August contest vote is officially open

2 questions....

can we vote for ourselves?

and

when does voting close?

Hi, Scott,

Yup, you can certainly vote for yourself. And voting ends at midnight Sunday, Sept. 14.

I notice that the photos are not loading consistently.
Sometimes I see new photos and other times I don't see photos that I know I have seen. Is it just me?

I have enjoyed the contest and have made the difficult choices in voting. I'll have to see what I can come up with for next month.

Hi, Nice ... I haven't seen that problem. We haven't added any photos or removed any since we launched the Voting Machine. I'm sorry you're having trouble with the display: perhaps a refresh will get the photos in a more consistent order for you.

One issue I am seeing -- in Firefox -- is that after I scroll up and down a few times, all of the photos start to slide down, leaving a white space between the place boxes at the top and the row of photos. Anybody else seeing that?

I'll ask our developer who built this Voting Machine to look into it.

You know, Nice, I just noticed that the photos do move around a bit ... a photo that was the very first one a few minutes ago, for example, became the second photo when I refreshed. But the photos are the same.

Some amazing shots!!

i HAVE BEEN TRYING ALL MORNING TO LOAD THE PICTURES WITHOUT RESULTS CAN YOU HELP ME.THANKS

Is it me......or does anyone else NOT see any "Voting Machine?

I have clicked almost every possible link on boston.com, and I can't figure out how to vote.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi, Phil ... can you tell me what you see under the last line of text above ("Voting ends Sunday, Sept. 14 ...")

In the middle of the white section below that, do you see a grid of light gray boxes? If yes, so those boxes start to turn dark gray one by one?

If you describe what you're seeing I might be able to get someone to help you. Thanks....

Rich, same questions for you: You don't have to click on any links. You just have to be on this page, and in the white area below the text above, a grid of light gray boxes will appear, and the boxes will turn dark gray one by one as the photos are loaded in from Flickr.

Refreshing the page may help. Tell me what you see. Thanks.

Hi,

Are all of the photos loaded into the thumbnails? My photo which was posted on the Boston.com site on Thursday has not been included. I just sent a copy of your posting to the raw email address. Thanks.

Hi Teresa I see the light grey boxes but they are not turning dark

When I open the page using Internet Explorer, under the post titled "Vote for the best "At the Beach" photos", I see a post titled "A Patriot is sharpening his focus", dated, September 5, 2008 08:07 AM

When I open the page using Safari, under that first post I see another titled, "Contest update" dated September 4, 2008 11:46 AM

On neither browser do I see any grid of light gray boxes

Hi, I know that all the photos are not appearing here. My husband and I are on separate computers and we see different photos. Some of the ones on his computer are not on mine and vice-versa. And my entry is not showing up at all. I've refreshed several times and each time see some different photos.

After sending the last message, I was finallt able to see the grey boxes, and I have voted. Thanks.

Hi, Anne and Linda,

All the contest entries that I posted on the site are the photos that are eligible for the contest. So if your photo was posted at some point in the past month, it is supposed to be pulled in here from FLickr.

However, I have discovered a handful that are not being pulled in. Unfortunately, the developer who built this for us is at a convention in Las Vegas (lucky duck). I have called and emailed him; hopefully in between his workshops he can look into the issue.

If the problem persists for the next couple of days, then whenever he fixes it, I will reset all the vote counters to zero so that everybody has an equal shot.

Well, Phil, all I can counsel is patience. Refresh the screen, and then wait. Your PC might take longer than others to download all those photos.

If it really never loads, even after say 20 or 30 minutes, can you use a machine at work?

I can't see the pictures. I'm using Firefox on a Mac.

I left it on for an hour and still nothing. I am retired, so I do not have access to another machine. I have Windows 2000 pro -- could that be a problem?

HI, Alyssa ... This is definitely Mac and Firefox compatible. Can you describe for me what you DO see when you click on the entry? Specifically, what's below the last line of text ("Voting ends at midnight ...")

Hi, Phil -- I don't think Windows 2000 would be the problem. Lots of people still have that operating system. You said you're seeing the light gray boxes ... do you also see the words "Downloading images from Flickr"?

I'm not a technical person by any means, but I wonder if it's an issue with the amount of memory you have on that PC. Here's how to find out how much you have:

On your desktop is an icon called "My Computer". Right-click on that icon and on the menu that opens up, left-click on "Properties" at the bottom. That should open a window that contains information about your computer.

Look for the section that specifies the amount of RAM you have. For example, on this laptop I am using, I have 1 GB, or gigabyte, of RAM. Can you tell me how much your PC has?

Again, I don't know if that's the problem, but I'll ask somebody at Boston.com who's smarter than me. In other words, just about anybody ...

Well, it could be argued that there is a similar photo to mine. It has the same subject matter and basic colors, but that is about it. I am disappointed though that mine isn't out there!

Running Firefox on a MacBook Pro here, have had no problems with photos loading. When voting/contest is over, will you be posting total votes for all the photos?

You're doing a great job with this whole thing Teresa! Keep up the good work! Lots of fun!

Hello, I'm in marketing research where I do surveys which need to be statistically correct. I noticed that the photos are in the order that they were uploaded. I think to be fair to everyone who entered this contest you should be randomizing the order in which the photos appear. Someone may only look at the first 10 photos and pick from there - so there is definitely a bias in the voting here unless you randomize the photo order every time someone loads the page. Thanks!

Hi, Linda,

Yes, I'm disappointed, too! Don't worry, we'll fix it.

Wow, Scott, you've made my day! >blush

I don't think we're going to post the vote totals for all 241 photos. I don't want to embarrass the photographers who get very few votes. My plan is to post the 3 top finishers, of course, and then the next 7 as Honorable Mentions, for a total of 10.

Hi there - I uploaded my shot for the contest after the August 31st deadline (on 9/2) because I was having computer problems. Is this why my photo was not entered into the contest? It was a close-up picture of a barracuda... Thanks in advance for your response.

Hi, Cait ... yes, I thought of that, too, although from the vote totals so far (which will be reset to zero when we get this bug fixed) indicate that people are being very good about looking at all the photos -- even those at the very end. But, yes, I'm aware of the shortcomings of displaying in the same order all the time, as well as the benefits of randomizing. We're checking to see if the Flickr API will allow us to do that.

Thanks for the great observation.

I'm sorry, LC, but yes, that's why your photo -- and a few others -- didn't make it in. They missed the Aug. 31 deadline. I hope you'll enter something in the September contest.

oh no! the votes are going to be reset?? I've had all my friends and family vote!!

While you say it's unfair for those people to miss 3 days of voting, i think it's unfair to erase the votes of the people who already had them, you should have taken down the voting thing as soon as you found the bug...

Well, cait, let's hope they are good friends and nice relatives who are willing to vote again ...

And sarah -- i certainly understand your frustration. We discovered the problem after some people had already voted. And we tried to figure it out for a couple of hours first before deciding to void the votes already cast.

While it IS unfair to lose those votes, we had to balance that unfairness with the unfairness to the 12 photographers who had no chance to get any votes because their photos weren't available. Everybody who already received votes can always get those votes again, or something close to them; those 12 photographers could never make up those lost days of voting.

This is odd - it works on the computer at work, but not on my computer at home. Yet they both are Mac/OSX/Firefox.
At home I just don't see the little boxes with pictures in them.

Alyssa, it might be an issue of memory -- your work machine may have more RAM than your home Mac.

can we re-vote now? is it all set to use?

Not yet, SCF ... we'll let you know when it's ready to go.

Hi Teresa,
I also wanted to bring up the possibility that the photos not being brought in through the API (mine included) are potentially set as creative commons or lower rights that wouldn't allow that.

In regards to the fairness of people who already had votes versus the people who weren't posted - as someone who wasn't posted, I understand that it's the first month and it's a bug, and I would be willing to forgo the ballots set to zero - if a picture will win, it will win on its own merits even if it missed a few days of voting.

can we vote yet? whats going on? can you give us an update? Thanks!

Hi, c8 -- I just posted an update here.

I still don't see one of my favorites. When I look on Flickr, I just type in "august boston.com contest" in the search field (without the quotes; keywords in any order). It seems to strip away the '.' Is the search case-sensitive perhaps...?

Hey, m -- yes, flickr does strip out the dot in boston.com, but it's not an issue, really. And the tags are not case-sensitive. Make sure you select "Tags only" under the Search box. Better still, try this link:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=boston.com+contest+august&m=tags

Regarding the voting machine functionality, can you ask the developer to add the ability to click in the scroll 'track' to page down (or up, if you've moved it down)?

Right now, the only way to navigate the pages is to 'grab' the scroll 'handle' and drag it. Standard behavior would allow me to also click in the track to page down or up.

Thanks.

Okay, so I hit "Cast Vote" but it appeared nothing happened, so I am left wondering . . . was my vote counted?

Good idea, Chris; I'll ask him to do that.

Linda, after you hit the "Cast vote" button, a black box appears on top of the photos, about in the middle, thanking you for your vote. It goes away after about 3-5 seconds. If you were scrolled down too far, you may have missed seeing it.

The vote counter is working ... no worries there.

Well... I sent some friends to look and vote. I told them,
> There are some snaps but there are also a fair number of
> good photos. Of course i will be happy if some of you think
> mine is best. But in any case, go there and pick the top 3
> photos. Don't forget to click "submit the vote".

How about getting the web developer to use anti-spam tools? Come on, this is Boston.com for crying out loud. Don't let the interns do it all.

Suggestions:
1. Make the voting a separate click-to page so we don't have to wait for the flickr download every time we go to the contest.
2. Use cookies so our browser can show if our vote is in the tally. With all the vote restart/extensions I don't know if my vote is in the tally or not. Give the cookies a month before expiration and we won't have to worry about accumulating cookies.

I think this contest would be a lot better and a lot fairer if a guest photographer judge picked the winner every month - not the public...any amateur photographer knows the public picks ones with cute babies, pretty sunsets, etc. I think this contest should really be about the best composition, exposure, etc not if you had a cute baby in the photo. After all it is an amateur site where people are trying to improve their photography, right? I don't even know if I'll enter it every month just because of the face the public (or a photographer who thinks it's cool to vote over and over for their own photo) votes...

...or perhaps having a photographer narrow them down to a small number and voting then.

Sarah and bean, you both make excellent points. I also have received a few emails from readers who are finding it difficult to adequately judge the quality of the photos when there are so many choices.

So for the September contest, my plan is to ask a different professional photographer each month to narrow the choices to no more than 50. It will make the Voting Machine easier to use and give voters a chance to really evaluate all the photos before casting their vote.

Any thoughts on this plan? (I'll also post a blog entry about this to make sure more people see it and respond.)

I think that is a very good idea, however I think it should be even less than 50. The thumbnails are super hard to see, if you had less photos then you could show the pictures a little better.