The picture is not bad, but so many votes in such a short time for this picture?  :shock:

Last week it was the same. A lot of votes for the not bad but also not very good “Spotted stingray” from the same photograph while other very excellent pictures (like “Grazing”, “Sand tiger of atlas”, or “Oceanic white tip") had less votes.

I think, that’s not the way how this contest should work. I think, that I don’t find a lot of friends with this posting, but if everybody would be a litte bit more honest, this contest would be much more interesting. Otherwise it makes no more sense to send pictures to this contest :evil:

thank you for your support.

Since we started the public voting system we struggle with this. Because we
cannot stop people from voting their own pictures, we keep the right to
select the winner at the end of the week. If we think that the votes are
manipulated we have to remove some votes.

See Andi’s statement: http://www.digideep.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=816

We would wish that everybody plays fair and votes only for their
prefered picture. Maybe we have to introduce another voting system, where
only members can vote on the pictures. We haven’t done it yet, because
we’d liked to encourage a lot of people to tell us their opinion about the
pictures without the hassle of creating an account.

What do you think should we introduce a member voting system or should
we stick to our current system? I opened up a public vote for this
http://www.digideep.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2246

/lars

I guess it’s sort of my responsibility to reply to the complains about the high rate of votes, as the photographer of the “not bad” picture that won too many votes…

a) I apologize for last week. Although I can’t be sure about it, but I guess it’s the best explanation, since there were absaloutely better pictures than the one I’ve uploaded, I assume it’s because some of my supportive friends which were told about my picture in the contest, tried to support too much. I promise to do my best and keep the ones who can’t be objective enough about this issue away from voting the contest.

b) Generally, and not really related specificly to this incident, I think it’s wise to change the voting system in a way that only registered users could vote. It will stop users which don’t have serious enough intentions from voting freely, like I assume has happened before. I assume it won’t stop photographers from creating different accounts and voting for themselves, as you applied, but I guess that’s the least of credit the users in this system deserve. after all, do remember there are no money awards in this contest..

And again, sorry if the voting rate seems unjustified. I have no way to find out, but I sure do hope at least some of it was actually justified.

Sharon

Sharon
You can’t stop family and friends from supporting you, that’s why we have family and friends.  :wink:
For the record I thought your Spotted Stingray was a good action photo and deserved the votes it got.
Ian

Hello Sharon,

thank you for your honest reply. As Ian already stated you cannot stop
your friends or family to support you. It would be ridiculous to tell all your
friends about your submission and in the same sentence tell them not to
vote for you (but you might say they should try to be objective .

This is not our real intention. What we try is to keep up a certain level of
objectivity. We do not want is that a picture wins, when there are obviously
better images in the contest.

Your picture is good and I think it got a fair ranking.

Btw we are glad and happy that so many of you have participated in the
our contest. :D We are sometimes overwhelmed to see so many
contributions in some weeks.

/lars

Since this issue was brought up I’ve won 6 more none-family-or-friends votes. I guess this whole discussion created a promotion for my picture…

Thank you all for voting, whatever reasons you had, and starting from next week, I would appriciate more than all an objective ranking, caused by no personal support or pitty

Sharon