★ STF Challenge 184: VOTING ★

Entries have closed to Challenge 184, and now it's time to vote to help sort out the large number of great submissions to this Challenge. Your photos were simply fantastic, and I loved viewing and commenting on every one of them! Thanks for the great turnout and high level of participation! Thanks also to all those who left comments and to all those who tended to the info thread. Now, I'd like to shout at you just a little more loudly (but respectfully:)...PLEASE VOTE. There are so many great entries that the only way to sort the placements effectively will be to have as many voting participants as possible. Thanks a lot, everybody!
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Challenge 184 Statistics
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• 214 images were entered in all, 63 in Eligible and 151 in Exhibition.
• 53 photographers contributed to the galleries.
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EVERYONE is welcome and encouraged to vote, whether or not they submitted entries to the Challenge. We need a lot of voters for this Challenge because of the high number of great entries. The more voters, the better the placements will be determined.

NOTE: Please remember to add a comment to this voting thread indicating that you have voted; otherwise, your votes may not be counted or run the risk of being eliminated. This is to help prevent "bogus" voting which isn't in the spirit of the Challenges. Votes suspected of being "bogus" are simply eliminated at the host's discretion. Also, posting back to the voting thread is useful for contacting voters in case of errors.


You will have 48 hours to review both galleries and award your points. An international time chart will be available on the Challenge 184 main page to determine the voting deadline in your own time zone.
*** Voting ends on Thursday, the 8th of January, 2009, at 10:00 pm EST (New York time) ***

PLEASE keep in mind the challenge themes "Tis The Season" and "The Best of 2008" when casting your votes.



The Voting System
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The voting system is provided to us by Warren Sarle and can be accessed at the link below:
http://www.warrensarle.com/vote

First, you should select the Sony Eligible and/or the Sony Exhibition gallery for voting. It will open a window with all the thumbnails listed from the selected gallery... the loading will take just a moment until fully finished. You can click on the "show help" button for explanations, but here is a short synopsis about usage...

I suggest checking the 4 check boxes at the top of the page for displaying the image titles, etc. Clicking on a thumbnail will open a new window of the photo's "full-scale" viewing in PBase. Below each picture is an evaluation line. It includes points from 4 to 1, "H" for honorable mention, "X" to move the thumbnail to the end of the page, and "0" if you want to clear a vote on an image. You can award points by clicking once on the appropriate number below the thumbnail.

PLEASE remember to do two things: 1) enter your dpreview ID name as your "name" when voting and 2) always hit the "Save your votes" button when you are finished awarding your votes. A new window will then appear and display your selections.

NOTE (INCREASED SECURITY): IN ORDER TO ASSURE THAT NOBODY ELSE COULD CHANGE YOUR VOTES, YOU CAN APPEND, IF YOU WANT, AN UNDERSCORE ("_") ONTO YOUR "ID" FOLLOWED BY A THREE FIGURE CODE TO ACT LIKE A PASSWORD. EXAMPLE: ela_475

PLEASE post a short message back to this voting thread after you're done to indicate that you've voted. This validates your votes... plus, you can be notified if something is in error (e.g. you forgot to save your votes, etc.). On the rare occasion a 'bad apple' tries to cheat the system, the votes are simply disqualified at the host's discretion. Rules for awarding points are the same as always:

• First, you must cast 4 points for your favorite single photo in each of the galleries you vote for. If your time is very short, PLEASE try to choose at least one favorite entry from each of the two galleries.

• After awarding your 4-point favorite, you can then award up to 12 more points in each gallery that you're voting for. That means you have 16 points total to work with for each gallery (32 points total for both galleries). You're not required to cast any or all of these additional 12 points, or to cast them the same way in each gallery. You can award the remaining votes however you like, keeping in mind the following guideline...
• Award between 1 and 4 points to each of your additional selections.

To show appreciation for each other's work, please don't vote for any of your own photos. Header photos should not receive any votes either. Please vote honestly and in the good spirit of these challenges by reviewing the merits of ALL of the photos.

After finishing the voting process in one gallery, you can go back to http://www.warrensarle.com/vote/ and select the other gallery for voting.

Thanks again, everybody...I've really enjoyed being host to this Challenge...now PLEASE VOTE!

Mike(MFC)

Links to the Galleries:

http://www.pbase.com/stfchallenge/challenge_184_main
http://www.pbase.com/stfchallenge/challenge_184_eligible
http://www.pbase.com/stfchallenge/challenge_184_exhibition

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