Dedication

[CauseISaidSo]

I just finished scraping the last of the contest pages for my stats site and I came across a stat that I found truly inspiring. On a whim, I ran a couple of queries to see who had participated in the most contests and who participated most frequently.

Maybe the rest of y’all already knew this and I’m late to the party, but the answer to both of those questions is our very own Elsinore. Since her first contest (#51), she has posted an entry in every contest since for a total of 239 contests! Now that’s dedication!

In case you’re interested, here’s what the lists look like:

1) Top 20 by contest count (otherwise unfiltered):

2) Top 20 by participation level, for those who’ve entered at least one contest this year and at least 10 contests total:

[orionid]

I knew I should not have gone to the hospital for a month. There it goes, farking up my stats.

Edited because a three-letter word changes everything.

[CauseISaidSo]

Good grief, man, where are your priorities?!? 🙂

You’re not too far off those lists, though:

UserName   FirstContestID   LastContestID   ContestCount   EntryCount   TotalVotes   Participation

orionid    119              289             112            328          5619         65

That places you #23 on the contest count list and #28 on the participation list.

[Curious]

thanks for doing that.

these comments are ONLY about my entering and thinking. i can not and do not mean to speak for others.

i want to enter each week but have come to the conclusion that entering a meh or three really isn’t participating. and over the years, and especially lately, i’ve got picker about what i enter.

if you look at my entry/vote totals compared to many others you can see the voters also want me to make more of an effort. fortunately for me some things in RL have resolved themselves leaving time to spend on taking good photos and not snapshots. time will tell if i capitalize on that 🙂

[CauseISaidSo]

You’re absolutely welcome, Curious. I’m really just doing this for me, so if anyone else finds it useful or entertaining, then that’s just gravy.

And I hear ya about wanting to post each week. For some reason, I feel “compelled” to post 3 entries if I enter at all and sometimes I feel the third (or even second and third) of those entries is somewhat “meh” and the votes usually end up reinforcing that.

And I hope you didn’t interpret that list as trying to shame anyone or inforce hierarchies of any sort – it’s all meant just for fun.

[lokisbong]

You know that first list makes me think I am not getting much better at photography. lol a whole lot of trying and not a whole lot of votes….well I wont learn to take better pictures if I don’t try right? I do have fun trying to get theme related pictures regardless of vote count and I do think I have been learning. I will admit I am not very good at setting up for themes like the music theme coming up. I still have exactly no pictures for that one.

ps I am not complaining in any way. nor do I feel singled out.

[caradoc]

You know that first list makes me think I am not getting much better at photography. lol a whole lot of trying and not a whole lot of votes….well I wont learn to take better pictures if I don’t try right? I do have fun trying to get theme related pictures regardless of vote count and I do think I have been learning. I will admit I am not very good at setting up for themes like the music theme coming up. I still have exactly no pictures for that one.

ps I am not complaining in any way. nor do I feel singled out.

Keep in mind that “better pictures” and “pictures that Farkers are more likely to vote for” may not always be intersecting sets.

[Curious]

And I hope you didn’t interpret that list as trying to shame anyone or inforce hierarchies of any sort – it’s all meant just for fun.

lists quit being fun when i fell off the top ten all time vote getters 🙂 that BTW was some time in the age of the dinosaurs.

i’m of two minds about stats. participation lists are interesting. vote total rankings don’t mean much since so many variables go into a person voting. my opening comment was meant to say what you did in that^ quote. i have no idea if folks post shots they know are meh just to enter or if they think their every entry is great art. and what i think is of no importance since it’s the voters who get to decide.

all of us have some ego involved in these contests and want to do well. but we all know, in our heart of hearts, that there are times our best efforts get ignored for one we slapped looter guy on. or the farktography equivalent of that. besides which there are no prizes fabulous or otherwise.

so to summarize if creating a list make you happy please do so. and we will take what we want from it each to his/her own ends.

[Curious]

I will admit I am not very good at setting up for themes like the music theme coming up. I still have exactly no pictures for that one.

i struggle with some themes but that one had ideas just popping up. one is shot and i’m happy with it. the other two aren’t shot yet and i’m not sure how they will turn out. can i convey the title? yes. do so in a visually interesting way? we shall see.

[CauseISaidSo]

lists quit being fun when i fell off the top ten all time vote getters 🙂

I feel your pain, brother! I’ve never made (and probably will never make) the top ten all time but have been on the top ten recent and fell off a couple of weeks ago.

Regarding vote rankings, I agree that they’re mostly worthless because of the variance in the total number of votes. Getting 30 votes in a contest with only 900 total is obviously more significant than getting 30 votes in a 2500-vote contest. To even that out, I’m going to use a “normalized vote tally”, which will be something like either a percentage of total votes or the number of votes you’d have gotten if the contest total votes were 1000.

I do think votes can help some as long as one doesn’t totally base his/her worth as a photographer on it. I know that the entries I’ve put the most effort into have (mostly) performed better than those I’ve just dug out of the archives.

And your final statement is exactly what I’m looking for. Writing software does make me happy (for the most part) and that’s why I’m doing the stats site. When I get it up (preemptive that’s what she said!), if the rest of y’all find some use or entertainment from it, then that’ll just add to my enjoyment.

[nobigdeal]

I don’t worry too much about stats, but I do like looking at them. Your list is pretty neat. I have only missed one week since I started (I believe it was the second week). I know that I could do better in the voting because when I actually put effort into shots I do relatively OK.

[orionid]

When I get it up (preemptive that’s what she said!)

She gets it up? Dude. You know it’s bad when I think it’s TMI.

[Elsinore]

Pretty nifty 🙂 schnee’s FSM captures the same info but organized differently on the Active Farktographer’s list (though I think “Filtered For Your Protection” is still filtered for our protection), so I’d known I hadn’t missed a contest. I actually almost missed A Day in the Life Of thanks to the strep-from-hell that almost sent me to the hospital. There’s been a lot of craziness in RL for me on top of that, so I haven’t really brought my A-game in awhile. But I always look forward to Wednesday nights.

[SilverStag]

The only problem I have with the current stats setup is that I feel like you are penalized too heavily for:

a) not having been here in the beginning,, and
b) missing contests.

which leads to situations where someone like myself who has spent time in the hospital or for other reasons has to miss contest, loses the chance to achieve: It quickly becomes statistically impossible to achieve a higher standing. I also feel that the emphasis on not missing contests produces an awful lot of placeholder entries, that are just there to make sure that stats are maintained, which I feel is a detriment to the whole effort people make. I know I’m guilty of it at times.

To be sure, I like and appreciate most of what the FSM does for us, I just think a couple of the basic premises should be tweaked a bit.

[CauseISaidSo]

SilverStag (or anyone with suggestions, really), can you give me any specifics on what you’d like to see differently or additionally?

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