[Clipart] Contest + Ideas

[Nicu Buculei]

Jon Phillips wrote:
> Also, I just discussed with my gf the idea of having a sponsored 
> contest. Maybe we could set a number of images. Or, an image bounty up 
> and then pool together some money to buy a good art book or something. 
> In fact, it would be great to give away a nice art book a month or every 
> other month. These books would only cost us like $20-$40. However, maybe 
> it is better to do this one-time only and see what happens. Also, my GF 
> had the idea to develop a competition of sorts so that the person who 
> contributes the most images in a month receives a t-shirt of one of 
> their works printed onto it.
> 
> Anyhow, what type of competiton or goal could we set that would 
> encourage further participation and would also help to get some more 
> eyes on our project.

i see those competitions (if done in a friendly manner) as a way to 
increase and improve our community

> Possible goals for a competetion:
> 
> * 5000 unique images
> * 10000 unique images
> * largest number of images submitted in one month by one user
> * largest number of images submitted by a group

i would not encourage submissions of large numbers of images, this is 
risky because:
- we can receive images with questionable license (say, mass convert of 
non Public Domain images)
- we can receive images of poor quality (say, large number of traced and 
not optimized images)
this is why i think we should focus on quality and community

> * qualitative: best clipart in a month (who would judge)

right, this can be very hard to judge, we have several different styles 
of images and is like comparing apples to oranges

> * knock out clip art requests month...we treat the requests like bugs, 
> give them point values and set a goal for how many to get as a group
> * competition in support of developing tools to help the library
> * best use of imagery from open clipart -- this doesn't help our project 
> very much though like a competition that encourages new clip art 
> submissions

but it can improve the visibility of our project, with the indirect 
result of encouraging submissions

> Thoughts on this idea and possible rewards? Also, we might not need to 
> have a gift if we do something collective like try to get 2000 
> submissions in a month.

maybe we can find a way to make those rewards self-sustaining. for 
example, we may get a CafePress store selling stuff with our images on 
it and use those money to fund the rewards (personally i'm very unhappy 
that i can't buy from CafePress due to high shipping prices outside US 
and customs taxes and still have not found a local shop providing a 
similar service)

-- 
nicu