Make contest topics easier to understand

[CliveM]

Looking at the current pictures in the August contest, it confirms what I originally thought when I first saw the topics, that they are too difficult to understand. In the "Natural frames" topic in particular voting is very easy, because on average only one picture out of every screenful presented actually conforms to the topic description and so it is the only one that one can possibly vote for. I suspect that other people may misunderstand the topic as much as the original photographers did, and there is therefore a significant risk that the eventual winner may be a photograph that does not conform to the topic.

I have tried looking at the contest pages with different language settings, I notice that the topics and their descriptions appear in English only. I would suggest either:-

a) That contest pages appear translated into the user's selected language

or

b) That topics vary less from month to month and are described in easy English.

[Hans Sterkendries]

Clive, is it misunstanding and voluntarily submitting wrong pictures? You can create very clear categories in easy English (e.g. "animals") and some people will still submit their self-portrait, a picture of their car or a sunset over sea...

The only way to avoid this is have someone review all entries.

[CliveM]

Yes, it's true that the contest always attracts more than its fair share of self-portraits, advertisements (perhaps one of the advantages of the contest is that it makes such pictures easy to find and report!), baby photos etc., but it is particularly noticeable in the August contest that some subjects attract more irrelevant entries than others:-

Night

Easily understood subject. Nearly all the pictures are night pictures.

Human Constructions

Slightly more complicated subject, but most of the pictures are still relevant. I have noticed a few baby pictures. I suppose one could argue that a baby is in some sense a "human construction".....

Vertical

Description a bit more complicated. Perhaps about 50% of pictures are relevant.

Natural Frame

Most complicated concept and description. It is sometimes necessary to press the "Get more photos" button several times before one finds a single photograph that is relevant to the topic.