A possible new contest tool: Poll Unit

As some of you might know I have been very unhappy with the contest situation for years. There just seems to be no software that's working the way I need it to work. So doing these contests is no fun for me... I love the pictures, but I hate the process.

But now it looks like I will earn some extra money thanks to the TikTok trend and I want to use it to improve the SP-Studio contests. So I think about paying to test this promising tool:

It looks like this is exactly what we need:

• Like the current voting tool it can be embedded in the website. But I think it will look way better.
• Everybody can upload their image files directly. At the moment I get them by e-mail which is much extra work... especially with 90+ pictures.
• There are different ways to vote: Likes, Star ratings, even a point system (like in the ESC).
• Comments will be possible for each picture!
• I can specify the size of the picture upload, so less random images will be uploaded which do not fit the SP-Studio size.
• The sorting of the photos can be randomized. With big contests this will be fairer.
• The approval system looks promising.
• Atuomatic start / end of submission phase and voting phase. The vote will never start late again!

Sounds good, right? I will try it and hope there are no hidden problems!

Is there anything you want to change with how the contests work? I think I will stay with the likes instead of the star ratings because they are easier to use... more intuitive and voting takes less time. But I am not sure yet. I will allow comments though, as long as there is not too much spamming.

I think I will use it for the March contest voting and then test uploading with the April contest.

Oh, you were never supposed to decide for only one picture. You can like as many pictures as you want in the contests. And in the end the winner is the one with the most collected likes. That's how it worked here during the past years. I vote for about 5 or 6 pictures in every contest. Usually every picture I would like to see in the top 5.

These are the different voting methods the new tool is offering (there are more, but the others aren't useful for picture contests):

• Yes / No: Voting with Yes, No and abstain. Negative votes are subtracted from positive votes.
• Yes: Simple upvoting. Only positive votes are counted.
• Upvote with like button: Simple voting by liking with thumb up symbol.
• Upvote with hearts: Simple voting with heart symbol.
• Range voting: Participants can rate options with points from a given interval.
• Star rating: Users can rate options with 0-5 stars.
• Dot-Voting: Dot Voting is a method to evaluate ideas and to prioritize selections and decisions in a group. And this is how it works: Each participant receives a fixed number of points. Each participant distributes his points to the options. The option with the most points wins.

Of course Yes / like / heart are very similar, except for the look. And range / stars as well.

I don't like negative downvotes and would avoid the "no button" in the contests.

Dot Voting is a very good method if you play fair, because you can decide yourself if you wan to give all your points to one picture or to many. So you could give your personal 1st place 3 points, your 2nd favourite picture 2 points and the 3rd one 1 point. But it is not very intuitive... and it sounds risky if somebody cheats by telling their friends to vote for them. Everybody who only votes for one pictures has too much power here.

A better confirmation should be no problem.

I have most of them saved on my computer, but it was too much work to upload them on the website. At least if I wanted to add all the names and titles.

In the future it might be possible though to see all pictures, because I could link to them, even after the contest ended.

If somebody wants to create an archive of course I would support them by providing the old files and information as good as I can. It's just not something I find the time for.

Another thought to discuss:

Do you think there should be a limit of maybe 40 or 50 pictures per contest?

If there were more I (or a small team of experienced volunteers) could sort out the more "boring" attemps before the actual voting starts. I mean... some are clearly less creative as others and don't have a chance for the top5. And sometimes we have multiple variations of the same character where it's easy to select one or two favourites.

The reason I ask about this is that for the voters it takes a lot of time now to look through over 80 pictures in the current contest. We did not have this problem before, but I notice it now. Maybe more would vote - and would vote more concentrated - if the amount of images wasn't so intimidating?

Or do you think it's better that everybody who submits a picture is part of the vote? Less people will be disappointed then.

That's the problem, yes... maybe it's not a good idea. The contests are for fun and I guess being part of the vote is part of the fun.

If they get disqualified I often try to send an e-mail where I explain how the picture did not fit the rules. If an e-mail address is provided.

If the numbers rise I could indeed create a private "jury" forum here, with access for trustworthy contest winners of the past. During the submission phase I could upload screenshots of the pictures there which they can discuss. I guess this would be an easy way to solve it.

Well... let's wait a bit how the numbers look next month.