I think that the top three captions tend to get all of or most of the votes, would it not be a good idea to keep the votes hidden until the voting is over, I think you would see the votes shared out more but you would lose the excitement of having your caption voted on and maybe top of the leader board.
What do you think?
David
I agree, and much as I try to look down the bottom of the captions for any that might appeal to me I can hardly bring myself to go to the second page.
Is it me, or has the voting become a little cowardly recently? Nobody seems to want to vote on anything that doesn’t already have a vote, which means that the top two captions hog everything. It seems that if you don’t get a vote in the first twenty minutes, you won’t get a vote at all- it’s infuriating. Why has it gone this way? This only seems to have become critical in the last two weeks, and there are some excellent captions getting ignored because voters won’t get off their arses and look beyond the top row. I often have to put in around ten votes per contest in order for the good captions to have a chance- does anyone have any ideas to remedy this?
Michael - like you I regularly trawl the whole lot and also because people, if they are anything like me, may change and hopefully improve a caption. The consequence is that you are regulars near the bottom of the finders table. For those who take an interest in the table it affects behaviour in two ways - firstly the fear of voting on a caption with no votes outside of the first 15 minutes and secondly the mad rush to vote and sort things out in the first 10-15 minutes before many of the best captions have even been entered.
Perhaps if the voting remained blind and the order unsorted until the next picture was in this would offer a double whammy of a new picture and the pecking order revealed from the one before.This would allow a minimum of 4 hours uninfluenced voting where the captions are arranged in the order in which they came in. Perhaps also the chronology could be reversed so that if an idea has been duplicated the first entered would be first to be read on the list.
After that initial 4 hours min - normal service could be resumed.
John, thanks for your reply, I couldn’t agree more. It must be the finders points table that’s skewing things towards the captions on the top- it’s like extreme Darwinism at the moment. Either a ban on voting for the first hour, or making the voting invisible for a while would change things for the better. I like the reverse chronology idea for similar captions too, great suggestions, thanks.
I am firmly in favour of showing captions in quality order on photo pages.
I’m sorry I didn’t read the whole post but I agree with Michael that at the moment the winning captions (for the last 2 months) have almost all been ones added within an hour of uploading the new photo. Many were added within the first 5 minutes or even 30 seconds! Here I would say that the cure of voting incentives by finders points is worse than the disease of not voting…
Don’t forget that those captions that get added in the first few seconds/minutes are probably ones that have been pre-prepared days, maybe weeks in advance, given that the upcoming photos are visible. I wouldn’t be surprised if these captions are generally better quality as they’ve had more thought.
It’s a shame some good captions get lost in the 8/12/8 flurries, but I think provided we incentivise fast voting (using finder points) then the system will work for the majority.
Thank you Chris for putting up with my little irritation 
I wonder if many captioneers write so many captions in advance when there are 3 photos a day, with the insecurity of up- and downvoting for upcomming pictures; this would require quite some work. But being addicted to captioneering (or captioning?) myself, I actually wouldn’t be surprised
Maybe it is an idea to hide the votes for the upcoming photos instead of the running ones; this way leading captions will still be on the top of the page from the moment of uploading, and with the upcoming photo section still visible and “votable”, there would be an element of surprise (also a topic on the forum). Also people who make the effort of writing in advance will still be happy, and it will give occasional captioneers a little more time to come up with something brilliant without the feeling of having to hurry before a prefab caption gets 10 votes within the hour.
Is it otherwise technically possible to prewrite captions that afterwards are automatically added when the new photo is uploaded even when a captioneer can’t be online on the set times? I do have work to…
Finders points sometime seem to start a voting race, and a 1word caption is often easier understood (and voted for) than longer captions or better worked out captions. I might not get some of the puns but also sometimes frown at the amount of votes a simple wordplay gets within the hour, while brilliant captions that have been added later can’t catch up with them anymore. It could discourage captioneers adding great captions later on in the day, but of course there are exceptions.
It is just my idea and I realize that as the founder of caption.me your overview and context of the site is far greater than mine, so I’ll get back to the drawing board and try to create some brilliance.
I know one or two captioneers that keep prepared captions ready in notepad and then copy-paste then in. Very organised!
I think impromptu photos would be a fun addition (there are separate discussions around that) - this could be in addition to the voted-in photos.
Pre-writing captions for photos would also be good. Perhaps our model of having three photos per day ought to change? How about instead we just show a highlight of popular photos on the Photos page and let people add captions to whatever upcoming photos they like without having to wait for them to be featured?
Regarding Finders Points how bout we change the way they’re awarded, based on where the caption was on the list at the time it was found. We can give more FPs to people who find captions that were low in the list at the time?
Impromptu photos would be nice, but maybe it is an idea to use on of the 3 photos for this (4 photos a day would be too much!). I probably am a minority but I loved the 2 pics a day, it gave me more time to keep up scanning the forum and read every caption.
Maybe finders points would be good if they would be “Real” finders points (not who can vote the quickest for a good caption within 5 minutes of the new photo). To get “Finders” points one should need to put in some effort and really find a beauty that got lost in the swamp. Finders points would be brilliant for captions added a day later (or lost on the bottom of the page, or even edited ones). I think many more would start reading all the captions and also ones on 2nd pages or days before. It also encourages adding captions for past photos. So just an idea would be that finders points become available for a photo as soon as the next photo is uploaded, so they are always a photo behind. That would really be finding good captions. I boldly assume Michael Winner would like this idea to.
Even the voting period could be extended to 5 days so captioneers have more possibilities of “finding points”.
I think the FP’s have done their job pretty well so captioneers are voting more rapidly now, I don’t think this will change if the rules for FP’s are changed…
@Guido - finders points are precisely meant to speed up voting and ensure that the pace of voting matches the pace of caption writing (which comes in a flurry at 8/12/8). If we don’t have a flurry of voting to match the flurry of captions, then good captions won’t get held at the top of the list and won’t get so many votes.
I like the idea of the super vote, that can be placed on elapsed captions. Would it not really piss of the lead captioneer especially if it went to the top of the list? But then again if it went to the top it was obviously a good caption. Doh, my brain hurts.
If the lead captioneer has the best caption, they’ll be most likely to get the super votes, no?
I’d prefer if you left previous captions alone. Let the people who played then called the shots…
Yes Chris, and I’ve taken an aspirin.
Instead of super votes on old captions maybe each captioneer could have a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place rosette which they can pin to any caption and can move anytime if their favourites change? They could appear on the captioneer’s profile page too.
@Guido, you’ve raised some good issues there about finders points, especially about those captions getting lost in the swamp. Finder’s points do have their disadvantages, in that they tend to make some voters a bit conservative in their voting, only going for those captions that they are sure will get some attention early on. They dissuade people from going for the longer or subtler captions that take time to build or think about, and puts the emphasis on puns and wordplay instead over gags and screwball stuff. That said, I do think that they should be given a chance to work, and the new super votes should address some of those issues. The least we can do is to give it a go, especially after all of the brilliant work Chris has put into developing them. And I say this with the utmost confidence that I will never, ever get to use one. I really like your idea of only using them after a ‘cooling off’ period of 24 hours though.
Thank you Chris & Michael, I’m starting to see things from a different angle (such a good thing that we can discuss on a forum); and no doubt that the site will improve because it’s ongoing development is nurtured by Chris like a golden egg (which it probably is). Whatever happens, in the end it is all about any brilliant caption, so I think I’ll ask John for one of his magic aspirin pills and concentrate and be more constructive
@MichaelWinner I will definitely implement the welcome pack and appreciate the input that you, Fraser and others have put into the proposal for it. I am finishing off some work on user linking at the moment and then will move onto super votes. Once those are done I’ll get on with the welcome pack.