Hi all,

since we have reached the magical assignment number 50: Challenge Yourself I was thinking to myself how the assignments are working and how they could improve. I asked a few of the previous assignment winners for some feedback and I got some really good ideas. Thanks! The goal is to make the assignments more open and more interesting. And also I'd like to get people active instead of searching their library's.

One thing that really stood out in the reactions I got was the "lack of time". Normally I set 2 weeks for the entry-period which is too short for some of you. Therefor it's changed to an entire month. With the end of the month being the end of the entry-period. The voting will be happening in the first week of the next month.

A few other points are still open for debate such as:


  • When does the next assignment start? Since I browse the forums categorically I only see one topic per category. If I'd start the next assignment the first day of the next month, the "current" assignment which is still in voting might not be noticed anymore. Another options is to announce the next assignment-idea as the voting starts. So you know what's going to be the assignment, but the actual assignment thread will not be there yet. That will give you a whole month of time. If I'd start the assigment after the voting is done, the actual time for the assignment will be one week less. That would be about 3 weeks normally.
  • Following on announcing the next assignment idea is the idea to announce two assignments at the same time. One current assignment and one next assignment so basically at the start of an assignment you already know what the next assignment will be. Which gives you double time.
  • At this point the winner of an assignment picks his/hers 3-5 favorites. With 3-5 favorites I'm able to add all of the favorites photos to the start-post. However in some cases there aren't as many players and some might be left out. With the current system I'm able to get up to 10 people in the poll. However I would not be adding each photo to the start post. What's your take on this?
  • Do we still want an assignment with a final-poll? Are there alternatives?


Anyway these are a few things I can think off myself right now. I hope to get some more feedback and hopefully improve the assignments.

All feedback is welcome(even if you don't want me to host them anymore)! If you like to send me an email of PM, that's fine as well.

The main goal of improvement on the assignments will be activity, fun and accessibility.

Thanks,
Jan