Use the gallery for a photo contest

[Mr Lucky]

My suggestion is that there should be a couple of (hopefully minor) feature additions that will make Media Gallery great for a photo contest.

I suggest that the contest is assigned to a category, but could be an album

• Voting would be done normally via ratings, but ideally you'd want to disallow voting until all the images were there, ie you turn off ratings for that one album or category until the closing date for entries. Then turn on for a period of time to collect ratings once all the photos are up, and off again at the end of the contest for the final winning announcement.
• It would be good if ratings could be anonymous
• It would be good if recent items block in the forum list could be restricted to the photo contest album/category

That's all it would need to make this work really well. There could be more stuff, but this would be a great start.

 

[Mr Lucky]

One other thing, if the contest was run in a category, you would not to make so people can't upload after the enty closing date. So maybe best in an album - but then you would need to have a specific link to it in main nav or sidebar.

Still, that's not too complicated.

 

[cdub]

Yes this would be awesome and would be perfect for my site.

 

[Fiala06]

Really sad this doesn't exist ready, I would love this also!

 

[RvG]

+1 for me too

 

[cherylferraro]

Good suggestion!

 

[Puntocom]

Great suggestion! I use to run photo contests and this would be very nice.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Thanks everyone for the support for this idea.

I just ran a photo competition with what we have and it went down very well. Given the limitations it sort of worked Ok, but was a bit of a pain - I made a close of entry date and changed permissions on the album to upload at that point, but it was the voting system that was the most annoying. ie it would be ideal if people can't vote (rate) until the specified date when all entires are in, and be able to stop people voting at the end of the competition.

Also it would be good to say people can only vote for x number of entries.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, here is the winner of my competition which was about saxophones:

 

[Puntocom]

I agree... actually I open threads with a poll and it's a pain. It would be useful also to restrict which users can vote (date of register, number of posts, etc).

Photo contests boost quality and quantity of content.

 

[Mr Lucky]

It would be useful also to restrict which users can vote (date of register, number of posts, etc).

Good idea, I would edit that into my OP, but have gone past the editing capability time.

 

[Rich]

+1 need this

 

[Mr Lucky]

+1 need this

Please give the 1st post a like, the more popular this suggestion looks the better chance of getting this implemented or an addon being developed

 

[Chassey Group]

We don't have the gallery. Is it possible to use the gallery as a photo contest & count the votes manually? I don't really get how it works since we don't have it. We need photo contest ability.

 

[Paul B]

The online demo includes the gallery so you can test how it all works there.

 

[Chassey Group]

It looks nice! Can you tell who "likes" the images or can it be private?

ETA: Also, can you set up different "galleries"? So like we could leave each contest up?

 

[Cmely]

I add my voice to the photo contest feature.

But I would like to add some suggestions about rating. When rating pictures, we (photographers) usually look at several things in a picture like :

• Composition,
  
• Technic,
  
• Story / mood,
• Lighting,
  
• Creativity

In my opinion a photo contest should allow users (or jury) to rate based on those criteria, in order to get a really meaningful contest.

 

[Lindal_Oronar]

Good idea a photo contest, just what my members ask for.

 

[51463]

This is available now!


https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xfmg-media-of-the-month-motm-themescorp-com.4247/


way to go @Allan

 

[jauburn]

Yeah, contest capability can be quite valuable for a forum. PhotoPost had just a rudimentary contest feature, with usability and functionality flaws, but we used it a lot anyway when I ran the large photo forum. Contests are one of the better white-hat ways to gain exposure at low or no cost.

People who run contests, though, have a number of special requirements--accountability of entrants, the desire to limit entries per user, other special entry requirements (number of posts in the forum before entering?)--that go far beyond the "post-and-view-and-share" functionality around which galleries are built. If the author of this plugin, or xenforo, chose to take contest functionality seriously and study the requirements of contest admins, I would applaud such a feature.

 

[Cmely]

If the author of this plugin, or xenforo, chose to take contest functionality seriously and study the requirements of contest admins, I would applaud such a feature.

I certainly agree with you Jauburn...Picture contest feature should be developped a little bit more than what it is currently.