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| Konica Minolta Users | profile | all galleries >> KM Challenges >> KM Challenges Moderator Guide | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
You've earned the respect of other photographers by having your entry voted as the most popular one in a Konica-Minolta Challenge Competition Gallery. Well done. However, if you're now asking yourself the question "what now?", you've come to the right place for some ideas. This is not meant to be a prescriptive list of all the things you must do, but will hopefully give you enough ideas to allow you to successfully run your own Challenge without too many hassles.
Intent of having a Moderator: The Moderator is there to create a fun and educational environment for our friendly Challenges and to run the competition. That involves everything from choosing a theme and setting things up for everyone to take part, through to making sure everything runs smoothly and the votes are counted and results published, and finally updating the Hall Of Fame and at least starting to get the galleries ready for the next Challenge
e-mail comments to John down under
Here are suggestions of what to do and in what order to moderate a Challenge (Cx). Select any item for more information.
If you are unfamiliar with moderating KM Challenges, it will be useful for you to read this guide and the KM Challenge Rules.
You will need to choose a theme. It's best to try to choose a theme that will have general appeal. You don't want to make the Challenge too difficult or unattractive for too many people by choosing an unsuitable theme.
The entry period is normally from first thing on Friday (the day after voting for the previous Challenge normally finishes) until some time on the Monday 10 days later. The voting period is normally from some time on that Monday until some time on the Thursday three days later. If in doubt, have a look at the main galleries from previous Challenges https://pbase.com/mtf_foto_studies/km_challenges to see what days/dates and times were previously used. As Moderator, you can change those days/dates and times, but it is best to stay with the standard periods unless you have a good reason to change them.
The galleries for your Cx need to be set up in the KM Challenges main gallery https://pbase.com/mtf_foto_studies/km_challenges to provide details of the Challenge and a place for people to put their entries and comments.
Make sure you are logged into the mtf_foto_studies (KM Galleries) PBase account (refer to How To Use PBase for information on logging in) and go to the KM Challenges main gallery https://pbase.com/mtf_foto_studies/km_challenges .
From there, choose 'edit this gallery' near the top and look for the new gallery for your Challenge. If your Cx gallery already exists, you will need to finish setting it up by tweaking the details in the gallery descriptions, etc by following from step 13 in the following procedure. If your Cx gallery hasn't already been created, you will need to create it yourself. The CX gallery is actually a set of 4 galleries: the main gallery, Competition gallery, Exhibition gallery and Originals gallery.
To set up new galleries for your Cx:
Create a new thread in the dpreview KMTF titled something like '***KM Challenge Cx - Theme'. Include details of your theme and provide a link to your Cx main gallery in PBase. There's no need to go into much detail as it should all be in the Cx main gallery. You might also want to create a similar thread in the dpreview KMSLRTF, but perhaps just link to the main thread in the KMTF.
As part of creating your KMTF main thread, you should provide a link to your Cx main gallery.
Well, you'd almost finished setting up the Cx galleries in the section in finish setting up the galleries. The last step is to include a link in the main Cx gallery back to the KMTF main thread. Copy the 8 digit number at the end of the URL for the KMTF main thread so you can insert it into the Cx main gallery description. Go to the edit screen of the Cx main gallery and into the description. Near the end, there are a couple of places where 'forum=1024&message=' appears. The first one is where you want to point to the KMTF main thread. Just after the first 'message=', insert the 8 digit dpreview forum number and select the 'Update Gallery' button. Things are now all set for the Challenge to happen.
It's up to you how much you want to put into keeping the Challenge interesting and alive. One thing you might want to do is keep an eye on the KMTF main thread and the KMSLRTF thread to see when you think they could do with a message to keep the threads prominent and get people going.
Moderators sometimes post thumbnails of new entries in the KMTF thread each day, or provide more definitions related to the theme or links to related information. It's all part of getting/keeping interest going and helping with ideas for the theme.
To post thumbnails in the thread, the need to be the URL of the image that ends with the 8 digit image number, followed by '/medium.jpg' or '/small.jpg'. To get the URL, it's easiest to be in the gallery containing the images, either as thumbnails or the gallery edit screen. In Windows, right click on the image and select 'Copy Shortcut' from the dropdown menu. You can then paste that into the KMTF thread using Ctrl-V or Edit > Paste. You can also copy the image title, which includes the image name and poster's name, quite easily from the gallery edit screen and include that in the KMTF thread too.
One of the useful ideas in the KM Challenges is the comments people place against entries for encouragement and education. As the Moderator, it's best if you lead the way by commenting fairly liberally against entries if you have time to do that.
Entries are supposed to conform to the rules, eg being on theme, no more than 800 pixels on the longer side, file size of no more than 200kB, image name and user's name in the title, date and (for Competition gallery entries) other camera detail from EXIF data or entered as text. The file and image sizes are easy to see from the Competition and Exhibition gallery edit screens, along with the image title and person's name of course, so it's worthwhile having a look at those edit screens every now and again. You should also open each Competition gallery image at some stage to check for date and camera information to validate that the entry belongs there.
It's your Challenge, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't enter. You're as eligible to enter as anyone else. Your participation may encourage others to have a go. However, it's probably not a bad idea to wait until at least a few other people have entered before you enter yourself.
In the leadup to the Challenge closing time you specified in the main Cx gallery, it's a good idea to post a message in the KMTF thread (and probably the KMSLRTF thread) to remind people that the closing time is approaching. Once you reach the closing time, post a 'gallery closed' image to both Competition and Exhibition galleries.
Back to ' What To Do' Contents
You also need to put a 'closed' message in the KMTF main thread (and KMSLRTF thread).
Create a KMTF 'Voting & Results' thread in the KMTF, with a title something like '***KM Cxx - Theme Voting & Results'. You might also want to think about putting an advertising thread in the KMSLRTF to remind people who usually look at that thread that voting is udnerway.
Once you've created the 'Voting & Results' thread, you should put a link to it from the main thread and the main gallery.
The 'Voting & Results' thread may stay active from voter participation, but if the thread stagnates during the voting period, you might want to post a message to remind everyone that it's there.
You need to check the votes from each person to make sure they award 4 points to one and only one entry per gallery and that they don't award more than 16 points total per gallery. There is not need to vote for both galleries, but it's better if people do.
You will need to keep track of the votes per entry so that you will know how many points they each get to determine the final results. A spreadsheet to show votes by each person against each image is not a bad way to do that. if you keep up with tallying the votes each day, the job of finalising the counting will be easier at the end of the voting period.
You can start setting up the galleries for the next Challenge any time during the voting period. You don't have to do it, but it will help the next Moderator to get the next Challenge off to a quick start. You know the next Challenge number and the tentative days and dates for entry and voting, even though you don't know the theme, so you can make a good start with the 4 new Cx galleries.
At the voting period closing time you specified in your Cx main gallery, you will need to close voting by posting a voting closing message in the 'Voting & Results' thread.
You should finish counting the votes as quickly as possible and announce in a new post in the 'Voting & Results' thread the results of at least the top 5 for the Competition and Exhibition galleries.
If you know the Competition gallery winner's e-mail address, eg from his/her dpreview profile, it's best to send him/her an e-mail to let him/her know of his/her success to provide teh best chance of the next Challenge kicking off promptly.
You should change the order of images in the Competition and Exhibition galleries so that the top 5 in each appear first (before the gallery header image). You should also edit their titles ( in the gallery edit screen is easiest) to put the place number from 1 to 5 at the start of each title. Finally, you should post the gallery voting results in the respective galleries. It's up to you how you do it, but one way is to take a screen dump of the spreadsheet for each gallery and post it as an image in the appropriate gallery just after the 5th place image.
Go to the KM Challenges Hall of Fame https://pbase.com/mtf_foto_studies/km_chal_hof and into the gallery for the group of 5 Challenges that yours belongs to. If you need to create a new gallery for the next 5 Challenge results, then copy the format from the existing galleries. You need to create a banner image for your Challenge that is in keeping with the existing banners and upload it into the the relevant HOF gallery. You then need to copy the first 5 Competition images to the HOF gallery:
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| sadfasdf | 20-Feb-2010 13:59 | |