..but if 40 people enter a contest, and the CH falls off the face of the earth, who can leave -1 Feedback if theres no picked winner?
i think market rules apply here... if designers get fed up enough with the poor contest-award ratio, they will pack up and take their talents elsewhere. the current system favors CHs a lot more heavily than designers. that's just the way it's set up right now. the sellers need protection but that's going to be really hard to accomplish when it's a buyer's market out here.
I think Digital Point should prohibit the ability to display images from outside sources (photobucket, flickr, etc) and force designers to upload their designs to Digital Point's servers. Then, Digital Point can mass-watermark all designs, so all previews must have a watermark on them. It gives designers much more confidence to submit designs. However, this will only solve part of the problem, because although contest holders can no longer take designs without the consent of the designers, but the abandoned contests dilemma still exists.
It definitely is a buyers market but that doesn't mean that we have to be abused. There should be some changes made here but most likely there will not be anything done about it. I personally believe that if I spend the time to design something that the least the CH could do is offer feedback or at least a no thanks that is not what I am looking for. This should be mandatory, and infractions should be given out if not managed properly. It takes all of a couple of seconds to respond. It should be a professional courtesy. If a CH does not like any of the designs they should also state that as well. A lot of the problem is that the CH is not very clear with what they want. After seeing a couple of options they should see, or have a good idea of what they want and state it. If they don't see anything up to par than they should post that and close the thread. At least there would be some type of closure. From a designers perspective we should open up a thread that contains a list of contest holders who waste time and warn other designers of it so that they don't waste their time. Our own Idesign if you will. Maybe that will help out. If we keep adding to the list it will definitely help us find out who to stay away from, sort of like what they have done to stay away from domain scammers etc.. Thats just my 2 cents.
I like that idea. Since so many CH's are taking advantage of the contests... maybe have a DP requirement to have a set closing time on all contests. If no winner is picked (abandoned contest), then DP looks into it. If the CH decides they dont want a logo from the contest, they can say so... But only have a certain number of times to bail from a contest. Just a suggestion
I agree with everything said here. It is so annoying when you put in a lot of hard work into a design and the contest holder never logs on again. A separate section with more enforced rules would be awesome. -ATF
It's everywhere though, by using common sense I mean if the CH has no iTraders and no reputation or little post count then don't deal with them or work for them, simple. If the market is so rampant with scammers then don't enter competitions here, the simple fact is DP is just a forum and expansion isn't going to take place, there's scammers in every forum and the current system works OK - I am sure that if the CH is being a nuisance and scamming - the DP mod's will do something about it.
Just did. Not only contests, but the design + templates sections are pretty poor; so its a no gain situation trying to put some professionalism/solid works in there. If i see a "Paint" designed ?!!!!!!?? template design for $5 ??!?!!?!?!, what can i say?
Maybe we could have a separate moderator for the contests forum who knows the ins and outs of designing and the "black hat" methods both contest holders and contest participants use. One who can keep the lawbreakers in line. How would that work out.
I posted this in the last related thread but it might be worth repeating here. It's something we can do right now, without waiting for DP to change itself and without help from anyone but our fellow designers: REMEMBER THE NAME of the CH that abandoned the contest you were in, and if he/she starts a new thread, use the "rate thread" option to give that contest a "terrible" rating. We designers will then avoid contests with low ratings. "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" EDIT: let me state for the record that my definition of "abandonment" is the CH simply disappearing on a contest, as opposed to clearly stating that he/she didn't like any of the entries.
l3fty I think that giving terrible rating is not enough, because you don't "punish" the CH direct, the contest should like a agreement. If 10 peoples want to get to the contest they need to "sign in" with CH - then if contest was abandoned those 10 peoples have a chance to give some bad rating to the CONTEST creator, not to the topic.
you're right tooschee, my suggestion was just one thing that we can start doing right now, it wasn't meant as a permanent solution.