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Suggestion; combine advanced and intermediate and then have one mystery reviewer of that level 5 years 10 months ago #1701

  • Mark Lethlean
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Hi All, I have just been looking through the advanced and intermediate levels of the "being blue' competition and am really struggling to separate any significant differences in the quality of images b/n the two levels. I think that observation has been fairly consistent ( in my very humble opinion) for most comps over the last year or two.
I was wondering if it would be worth considering condensing the competition to only 2 levels. The advantages would be that it would provide a bigger pool and more competition. That you would only need a single mystery reviewer where at the moment there is no feedback for the advanced group.
I would also, if possible, like to see the return of what your images scored in terms of total votes and average vote after the comp ends. Basically, I would like to get some more feedback on images entered.
Thanks
Mark Lethlean

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Suggestion; combine advanced and intermediate and then have one mystery reviewer of that level 5 years 10 months ago #1702

  • Rob Parker
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Hi Mark,

Just a quick comment on one point you mention: there have been Mystery Reviewer Critiques for the Advanced Level competitions for the last year; these have appeared in our bi-monthly Newsletters (with a lag for the first year - finding suitable MRs for the Advanced level is not easy), and most are also available in the Resources - Mystery Reviewer Critiques section of this website. Another catch-up MR Critique from last year's Advanced competitions, and the MR Critiques for all three levels of the first of this year's competitions, will be in the April Newsletter; they will be added to the website soon.

Rob
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Suggestion; combine advanced and intermediate and then have one mystery reviewer of that level 5 years 10 months ago #1703

  • Glenn Pure
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Hi Mark, purely a personal view from me... while I can see your point, I think it means that some in the Intermediate comp really should be in the advanced comp. It is largely up to members to decide where they compete but I think it does get a bit messy if members change levels mid year as it makes it hard to score for the annual BLP awards.

As for the scoring of images and feedback. I think this is a useful idea that should be considered. What I think would be good would be to show the total scores for the images that won or received a commendation in the comps and that individual members would have private access to their own image scores (via the 'My Photos' page for example) after a competition closes. The only thing I'm reticent about is priority for such a change as there are other things being reviewed on the website and Rob already puts in a huge number of hours with this.
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Suggestion; combine advanced and intermediate and then have one mystery reviewer of that level 5 years 10 months ago #1704

  • Mark Lethlean
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Thanks Rob and Glenn, appreciate your quick response. I think that that is really the point- there are either a lot in the intermediate comp that really should be in the advanced comp.- or maybe it is vice versa. Maybe both.
Regards Mark
PS I keep Rob busy enough with some of the mistakes I make with my submissions.

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Suggestion; combine advanced and intermediate and then have one mystery reviewer of that level 5 years 10 months ago #1712

  • Graham Cam
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Hi Mark,

Sometime back I seriously considered membership feedback and proposed an Entry Level competition to the committee. This made sense given the numbers of new members - many new to photography and in some cases new to birding. The issue then arose that a number of members felt that competing in the Intermediate competition was not a level playing field as some members competing in the Intermediate competition clearly have advanced photographic expertise. Hence the Advanced level was implemented. The main issue with the Advanced level, of which I am aware, is that too many Intermediate members are not moving up to the Advanced level of their own volition. The result is too many members submitting photos in the Intermediate competition and this needs to change. There are sufficient Intermediate level entrants that should move to the Advanced level to ensure more competition for our Advanced level entrants,.

You might have noticed that some of the committee do not enter competitions and I am one of these people. My view is the President should not be competing for medals I introduced and as I am part of the medal review panel,it would be most inappropriate for me to compete. Nevertheless, I do keep an eye on competitions and the committee will continue to improve competitions taking into account feedback such as yours - thank you for taking the time to contribute to the Forum.

Rules and regulations are put in place with the best intentions and sometimes they need revising. The rule that has been in place since the inception of the 3 competition levels has been that Gold medal winners must move up to the next level at the start of the next calendar year. Silver and Bronze medal winners are not required to do so and those members not receiving a medal remain in the level in which they competed. I am aware that this now needs to change and I am prepared to intervene and I will do so asking member to move to a different level at the start of 2019. As Rob Parker has pointed out, there are issues with our medal scoring when a member moves up a level mid-year. Hence, we should wait until the start of 2019.

Until recently Rob and I have been moderating the competition entries as well as the New Images gallery; we now have a dedicated competition moderator, which will free up my time to take a closer look at the entries in the three galleries and make recommendations to the committee.

As far as feedback on images submitted to competitions is concerned, it was my idea to introduce the Mystery Reviewers and it has been my task to find a total of 6 MR's. This has been a really time consuming task and one reason why reviews were delayed last year. One has to find suitable judges and then train them how to navigate the functionality of the website. I am now in a position where we have more than 6 reviewers. My aim is to have 3 reviewers per level - a total of 9. These reviewers are hand-picked advanced or professional photographers. Not all are bird photographers but all are nature photographers and at least 50% are club level judges. So why have MR's? The membership voting system is seriously flawed and this became obvious when I joined BLP as the Competition Co-ordinator in 2014. At that time I had started judging/critiquing at club level and when reviewing our membership voting it became clear that votes were often not aligned with the quality of the image, more often with the name of the photographer, a favourite species, perhaps even the most colourful species. Remember, any member can vote and thus some votes will be cast by members new to photography or not photographers at all. To eliminate the the name of the photographer issue, I implemented 'anonymous' photos displays until after the end of the voting phase. To ensure that photos entered at the start of the competition received equal viewing to those entered at the end of submissions, I introduced a random sort functionality for each time the competition entries are accessed. There is also a higher weighting given to MR scores as compared to membership scores when compiling the annual medal scores.

Good news is that you will find that the MR critiques align with the competitions this year.

Ideally, I would like to provide critiques for all entries but this is not possible. Club judges provide verbal critiques, which are quicker to provide to an audience rather than a written critique. I doubt that any of our MR's have the time to write critiques for all the competition entries and if this was possible, the 'fee for service' would be unsustainable for our meager budget.

I trust this fully answers your questions/comments re: competitions.

Graham
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Suggestion; combine advanced and intermediate and then have one mystery reviewer of that level 5 years 10 months ago #1713

  • Mark Lethlean
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Thanks Graham, remarkably detailed and informative reply. Much appreciated
Mark
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Last edit: by Mark Lethlean.
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