide a service to dpreview in terms of traffic on the site which allows them to charge other companies to advertise here. In the context of no material prizes for challenges, and uncontrolled 'poor' voting behaviour by some challenge entrants (and friends), to suggest that we pay for this is too much.
--
BartyL

Let hosts see a member's votes in the challenge they host. I'd think that really bad behavior could rapidly be spotted and not be too much work for the host. Give the hosts the ability to remove that member's votes in that particular challenge.

--
'Better' is the enemy of 'Good Enough'.

Mister Mike said:

Let hosts see a member's votes in the challenge they host. I'd think that really bad behavior could rapidly be spotted and not be too much work for the host. Give the hosts the ability to remove that member's votes in that particular challenge.

Click to expand...

I don't know if this has been previously suggested, but I think it is a great idea. If the host can view the actual voter names, it will encourage more honest and responsible voting. This would be a great first step.