Greetings everyone!

I am sure most of you may be aware that there are a lot of design contests conducted over Related Offers and Requests forum.

One difficulty is that one cannot keep track of the progress of such contests because there are just too many of them.

And sometimes, a designer who wishes to participate in the contest submits his entry only to find out that the winner has already been chosen! But, there was no announcement in the contest thread or whatsoever.


May I request that a separate forum may be considered for this? Or perhaps try to improve on the present situation by imposing some rules? Here are my thoughts:

1. "The person conducting the contest must state his/her criteria clearly -- how will he/she choose the winner? what are the bases?"

2. "A person who conducts the contest must update everyone of his/her decision. "

3. "The winning entry should be posted for every participant to have a look how it compares to their entries."

4. "Private submission of entries should not be allowed. This is easily subjected to anomalies."

5. "A deadline is a deadline on the design contest. If a designer is too late to read about the contest, let him join the other contests. Simple. "

6. "Any violation of the contest rules will ban the person (with a warning first) who conducted the contest from WHT. "

This may be harsh. But, this should be the case. A person who constantly conduct fake contests and never pays has no right to be in this forum in the first place.

There are already several cases here where somebody just run a contest and then leave!

Thanks for the time reading. And MODS, thank you for taking this into consideration.

Take care everyone.

:)

Well, I'll try to address the points...

1. "The person conducting the contest must state his/her criteria clearly -- how will he/she choose the winner? what are the bases?"

Why would you enter a contest that didn't have the criteria clearly defined? My suggestion is to either ask (if not listed) or pass over those.

2. "A person who conducts the contest must update everyone of his/her decision. "

This is something that we really can't control. If they fail to update on the progress/decision, well then but the time they fail to, it is really too late for anyone to do anything about it.

3. "The winning entry should be posted for every participant to have a look how it compares to their entries."

This is something that the participants should demand before they even submit an entry. We can bitch and moan at people however you guys are the ones who are entering the contests, it seems this would be a reasonable request to make by the entrants.

4. "Private submission of entries should not be allowed. This is easily subjected to anomalies."

Another thing that is hard for us to control. See above.

5. "A deadline is a deadline on the design contest. If a designer is too late to read about the contest, let him join the other contests. Simple. "

See above.

6. "Any violation of the contest rules will ban the person (with a warning first) who conducted the contest from WHT. "

Well, the thing is that for the most part, we're a forum. We have guidelines to cover that. We're not a contest forum, nor an auction site, so developing guidelines for these types of activities, and everything beyond the normal posting of ads, is somewhat a daunting, unrelated task.

The Related Offers Forum, and the other ad forums, could have a host of other guidelines, but it really becomes guideline overkill at some point. It seems many of your points are decent common sense type requests...

State criteria and list deadline, update contest progress/results, and post entries to the thread.

That's why every anomalous contest starter receives my famous Butthead Award :D (customized for free).

I must say, your designs are quite breathtaking. So far, it seems everyone has understood the nudge nudge nature of those, however if someone freaks out, we'd have to remove that, heh. Hasn't been an issue, but if one goes, you'll know why, and most likely understand.

ok :)