David Buck wrote:

>    - Registration will capture home address and phone number

I don't see this as a problem but is a phone number really useful
for an international internet-based competion? It's usually email
for communication and login id, and sometimes home address for
verification and shipping purposes.

I assume registration will also capture the real name,
although that wasn't explicitely mentioned.

>    - Votes would be on a scale of 1 to 10
>       - A vote of 0 means the voter didn't rank the image

The use of the 0 seems a bit implementation oriented - oh,
let's store this information in an integer variable :-P

I think the interface should be able to provide something
like "-" or "unrated" to make it more clear. You could then
also encode it that as -1 and allow 0 as a vote.

>    - Every voter must provide a comment on each image they vote on

I agree that comments are very important, but I'm not sure if
enforced comments are helpful. It may just lead to a lot of "nice
image, I like it" responses for images where you wouldn't have
left a comment because you just didn't see any particular
problem or outstanding feature.

Furthermore, voting is a responsibility, but also a service
provided on a voluntary basis, so it feels awkward to enforce
it. It might backfire by deterring people from voting.

Also, it's obviously not something which automated system are
very adept at checking, and even administrators may be on thin
ice when disqualifying because they feel the comments are not
good enough (not talking about offensive comments, of course).

I'd opt for a strong recommendation to leave comments for as
many images as possible, enforcing comments for extreme votes
(you can't very well rate an image as 1,2,9 or 10 without
having something to say about it), and possibly requiring
a certain minimum number of comments (like 20%?).

A final technical note: It would be nice if the system was
capable of storing incomplete votes. I generally have a very
low trust level in browser compatibility issues when it comes
to filling out and submitting very long and tedious forms ;)

BTW, shouldn't these matters be discussed in irtc.general,
where they might also be seen by non-pov participants? Or
does new IRTC target POV-Ray alone?

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