. anyway i've found it . could we make this post of larry a sticky for those people like me who's new in dvx contests. cheers :beer:Larry R said:The original idea was to allow full res images to be provided, but to scale them down for easy viewing within the context of the page. For those who haven't discovered it yet, clicking the image on the page will pop up the full res version of the image. For those who are asking for predetermined size constraints, what is the reasoning behind it? Why not allow for the larger version to be accessible? It is certainly possible to make the initial display larger, but we have to make sure it is viewable by the majority of viewers who might come by to view/vote.
Regarding the voting ... the system we are using is the same one we use for the DVXFest Film Festival. Each image is rated on its own, not ranked amongst the other images. Take each image on its own ... view it and decide where that image falls, in your estimation, on a scale of 1 to 10. You represent your choice by selecting the equivalent number of stars. The moment you click the representative star it is instantly recorded, but until voting closes you are free to change the vote.
The idea is not to rank the photos, do not give one image 6 stars because it is slightly better than an image you gave 5 stars. Rate each film on its own. We then total the votes entered by all users and calculate the average vote and rank the photos based on that average.
The advantage of this system is it prevents people from swaying the results by giving 1s or 10s. There are people who will give their own, or their favorite, photo a 10 and give the others all a 1, thinking that they are pulling down the other images and boosting their own. But because it is an average it doesn't have significant impact. The average actually tells us what the overall consensus of the image is. You might only give it a 1, but if it really is a 6 then the bulk of votes will be between 4 and 7, thus giving an accurate representation of the voters.
The other advantage of this system is that as long as at least 5 people vote honestly for each entry it doesn't matter if everyone votes for every entry or not. One entry may get 50 votes and another only get 10, but because it is an average of the total votes for that entry the result comes out the same.
When we initially devised this system we ran a tremendous amount of theoretical numbers through the system and proved this to be the case. Then during the recent TimeFest Film Festival we watched the system in action and saw that this was truly how the system worked. There were people who tried to sway the outcome by giving 1s and 10s, yet they had no significant impact on the total average, and definitely didn't push the entry up or down a single position.
The only way to sway the system is to get all voters to agree to under vote, or over vote, but unless the majority go along with you it won't have an impact.
This means that even if you vote 10 for your own entry it doesn't really have an impact. Some people have argued that you should give yourself a 10 to counteract every one else giving themself a 10, but as I've explained it has no significant impact anyway.
There is also the argument that you should give yourself a 10 because if you were running for president wouldn't you vote for yourself? This argument doesn't work. That is a count of votes only, so of course you include yourself because you, as a competitor, definitely want to win. But in this case the entries are being ranked, not just providing a vote count in favor of one over another. We don't pick a single entry and ignore the rest. So there really is no reason to vote for your own entry and really isn't a realistic representation because most people can't be objective about their own entry ... and if you give your self a 10 then you aren't being honest (unless you are Ansel Adams
So for those of you who voted for yourself but now wish you hadn't, don't worry it won't significantly impact the system. If you didn't vote for yourself, again it won't have a significant impact.
Going forward we will change the system so when you see your entry come up in the voting it won't have an option to vote for it, but the remaining entries will have the stars.
Hope this clears things up.
Larry
1 Fly The Friendly by deedive:
