Hi! In my past post I had already posted a message towards a new voting method about asking people who vote to use a scale for all candidates! Thus we, as artists, get invaluable structured feedback from our peers and get to know how they view our art! The other thing, which has been on my mind, is, who should vote? Well, I guess we all know that all it takes is an e-mail id to get a new user-id here! This has been an issue of discussion between me and, a few of my friends, here in renderosity! I remember, during the contest for both Bryce5 as well as New Beginning, I had thought there were a number of good and interesting entries which didnt make it to the last 10 or 15 due to lack of vote and not so interesting ones which did! I guess there are quite a few who have number of ids in renderosity! Well Im not judging them and in case the system allows, I guess people will use loopholes. But as the main intent of the challenge is to get input from our peers, I was wondering if a voting qualifier be in place. I.e. only people with galleries here in renderosity votes! (Its a bit more difficult to set up a gallery then an e-mail account!) That way we truly know that its our peers giving us their opinions not a Troll! All those who feel that they would like to vote, but don't have a gallery, might contact the moderator for validation (guess all we are looking for is not be voted out by trolls!) What do you all think about it?

I know you're trying to do a good thing here so please don't take this as a flame, but... Well, I've not been part of Renderosity for very long and haven't had the time to set up a gallery yet. Because of my time commitments, it's going to be a while before I can make some work to put in my gallery. I don't feel that I need any validation from the mods just because I have no gallery. If this ends up as another 'jump through even more hoops just to be a r'osity member' idea, then I'm one step closer to the exit. I haven't the time or patience to remember which dance steps I'm supposed to perform in which forum. Besides, people with galleries troll, double-vote, set up clone accounts etc. Your impulse is admirable but I don't think the idea works.

I've posted a reply to this at the challenge-message. If you haven't had a look at it yet you might want to do so.

Can the mods check the IP addresses of the voter? I don't know if this BB supports IP logging, but that would help eliminate double votes by the same person. As for rankings, a 1-10 rating simply won't work. Just check out the what's new gallery. A piece either gets a 7+ or no rating at all. I, for example, have seen a ton of garbage passed off as art, but it's better not to say anything than say what I truly think of it. Even if I offered constructive criticism, there is some stuff out there that is so bad it would still be too harsh to the author. For good, honest feedback your best bet is to start a thread, in this forum or another, and just ask people what they think. Eventually, you'll get a feel for who can help you more in depth and who just says, "cool, man." I do think that it's interesting how so many people don't comment on bad stuff, especially considering how many trolls there are out there. I'd expect more flame wars to be honest.

I understand perfeclty your doubt but I thnk that your idea for allowing vote is not good. I have a friend who doesn't make any image but likes computer graphic and has a log to renderosity. Also there is another question: sometimes who has a lot of friend recieves a lot of votes. What can we do? the only possibility, I think, is to trust in our fellow members and accept the "popular" sentence. Taste is taste... and at least, theese are only challenge for ouselves they are not essential for our life or for our careers.

Well, logging IP adresses wouldnt help much. Double voters can easily log on with another username from work, from a friend etc, and get a different IP. Humorix already suggested the best way of dealing with trolls. But i understand Cambert as well. Setting up a gallery takes some time, especially if one has work, family, kids etc. However, i still think that a validation is necessary.

Oh, I posted my suggestion in the other thread. I think it's a good one, so you might want to take a look at it. And, as long as I've got a soapbox, it's just this kind of question (problems about the voting) that discourages me from even wanting to enter in the first place. Besides, I forgot there was a theme involved, and I doubt I'll have time to chug out a brand-new image anyway.

I think the Bryce Challenge ought to take a lesson from the PSP Forum and just be a challenge, NOT a voting contest. The challenge ought to be just that - a challenge that stretches your imagination in order for you to learn the various aspects of the programme. Then, forget the vote for which one is best. Put the completed challenges on a page, or keep them in one thread were all can enjoy them.

It's not like we're voting for president here. Let the cheaters cheat. The only thing that happens is that they cheapen the award to the point it's meaningless. Ultimately, the award doesn't mean anything anyway, because as said, art is a very personal thing. The viewer will either like or dislike an image regardless of how many or what type of banners are on the page next to it.

Ooooooops! I seemed to have opened the veritable Pandora's box about the voting procedures! Well now, on second thoughts, I agree that we needn't police our own community would bring its own set of problems! Also somehow I realize that all this suggestions seem to be making this an "exclusive" contest. Which wasn't the idea at all! The basic premise of the challenge is to challenge oneself to go further as against run a race!!! If that was the premise I guess everything about voting procedure is redundant! I quite like Shin's idea about following the PS forum. It also seems that, some of us are afraid to join 'cos this challenge might be too complicated!!! :-( Well that wasn't the idea at all! I was thinking of creating a peers group whereby we HELP each other out and try and maximise Bryce's potential! My apologies for posting the bit on voting procedures! I was more concerned about our community, and didn't want it to be hijacked by selfish intentions. But this idea about voting seems to have struck at the very spirit of peer interaction as against filter the interaction. To be honest the interaction with you guys by far outweighs coming first, second or whatever! Anyway, my race is always with myself!!! I'm glad though this topic allowed us to do some rethink on what we want our challenge to be! Yet being judged by a peers group and being scored by them lay the basic principles of excellence (case in point: The Oscars)! The challenge might now be small, but it might grow over a period of time! So how can we create a mechanism yet foster a feeling of camaraderie between ourselves?

The last thing I had in mind when I posted thoee messages was to make this challenge, exclusive in any which way! Yet I feel that with a theme, we stretch ourselves a little bit more. However some have expressed doubt about working within a theme. Now is there a way we can form a help group such that anybody with not necessary a lot of experience can also participate in the Bryce challenge and help improve him/herself? I'm ready to volunteer for any such help group and I'm sure that there are quite a few of us who would be along to help out others to maximise their skills in a challenge?

I don't think that there has been a problem in the past on voting in the challenges. There may be problems in the contests, etc., but I haven't seen that in this forum. You can see who everyone votes for, even if you just lurk a lot (like me), or just not active everyday, the name is recognizable. I don't like the idea of restricting the voting to just the participants. Sometimes I just don't have the time to enter but I don't want to be prohibited from voting. I like the theme idea, it's always interesting to see the different things each of us comes up with. My .02

HA HA!! This is more than you'll probably see me type in awhile!

Arleen

Hi Arleen - Your .02 always counts for at least .04 in my book! Just to clarify. I really like the idea of a theme; in fact, I prefer it. I only meant that I'm short of time these days and probably won't be able to come up with something to fit a theme this time around.

About votes: I had suggested a scoring system in a previous post which I'll re-iterate here: 25% for interpretation of idea/theme/concept, 35% for aesthetic appeal (color, composition, balance etc) and 40% for thechnical abilities. That way not only do we get some idea about how people view our works but also how we fare vis-a-vis others asgainst a simple "I vote for..." as well as a structured feedback :-) About time: Well this challenge is in all probability to become a May challenge, so that should give us pleanty time to stretch ourselves. :-)

1. I do like the idea of a theme. It helps those of us who are creativly challenged come up with a good idea(I came up with one for the challenge humorix posted about a wekk ago or so). 2)I like the current method of voting. Adding another level of complexity would really mess things up. I mean, think of our poor moderators! Someone mentioned above that the challenges were more to challenge oneself, rather than everyone else, and I agree, there is no sense, for example, me to try and challenge...I dunno....AgentSmith, because I simply don't have the skills, but as a challenge to myself, where I can look forward to some feedback(positive and negative) I can find some inspiration to put some effort into my work. 3) summary: themes are good, more complicated voting system is bad. my two cents.

Wow....heavy reading guys, and we mod's appreciate it a lot. Yes, in the end we cannot ban people from voting just because they do not have any pics in their gallery. There are a handful of reasons for this. The least of which is, I myself was a member for nine months before I felt I was good enough to post anything to my gallery, I am sure there are others like that. ISP tracking will not be used for the forum challenges at this time. I like the idea of voting differently, as in the 25%, 35%, 40% aspect. But would that apply to the actual vote or just for critique? I'll have to talk to you (humorix) about that one. Thank you all for your discussions/input! AgentSmith

over in the Rhino forum... we have two "catagories" advanced and new user; it is generally left to the artist to decide WHEN they are ready to move from new to advanced. The general rule of thumb is "you win 2 challenges" then you are ready to move into the advanced level. So how about something like that, an advanced user and the newbie using the same challenge, but different catagories ? I know it isn't "winning" that it the jest of the challenges, it is pushing your abilities to the max, but it balances the playing field by being judged against someone with the "same" level of talent. I am very much a newbie to Bryce and Rhino .. trying to learn both at once ... my poor little brain can't handle it ...LOL regards, bob

I think some people are taking this all too seriously. We'll be having butterfly ballots next. Really, the current system works just fine; let's leave it. It's only for fun after all.

And chads. Don't forget chads - LOL!

Oh...the chads.... Good idea on the two catagory system, but there are usually not enough entries to sufficiently fill BOTH catagories and still make it an interesting challenge. For right now, just one catagory. FOOTNOTE - Have been forgetting to mention that this forum will be setting up an area (The Bryce Backroom) to store future monthly challenges, so they can be viewed anytime later. It will include all entries, not just the winner. Setting this up will take some time, and it seems to be up to me to figure it out, lol, so...be merciful. I want to have it up to store this next challenge.

So, AgentSmith, are we going to use the nifty format that Spike offered us? With my lousy internet connection, I really REALLY like that approach.

New Format - I can understand that, but I doubt I will have it up for the start of May's Challenge. I will strive to have it up for the voting part of the challenge later next month. I have had to hit the ground running as a moderator for the Bryce Forum, and I am playing catch-up. I WANT it up asap, but it will just take some time, like I said, be merciful. But, for right now, I am going to instate format rules for entries to lower the actual total size of the thread that will hold the entries for voting. Basically, a dimension maximum of 800x600, saved at a maximum of 90%. This will save on total file size and make it a bit more fair visually; i.e. a 400x400 entry vs. a 1280x1024 entry. Last challenge, the total amount of pics added up to 2Mb. This would have been a MAJOR pain/impossible for most people to have loaded that whole thread, so they could see all the pics, so they could vote. So...I did something, that maybe I shouldn't have, but I wasn't a Mod yet, so hopefully I can't be held accountable...lol. Before I uploaded all the pics for voting I made sure the .jpgs saved at 100% quality, were re-saved at 90%. I am pretty good at doing this, and made sure no pic suffered visually. Anyway...the total size of entries when down to 1Mb. If I hadn't done that, not as many people might have voted. Uhm...forgive me? I'll produce those new rules for dimensions and compression quality, so it will not be a issue in the future. AgentSmith

LOL. I certainly never noticed any difference in my image, so there you are. Besides, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that it was easier to load the thread at 1 meg than it would have been at 2. As it was, approx the bottom half of entries showed for me as broken links. So I simply right-clicked on 'em one at a time, and they opened just fine. Hey, I didn't win Penguinisto's crappy internet connection contest for nuttin!