With the recent hastag challenge survey in mind, I find the way you publicize and promote contests confusing. You have a Contests page ( https://www.renderosity.com/contests  ), a Contest Announcements forum ( https://www.renderosity.com/forums/12369/contest-announcements ), and a Challenge Arena thread ( https://www.renderosity.com/forums/12372/challenge-arena ).

To me a contest and a challenge, both things where you upload a picture for a chance of winning a prize, are more or less the same thing.

But you also open threads for new contests in the Community Centre forum 

(sorry, using my idiotphone and accidentaly posted before I'd finished)

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Having multiple threads in different forums to announce a contest can cause confusion when people start posting replies - that's why forum admins merge duplicate threads isn't it ?

And rather than two separate forums why not a single "Contests and Challenges" forum, with threads for open contests being pinned?

Also, rather than having to dig down into Community/Forums or Community/Contests why.not have a direct link to a main Contests+Challenges page from the site homepage and from the main site menu ? A button with a trophy icon would be cute

Contests are done in the contest modules. They are very formal, and strict on the rules. It takes me a considerable amount of time to build an official contest - usually a month or more to do all the artwork, coordination, advertising, rules, and wrestling a budget for prizes from the Renderosity Dragon that guards our treasure hoard.

Challenges, on the other hand, are done in the forums. They are less formal, and less strict on the rules. They don't require nearly as much time to create, can be impromptu, and though there are semi-formal challenges created by Renderosity and Moderated by Renderosity in the Challenge Forum, they can be created in any forum by any member, and moderated by the member creating the challenge. We get occasional challenges of this nature throughout the year. The only time the Mods would interfere is if a TOS occurs.

If you want to create a challenge, you can even notify a Mod for assistance in pinning your challenge to the top of the forum, or removing inappropriate comments.

To make a long story short, they are two different beasts.

The only exception to the ease of doing a Challenge would be when I put a mega-challenge in place, like the Summer Carnival. That beast took two months to prepare and wrestle to the ground. Trivia fact: When I was creating the backdrop for the marble counting game, well... I'm no engineer and the bricks collapsed, crushing the original jars. I'm still finding marbles on the back porch.

P.S. We can't merge threads, we can only move threads. Every thread has a unique id. This thread is 2990486. Merging a thread would be a nightmare, it would mess up the perma-link (used for the newsletter and advertising), and create a bunch of broken links. This happens when we copy-paste a thread instead of moving it.

P.S.S. On the flip side of all that, yes, we need to be more careful with contest announcement announcements - those are often our weak point when something changes and I can't find all the announcements to make the change. The reason there are often so many announcements is that people turn off all the forums they aren't interested in, and never see any announcement, and then later ask me why I didn't announce the contest or challenge. Which means, I have to post the announcement all over the place to reach everyone.

It's a big beast to wrestle with.

(continuation of first post)

Having multiple threads in different forums to announce a contest can cause confusion when people start posting replies - that's why forum admins merge duplicate threads isn't it ?

And rather than two separate forums why not a single "Contests and Challenges" forum, with threads for open contests being pinned?

Also, rather than having to dig down into Community/Forums or Community/Contests why.not have a direct link to a main Contests+Challenges page from the site homepage and from the main site menu ? A button with a trophy icon would be cute

Thank you for that feedback. I agree that we can do a better job at communicating and publicizing contests and challenges. I like your idea about  a main page for contests and challenges. I will get with our developers on  a link. In 2025, we plan to introduce some hashtag challenges that will take place in the galleries. The use of hashtags (#) will help tie the entries together, making it easier for members to find and explore them. This approach will also hopefully encourage more engagement by driving members to view, comment on, and participate in the challenges, creating a more vibrant and interactive community experience. 

Point taken about the Contest/Challenge difference on the admin side.

I recently clicked on links for a specific contest from both a thread and a newsletter and both took me to the "Oops no open contests" page - I know other people have done this too. A link from here to the Challenge Arena (or if you take up my suggestion the Contests AndChallenges) thread with the text "But tere may be other challenges open" may be a good idea

I agree, it's a good idea. I'll put it on the list for the developer to look at.