"Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message 
news:421cfad9$1@news.povray.org...
>
> To be fair, I'm not too happy with the comments (starting with mine). Some 
> people feel that they are too negative and indeed they are, which is both 
> unavoidable (only positive comments wouldn't make much sense) and not very 
> nice for the artists. A diplomatic touch is necessary when writing 
> comments, but after penning a few dozens of them the varnish wears off...

My first reaction was that they were rather negative, but later I realized 
that the intent was to be helpful.  Nevertheless, it occurred to me that 
since these images were meant to showcase POV-Ray's features, I'm not sure 
how such comments would be viewed by an outsider.

More detailed comments would have been nice, but obviously, that's a bit 
much to ask.  I think each of us would have liked several paragraphs from 
each of the judges, but, well, let's get real.  ;-)

>
> Allowing comments could be interesting, but I'm not sure that there will 
> be much interest now that the competition is over, at least not enough to 
> warrant further development of the interface for the time being. 
> Registration should be mandatory to avoid spam, and in any case the 
> comments would have to be moderated so it's not straightforward. I don't 
> want some idiot to be able add "this pic sucks" under every image and have 
> this indexed in Google before anyone sees it. I guess that the system 
> should be built to accept public comments from the very start for this to 
> work without too much trouble.

You're probably right.  I was just over at Photo.net recently, and I was 
reading all of the comments.  It made me think about this.  As Jim said, 
there is always a lot of "Great pic, d00d!" comments, that don't mean a 
whole lot, and there are always art critics who know nothing about art.  But 
taken as a whole, I think the comments are relevant.  I don't know how many 
viewers we have at POVCOMP, but I would guess it's nowhere near Photo.net's 
viewership (though we all wish that weren't so).  And as you suggest, there 
would probably be less enthusiasm for posting comments at this point.  If we 
have another such competition, I hope that we have some way of allowing 
comments, even if they are only made by the participants.

>
> However, I'm all for starting threads here about the images, such as the 
> one you suggest.
>

I don't disagree with that idea, but I also think if falls short of a 
broader comment-system.  Not everyone who participated (or viewed) the 
POVCOMP entries posts in this newsgroup.  And it's sometimes good to get 
"outside" opinions, too.  It can sometimes be a "breath of fresh air".

I appreciate the work that was done by everyone involved.  I'm just stating 
my opinions, as usual.

-- 
Jeremy
www.beantoad.com