RHP Photo Competition: MOVEMENT/MOTION

Originally posted by Ragnorak
There are a couple of factors...
1. Do we require people to register, or do we allow anonymous voting? How do we police that?
2. How do we ensure that there is an active thread here?

D

Firstly, I'd not favour having to register people or even for them to have to log in as that gets in the way of usage and we're not talking about a banking app here. I do think we need only require that a persons RHP user name is linked to their votes/comments which could be crossed checked against the site.

The web pages that handle the registering of votes and comments could post them to the RHP photo thread. Hell, it could even start the competition automatically on a regular basis given it knows what the next subject of the round is. It could use the id of whoever is running the competition or possibly even a new RHP account specifically created for it if Russ is OK with that. The only problem with that is that the person running the competition would need to keep logging in to the new account to check for private messages as I don't think they can be forwarded.

EDIT: Actually it doesn't matter if private messages can't be forwarded. The scripts could periodically log in and forward any messages itself. ENDEDIT:

ANOTHEREDIT: I think it might become less personal though if we use a new RHP account. Not sure .ENDANOTHEREDIT


I'm happy to arrange all this if a) people are OK with me doing it and b) people think this is a sensible way to take the great work that Nordles has been doing on.

Originally posted by Wheely
Firstly, I'd not favour having to register people or even for them to have to log in as that gets in the way of usage and we're not talking about a banking app here. I do think we need only require that a persons RHP user name is linked to their votes/comments which could be crossed checked against the site.

The web pages that handle the registering of ...[text shortened]... people think this is a sensible way to take the great work that Nordles has been doing on.

Fair enough. So would a voter have to post on here saying "voted" or what not, so we know that people aren't taking the mick?

It sounds like a good implementation that you have in mind. I don't think Russ would encourage a new "bot" account, but we could always ask his opinion.

I think something that has limited interest has been the fairly specialised aspect of some of the recent rounds. To generate more interest, I'd support a return to a couple of rounds of fairly typical topics, in which everybody with any type of camera could participate in.

D

Originally posted by Ragnorak
Fair enough. So would a voter have to post on here saying "voted" or what not, so we know that people aren't taking the mick?

It sounds like a good implementation that you have in mind. I don't think Russ would encourage a new "bot" account, but we could always ask his opinion.

I think something that has limited interest has been the fairly speciali ...[text shortened]... rly typical topics, in which everybody with any type of camera could participate in.

D

I was thinking that the system could just post the votes and comments from voters into the thread under whatever account we use with a heading saying who the comments come from.

People could still comment by just posting in the thread as they do now, of course, it's just that the votes themselves would be handled on the web page.

If someone happens to vote here too, in the old way, then they could be manually added to the system.

I agree with you completely about the rather specialist subjects of late and think we should come up with some more general ones. I was thinking we could make the first one particularly attractive to Nordles, perhaps "sky" or "weather", or something as a sort of thank you but that's something we can think about

Originally posted by Wheely
I was thinking that the system could just post the votes and comments from voters into the thread under whatever account we use with a heading saying who the comments come from.

How do we stop me (for example) voting as Noodles, wheely and DdV (or some random RHP member who doesn't even read the forums)?

D

Originally posted by Wheely
I could arrange for automatic posts to the threads containing random phrases from previous posts 🙂

Sounds good. 😀 I guess you could also arrange an automatic bump once in a while? And maybe a random insult every few posts.

Originally posted by Wheely
The development of a site is no problem. I have been a systems programmer for many years and have developed many tools for automatically spitting out HTML code of varying complexity. I have to admit I'm impressed with that link though but think we'd probably need something far simpler.

The main problems are 1) wether people think it's a good idea and 2) hosting.

Before the photo comp fell asleep for about a year, someone offered me to host and automatise the comp. It sounded like he already had a plan. I don't know if he'd still be able and/or willing to do this, but if there's interest, I can ask him. You might also want to work on it together.

Originally posted by Ragnorak
How do we stop me (for example) voting as Noodles, wheely and DdV (or some random RHP member who doesn't even read the forums)?

D

Registration would be a big turn-off. Using cookies can be circumvented.

If one had to provide just an rhp username when logging on, we could at least link votes/IPs to users. If there was any monkey business, it could be investigated/rectified.

We could also change the method of voting to a rating system (1 to 10). That way the number of votes has much less impact.

The real work for voters in the past has been putting the entries into order, cutting, pasting and commenting. If you can just view the entry and rate it on the fly, maybe add a few comments, it could be much more fun for visitors.

Originally posted by Ragnorak
How do we stop me (for example) voting as Noodles, wheely and DdV (or some random RHP member who doesn't even read the forums)?

D

We don't completely but we will all notice if someone does that.

We could do some IP tracking but as most people are using DHCP, that might not be too useful.

Originally posted by Nordlys
Sounds good. 😀 I guess you could also arrange an automatic bump once in a while? And maybe a random insult every few posts.

I like the insults idea. We could just take random sentences from the debates forum.

Originally posted by Gatecrasher
Registration would be a big turn-off.

I don't favour registration either, but don't see how we could keep the odd clown legit.

As opposed to simply rating, wouldn't be a good way to just allow the viewer to choose their first place photo, second, etc, without being exposed to the detail of the points? Of course, it wouldn't be a secret that points were awarded, but just let people simply chose their favourite, their second favourite, etc.

D

Originally posted by Nordlys
Before the photo comp fell asleep for about a year, someone offered me to host and automatise the comp. It sounded like he already had a plan. I don't know if he'd still be able and/or willing to do this, but if there's interest, I can ask him. You might also want to work on it together.

Hosting is the problem though Gratecrasher says he may be able to help there 🙂

I wonder how people would feel about the automation also being used to accept, resize and sharpen their competition entries. Obviously they would be able to review the result before committing it.

Originally posted by Wheely
I like the insults idea. We could just take random sentences from the debates forum.

Eurosissy!

This insult was brought to you by the random insult generator.

Originally posted by Gatecrasher
We could also change the method of voting to a rating system (1 to 10). That way the number of votes has much less impact.

I was thinking this too. We would have to allow for people to vote the same for more than one image though.

Ultimately, it would be important to remember that we're not designing a commercial system here. We're designing something that a small number of RHP users, interested in photography, would use to make an entertaining diversion easy and rewarding to use.

Two priorities would be to protect the hosting system from abuse and to protect RHP from spamming posts (e.g. someone decides to use the system as a means to bombard the RHP forums) but other than that, it's not going to kill us if the votes turn out wrong for one round because somebody is being an Aass.

The system can log everything it does and send it via e-mail to me or whoever is doing it and that could be the way to keep a check on things.

EDIT: not sure there's much point in tracking IP addresses because of DHCP. One check we can do is the first time someone uses the system, an RHP private messages is sent to request confirmation of the validity. The votes are not committed until that user responds.

Originally posted by Ragnorak
I don't favour registration either, but don't see how we could keep the odd clown legit.

As opposed to simply rating, wouldn't be a good way to just allow the viewer to choose their first place photo, second, etc, without being exposed to the detail of the points? Of course, it wouldn't be a secret that points were awarded, but just let people simply chose their favourite, their second favourite, etc.

D

Absolutely.

I see a page of images, a small button next to each image, you press it and get another page with a thumbnail of that image, a dropdown box or radio button set (1-10) and a text area to type in.

Maybe each time you select the voting button you get the thumbnail of the one you are currently on and a summary of what you've done so far.

Important thing is the interface is as simple as possible.

Originally posted by Nordlys
Eurosissy!

This insult was brought to you by the random insult generator.

I might do one of those just for fun 🙂