Old captions first - not last?

Suggestions
1

I proffered this before but I don’t know what came of it.

If I submit a caption, with an original idea in it, it soon gets swallowed up by all the following ones, so that my original caption is probably on page 2 or 3 quite quickly.

Now, people appear to vote for captions on the first two or so pages - rarely going further, it appears.

If someone copies my original point and submits a captiion a couple of hours after mine, then anyone new, looking at captions to vote on, would see the later one (who may have stolen my idea) first! My original one is long lost but this new “upstart”, having taken my idea on board, appears - to the viewer scrolling down - to be “original” just because it is the first caption using the idea. The credit for the idea would now appear to go to the “upstart” because his will be seen first. Mine will be “old” - buried away in page 3 or 4 by now. I will have lost the copyright of originality effectively.

As I said before, The Edinburgh Evening News used to have (not now, it’s now rubbish) the newest caption right at the top. And it STAYED there for the duration of the competition. THey all stayed in chronological order. Anyone stealing an idea would be much further down the page and people scrolling down would recognise the older one as being just that - older than the original.

So they were in chronological order for the entire day. Then the next day, a new caption appeared, and the yesterday caption is consigned to history (but accessible by clicking on the yesterday photo which would be available to see, along with all the captions submitted incidentally).

However you couldn’t vote on a yesterday photo, only the current one.

That means that captions for the one day, stay there for one day. The yesterday one is old hat, and not votable on (but you can SEE them by clicking on yesterday’s photo).

That means the original ideas showed early chronologically and would get the credit as being original, and not got swamped onto a page 4 or something. Which is far fairer than it is today I think (sorry Chris!).

Just wondered if I could revive that thinking!

Grover D. Bluebottle IV

2

Hi Grover,

I’ve taken on-board your suggestions and have changed the ordering of the captions on the photo pages.

The best ones are still at the top, but newer captions are now lower rather than higher in the list. The order on the “Captions” page is unaffected by this change.

3

Hi Chris,
I can understand why you’ve changed the listing order, but I have to say that I don’t think it works too well. The captions at the top just stagnate now, whether they have votes or not. I miss the continuously changing list of new captions, and having to scroll to the second page to see the new ones is really tedious. In fact, I haven’t bothered looking at them since the listing order changed. Due to work pressures I often can’t get to the site until around 1pm, and until recently it was still worth putting in a caption by mid-afternoon in case it received a vote. Now though, the first captions in dominate the voting, making it harder for newer captions to rise higher in the listings so it’s not worth bothering after a certain point. I’ve also noticed that people seem to be voting less, too- 12 to 15 votes on average for the top captions in previous weeks, 5 or 6 since the change. I don’t think that it’s coincidental, but that, like me, people can’t be bothered to scroll down to look at the new ones.

Is there any chance of having it back to the way it was?
Cheers,
Michael

4

Hi Michael,

I was hoping that people would use the Captions page to see the new submissions. But if others browse as you do, perhaps we should revert the change.

Anyone else think so?

Chris

5

I’m with Michael on this one.

6

Totally agree with Michael and Shandonbelle.

7

I think we’ve got a consensus - I’ve reverted the change.

8

Hooray! Three cheers for Chris! It was a good idea Grover, and well worth testing, but I’m afraid it just didn’t work in practice. Keep them coming, though,
cheers,
Michael

9

Cheers Chris :slight_smile:

10

Not sure if it will better but I was thinking about splitting the captions under the picture in 2 coloms. 1 with scored votes and next to it one with latest captions.

11

I agree with Michael, the change didn’t work for me. (:P)