Civilian Aviation

Last month we had very few (only 8) entries for POTM, and in the previous month there were just seven. I felt that when there were such low numbers then 3 votes was disproportionate and I raised this point with the other moderators.

When there are a small number of entries then and if there are say only 8 entries as per this month and assuming everybody is honest and doesn't vote for themselves that mean they are picking 3 from 7 i.e. almost half. I suggested that this might not always brings the best to the top as with a large number the best will get picked more but with a few and actually voting for 40% ish of the entries distorts the figures a bit/lot. I also wonder if because it's difficult to pick 3 from 8 which are all good enough that some only vote for one or two anyway.

SO,my proposal was that we keep the 3 votes if there are 10 or more entries but we allow just 2 votes per person if there are less than 10 and only 1 if less than 5 (heaven forbid)! I think it would make it easier for the membership to pick the best, and maybe everyone would use 2 votes (or 1) whereas they don't all use 3 at present. I think it might make it easier and probably get a more accurate representation of what is considered the best photo.

The moderators are all in favour of this idea therefore we intend to implement it commencing with next months polls if any of the competitions have less than 10 entries.
Hopefully we will reach double figures and it won't happen but particularly with POTM the entries tend to drop off a bit during the winter months as it's difficult for people to get out as much for photography (short days, bad weather etc!).

As usual we welcome comments and questions about the operation of the competitions

MTIA

Andrew

Sounds sensible to me Andy.

the changes to the voting system sound like a good idea

The fall in entry numbers always seems to be a problem at this time of year and I for one really struggle to get photos to enter monthly comps during the winter months

it is a two and a half hour run for me to get to manchester and the same to birmingham and the shorter days make it very difficult to plan a trip out to take shots

I would love to be able to support the photo comps year round but my last trip out in october was a wash out due to fog and it is a bit disheartening to give up a whole day off and not get a single shot so for me winter spotting trips are few and far between

I think that this is a good idea. It will be more accurate to reflect the quality of the photos.

Not sure whether this may be contributing to the lack of entry numbers or not but the rule stating that the entry has to be from a post already on the forum somewhere is certainly why I don't enter. Not everyone neccessarily has the time to upload a 'qualifying' post every month but may have something that is worthy of entering but is then excluded from doing so. There isn't such a rule on the sister Military forum and it has always puzzled me as to why there is on here.
Just a thought

bizfreeq wrote:Not sure whether this may be contributing to the lack of entry numbers or not but the rule stating that the entry has to be from a post already on the forum somewhere is certainly why I don't enter. Not everyone neccessarily has the time to upload a 'qualifying' post every month but may have something that is worthy of entering but is then excluded from doing so. There isn't such a rule on the sister Military forum and it has always puzzled me as to why there is on here.
Just a thought

thanks for that point Mark - very interesting comments. I've just spent a happy hour going through all the old forum posts and competitions to try to see where it started and why. I've established that the first comp with that rules was Oct.2012 but can find no discussion as to why - I've asked a far longer standing admin if he knows the history of it's reasoning. i'm sure we could have a re-think on it if there is enough support for a change. Personally I quite like to see theposts elsewhere as it does encourage people to put other pics with them but conversely it might be a case of lack of time - I'm retired so I should have loads of time but wonder how I ever had time to work!

andy

A change to the timescale for voting in the photo competitions

The moderating team have discussed the time allowed for voting in the competitions which has been 10 days ever since we started the poll to decide the winners and after watching the voting patterns we have decided to reduce the voting time to 7 days.

Normally most of the votes are made in the first 3 days of the polls being opened, followed by an often complete stop for 5 or 6 days and a couple of last minute voters in the final day or so. for example in the December SPOTM we had 42 votes in first 24 hours, just 3 more (i.e. 1 voter) in each of the next 3 days and then 9 (3 persons) in last 48 hours; POTM followed a similar pattern.

This will mean that the competitions are not so drawn out and the interest might remain (almost) right to the end and we will also not have a mixture of voting polls topics and entries topics for the current month for as long. The last minute (or rather day) votes are possibly an element of tactical voting so hopefully this can discourage that by allowing less time for anybody to consider doing that.

Also when we first started the poll system there were probably far fewer smartphones about and as such more people had to get home to a PC or laptop to be able to vote and as such we needed a longer voting timespan, the 'mobile' internet now means that voting can be done much quicker by the vast majority of members.

We hope this speeding up of the process will help to maintain a better interest through the voting.

Andrew

Not voting as such but a small amendment to the rules and I thought it better posted here rather than have 2 rules topics running together.....

We mods had a discussion about the closing dates as currently the comps close at 23.59 on the 1st of the month which means that if you take your photo on the last day of the competition month you have just 24 hours to get home, process the photo and post it which tbh isn't much especially if you have work to go to on the 1st. I'm retired but as am example I went to Old Warden on Sunday, got home around 9pm and had a meal, downloaded my pics and started sorting them into sub files to make selection easier (and to dump the rubbish), I processed a couple and went to bed at midnight. I did a bit of editing at times on Monday but had other things going on which probably equated to a days work time-wise, and finished editing pics around 8pm so had it been the 1st I would have made it with a couple of hours to spare- and it was probably easier for me as I didn't have to travel home from work.

SO, what's the old git on about? .............we have decided to give more time for processing last minute photos and from now on both photo competitions will close at 23.59 on the 2nd of the month. It really only affects POTM but we decided it was best to have the same rule for both.

Hopefully this will make it easier if the end of the moth is a weekend and we will see a few more entries. Get snapping and get editing folks!

Andy and the team

andygolfer wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 06, 2018 10:15 pm

Not voting as such but a small amendment to the rules and I thought it better posted here rather than have 2 rules topics running together.....

We mods had a discussion about the closing dates as currently the comps close at 23.59 on the 1st of the month which means that if you take your photo on the last day of the competition month you have just 24 hours to get home, process the photo and post it which tbh isn't much especially if you have work to go to on the 1st. I'm retired but as am example I went to Old Warden on Sunday, got home around 9pm and had a meal, downloaded my pics and started sorting them into sub files to make selection easier (and to dump the rubbish), I processed a couple and went to bed at midnight. I did a bit of editing at times on Monday but had other things going on which probably equated to a days work time-wise, and finished editing pics around 8pm so had it been the 1st I would have made it with a couple of hours to spare- and it was probably easier for me as I didn't have to travel home from work.

SO, what's the old git on about? .............we have decided to give more time for processing last minute photos and from now on both photo competitions will close at 23.59 on the 2nd of the month. It really only affects POTM but we decided it was best to have the same rule for both.

Hopefully this will make it easier if the end of the moth is a weekend and we will see a few more entries. Get snapping and get editing folks!

Andy and the team

following the above extension of time, we had some useful constructive feedback particularly about extending the deadline further so the moderator team have unanimously agreed that the closing date for POTM will be 23.59 on the 7th of the month from now on to allow more time for people to edit their last minute photos beyond the end of the month. To avoid confusion (although it's not a necessity) SPOTM entries will close at the same time.

Hopefully this will encourage / enable more entries from now on.

many thanks
Andrew & the team

that is excellent news andy
i was at heathrow in july ,got home at midday on august 1 with 6000 photo to process for july potm !,i wanted to do a quick visit to EDI ON my way home from LHR BUT had to go straight home so i could get a photo in before the deadline
so this is great news indeed for next time
mike

I'm trying to streamline the briefs accompanying the forum headings and realised that in this section there is no topic in the section to say what the competitions are about so I have added this and reduced the heading text.

We run two monthly photo competitions on Civilian Aviation, both open to members' own photos.

The first is the Photo Of The Month (POTM) competition for photos taken in the current month, rules are simple and stated at the start of each month's competition

Secondly we run a Specialist Photo Of The Month (SPOTM) which had a different topic for the subject every month, for this the photos can be taken at any time so if you have a suitable one in your personal portfolio please consider entering it.

There are normally NO prizes and it is just a bit of fun to enable members to compare their photos against others with the membership voting for the winners.

Why not join in and enter and if you don't want to enter you can still vote for your favourites (normally 3) in our polls