Please Consider Being an IOW Judge.....

[hmca]

Once again I'm asking for volunteers to judge the weekly submissions for Image of the Week. We have a committed group of members who have taken on this responsibility and share their picks with you each week.

Art is subjective.  Each judge brings their unique perspective to our members when they post their chosen images.  There are no "right" or "wrong" choices.......only those that have caught the attention of the judge for a given week.

It would be wonderful if some new people would step up and join this group.

It doesn't take a lot of time and I am always willing to schedule around dates that you wouldn't be available.

There is a private board, only visible to judges, with suggestions for selecting and creating the final IOW post.

The new schedule will begin April 9th. Please consider helping our forum by joining the judges' team.

You can add you name below and post any questions you might have.

Thank you!

[Deleted]

Helen, please count me in again!

[blackmutt]

Me too!

[hmca]

Thanks Simone and Judy....now if we could only add some new judges to our team.

[Bailey]

hmca said:

...
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You can add you name below and post any questions you might have.
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Since this thread is 5 days old now (it's 20 March in Melbourne Australia) and members are not exactly jumping at the opportunity to become new IOW judges (0 at the time of this post), I am thinking there must be a message (at least subliminal) in that.  I'm not sure what it is though .

Regardless, I am trying to brainstorm a solution to try to stimulate some interest in IOW judging and have come up with this idea.

Instead of having a designated IOW judge each week, why not consider allowing any member  to select and post about their favourite gallery image from the last 7 days.  The 7 days could be fixed from Mon - Sun or even be a rolling 7 days period.

The recent IOW poll vote clearly showed that in a given week members will choose different images as their IOW, depending on their tastes, likes and dislikes.  Allowing all members to post about their personally chosen IOW and stating their reasons will provide a wider perspective of views about various images and image types. 

For example, in a given week if you asked all the current IOW judges to choose their IOW for that week, I am positive you will get multiple #1 choices.  So why not offer the opportunity to all members to express their view of IOW and give their reasons?  From the posted reasons, members might also even learn some new things about image creation and/or processing.  Given that the IOW is not a weekly competition, but an opportunity for the designated IOW (under the current system) to post about their opinion about which image is IOW and give their reasons, allowing all members to choose and post their chosen IOW, if they wish to, can be only a good thing imo.

As I mentioned at the start, I am just brainstorming here trying to provide food for thought and haven't thought too much about the finer details on how this could work, but I am sure it can if this is the path IOW judging follows.

If you are reading this last sentence, thank you for your patience and consideration

[hmca]

Thanks for your suggestion, Bailey. I will take it up with the other admins. and report back when I have heard from all of them.

[Bailey]

Thank you for looking into this hmca

One way this could work would be that an admin person start a new weekly IOW thread like normally and post thumbnails of the gallery posts (Clicking a thumbnail would display an enlargement) from the previous week.  All members could then be invited to choose their IOW from the thumbnails, or maybe 2-3 IOWs maximum, and post their reasons behind their choices.

This way no-one is under any pressure to choose an image if for some reason no image for that week stands out saying "Pick me!! Pick Me!!" and everyone is free to post their choice and reasons at their leisure when an image they would like to highlight presents itself.  I think something along this line would be an interesting thing to at least try.

[hmca]

Bailey

I originally thought your idea was a good one and well stated. However, some of our admins were concerned that you seem to have a fault-finding attitude that we don’t want to promote on this forum. I disagreed, and thought your intentions were good and your idea was worth trying . My thought was to have a “member’s choice” week interspersed with the one judge/poll weeks in the next schedule. But then I saw your post in the IOW post by Alex.

I am not sure why you found it necessary to point out what you had discovered about Dr. Joe’s image…….he was not trying to deceive anyone and Alex was commenting on how he saw the image….which only attests to what a good job Dr. Joe did.

Shortly thereafter I saw your post here.

Why was it so important to question the Weekly Challenge?


It leaves me wondering what your real intentions are here?

[Bailey]

Hi again hmca,

thank you for taking the time to look into this.

Regarding your comment

hmca said:

....However, some of our admins were concerned that you seem to have a fault-finding attitude....

that is very interesting because it is contrary to the general feedback I have been getting.  It shows how any given person can be perceived totally differently in online communications.

To reply to this and your other queries in your post, all I can say is that my intention on every web site I visit is not to deliberately go scurrying through threads looking for things to nit-pick at.  But having said that, I will say that I always call things as I see them and always (unless I slip up) provide evidence/references (eg. to other posts, links to web pages, my experience etc) to support my view or query.  So if anyone ever feels they are being personally queried by me without supporting evidence/information then I have slipped up, and I would welcome being pulled up on that and given the opportunity to rectify the situation by providing supporting evidence that should have been given initially.

Now I notice that still no-one has put up their hand to become a new IOW judge.  As I mentioned in my first post, there is probably a message in that and everyone can interpret for themselves what the message might or might not be.  Hopefully you will get some new additional judges.  Again, from the feedback I have been receiving a "Members Choice" feature would have been well received, at least at the start. 

Hopefully the real reason the admins have decided against "Members Choice" is not just their perception of me, because I could have just abstained from posting in it if they thought I would be disruptive or scare people off.

Anyway, all is good and I'll try to not rattle the cage or ruffle too many feathers in the future

[Bailey]

Hi hmca, I find it difficult to believe that the only reason the admins didn't support your proposal was because of their perception of a single user, me, as you described.

Bailey said:

Hopefully the real reason the admins have decided against "Members Choice" is not just their perception of me, because I could have just abstained from posting in it if they thought I would be disruptive or scare people off.

To eliminate any fears the admins have about me potentially fault-finding, being disruptive or scaring users off, I am happy to declare that I will unconditionally not post in any "Members Choice" or similar Members Choice type IOW thread. 

Will the admins now reconsider their decision assuming their are no other hidden reasons for not supporting a "Members Choice" type IOW?

[hmca]

Not to worry, Bailey. I made up the new schedule today and have scheduled two "Member's Choice" weeks in the next schedule. I realize it may take more than two runs before we know how successful it is but it's a start.

All the admins are on board with the decision.

[Bailey]

hmca said:

Not to worry, Bailey. I made up the new schedule today and have scheduled two "Member's Choice" weeks in the next schedule. I realize it may take more than two runs before we know how successful it is but it's a start.

All the admins are on board with the decision.

That sounds great

How to measure if it is a success or not?  Well, for me it's pretty simple.  Given that "Members Choice" is basically an extension of the single judge IOW because now all members can select their own IOW and post why they chose it, as long as you get at least 1 member posting their IOW then it is a success imo.  If after a few days you visit the thread and all you get is the sound of crickets in the background, then I guess it didn't work, at least for that week

Given that at least some current IOW judges take their role very seriously (as I see it), I would be surprised if you didn't get at least 1 current IOW judge member posting in "Members Choice" each week  and then plus other members who would like to post their particular choice.

One "rule" I would suggest to be considered is that if a member is interested in more information (how the photo was taken, the post processing/effects etc) about an image that has been chosen as a Members Choice IOW, then perhaps the interested member could start a new thread in an appropriate forum to submit their query to the creator of the Members Choice IOW and have the discussion there.  Otherwise the Members Choice thread could become cluttered by going off in multiple tangents with discussions about different images which would take away the original purpose of the Members Choice Thread - to give all members an opportunity to select their IOW and post why they chose it.

As always, just some food for thought