Anatomy of a Contest

Contest can be pretty simple.  A contest opens , you read the rules, submit a photo, and participate in the voting process.  Then wait to see if you win.  Lets go into more detail about how these contests are created and run…

We run four types of  Photo Contests.   Each of these contests have four unique phases to describe the participation level and milestone dates within each Contest. Its important to pay attention to these dates as your participation changes from phase to phase.

Participation phases:

1. Contest Announcement

This phase announces that a new Contest has started.  An announcement at the beginning will give you all the details of photo submission requirements, awards to winners  as well as the time line to the end of the Contest.  Any other relevant details will be described in the announcement posting.  Use this time to comment on the post, ask questions, discuss details, and most importantly prepare your photo submission.

2. Submission Window

This phase allows members to begin to submit their photos to the Contest Album. During this time,  voting and comments are disabled. The announcement post will link to the Contest Album so you can begin to submit your photos. Voting and Comments are disabled during this phase to prevent vote skewing.

This window can close by one of two ways, defined at Contest Announcement.

1. Preset Term : A preset number of days is defined to accept submissions.   There will always be a time window regardless of how many submissions are made.
2. Maximum Submission Count: This is an optional criteria for a contest.  If, during a preset time window, the maximum submission count is reached – the submission window is then closed. If this criteria is not reached by the end of the preset term, the submission window will close at the end of the term.

3. Voting Window

After submissions are closed, voting can begin. Voting will either be by your Peers, or a Judging Panel. Comments will also be enabled during this phase.  We recommend constructive criticism on comments you choose to add to the photo. Each contest now has both a Judging Panel, and a Popular Vote.  So there is two chances to place for every contest.  For more info on the each,  see (How Judging Works) and (The Popular Vote).

4. Contest Close

Finally the winner(s) is chosen and a final announcement post is made.  Winners will be contacted by email (via Facebook proxy). The selected photos will be moved to the Showcase album for the Group.

Each of these contest phases will have a ‘time window’ before it closes. This gives members time to prepare and participate in the Contest within each phase. When a Contest is announced, the dates for each window will be listed. More info on these windows later on in this post.

Go to Page 2 for more information on Contest Types.