I have been noticing lately that people are throwing out names when commenting during a challenge, such as "wow, this is awesome, could this be ????". While I am not accusing anyone, I think this may be a new way of cheating. Face it, everyone here knows someone, they may email, im, or speak outside of dpchallenge, and may mention that they are in a certain challenge, look for the ..... pic. That someone then comments during that challenge using a name, and if enough people like their style of photography, may score higher than what they may have not knowing who it was. I have seen many pics hit the front page that were definitly not worthy of a ribbon, when other pics in the same challenge were. You scroll down the comments, and lo and behold, you see the comment "could this be ??????, this is beautiful". And so that cues others who may use this trick to realize who the photographer is, and thus vote higher or lower, depending on whether they like their style, or the person. I just think we need to start a new rule which would make it against the rules to mention names in comments when voting during a challenge. I feel the penalty should be disqualification if a name is mentioned. Anyone have any comments or responses to this? Maybe see this also?
Nah, you can not see the comments in voting. I think some people are now so predictible that you can pretty much guess whose shot it is when you see it.
Nah, you can not see the comments in voting. I think some people are now so predictible that you can pretty much guess whose shot it is when you see it.
yeah, I was going to point this out...not sure what you are getting at rugman.
eta: I think it is a great honor to have my picture thought of as someone elses. I think it only happened to me once but it was for a much better photographer so it made my day. No reason to have a rule against it.
I was recently mistaken for IreneM during a challenge and was very honored to be. It was my Strawberries and cream shot. Now I agree with you in the sense that you shouldn't know the identity of the person you are voting on, I don't think a disqualification would have been in order because someone thought I was their friend.
If you like a photographer's style, what's wrong with giving a picture of that style(not the photographer) a high vote? What if you recognize a photographer's style but don't like it and give it a low vote?
Re the original post; If having a user name posted in a comment during voting would cause a DQ, then all someone would have to do to get a lot of top shelf images DQ'd would be to get some pals and go through the images in voting, and post comments using user names. It can't work that way.
Voters can not see other peoples comments during voting anyway, so they are only seen after rollover.
Ha! this thread is funny. Just because I can pinpoint someone's work and maybe call it out in a comment (which I rarely do) doesn't even mean I'm a friend! Online or offline. I called one out today whom I have never communicated with. It's more like a guessing game than anything.
To be fair to the OP, I think it's reasonable to bring up a concern about cheating or fairness, but in this case, it was a mistaken presumption that voters could read comments during voting. Hope you don't feel attacked for bringing it up.
The OP may be wrong about voters being able see other people's comments during voting, but I don't think there's any doubt that voters often identify the owners of challenge entries. I think they also adjust the scores they give such photos (either up or down) based on their personal feelings about the photographer. And whether they raise or the lower the score, in my opinion, that is cheating.
I think there's also a lot more 'Rikki' voting going on than anyone is willing to admit. Yes, I know there's supposed to be algorithms in place that guard against such 'friend' voting. However, I'm also an experienced programmer and I know how difficult (virtually impossible) it would be to write code that would work well for something like this.
Unfortunately, without going to judging panels and doing away with the 'popular vote', I don't think there's anything to be done about it. Even if we did switch to judging panels, the scores would still reflect each judge’s personal bias. After all, humans will be human. Some may be prejudiced against photos with saturated colors, and others may love it. Some will like a given subject and others will hate it. Everyone will have his or her own opinion on any given subject. It’s simply human nature. People can say they’re being totally unbiased all they want, but people are not machines. They will vote based on their opinions, biases, and personal knowledge (or lack thereof) of the criteria specified for such judging. What else is there for them to go by?
If I ever get enough time and energy to enter another challenge, I will do it for the comments my photo may receive. I will not expect an impartial score based on how well my photo compares to others in the challenge.
When I see what I find to be mediocre photos scoring high above technically and aesthetically better ones, I can't help but wonder just how much preferential treatment voting is going on amongst friends and more so, teams.
When I see what I find to be mediocre photos scoring high above technically and aesthetically better ones, I can't help but wonder just how much preferential treatment voting is going on amongst friends and more so, teams.
That is only your opinion Laura. Photos you find mediocre are jewels to others. You can't accuse or hint at preferential treatment just because you think an image deserves to be above another one that you think stinks.
When I see what I find to be mediocre photos scoring high above technically and aesthetically better ones, I can't help but wonder just how much preferential treatment voting is going on amongst friends and more so, teams.
That is only your opinion Laura. Photos you find mediocre are jewels to others. You can't accuse or hint at preferential treatment just because you think an image deserves to be above another one that you think stinks.
Jac, IMO, your comment makes some sense in a way, because judging an art form is a very subjective experience. (ETA: Spell correction)
However, talking about paranoia (;-), whos to say there isnt any friendly voting going on? All it would take would be to register new pals as free members (friends) OR PM/email existing ones to get help during voting:-)
All I am saying is that it is definitely possible to do something like this... whether or not it will affect the final score, will depend on the statistical sample size of the 'pals' v/s the rest of the voters. And so I say it again: lets lift the limit on the number of open challenges one can participate in per week. Its about sharing, and improving an artform. Why so many restrictions? Let the submissions reach 500...1000... and then let the best one win ;-)
