Reveal & Review
Thursday, June 21, 09:14 PM By
Shelly
The
Worth 1000 photo contest I entered has finished, and I didn't do
very well.
Not. At. All.
Let me reveal the photo I entered:
Now, I realize it's not the greatest photo. I was inspired by another photo I took not too long ago, and I was trying to recreate it with purple beads.
Obviously, I didn't capture in the purple bead photo what I did in the Czech bead photo. I remember now, something I learned in my 4-H photography lessons. They taught that I should write down how, when, where, etc I took each photo. Now back then, it was partly about remembering what was in your camera, BD (Before Digital), but it was also about being able to recreate a photo if you want to. Making those notes when I took the Czech bead photo would have helped me get a better shot on the purple beads.
It's ok with me that I didn't do very well in the contest, honestly. But what I'm not so ok with is not understanding the voting, which leads me to write a short review of how Worth 1000 works. Because they are trying very hard to make sure no one 'cheats' when voting, they make everyone who votes create an account, that's good, and only one vote per contest per account, that's great.
Then it gets weirder. They keep track of IF you vote, and HOW you vote, and they award you 'karma' points for voting appropriately. And in this case, 'appropriately' could also be called 'with the pack'. If you vote to far off the median of others' votes, you can lose your karma points. I kinda see the point, like I noticed that someone lost a lot of karma points for voting almost all entries a 1 (on a 1-10 scale) and one at a 9. That doesn't seem fair, all the entries except one couldn't stink that badly, so this person loses karma for playing favorites. I'm sure someone behind the scenes has the mathematical formulas all figured to make this all make sense, and in theory, I agree with the concept.
But what we like is so subjective, and to someone who tends to be a bit OCD about rules when playing a game, I did vote how I understood the rules to dictate. The category of this contest was 'Purple' so I felt that my votes should not only be based on how 'good' the photo was, but also on how 'purple' it was. If the photo made me think purple. Well, I guess that's not how everyone else voted, because I lost 10 karma points voting this way.
If I studied how the karma gurus vote, I could probably figure out how to not lose karma, but for a casual user and voter, it doesn't work out how it makes sense to me that it should. There are plenty of people who understand how to vote better than me, and I guess I should just leave the contests to them.
Sheesh, from forth place to forth from the last, I really should learn to quit while I'm ahead.
Not. At. All.
Let me reveal the photo I entered:
Now, I realize it's not the greatest photo. I was inspired by another photo I took not too long ago, and I was trying to recreate it with purple beads.
Obviously, I didn't capture in the purple bead photo what I did in the Czech bead photo. I remember now, something I learned in my 4-H photography lessons. They taught that I should write down how, when, where, etc I took each photo. Now back then, it was partly about remembering what was in your camera, BD (Before Digital), but it was also about being able to recreate a photo if you want to. Making those notes when I took the Czech bead photo would have helped me get a better shot on the purple beads.
It's ok with me that I didn't do very well in the contest, honestly. But what I'm not so ok with is not understanding the voting, which leads me to write a short review of how Worth 1000 works. Because they are trying very hard to make sure no one 'cheats' when voting, they make everyone who votes create an account, that's good, and only one vote per contest per account, that's great.
Then it gets weirder. They keep track of IF you vote, and HOW you vote, and they award you 'karma' points for voting appropriately. And in this case, 'appropriately' could also be called 'with the pack'. If you vote to far off the median of others' votes, you can lose your karma points. I kinda see the point, like I noticed that someone lost a lot of karma points for voting almost all entries a 1 (on a 1-10 scale) and one at a 9. That doesn't seem fair, all the entries except one couldn't stink that badly, so this person loses karma for playing favorites. I'm sure someone behind the scenes has the mathematical formulas all figured to make this all make sense, and in theory, I agree with the concept.
But what we like is so subjective, and to someone who tends to be a bit OCD about rules when playing a game, I did vote how I understood the rules to dictate. The category of this contest was 'Purple' so I felt that my votes should not only be based on how 'good' the photo was, but also on how 'purple' it was. If the photo made me think purple. Well, I guess that's not how everyone else voted, because I lost 10 karma points voting this way.
If I studied how the karma gurus vote, I could probably figure out how to not lose karma, but for a casual user and voter, it doesn't work out how it makes sense to me that it should. There are plenty of people who understand how to vote better than me, and I guess I should just leave the contests to them.
Sheesh, from forth place to forth from the last, I really should learn to quit while I'm ahead.
