web.417aa863b45fa19e497bbfc0@news.povray.org...
> First of all, thank you for finally telling us what is going on.

We certainly owed it to you.

> Being told that the sum of the efforts that were
> submitted was not good enough for you to award a prize is a slap in the
> face to all of us.

As I said, this wasn't an easy decision. Hey, I'd be awfully disappointed 
myself if I were participating... But then, there were 25 prizes to 
distribute to 56 images. We'd have to award prizes to images that weren't 
just special enough, and that would have been, well, wrong. There's more at 
stake than it seems in fact. POV-Ray needs (and deserves) more public 
recognition than it has presently, and a high profile competition like the 
POVCOMP is the right tool for that, but it also means that the outcome of 
this competition has to be high profile too, otherwise we're not going to 
convince anyone that POV-Ray is the great tool it is.

> This doesn't encourage me to provide you with a better
> work, this makes me reluctant to continue to participate.

Since you said that you missed a few hours to complete your entry I warmly 
encourage you get over the initial disappointment and to continue to 
participate.

> Personally, I feel that you should award the prizes and organize a new
> contest if you feel that you didn't get what you wanted from this one.

To organise a new contest, to find paying sponsors and willing participants, 
it is mandatory that the first one is a success, and that the results are 
impressive enough.

> First and foremost, your requirement that we submit images
> without a copyright notice makes me acutely uncomfortable.

You are actually invited to provide one:
 "4.g. You can optionally submit a PNG image with alpha channel - of the 
same size as the main image - which contains a signature that will be 
applied to the image before it is published on the website. (...)  If you do 
not provide such a signature file, the competition organisers will, if you 
request, apply an automated copyright notice for you, using your real name 
or nickname as supplied in registration. "

The reason why the signature/copyright has to be separate is given in the 
guidelines:
"Judging will be done 'blind' meaning the competition organisers will not 
supply the name of the entrant with the entry. Each entry will have a unique 
ID which is what the judges refer to them by. All submitted files are 
renamed based on this ID. The descriptions and other texts supplied with 
your submission should not reveal your identity. "

> Secondly, either you need to get more people involved in moderating the
> boards or you need to provide a forum for unmoderated discussion.  It 
> often
> takes a day or more for my posts on this board to appear.

There is clearly something wrong on your end (proxy, cache issue...). 
Discussions are not moderated and posts appear immediately.

> The reminder email was a nice touch, but it would
> be best to have a count-down clock so that the time remaining is clear to
> everyone.

This is in the works (AFAIK).

Thanks for your input !

Gilles


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