TheSkySearchers

I appreciate that when there are less people in the forum then a collection of awards is easier to accommodate on a daily basis by all concerned. Daily awards may still have their place but I think we are missing a high value prize effect from before.

These are just some of my thoughts to provoke moderator discussion. (They are not a solution just some random thoughts)

• Continue but should not only consider daily awards as the only candidates for Quarterly or weekly prizes.

• I used to like the quarterly award with the committee deciding which felt special whereas I feel like the daily can be on a different criteria due to limited output.

• If there is a good solar/lunar/solar system/nighttime image on the same day then one can fall by the wayside.

• I don't understand how many images are posted per day in each category or the distribution of those but it is a factor..

• Weekly awards with a gold silver bronze may be another option for each category

Please add your thoughts

Hi Fraz,

Since I'm the one that does the APOD I will respond.

I also ran the photo contest on AF. With AF.net I took all of the images posted each month and placed them in a Poll. Then the members selected which image, for each category, was a winner. We then took those and selected a photo of the month. It's very difficult to describe just how difficult that was to accomplish, it took well over 4 hours to compose the polls. Then we discovered that in total there were just a few members voting. Also we discovered that there were some instances of "loading" votes.

I tried that here and it just didn't work. We ended up with tie votes and then the TEAM picked the winner anyway.

So I decided to just do an APOD and run with that. I don't really have a 'criteria' that I use, it's just based on which image I think should get the award. We do have a topic where members can suggest an APOD image viewforum.php?f=104 as you can see we don't get a lot of them.

Hopefully this helps you to understand the reasoning behind what we are doing.

If you (or anyone) has suggestions we are always willing to listen!

Thankyou very much for the information and a better understanding of how things work.

I appreciate the fact that you were accepting of my at times less informed opinions and apologize if i came across as all knowing My intention as I am sure you know (because you didn't pound me into the ground lol) was to keep us talking and growing. I hope we can keep this discussion open in case there is a better way that comes to mind in the future.

Thankyou so much for responding so respectfully and promptly.

Fraz

Fraz,

We are always open to suggestions. That's how we grow. Sometimes they work and some times they don't but if we don't try then we would never know.

Thanks again for all of your help to get the 'Solar Heads' back in line... (they tend to get out of control some times)....

I love the idea that the SolarHeads get out of control and you may just have given us a collective name for the monthly post