Has anyone any suggestions for me to improve? I started out well in the contest, but after a while my votes just stalled out. I know there are a lot of talented people here, but I thought my entries were pretty strong. Did I just enter too many? I'm thinking about quitting contests.
• My entries into the Gelaskins Hardcase Contest 2

Your entries were fantastic, Edith. Enticement Gardens especially.
The problem doesn't lie in your entries; the problem is in the system.
Sending you a love note...

OrigamiMei wrote:

Your entries were fantastic, Edith. Enticement Gardens especially.
The problem doesn't lie in your entries; the problem is in the system.
Sending you a love note...

Thanks for the comment, Mei. I know we have a problem with the contest system. But besides that, there are more than a hundred votes seperating my entries from say, O2bQueen's. I know her entries are marvellous, voted for her myself, but I don't think there's a hundred votes' difference in quality there. So I would like to learn more about those qualities that make voters choose hers, or any winner, and improve so they would be more likely to vote for me as well. In the last 5 days of the contest, I got no votes whatsoever, so clearly people thought I had reached a limit of some kind, and I want to break that limit.
That's why I ask.

Don't get down on yourself pattern-wise, because your patterns are always awesome.

Now, from a purely objective point of view: Looking at the winning entries, the common denominator seems to be larger, simpler patterns, whereas most of yours are smaller, more intricate, and complex. This intricate complexity is what I absolutely love about your patterns, but people generally seemed to vote for larger, simpler patterns this time around.

Random thoughts: I pay almost zero attention to the contests here (I didn't even know this contest was running! lol), but the way they are set up, I'm guessing that there's a certain amount of aggressive promotion that each artist has to perform in order to get their entries noticed. Probably a full-time job in itself. And that is in addition to how popular they are to begin with (popularity = votes). And on top of all THAT, I imagine there were probably thousands upon thousands of entries for voters to slog through. And it seems each artist has to submit their entry early enough to get the maximum number of votes before voting ends.

Thank you, Omentum. I know my patterns/templates are pretty good, I'm not fishing there. I know people have different tastes. I also consider that there are some entries that finished ahead of mine by special circumstances that I set aside from ordinary participation in the contest. It's just that when over a hundred people don't vote for you, you have to wonder what more it is that you could have done, if there's something people could point to, would want to tell me. It seems statistically significant to be so numerically far from the top ranked entries. I'm wondering what my entries lack, if anybody could offer a clue. I really want to know.
There are others, like Jennafire, and Marzlene, who had fantastic entries but very few votes, I'm wondering what's up with that.
I self promoted as well as anyone, I featured all my entries on my own home page (took them down after the results), answered all my thank you notes and more, quoted all entries on the contest blog page. Most entries mounted within 24 hours of contest start. Constructed a pinterest board and campaigned on Pinterest and Facebook. I kissed babies and shook hands, and it did help, but not enough, apparently.

What I'm really wondering, I suppose, is whether there's any point.

Also some patterns made it to the ''Huesday'' newsletter. That's a huge platform. I'm not even going to talk about the suspicious entries...

This definitely wasn't the case for one of the winners of this contest. The member has been here for a short time, has few followers, and, from what I've seen, doesn't do much interacting on the site...yet all of their entries got votes in the hundreds and thousands of page views each. That doesn't even happen for entries by the most popular community members. Something smells fishy....

omentum wrote:

Random thoughts: I pay almost zero attention to the contests here (I didn't even know this contest was running! lol), but the way they are set up, I'm guessing that there's a certain amount of aggressive promotion that each artist has to perform in order to get their entries noticed. Probably a full-time job in itself. And that is in addition to how popular they are to begin with (popularity = votes).

Yeah, I have to agree it appears as though voting was compromised. And nobody in CL management has made any comment or determination, that's concerning to me.

automated scripts quite simply its how spammers do it

Singingfish, I have no problem with your entry being among the winners. Well deserved. Your artistry and entries weren't the issue in this latest contest.

OrigamiMei wrote:

This definitely wasn't the case for one of the winners of this contest. The member has been here for a short time, has few followers, and, from what I've seen, doesn't do much interacting on the site...yet all of their entries got votes in the hundreds and thousands of page views each. That doesn't even happen for entries by the most popular community members. Something smells fishy....

omentum wrote:

Random thoughts: I pay almost zero attention to the contests here (I didn't even know this contest was running! lol), but the way they are set up, I'm guessing that there's a certain amount of aggressive promotion that each artist has to perform in order to get their entries noticed. Probably a full-time job in itself. And that is in addition to how popular they are to begin with (popularity = votes).

Might not have been fishy, Mei.

I voted for one of the designs of the designer you are talking about, and I'll tell you why I did, and probably why many others did as well.

1. I am personally tired of seeing the same patterns being entered contest after contest, with the same colours and the same people winning them. It gets a little stale.

2. I protested voted due to contests being a popularity contest.

3. They sent me a note, asking nicely for me to vote for them, and I didn't know their name or their work. I did it to break up the clique that holds the top line all the time.

I voted for a lot of other folks as well, (including at least one creation of almost all the people who've posted in this thread) as well as almost all of Dazzlement's creations because I think that her work is really stand-out and not just the same hearts and flowers crap that always wins.

I do think that as a good community member, those who have won a contest should sit out the next contest in the interest of letting someone else have a little sunlight, but that isn't happening.

So I did vote for the person everyone is freaking out about, and I have talked to several others who have voted for some of the same reasons I did. The contests are broken, and are causing far too much angst and drama. IMHO, they should be hosted on the vendor's site, and not on colourlovers.com.

I can't speak for other entrants. Myself, I entered 24 designs, only one of which had ever been entered in a contest before (and lost, for a bookmark). 8 of my entries were made with new templates within two days after the contest started. So they had never been seen before at all by anyone. All my entries were made after the preceding Gelaskins contest, and never entered in a contest. Except this one.

I do not think, personally that winners should sit out of a contest, any more than one would ask an olympic medalist to skip the next Olympics. That way lies appeasement and a trend towards lesser quality. I agree that contests are broken, but I think the answer lies in outside jurying (prequalification), judges, and losing the internet and site vote. What I want to see is a merit based, serious art competition, and not a political bandwagon. We shouldn't have to be ashamed, and hide it away as we did the last two contests, for fear of alienating anybody. We should be proud of our strong artists. Outside judges should kill the popularity and the badge spamming. Who's with me?

Sending notes was one of the strategies... I'm telling you because I was alert since the beginning, and from one moment to another, boom almost 100 loves and less than 10 views.

I rather vote for the same entries 152245 times than voting for beggars, and flowers and hearts crap than actual crap. It becomes a popularity contest when all you want is to win no matter what. Maybe the same people win almost all the contests but at least they worked hard for it and if they are talented they should be able to compete every time they'd like even if it lessen my chances of winning. I'm all for not ''loves'' contests but in the main time if I have to vote I will vote for good work and not in a vengeful manner.

After all there must be a reason why they are so ''popular''.
Liebling wrote:

Might not have been fishy, Mei.

I voted for one of the designs of the designer you are talking about, and I'll tell you why I did, and probably why many others did as well.

1. I am personally tired of seeing the same patterns being entered contest after contest, with the same colours and the same people winning them. It gets a little stale.

2. I protested voted due to contests being a popularity contest.

3. They sent me a note, asking nicely for me to vote for them, and I didn't know their name or their work. I did it to break up the clique that holds the top line all the time.

I voted for a lot of other folks as well, (including at least one creation of almost all the people who've posted in this thread) as well as almost all of Dazzlement's creations because I think that her work is really stand-out and not just the same hearts and flowers crap that always wins.

I do think that as a good community member, those who have won a contest should sit out the next contest in the interest of letting someone else have a little sunlight, but that isn't happening.

So I did vote for the person everyone is freaking out about, and I have talked to several others who have voted for some of the same reasons I did. The contests are broken, and are causing far too much angst and drama. IMHO, they should be hosted on the vendor's site, and not on colourlovers.com.

How many people didn't vote because they feared there was a stronger entry than theirs? I voted for every single entry that I felt had artistic quality over the suspicious entries. Every last one.

I'm with you. I even voted for random stuff with less artistic quality than those but never for beggars.
eighteyed wrote:

How many people didn't vote because they feared there was a stronger entry than theirs? I voted for every single entry that I felt had artistic quality over the suspicious entries. Every last one.

I wasn't talking about your entries, eighteyed. I know that I voted for at least 4 of your entries, and I never withhold votes from designs that have more votes than mine, nor do I vote out of vengence, as I've been accused of.

I will not, however, vote for the same design I've voted for in the past. The simple reason is that there are many many talented artists here, and I'm kind of a hippie and I like to see the love shared. I think it's selfish for people to enter the exact same design that won in a previous contest. Then it is about just winning... This is not the Olympics, there is not nearly as much training , hard work, and money that goes into these designs so I think that this analogy is a little lost on me. Right now our contests are mostly about how many friends you have and how many votes you can get for your designs... If it was about talent, Dazzlements design that won would have had more than 20 votes, don't you think?

I think that voting shouldn't be on the site, I think that it should be handled by the people who want to run the contest. Putting it in the community has added drama that a loving community shouldn't have in my opinion. This is colourlovers.com not icolourbetterthanyou.com

I just read the opions about the contests here. I think it should be anonymus.. so everybody get the same fair chance.It should not be a popularity test. It is about quality palettes and/or pattern.
Only for pattern making.. there are more skills involved and many hours of practise too to go to a higher quality level. Palettes are more about feelings and emotions of the moment.

But if this choosen system bothers you and you feel dissapointed... do not participate the next time.. I should say...

Exactly. And those repeated templates are still competing because the haven't won. They should have the opportunity to do so.

Another thing is respect. Just because I don't like someone's work doesn't mean they are not good. In the end our stuff are always good for us. And just because you like something doesn't mean I like it too. There are different tastes.

This is the never ending story. Discontent people contest after contest and even if other site host it there will still be discontent people because they didn't win. My only problem is dishonesty and beggars spamming the inbox.

Gabrielle Marie wrote:

I just read the opions about the contests here. I think it should be anonymus.. so everybody get the same fair chance.It should not be a popularity test. It is about quality palettes and/or pattern.
Only for pattern making.. there are more skills involved and many hours of practise too to go to a higher quality level. Palettes are more about feelings and emotions of the moment.

But if this choosen system bothers you and you feel dissapointed... do not participate the next time.. I should say...

eighteyed: Maybe not enter so many different entries? I remember seeing how excited you were about the contest, and rightfully so, but maybe focusing on a couple of patterns rather than a ton would be better? I'm not sure, because I don't know how many *unique* votes you got, but maybe if there were a certain pattern not there one of your others would have more votes. Does that make sense?

The other thing I have to say, is that I, too, voted for the person that got everyone so up in arms. For the same reason as Liebling. But maybe just as suspicious is the lover 'pumpkin!'. They came about during the squarespace contest, entered their palettes, did many patterns with said palettes, and has been inactive now for two months. How is that not just as bad as the offender here? It's almost like taking an existing user and adding anonymity. Just my thoughts.

I've been irritated with how contests have went the last few times, so I didn't enter this one. This has been the first one I haven't entered.

It's the same thing and it was pointed out during that contest. I think this is the worst thing. To have inactive members getting the prizes and then never coming back.
whattafeeling wrote:

But maybe just as suspicious is the lover 'pumpkin!'. They came about during the squarespace contest, entered their palettes, did many patterns with said palettes, and has been inactive now for two months. How is that not just as bad as the offender here? It's almost like taking an existing user and adding anonymity. Just my thoughts.