Photo contests... opinions, thoughts and observations.

[AZMSGT]

I'm seeing a lot of critiques of the topic, unfortunately not every topic will "suit" everyone, yet this is starting to derail the thread so I'll ask all to refrain from further derailing this thread. You are always welcome to PM topics that u believe would make for a great POTM and well make sure to chose those if they match with the vision we have for the POTM.
Looking forward for more positive posts and submissions and less negativity on a fun competition.

I’m quoting the above from the September POTM thread so we don’t “derail” that thread.

It’s not negativity, it’s called criticism and people expressing themselves. There are several people that are not happy with the photo competitions. Either you learn to accept other peoples point of view as a positive experience, or you don’t accept it and call it a negative experience. The choice is yours and how you spin it.

First things first..
photo submission threads aren’t getting restored after the winner is announced. Three in particular are missing. I don’t remember the specific titles or month but the basic subject I do remember
1. Photo of your fish tank room.
2. Picture of your favorite fish up close.
3. Picture of blue coral

The selection process is supposed to end up with 15 photos to be judged.

The mod team will select up to 15 finalists and a poll will be created and posted in the Reef Discussion Forum.

On many occasions this has not been adhered to. There have been several times that an excess of 15 where selected. Also there are times when less are selected. I understand it says “up to 15”. So less is purely based on votes by the staff.

I think in this case you need to be consistent always pick the same number never more or less.

Mods should not be able submit photos and then be in the vote for selection. This just asks for bias. Also, even if a Mod submits a photo and it makes the final selection it’s going to cause problems. There Mod friends could be playing favorites. These are the things that people see from the outside looking in.

We saw a recent issue where a previous POTM winner, won again but then the award went to the second place. Which is the right thing to do. However it should never have come up. The previous winners photo should never have been selected into the final list.

• Photo must be taken by you and in your tank or in the ocean

Photos should NOT be allowed from anything other than a persons tank. Allowing photos from the open ocean or divers isn’t fair to anyone. This forum is a reef keepers forum, not a diving forum. The pictures posted in a competition should always reflect that.

unfortunately not every topic will "suit" everyone

No, but a subject should not be so exclussive that it narrows submissions to a handful of possible winners. This month for instance is to narrow. We all know people will vote and how they will vote. They pick big, pretty and full of coral.

Competitions need to be fair, open and without bias. Right now, there isn’t any transparency in the photo selection process. What’s going on in the photo selection process is heavily clouded behind the scenes. The competitions need to be more inclusive to invite more photos not less. Bring back the submission threads on a steady basis let people see what photos didn’t make the final selection.

 

[Peace River]

There are a lot of good points here. Thank you for the constructive feedback.

 

[revhtree]

Thank you Ken for your insight and constructive criticism. We will be taking a look at this when more of the team gets back online this week.

 

[AZMSGT]

Thank you Ken for your insight and constructive criticism. We will be taking a look at this when more of the team gets back online this week.

Thank you, I look forward to hearing what you come up with and seeing a post here regarding it. In the mean time I would like to see if other photographers on the forum have input to provide.

 

[revhtree]

Thank you, I look forward to hearing what you come up with and seeing a post here regarding it. In the mean time I would like to see if other photographers on the forum have input to provide.

Absolutely!! Let’s make every aspect of R2R the best it can be!

 

[vetteguy53081]

I’m quoting the above from the September POTM thread so we don’t “derail” that thread.

It’s not negativity, it’s called criticism and people expressing themselves. There are several people that are not happy with the photo competitions. Either you learn to accept other peoples point of view as a positive experience, or you don’t accept it and call it a negative experience. The choice is yours and how you spin it.

First things first..
photo submission threads aren’t getting restored after the winner is announced. Three in particular are missing. I don’t remember the specific titles or month but the basic subject I do remember
1. Photo of your fish tank room.
2. Picture of your favorite fish up close.
3. Picture of blue coral

The selection process is supposed to end up with 15 photos to be judged.

On many occasions this has not been adhered to. There have been several times that an excess of 15 where selected. Also there are times when less are selected. I understand it says “up to 15”. So less is purely based on votes by the staff.

I think in this case you need to be consistent always pick the same number never more or less.

Mods should not be able submit photos and then be in the vote for selection. This just asks for bias. Also, even if a Mod submits a photo and it makes the final selection it’s going to cause problems. There Mod friends could be playing favorites. These are the things that people see from the outside looking in.

We saw a recent issue where a previous POTM winner, won again but then the award went to the second place. Which is the right thing to do. However it should never have come up. The previous winners photo should never have been selected into the final list.


Photos should NOT be allowed from anything other than a persons tank. Allowing photos from the open ocean or divers isn’t fair to anyone. This forum is a reef keepers forum, not a diving forum. The pictures posted in a competition should always reflect that.


No, but a subject should not be so exclussive that it narrows submissions to a handful of possible winners. This month for instance is to narrow. We all know people will vote and how they will vote. They pick big, pretty and full of coral.

Competitions need to be fair, open and without bias. Right now, there isn’t any transparency in the photo selection process. What’s going on in the photo selection process is heavily clouded behind the scenes. The competitions need to be more inclusive to invite more photos not less. Bring back the submission threads on a steady basis let people see what photos didn’t make the final selection.

THANK YOU !!! Glad I kept my mouth shut.
pictures from deep ocean tim-buk-too, or an aquarium in India just makes one feel they’re wasting their time. Enough comment - you made a full valid point

 

[Shep]

No, but a subject should not be so exclussive that it narrows submissions to a handful of possible winners. This month for instance is to narrow. We all know people will vote and how they will vote. They pick big, pretty and full of coral.

So what changes do you want to see exactly? No matter what the topic is, it is likely to restrict some people and people with more mature tanks are just likely to have more subjects that are covered well. Do you have suggestions on topics that would be broad enough to include everyone but still have a well defined subject/theme?

 

[AZMSGT]

So what changes do you want to see exactly? No matter what the topic is, it is likely to restrict some people and people with more mature tanks are just likely to have more subjects that are covered well. Do you have suggestions on topics that would be broad enough to include everyone but still have a well defined subject/theme?

I’ll admit, there is no sure fire includes all subject. However the subjects can allow for more people to participate

Here’s a few just off the top of my head.
Best shot of a frag SPS, Acro, Milly.. etc
Mini colonies, SPS and/or LPS
Best shot of the most generic LPS in your tank.
Clowning with clowns..
Foxy fox face
angelic angels, Pygmy and/or larger types
Gems of the sea.. Anthias
tangs, tangs, tangs
Zoas
Night shots, under black light

 

[Peace River]

Good list! We'll add those to the list for of potential POTM in the future - thank you!

 

[Shep]

I’ll admit, there is no sure fire includes all subject. However the subjects can allow for more people to participate

Here’s a few just off the top of my head.
Best shot of a frag SPS, Acro, Milly.. etc
Mini colonies, SPS and/or LPS
Best shot of the most generic LPS in your tank.
Clowning with clowns..
Foxy fox face
angelic angels, Pygmy and/or larger types
Gems of the sea.. Anthias
tangs, tangs, tangs
Zoas
Night shots, under black light

But the issue is that most of the things you listed are not anymore inclusive than this months topic is, I get trying to include more people but no matter what the topic is, its going to exclude some people. We try and change it up every month so that way if you could't participate one month, you hopefully can the next.

 

[AZMSGT]

But the issue is that most of the things you listed are not anymore inclusive than this months topic is, I get trying to include more people but no matter what the topic is, its going to exclude some people. We try and change it up every month so that way if you could't participate one month, you hopefully can the next.

I never said to include everyone. Those are your words not mine. I see this months topic and issues from a different direction. This months topic is a situation where I and anyone else can predict what the winners FTS will be a tank full of coral. It’s not about limiting submissions, it’s about stacking the deck. You know before submitting an entry that the winner will be a tank filled with corals. That is what makes this months contest frustrating. It’s a situation that anyone with experince in these contests can see how it will go.

The topics I listed are geared to an item that anyone can take a good picture of and participate. The potential winner is much more open to photographic skill.

It would be nice if other people would add there concerns instead of me and the forum moderators going round and round.

 

[WV Reefer]

Also the rules are not being followed on the vote times. The last several months the voting has been stopped early. In one case it was stopped days early. I had to complain last time in order to get the voting restarted.

 

[revhtree]

Also the rules are not being followed on the vote times. The last several months the voting has been stopped early. In one case it was stopped days early. I had to complain last time in order to get the voting restarted.

We will have some more info on all this next week! Thanks for the tips and info so far!

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Hey Ken, so here is a response that I hope is helpful. I've gone point by point to try and address each concern.

First things first..
photo submission threads aren’t getting restored after the winner is announced. Three in particular are missing. I don’t remember the specific titles or month but the basic subject I do remember
1. Photo of your fish tank room.
2. Picture of your favorite fish up close.
3. Picture of blue coral

This is probably just a case of oversight. If we forget to put it back, someone can message one of the staff once the contest voting is done, and we'll be glad to fix this.

The selection process is supposed to end up with 15 photos to be judged.
On many occasions this has not been adhered to. There have been several times that an excess of 15 where selected. Also there are times when less are selected. I understand it says “up to 15”. So less is purely based on votes by the staff.

I think in this case you need to be consistent always pick the same number never more or less.

We actually used to have all entries voted on by the community. However, as the community has grown, we regularly have 45-65 entries and sometimes even more. We felt like this did not give all entries a fair chance at being reviewed and hurt voter participation (this was verified by looking at the number of votes that were happening), and that is why we ultimately decided a long while back to go to 15 finalists.

Occasionally in finalist voting, we end up with a tie between multiple photos for the 15th spot, so what we have decided is that rather than us trying to revote on those finalists, we feel it best to simply give those all of those entries that tied for 15th spot a place in the member voting poll. We do this because we feel it's better for our members to choose than for us as a mod team (giving more power to the community rather than the moderators).

Mods should not be able submit photos and then be in the vote for selection. This just asks for bias. Also, even if a Mod submits a photo and it makes the final selection it’s going to cause problems. There Mod friends could be playing favorites. These are the things that people see from the outside looking in.

Ok, so our mods are volunteers, and we do allow them to participate in any contest that we hold. We do not play favorites with mods. How can we verify that? Simple. Look at how often a mod has actually won photo of the month compared to the number of POTM contests we run. That accusation simply doesn't hold up. Even when voting for finalists, the names of entrants are all removed, so I don't know if I'm voting for a mod photo or not. Ultimately, mods are allowed to participate in the contests same as anyone else and will continue to do so.

We saw a recent issue where a previous POTM winner, won again but then the award went to the second place. Which is the right thing to do. However it should never have come up. The previous winners photo should never have been selected into the final list.

We actually have a rule that addresses this. Previous winners are allowed to participate, but they cannot be awarded the prize again for the contest for the time specified in the rules.

Photos should NOT be allowed from anything other than a persons tank. Allowing photos from the open ocean or divers isn’t fair to anyone. This forum is a reef keepers forum, not a diving forum. The pictures posted in a competition should always reflect that.

This is something that may warrant further discussion, but it is something we've always allowed. The idea behind it was that this is a photo contest rather than a tank keeping contest, so people have been allowed to use photos they took while diving. Ultimately, the idea has been to allow for as many great photos to be shared as possible (as long as they were taken by the person entering the contest. If the community as a whole doesn't like this, I don't see why we can't revise it, but we'd probably want to hold a poll to ask the community to decide on it. I do want to add that photos from ocean dives don't always beat out tank photos as evidenced by the number of times we've had photos from the ocean entered only to be beaten by photos from someone's tank.

No, but a subject should not be so exclusive that it narrows submissions to a handful of possible winners. This month for instance is to narrow. We all know people will vote and how they will vote. They pick big, pretty and full of coral.

This might be true if we had a photo of a super rare fish (like maybe a Dr. Seuss fish or a peppermint angel). However, a FTS photo is something pretty much every reefer has. In fact, I'd say this category is less exclusive than say "acans," "clams," "NPS," or some of the ones you named above since not all reefers keep these things in their tanks (btw, I do really like the ideas you submitted above and I think we should incorporate some of those into schedule for the contest). However, it doesn't make sense to overly restrict the types of categories that can be used. This is a fun monthly contest, and it's something we hope to continue to keep fun for forum members and if someone doesn't have a submission one month, hopefully they will the next month.

Competitions need to be fair, open and without bias. Right now, there isn’t any transparency in the photo selection process. What’s going on in the photo selection process is heavily clouded behind the scenes. The competitions need to be more inclusive to invite more photos not less. Bring back the submission threads on a steady basis let people see what photos didn’t make the final selection.

And the contests ARE fair, open, and without bias. The photo selection process is pretty clear. Each member may submit an entry. Those entries are all given to the mod team to vote on. The mod team votes on the entries to narrow the selection to 15 finalists (with the caveat of what was mentioned above). Once the finalists are selected, the vote for the winner is taken back to the community.

I hope this explanation is helpful.

 

[maroun.c]

@AZMSGT Apologies for the late reply, was off the forum lately and missed this thread till now. maybe a tag would have helped me notice your post as your addressing me and as I'm the one running the POTM.
Hope below answers all your questions.

It’s not negativity, it’s called criticism and people expressing themselves. There are several people that are not happy with the photo competitions. Either you learn to accept other peoples point of view as a positive experience, or you don’t accept it and call it a negative experience. The choice is yours and how you spin it.

If you go back to my comment it goes "I'm seeing a lot of critiques of the topic". Critique=Criticism, I didn't mention negativity. I realize and understand constructive criticism when I see one and the way this was posted and multiple posts by different people did derail the POTM on its first page. yet we have a fair share of quality submissions and voting thread which will start shortly will show it.

First things first..
photo submission threads aren’t getting restored after the winner is announced. Three in particular are missing. I don’t remember the specific titles or month but the basic subject I do remember
1. Photo of your fish tank room.
2. Picture of your favorite fish up close.
3. Picture of blue coral

So we forgot to restore a couple threads, a simple PM and we would just copy them back. it is the rule that the threads have to be moved out during vote so its more anonymous. Don't see any conspiracy theory here.

The selection process is supposed to end up with 15 photos to be judged.
On many occasions this has not been adhered to. There have been several times that an excess of 15 where selected. Also there are times when less are selected. I understand it says “up to 15”. So less is purely based on votes by the staff.

I think in this case you need to be consistent always pick the same number never more or less.

Not always possible due to Ties in mods voting for the finalists. revotes would take days and delay the thread. most of the time we take more pics than less so no one is affected negatively. in the worse case scenario a few pics with less votes (less chance to win in public vote ) are included is that a big deal. Did you ever see a non deserving shot win?

Mods should not be able submit photos and then be in the vote for selection. This just asks for bias. Also, even if a Mod submits a photo and it makes the final selection it’s going to cause problems. There Mod friends could be playing favorites. These are the things that people see from the outside looking in.

Says who? this is only your opinion, it might be a suggestion but coming out with a statement that "MODS should not be able to submit photos" is kind of taking your opinion for the norm. Many photography forums, other reefing forums do allow mods to submit pics in competitions.
can you remind me when was the last time a Mod won???
wouldn't members be able to team up as well? should we not allow members to submit as well?
Reason we move the thread out of sight while vote is ongoing, and that we don't allow watermarks is to avoid that.
POTM is meant to be a fun contest and there are no conspiracies in the background.
It would feel awkward if I ever won a POTM as I run the POTM but trust me I'd give up the prize to the second runner up if it happened.

We saw a recent issue where a previous POTM winner, won again but then the award went to the second place. Which is the right thing to do. However it should never have come up. The previous winners photo should never have been selected into the final list.

So what? POTM is all about having great pics posted, discussed and seen. not allowing good pictures in the competition simply cause owner has won in the last 6 months takes a way from the quality of the submissions and decreases participation. a person wins a second time, he gets recognized for it, yet prize goes to runner up. Why is that such a big deal?

Photos should NOT be allowed from anything other than a persons tank. Allowing photos from the open ocean or divers isn’t fair to anyone. This forum is a reef keepers forum, not a diving forum. The pictures posted in a competition should always reflect that.

I might agree with this one, yet what is the percentage of ocean pictures that won? again more than happy to discuss with the team and change the rule if needed. again Encourage you to post your suggestions as suggestion and not as "Should NOT be allowed" as that is only your opinion.
a simple PM with those concerns would have led to a more constructive discussion than posting your opinions as rules.

No, but a subject should not be so exclussive that it narrows submissions to a handful of possible winners. This month for instance is to narrow. We all know people will vote and how they will vote. They pick big, pretty and full of coral.

Seriously? Full tank under blue light is an exclusive topic. FTS is by far the most topic everyone wants to win. yes it reflects nice tanks full of corals (not necessarily big but so what if big) isn't that what the majority wants? I see current months topic (blasto) As a more narrow topic as not all reefers have a blasto in their tank.

Competitions need to be fair, open and without bias. Right now, there isn’t any transparency in the photo selection process. What’s going on in the photo selection process is heavily clouded behind the scenes. The competitions need to be more inclusive to invite more photos not less. Bring back the submission threads on a steady basis let people see what photos didn’t make the final selection.

I do not accept your accusation of competition being not fair or biased or not transparent.
I'll challenge you to show me any months POTM where a deserving shot didn't make it to the 15 finalists submissions. what happens after is members vote and that is a public vote ie you can see who voted for each picture. I always return the threads after vote is done. I might have forgotten one ill check and restore it. Trust me if any member with a deserving shot doesn't make it in the finalists they would have been vocal around it. Ever saw that ? Go and check all the potm submissions and tell me what picture deserved to make it to the finalists and didn't and we can discuss it.

Here’s a few just off the top of my head.
Best shot of a frag SPS, Acro, Milly.. etc
Mini colonies, SPS and/or LPS
Best shot of the most generic LPS in your tank.
Clowning with clowns..
Foxy fox face
angelic angels, Pygmy and/or larger types
Gems of the sea.. Anthias
tangs, tangs, tangs
Zoas
Night shots, under black light

a simple PM with those suggestions would have helped, we welcome all those suggestions and try to accommodate. Remind me when did u pm or post those ideas and they weren't welcomed or accommodated?

Also the rules are not being followed on the vote times. The last several months the voting has been stopped early. In one case it was stopped days early. I had to complain last time in order to get the voting restarted.

Also the rules are not being followed on the vote times. The last several months the voting has been stopped early. In one case it was stopped days early. I had to complain last time in order to get the voting restarted.

My Bad, I live in a 9-11 hours different time zone and am on travel to different time zones all the time. Forum timing doesn't show it when I set the time limit on the poll to be automatically closed and there was one time where I made a mistake of choosing 30th instead of 31st of the month but that was quickly rectified and we even gave 4 more days for people to vote.

@AZMSGT
I'm always open for a constructive criticism, or for an honest discussion when you think it adds value. Yet coming out and stating your opinion as the rule and accusing the mods and me of running a non transparent competition without any proofs or examples is simply drama.
I challenge you again to find a single POTM where a deserving shot didn't make it through to the finalist votes (there its the members who do chose and you can see who voted for each pic again)
POTM is a competition meant to be fun, full of nice pictures and opening the room for photographic discussion. turning it into a conspiracy theory just because it has a prize behind it, is unacceptable. Forum owner, mods team and myself have years of exposure on forums and dragging us that low is simply not acceptable and very disappointing.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

@maroun.c ,

@AZMSGT suggested some great ideas in order to establish a fairer and unbiased competition. You basically dismissed them one by one and implied that because his opinion differed from yours (or the established rules) it's not going to be weighted accordingly.

Your suggestion to take it behind the scenes via PM advocates his point of secrecy. What's wrong with having the discussion openly? Why can't participants have buy in?

It's clear that AZMSGT has offended you but that doesn't mean it should detract from the points he made. The idea of transparency seemed to be the theme of his complaint. What you have established as the norm doesn't appear to be fair to him. I get the quote, "I've been doing this a long time, and there's no reason to change it" but there seems to be reason. Trust me when I say that he's not the only one that feels this way, it's just that others don't care enough to put forth the effort.

And to add my impression, is that I see quite a few mods with the POTM badge which suggest to me that it is valued amongst the guys behind the scenes, and when voting is done behind closed doors the perception seems to yield suspicion that mods favor photos from other mods. Could be completely wrong, but you have to admit that it doesn't seem right. Step out of your bubble and try to see this from his perspective.

Honestly, his intentions are pure and only wanted to make R2R better, but the status quo got in his way... and for that we will keep as we always have.

 

[AZMSGT]

Any time a person is a judge of a final selection and also a participant in the contest it opens the contest to speculation of corruption. By entering and judging you remove any perceived impartiality.

I challenge you again to find a single POTM where a deserving shot didn't make it through to the finalist votes

Of missing contests, they are the ones I entered. In each case none of my photos made it to the final 15. I find it suspicious that those contests I entered are the ones not restored. 3 contests entered, 3 not restored.. proof of my suspicions.

The PM system failing is why I brought these issues out to the open. I brought these issues up to others and they were pushed aside.

Yes, this is an aquarium website.. the pictures SHOULD be from aquariums. If this were a scuba site then by all means have pictures from people diving. It’s logical.

You want to make this about me vs the Mods.. well... it is. What you guys are doing is wrong. You can’t judge and compete in what you‘re judging, it’s unethical.

 

[kschweer]

If it was rigged where’s my photo I entered? Or do the rest of the mods just not like me? If it makes anyone feel better I won’t enter a contest anymore. I’ll just keep volunteering my time to be called out for trying to cheat to win a small prize.

 

[AZMSGT]

If it was rigged where’s my photo I entered? Or do the rest of the mods just not like me? If it makes anyone feel better I won’t enter a contest anymore. I’ll just keep volunteering my time to be called out for trying to cheat to win a small prize.

Funny, how you play this card when your picture is #12 in this months contest. If I'm wrong, I appologize. But I recall you did a split tank shot like that.

CONTEST - Sep 2020 POTM, Voting Poll

The subject for Sep POTM contest was FTS under actinics. It is now Time to chose the winner! The poll allows multiple choices so choose the ones you like from the numbered entries below. The voting thread will closed oct 24th at 11:59 pm EST. As always, we thank Avast Marine for sponsoring...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[kschweer]

Funny, how you play this card when your picture is #12 in this months contest. If I'm wrong, I appologize. But I recall you did a split tank shot like that.

CONTEST - Sep 2020 POTM, Voting Poll

The subject for Sep POTM contest was FTS under actinics. It is now Time to chose the winner! The poll allows multiple choices so choose the ones you like from the numbered entries below. The voting thread will closed oct 24th at 11:59 pm EST. As always, we thank Avast Marine for sponsoring...

www.reef2reef.com

Not my picture.