Help us improve Competitions

Black & White Everything has been live for a few days now, and it’s been great watching submissions and votes come in for our first-ever competition. As expected with any first run, a few things have stood out to us that we want to be upfront about (and fix going forward).

Self-voting

Right now, nothing stops users from voting on their own submitted photo. We’ve noticed that most people don’t realize this is even possible, but the few who do get an unfair head-start over everyone else.

You shouldn’t be able to allocate points to your own entry. This is definitely something we will address before launching the next competition.

Submission and voting should be separate phases

Currently, submissions and voting are happening at the same time, which creates a strange dynamic. I’ve caught myself constantly re-assigning points as new photos come in, since a photo submitted on day 10 is competing against one that’s had votes trickling in since day 1.

Splitting this into two clear phases – a submission window, followed by a dedicated voting window – would make the competition fair and easier to follow.

Clarifying who can vote

We also want to make it clearer that you don’t have to be participating in the competition (i.e. have submitted a photo) to vote. Right now this isn’t obvious, and we think it is limiting how many people are engaging with voting at all.

Though, we also want to make sure only users who have submitted at least 3 photos to the platform can participate in competitions. This will prevent fake accounts and vote manipulation. We’re planning to implement this as soon as possible, and are also considering resetting votes on the current competition once it is.

Rethinking the point system

Right now, points can be allocated in increments of 5. In practice, that might be too fine-grained? It’s easy to spread points thin without really committing to your favorites.

We’re weighing two options: raising the minimum increment (e.g. to 10), or scrapping the point system altogether in favor of a simpler “like”-based system.

We want your feedback

Black & White Everything is our first test run, and this kind of feedback loop is exactly why we’re running it this way. We’ll be making adjustments based on what we’re seeing before launching the next competitions. If you’ve noticed anything else worth pointing out, please let us know in the comments below.