To see all of the entries:  Lollipop Kids

#1: Jayne Hodge – London, England, GB

#2: Tom Vogt – Fort Dodge, IA, US

#3: Debbie Aird – Durban, KZN, ZA

#4: Rodel Cabantac – Manila, NCR, PH

#5: Didik Harianto – Jakarta Capital Region, Jakarta Capital Region, ID

#6: Olga Charny – Boston, MA, US

#7: Azmil Omar – Kelang, Selangor, MY

#8: Melinda Amaral-Pimentel – Somerset, MA, US

#9: Jeanne Gordon – Wheelersburg, OH, US

#10: Rosie Pappas – Brisbane, QLD, AU

Super involved community member Andrew Halpern and I have been exchanging emails in order to try to come up with succinct statement that summarizes how images get ranked on Pixoto (Thanks Andy!).  Here is what we came up with:

• A photo is uploaded.
• You pay 10 credits (earned through voting ImageDuel) to submit photo to ImageDuel
• The photo is then dueled against other photos (mostly other new photos at first)
  • In the beginning ImageScore will rise whether you win or lose (but will rise faster if you win) – later on it will rise or fall with each duel
  • If your image wins many duels early on it will be matched against better and better images, and ImageScore will continue to rise, until it begins to lose at which point it’s ImageScore will begin to level out.
• If your image loses many of its original duels it will begin to play lesser quality images, and ImageScore will rise slowly and eventually decline, until it begins to win
• The number of duels your image will get naturally (i.e. without boosts) is dependent upon:
  • Whether your image gets paused (this happens when your image has not achieved the required ImageScore at any given number of duels)
  • Images with a low duel number are much more likely to get dueled than images with high duel counts
  • Images with high ImageScores are more likely to get dueled than images with low ImageScores (duel counts being equal)
• ImageScore changes a lot for each duel during the first 50 duels, until an approximate place on the leaderboard is established) and then changes at a slower past (refining the position) thereafter.
• After 150 duels your ImageScore will change very slowly and duels at this point mostly effect the score of the other image (i.e. we use your image as a benchmark to try to place the other image).
• Pixoto uses a variety of fraud prevention techniques to make sure that it is impossible to artificially inflate (or deflate) an image’s ImageScore.

Does this help?  Anything else that you think should be covered in this or is unclear?

Celebrate your local shopping culture in this week’s challenge by photographing your favorite outdoor market.

***
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Outdoor Markets”
***

To enter:

1. Submit a new photo under: City, Street & Park / Markets & Shops
2. Tag the image with “PWCmarkets”

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners

Rules:

• Please enter photographs of outdoor markets
• Title your photo with the location of the market
• People may be in the shot – but the emphasis should be on the market not the people
• The goods being sold must not be the subject – instead focus on the stall/shop as a whole or panoramic scenes
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCmarkets”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCmarkets-dq will be placed on the image).

To see all of the entries:  Coffee & Tea Cups

#1: Azmi Han – Kota Bharu, Kelantan, MY

#2: Alah Ja Ja Bin – Bucharest, Bucharest, RO

#3: Didik Harianto – Jakarta Capital Region, Jakarta Capital Region, ID

#4: Amy Spurgeon – Chesapeake, VA, US

#5: S̩bastien Muller РBesan̤on, Franche-Comt̩, FR

#6: Jane Bjerkli – Eidsvoll, Akershus, NO

#7: Debra Lynde – Homedale, ID, US

#8: Brandon Rechten – North Brunswick Township, NJ, US

#9: Muzo Gul – Roy, UT, US

#10: Silvana Schevitz – Waxhaw, NC, US

This week’s challenge should be as easy as giving candy to a baby.  So grab a pop and hand it to the cutest kid you know with camera ready.

***
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Lollipop Kids”
***

To enter:

1. Submit a new photo under: Babies & Children – any subcategory 
2. Tag the image with “PWClollipop”

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners

Rules:

• Must be a photo with a child with a lollipop (or other hard suckable candy) as the subject 
• Images must be properly categorized in Babies & Children
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWClollipop”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWClollipop-dq will be placed on the image).

We’ve changed our Instagram connect system so that it will now only upload images to Pixoto that have been tagged with #pixoto in the title.  In addition all of your # tags will now be added as tags in the Pixoto system as opposed to remaining in the title.

This change will allow you to select which images you want to upload to Pixoto and will help assure that the images our community is voting on are the ones you really wanted them to see.

Please note that we have also changed our category description and if you didn’t shoot the image with an Android or iPhone it is no longer allowed in the instagram subcategory. Please see Category Descriptions for details.

We’ve been putting in way too many late nights lately and have got coffee on the brain (litterally). This week’s challege will highlight one of our newest categories by asking our members to post their favorite photos of coffee & tea cups.

***
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Coffee & Tea Cups”
***

To enter:

1. Submit a new photo under:  Artistic Objects / Cups, Plates & Utensils 
2. Tag the image with “PWCcups”

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners

Rules:

• Must be a photo with a coffee or tea cup as the subject
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCcups”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCcups-dq will be placed on the image).

To see all of the entries:  Clocks

#1: Dody Kusuma – Jakarta, Jakarta, ID

#2: Will Perrin – Milton Keynes, England, GB

#3: Didik Harianto – Jakarta Capital Region, Jakarta Capital Region, ID

#4: Olga Charny – Boston, MA, US

#5: Kadir Lie – Medan, Sumatera Utara, ID

#6: J W – Jakarta Capital Region, Jakarta Capital Region, ID

#7: Leyon Albeza – Riyadh, Riyadh, SA

#8: Freda Nichols – Ferrum, VA, US

#9: Rory McDonald – Kendal, , GB

#10: Jigar Brahmbhatt – Woodbridge Township, NJ, US

We’ve made some big changes to our Player Leaderboard and Points Allocation algorithm.  We think the new methods are a big improvement over the way we were doing it before.  Here are the changes:

• We separated the Player Leaderboards by time period so you can see who’s submitting the best photography now (as well as in the past).
• We changed the allocation of points giving more points to the highest ranked images on the site. In the past rankings were too dependent on the quantity of images, and now we are more focused on quality.
• The new points allocation for awards is as follows (numbers represent % of total non-deleted images submitted in the category during the time period).

We hope that this helps improve the quality and excitement of the Player Leaderboard which has remained stagnant for far too long.

Hey Pixoto Peeps

And here’s something you’ve all been waiting for:  NEW CATEGORIES.

We’ve been burning the midnight oil trying to take all of your feedback into consideration as we develop a new category structure that is designed to:

1. Reduce confusion by being content centric
2. Reduce awkward image pairings due to widely different subjects
3. Work well for our future stock and print-on-demand services offerings
4. Better reflect the shooting preferences of our members

Here is the implementation plan:

1. We launched the new categories at midnight GMT on 7/21/2012 and you can begin to use them now.
2. At the same time, categories that are being deleted and subcategories that are being moved will be flagged with the statement “X- ” in the category name and will not be able to be submitted to.
3. After weekly awards are run for this week we will begin the process of moving all existing images that are in “X- ” categories or subcategories to their new respective homes. ***All Awards and Points will move with the image to the new category*** We expect to have this completed prior to the end of the month.
4. Monthly awards for July will be run based on the new category structure after all images have had enough times to find their right place in the new category.

So without further ado:

View the New Categories, Subcategories and their Descriptions