Postmortem on first time hosting

[24hrexposure]

My first challenge as host just finished, and I want to share a few thoughts on the experience.

Overall, it was a very positive experience. I appreciated being able to provide a level playing field for entrants, and I also received a lot of encouragement from other people (particularly Tim A2).

I deliberately chose an obscure theme (long-exposure portraits) to try to attract people interested in the craft rather than people trying to make cool (popular) photos. As far as I can tell, it worked, because I saw no evidence of cheating during the voting phase. I'm curious what the overall level of cheating actually is, and how much it varies with the theme of the competition.

I was very pleased with the creativity and variety in the submissions. A lot of entries were not technically perfect but were very artistic.

A lot of people didn't read all the rules. Some didn't read any. Of 51 entries, I disqualified 18, and several photos were withdrawn that would have been disqualified anyway. Someone even submitted a photo of a wristwatch, which just from reading the title of the challenge is obviously not appropriate. On the flip side, good photos that violated a rule were much more likely to be fixed and resubmitted than poor photos (photo too large was a common example), so strict enforcement acted as a filter for better entries.

It took quite a bit of time and mental anguish enforcing the rules I had listed. Next time I'll spend more time whittling down the rules to the simplest possible set, to make things easier both for myself and also for entrants. The most difficult one for the challenge was this:

A significant portion of the image must use continuous light sources to show the effect of the shutter speed. It should be clear that the photo used a long exposure.

I had to disqualify a few good photos on this rule, and I was unhappy leaving some not-quite-so-good photos in that fell just on the legal side of the line. It was difficult to decide what 'significant' meant, but at the same time the rule was necessary for the theme of the challenge.

I listed a rule that you must vote on all entries, but couldn't figure out how to enforce it. Is such a rule enforceable? I see the rule on other challenges but I couldn't find a way to link a voter with an entrant.

The one thing I wish I could change is I wish verbal feedback was encouraged in the challenge mechanics. Star ratings are better than nothing, but it's much more valuable to get specific feedback on what's right and what's wrong with a photo. Maybe some day DPReview will offer reciprocal group critique as one of the challenge templates.

 

[ConanFuji]

24hrexposure wrote:

My first challenge as host just finished, and I want to share a few thoughts on the experience.

Overall, it was a very positive experience. I appreciated being able to provide a level playing field for entrants, and I also received a lot of encouragement from other people (particularly Tim A2).

I deliberately chose an obscure theme (long-exposure portraits) to try to attract people interested in the craft rather than people trying to make cool (popular) photos. As far as I can tell, it worked, because I saw no evidence of cheating during the voting phase. I'm curious what the overall level of cheating actually is, and how much it varies with the theme of the competition.

I was very pleased with the creativity and variety in the submissions. A lot of entries were not technically perfect but were very artistic.

A lot of people didn't read all the rules. Some didn't read any. Of 51 entries, I disqualified 18, and several photos were withdrawn that would have been disqualified anyway. Someone even submitted a photo of a wristwatch, which just from reading the title of the challenge is obviously not appropriate. On the flip side, good photos that violated a rule were much more likely to be fixed and resubmitted than poor photos (photo too large was a common example), so strict enforcement acted as a filter for better entries.

It took quite a bit of time and mental anguish enforcing the rules I had listed. Next time I'll spend more time whittling down the rules to the simplest possible set, to make things easier both for myself and also for entrants. The most difficult one for the challenge was this:

A significant portion of the image must use continuous light sources to show the effect of the shutter speed. It should be clear that the photo used a long exposure.

I had to disqualify a few good photos on this rule, and I was unhappy leaving some not-quite-so-good photos in that fell just on the legal side of the line. It was difficult to decide what 'significant' meant, but at the same time the rule was necessary for the theme of the challenge.

I listed a rule that you must vote on all entries, but couldn't figure out how to enforce it. Is such a rule enforceable? I see the rule on other challenges but I couldn't find a way to link a voter with an entrant.

The one thing I wish I could change is I wish verbal feedback was encouraged in the challenge mechanics. Star ratings are better than nothing, but it's much more valuable to get specific feedback on what's right and what's wrong with a photo. Maybe some day DPReview will offer reciprocal group critique as one of the challenge templates.

You could have selected a better Title for this thread. What did it die off? Self medication?

 

[Ed at Ridersite]

24hrexposure wrote:

It took quite a bit of time and mental anguish enforcing the rules I had listed. Next time I'll spend more time whittling down the rules to the simplest possible set, to make things easier both for myself and also for entrants.

IMO, the best challenges are the ones with few rules. Less agony for everyone.

 

[Ed at Ridersite]

ConanFuji wrote:

You could have selected a better Title for this thread. What did it die off? Self medication?

Your interpretation is very narrow. Look up the definition.

 

[24hrexposure]

Ed at Ridersite wrote:

ConanFuji wrote:

You could have selected a better Title for this thread. What did it die off? Self medication?

Your interpretation is very narrow. Look up the definition.

 

[Tim A2]

Well, you jumped right in the deep water instead of just dipping your toes in it with your 1st challenge and you pulled it off quite well. I was impressed. More challenges like yours that highlight skills that exploit specific capabilities of our cameras are certainly welcome, especially if they only require subjects that are available to most of us.

It is a shame that creating challenges out of the ordinary are punished by having to do more work. I am usually pretty good at avoiding extra work, but don't have a solution to that. All I can think of is to issue one standard general statement with the DQ, instead of trying to explain to everyone why their entry was DQ'ed. It would say that the entry was DQ'ed because either the subject did not meet the theme or a rule was broken. If it is important to a host that it is not sufficient for something in the photo to meet the theme, that it must be the subject itself that meets the theme then make that clear in the blanket statement. The statement might suggest several specific items to check for rule violations, such as photo size.

The statement would ask the recepient of the DQ to reevaluate their entry in terms of subject, theme, and rules, and if the problem is something that can be fixed to fix it and reenter the photo. I would ask them to let you know by PM what they did , but would not count on it. I know I once resized an entry and entered the original by mistake. I would have discovered that by comparing my DQ'ed photo against the rules. It was good of the host to make the effort to tell me, but he should not have to do that. My mistake should not have caused extra work for the host.

Next the statement would say that if after reevaluating the entry, the entrant did not discover why the entry was DQ'ed than simply ask the host by PM.

My (probably misguided) thinking is this approach would save a significant amount of work for the host for several reasons. 1st, many would accept the DQ and not persue it. 2nd, many would repair a fixable problem and renter. 3rd, requests for the DQ reason would take no more time than if the hosts explained it up front, but there would be a whole lot less explaining compared to explaing it to everyone up front. 4th, if a jerk is going to jump in and start complaing instead of seeking a resolution, well you didn't waste any time on a jerk that did not deserve it.

I haven't been on the other end of the DQ process, so I don't claim to know what I am talking about. If anything I said is helpful then good, if not and I wasted my keystrokes, well I tried to be part of the solution. I just don't think a host shoulf be obligated to do extra work because an entrant didn't bother to read the rules. Of course non of this addresses the language barrier. Sometimes an idea is useful only because it sparks another better idea in someone else. Let's hope that DPR adopts OldArrow's and possibily others' idea that DPR implement as much automated rule checking as possible.

tim

 

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