Rules for 99 designs

[Josh Owens]

Hey guys,

I remember some people talking about or using 99designs last year for
the competition. What do you guys think the rules should be on that?

* Logo only?
* If you want design, only 3 team members allowed then?
* No hold bars, 4 team members and whatever 99designs can make for you
in 24 hours?

I talked to Nick about this over IM and he suggested getting a full
discussion on it.

[Roland Swingler]

Hi,

My two cents:

* You have to pay for 99designs - it doesn't seem fair to allow use of
a service which requires payment, as it puts some teams/individuals at
a disadvantage.
* Entrants from a more design-oriented background have to deal with
things like git, deployment etc. with which they may not be familiar,
it seems only fair that those from a more technical background have to
do the best they can with look and feel issues and can't just buy
their way out of the problem.
* Its probably quite hard to enforce a ban - I'm sure 99designs isn't
the only site that does this sort of thing, so spotting that people
have used this sort of service is quite hard.
* I'd be less bothered by people getting a logo than getting a full design.

These points are based on the assumption that the rumble is meant to
be a competition first and foremost.

Cheers,
Roland

[Josh Owens]

Perhaps this is a moot point, here is an entry from last year using
99designs:

http://r08.railsrumble.com/teams/team-queue

On May 26, 5:57 am, Roland Swingler <roland.swing...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My two cents:
>
> * You have to pay for 99designs - it doesn't seem fair to allow use of
> a service which requires payment, as it puts some teams/individuals at
> a disadvantage.
> * Entrants from a more design-oriented background have to deal with
> things like git, deployment etc. with which they may not be familiar,
> it seems only fair that those from a more technical background have to
> do the best they can with look and feel issues and can't just buy
> their way out of the problem.
> * Its probably quite hard to enforce a ban - I'm sure 99designs isn't
> the only site that does this sort of thing, so spotting that people
> have used this sort of service is quite hard.
> * I'd be less bothered by people getting a logo than getting a full design.
>
> These points are based on the assumption that the rumble is meant to
> be a competition first and foremost.
>
> Cheers,
> Roland
>

[James Golick]

You have to pay for 99designs - it doesn't seem fair to allow use of a service which requires payment, as it puts some teams/individuals at a disadvantage.

Unfortunately, if you're going to ban 99designs for that reason, you'd have to ban for-pay webservices, such as clickatell or encoding.com. You'd have to ban anything that costs money, which seems impossible...

[eshine]

I can see both sides, but I feel like the teams should handle their
own design rather than paying for something from a third party. I
think teams should have a designer on board as part of their project
(in some capacity) if possible. Of course solo participants have to
do it all.

If a team comes up with something that they want to expand after the
competition, then that's different, pay for a design then. But
otherwise I think it is better to keep it as fair as possible and not
allow people to buy a design. To me, its the same to me as if a team
paid for a rent-a-coder deal for the weekend

Perhaps if it were only a logo design, I could agree more. And there
is always the option of using free html templates too.

Just some thoughts! :-)

[Justin Blake]

On May 31, 2:03 pm, James Golick <jamesgol...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, if you're going to ban 99designs for that reason, you'd have
> to ban for-pay webservices, such as clickatell or encoding.com. You'd have
> to ban anything that costs money, which seems impossible...

I think paying for webservices is different. In those cases you're not
paying for someone else to create a tangible "piece" of your final
application.

[James Golick]

I think paying for webservices is different. In those cases you're not

paying for someone else to create a tangible "piece" of your final

application.

It really depends on the app, though, which is what makes this so tricky. If you were building a youtube clone and you used encoding.com to handle transcoding videos, you'd be outsourcing a significant portion of your app. 

FWIW, it's not that I feel particularly strongly about this, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

[Roland Swingler]

I think the difference is that you think of a different idea to
implement if you can't afford a particular service, but every app
needs both design and code. Paying for something that is created
specifically for the application rather than just a generally
available service seems different to me. As I said before though, this
is probably pretty hard to enforce.

Cheers,
Roland

[Nick Plante]

This is a good discussion. And helpful, for us as organizers. 

Anyway, I think the difference, in the case illustrated below, is third party web service or backend processing task vs the use of a purchased product or asset. Does that seem like a fair distinction?

The thing that (still) primarily gives me pause is the stock photography argument; I personally rely on istockphoto when building / designing my own web properties. But if we don't limit this sort of thing in a competition, where do we stop? A team could outsource the entirety of their development or even purchase a ready-made web application off of, say, EBay.

I mean, ultimately I think it comes down to playing fair and using good judgement, but it'd be nice to clarify the rules to avoid confusion.

Thoughts?

..nap

[Roland Swingler]

Perhaps a distinction should be drawn between text / non-text assets.
So it is fine to use stock photos, get a logo done for you or
(possibly) even outsource getting photoshop mockups done - but as soon
as you get to writing HTML that should be done by members of a team.
I.e. Any text/* files checked into git should have been written only
by a team member over the course of the weekend.

Cheers,
Roland

[Nick Plante]

To play devils advocate though, that would mean that you could have an
external design shop do a PSD comp for your team -- and potentially
ahead of time, at that.

Again, I'm fuzzy on if this is right or wrong for the intended scope
of the competition; on one hand, this is a 'startup incubator' of
sorts and that is the exact kind of thing you would choose to do if
you were building a web property in the wild and didn't have local
design talent. On the other, having the finances to lay out that cash
for the service is a bit of an unfair advantage in terms of a tightly-
constrained competition.

Anyway... I think, all things considered, I'm leaning towards what you
advocated earlier:

" Paying for something that is created
specifically for the application rather than just a generally
available service seems different to me"

That seems like a good distinguisher to me (or at least as good as
any!), and would cover stock photography as well (since it wasn't
created specifically for you). Enforcing it would / will be hard, but
we can amend the rules to reflect this and ask that people enquire for
specific use case clarifications I suppose?

..nap

[Nick Plante]

Since this conversation seems to have sputtered out, I'm going to
conclude that the consensus here has sided with Roland's previous
statement. In other words, paying for something that is created
_specifically_ (custom) for the application rather than being
generally available is forbidden. Note that this does not disclude, of
course, use of pay-for web API services whose existence predates the
competition, and/or generally available design templates or stock
photography, any of which is available publicly to anyone.

If anyone wants to discuss further or needs personal clarification,
feel free to follow up here or contact the organizational team at
organ...@railsrumble.com.

Thanks!

..nap

[Roland Swingler]

I hope this doesn't create more problems for you guys as the
organizers than its worth! Hopefully people will see it's in the
spirit of the competition, and will take it as is.

Cheers,
Roland