Kit pen Roller ball or Fountain Contest.

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mredburn

mredburn

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Discussion on the kit pen contest parameters. Should we limit it to RB and FP s or just open it up to all kits and let it run.
 
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I suppose because there were other contests for Ball point pens. We have had modified cigar, horn, slimline. etc where RB and Fp were not allowed. Part of the reason is in the way the contests have been changing in the last couple of years. However most of that is in the past and by redesigning the contests from "advanced" etc to kit and kitless. We can eliminate a lot of the old reasons. Even the Advanced contest is only 2 years old. There is no reason with kit and kitless that the entries have to be a certain style. Unless we want to make it a contest of a certain style on purpose. I dont think either answer is wrong.
 
I would vote to open it up to any commercially available kit of any type. But then maybe we wouldn't need both the slimline and ballpoint (cig/sierra) categories in addition.


Ed
 
In competition we can have general categories and have specific categories. We dont have to have all general category contests. I believe that having a specific set of pen style and parameters that every one has to follow has its place. Some of the contests are designed toward limited kit and tooling costs. A balance of both gives every one an option to play.
 
I think making it specific to RB/FP would be a good idea. That way the ones that want to do a ballpoint can enter that separate contest and that'd avoid any confusion as to which contest they belong in.

As many of us have learned from running bash contests....people NEED direction!
 
I'm going write up a proposal for the rules for the kit RB/FP contest. You all can comment and suggest improvements. Hopefully we can reach a consensus and get them finalized well in advance of the contest. Do we have official dates for things yet?

Ed
 
Yes we should have them done by the end of June. I would think we would have them done before that. I want to announce the event no later than July 14th and post the contests and the rules then. We will open the contests on AUG 1st for submissions and close them Monday the 18th. Firs tround of voting to close Sunday the 24th, Final poll to close on the 30th. Winners on the 31st.
 
I took a shot at drafting rules. My "simple" rules started getting pretty bloated, so I pulled out all the things that I think would apply to all contests and put them in a separate document. This is intended to be a straw man to spur some discussion. If you think something should be changed, don't worry about hurting my feelings.

Here's my draft for the Roller Ball / Fountain Pen contest and some general rules (which I pulled out of my contest and mostly copied from prior contest rules).
 

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Just checking to see if anyone is paying attention!! :wink: At least I didn't use the same picture twice.

I wonder if Jeff would be willing to give us a practice place to create our rules post and polls like he did for the bash. Having a place where I could play with things until I got them right was a big help.

Ed
 
What did you think about the "one contest per pen, but multiple pens per contest" instead of "one contest per pen and one pen per contest"?

What did you think about photo rules? My intent was to try and provide a level playing field while giving the voters the ability to check fit and finish in addition to prettiness of the pens. Maybe I went overboard though.

Ed
 
We can ask and im pretty sure he will help us out.
I havent had time to digest your photo rules. One part of me says its great you have given direction and examples but 4 may be a bit overboard. Logically I can see where the 4 give the best shots for judging and maybe a 5th one, one they can choose to use a back ground to present their pen. The 5th one would be optional.
 
would you post the pdf of the general rules in that thread so we can keep track of the discussion of it there.
 
Although it is not written anywhere (at least I can never find it) photos should not be over 800px x 800px. There is a maximum file size as well, but I don't remember what that is. I'll try to find this information.

Found it!
 

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mbroberg said:
Although it is not written anywhere (at least I can never find it) photos should not be over 800px x 800px. There is a maximum file size as well, but I don't remember what that is. I'll try to find this information.

Found it!
Click to expand...

Hi Mike - Thanks for the link! It's interesting that jpg format pictures are limited to 256k, but a png format picture can be up to 4mb. In any case, a 256k jpg limit can accommodate a much higher pixel count than 800 x 600. For example, the largest sample photo I created was 164kb for 1000 x 837. It could have even been a much smaller file size if I had used more compression (which would not change how it looked on a screen signficantly).

So my question is, why are we still holding to the 800 x 600 pixel limit? The vast majority of IAP members will be viewing the forum on screens with much higher resolution these days. Even those using phones to view the forum will have resolution well above 800 x 600. If there are a few members still using ancient monitors, they will have to scroll to see anything larger than 800 x 600. The benefit of giving the vast majority of members a better viewing experience (at least during contests) would outweigh the inconvenience to a very small minority (if there are even any). In my opinion anyway.

What do you think?

Ed
 
All the talk about pixels and file sizes is gibberish to me. I keep my photos to a max of 800 Pix on it's largest dimension because I at least understand that:cool:.

I have no personal heartburn over increasing the pixel size, but I didn't make that rule. I'll ask Jeff to take a look at this thread and weigh in.
 
parklandturner said:
Just checking to see if anyone is paying attention!! :wink: At least I didn't use the same picture twice.

I wonder if Jeff would be willing to give us a practice place to create our rules post and polls like he did for the bash. Having a place where I could play with things until I got them right was a big help.

Ed
Click to expand...

Could you use this forum for testing and poll setup? The only reason I created separate bash forums for poll setups was the contest managers were going to be entering each other's contests. Do we have that situation here too?
 
jeff said:
parklandturner said:
Just checking to see if anyone is paying attention!! :wink: At least I didn't use the same picture twice.

I wonder if Jeff would be willing to give us a practice place to create our rules post and polls like he did for the bash. Having a place where I could play with things until I got them right was a big help.

Ed
Click to expand...

Could you use this forum for testing and poll setup? The only reason I created separate bash forums for poll setups was the contest managers were going to be entering each other's contests. Do we have that situation here too?
Click to expand...

I was planning on entering the kitless contest run by Mike. I would promise not to look at anything he put up in test / setup mode, but if that doesn't fly and it would save you a lot of work setting up forums I would just not enter any of the contests.

Ed
 
parklandturner said:
jeff said:
For quite a while now the jpg/jpeg limit has been 960x960 and 1 MB.
Click to expand...

Sounds good to me.

Ed
Click to expand...

Thinking about this some more, I plan to specify a max picture size of 960 x 960 and 256KB for my contest. Since we are only displaying pictures (with plain backgrounds) on screen and not printing them, the 256KB limit should be adquate and will make picture intensive poll loading a whole lot faster for anyone with slower connection.

If anyone disagrees, speak now or...........


Ed
 
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