Hello everyone! I’ve been answering one question a lot lately, so I thought I would do a post about it so everyone knows what the deal is. The question: “Is the winning poster the one with the most Facebook and Twitter likes?” The short answer to this is no. Like in previous years, the winning poster is chosen by a panel of international judges from a shortlist of 30 posters. These 30 posters are chosen by the Positive Posters team as well as a small number of invited designers.
The social media buttons have been added to allow you to share your own and your favorite posters with your friends and followers. However, we do rely on them to determine which posters are featured in the ‘Top Rated Entries’ section on the home page. Every 20mins our site calculates the 50 posters that have the highest number of combined Facebook and Twitter likes and 12 of those 50 are displayed on our homepage randomly.
People’s Choice Award
There has never been a ‘People’s Choice Award’, but we are keen to introduce one. With the inclusion of the Facebook and Twitter buttons, it would obviously be very easy to put one together. We’ll keep you posted.
If you have any more questions, let me or one of the team know.
I wonder if it is not actually a good thing if your poster has a lot of likes. Maybe PP would like to choose the posters that are not widely recognised? I hope not, but just a thought..
It should stay as a design competition & not a ‘who has the most friends’ on FB competition. But the peoples choice is a good idea.
@ihman We defiantly don’t take Facebook and Twitter likes into consideration!
@TC PP will always be a design competition and not a popularity contest. Don’t worry about that. Thanks for the feedback!
People’s choice award is a great idea although something that should be conducted possible a for a week after the deadline is over. I feel it would be unfair for those who have uploaded their poster on the last day as opposed to those who uploaded on day one, and have had time to accrue hundreds of “likes”. It’s not exactly the fairest system to be done with facebook likes unless they are all wiped clean and start again for say 7 days after the competition closes. That’s just my 2 cents
@RD really good point. Although, if we announced it in advance, you could enter your poster early to maximize the number of likes you poster received. But that being said, I’ve never been a fan of competitions that rely on votes from the public, I feel the results can be swayed to easily.
i don’t think the fb likes should determine the winner too much because i’ve seen someone ask people on fb to like their poster
@heymez agreed.
Agreed – People’s choice would be a great idea – but FB would not be a fair way to run it. Maybe something like.. everyone who has entered the competition gets one vote – (obv not their own!) – this would encourage positivity within the PP community rather than a popularity contest and the negativity that seems to surround the social media ‘likes’.
I guess the difficulty with the social media aspect is that you don’t know what’s genuine and who has just got all their mates involved… At the end of the day, the people judging this have their heads screwed on and will be looking at the brief and the outcome.
@liz thanks for your feedback and ideas Liz. I really like the idea of each person having their own vote, from a teach point of view it might be difficult to implement, but we will look at it
Though, it’s not exactly fair to those who submit at a later date in the competition as the viewing time is much shorter.
There would need to be a certain period where the ‘likes’ determine who’s popular.
@zane yep agreed
I made the mistake to take part in the Human Rights’ Logo Competition and it ended up in a complete fiasco. The Top 100 was a result of a like button and there were people that created hundreds of profiles to vote themselves.
As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t like to take part in any other competition with public voting and like buttons. I have the feeling that even the FB and Twitter buttons, subconsciously affect our judgement.
@teresa completely agree. I think as long as the major award is taken care of by judges then any ‘people’s choice’ type award can just be an extra fun thing.
Yes…I agree with Teresa – Hi Teresa (-:
I also took part in the HR competition and yes there was a manipulation on the voting system. I’m not sure how PP can go about with a ‘People’s Choice Award’ but if it is through Facebook/Tweeter it won’t be truthful, it will be a popularity contest.
Thanks Michelle, I completely agree. We wouldn’t do anything unless we were sure the system couldn’t be taken advantage of.