A Little suggestion to avoid spam and to be let's say "fair".
Posted By
fabiofranca
I read everyone here and maybe DBH should forbidden links in the comments field and images too. I’ve used images in comments and it is very useful when you want to show another version or bring people to come and look at yours since the submissions are in so big number that we are not humanly capable of seeing it (except if you pass the entire day connected). But if people are spaming, then those functions should be deleted. Anyway you cannot stop people from asking opinions about their art work.
Somme suggestions…
No votes! A pre-buying system would be the most honest. So I explain you how.
A “would buy it” button.
If you love the shirt idea and you click on it, you are saying to DBH staff that you are serious about the possibility of buying it.
Each user page would have its “buying rate” exposed. But only DBH staff can make the final decision. Once this decision made, DBH would send a mail to each possible buyer of that shirt saying that it is available for real.
Lots of people will not buy it even if they clicked, but after 10 rejection the person’s profile would get a, let’s say “red” label. The counter would go to zero and the profile green if they honor at least one engagement. So people would think twice before before clicking. Red labels cannot click anymore in the “would buy it” button. Red labels cannot make comments.
I know… people would create a new profile. But only full filled profile can click and comment. It means full and valid home and business address (no po boxes), and email and etc… This would not solve everything but would reduce a lot the creation of new fake profiles. Anyway DBH is not obliged to choose the biggest buying rate profile… it is just a indication and it show the artist that even if he is not approved, his designs has chances to sell somewhere else.
Another thing : A valid (but not required) paypal account in the profile would give let’s say a "
gold status" to the profile. You are still not obliged to use your paypal account to buy anything but it would show DBH how serious you are about making a real profile and not changing it so easily.
A good buying rate (even without paypal) would also give you a “gold label”.
Just a suggestion… you are free to contribute. DBH people could come and pick what they think is useful…
Sorry about my English… it is not my mother tongue.
Comments
Yeah I’t nos that big a deal, the people at designbyhumans don’t choose designs just based on the votes, and a link that says “vote for my t-shirt” may work to get people to view the t-shirt, but it doesn’t force them to do so, or to give votes.
I think it’s great that you can put html in the comments, it can be very useful.
I think it’s good idea when You start new site like DBH. But here and now, I don’t think this huge change of system is needed. Spamming would still be with us, coz people would writte “please check my designs” so You can see it and clik “would buy it” button…
I know but as Jimiyo was saying or “quoting” in his post about spam makes me think that some people may be treated as spammers when they are not, just because, during a work break or free time some busy surfers see something nice and say, “hey nice! +1. Come see my designs too” in a copy/paste basis so he can reach quickly the ones he admired and get visits without pass hours online…
In a site successful like this one… submissions just fall everyday. Once out of the first page, a casual visitor or site fan, will never be able to see your design, because they will not go through the pages. So asking shamelessly people to come and see your design is kind understandable. My suggestion is to stop the vote trade thing… People here sometimes exchange votes just for politeness . If they in some way engage themselves, them a designer would really know the value of his design and DBH would continue to be free to decide.
Anyway… maybe I’m wrong….
its like what they do at lafraise, threadless already—if i understand it correctly. (the would buy button stuff)
Well again, if vote count is NOT the deciding factor on whether or not a design gets printed does it really matter if a design falls to the third or fourth or last page? I haven’t been here that long so I don’t know, but in just the Quiksilver and Kings of Leon contests there are a good number of subs on the back pages that got a lot of votes. Granted they’ve been up longer, but I have to believe that if a design is interesting to this crowd that it will get the attention.
Lafraise has it and the threadless system is a bit different but none makes you engage yourself. Engaging can make people comment or give an approbation level freely, but only press the button if they really plan to buy it. Because they will know that they cannot do it more than 10 or 5 times in a row. I really would like to have an idea about how many people are seriously interested in buying and wering a shirt design of mine and not just voting because it looks nice.
fabiofranca said: Lafraise has it and the threadless system is a bit different but none makes you engage yourself. Engaging can make people comment or give an approbation level freely, but only press the button if they really plan to buy it. Because they will know that they cannot do it more than 10 or 5 times in a row. I really would like to have an idea about how many people are seriously interested in buying and wering a shirt design of mine and not just voting because it looks nice.
couldn’t agree more to you fabio. cheers
FluentSword… I agree with you… but if votes are not a deciding factor and lots of people are voting just to be nice or polite with friends and alike, then this button should not exist… because it does not reflect anything… the actual rating system just doesn’t work.
Sometimes I vote on designs I might not actually wear (not a background color I like, etc) because I still think it’s good and want to encourage them to keep designing. I feel votes are a form of encouragement. I’m not actually a shirt designer here or anywhere else so I just assume this, but I feel the designers would be encouraged by votes.
If there was a limit, in one way or another, to the number of votes one could give, there would be more 0-vote designs instead of, say, 5-vote designs. I feel that might discourage a few uh, “budding artists”, because “3 people liked it” sounds so much better than “no one liked it”. =P
Hey OmarO!
I understand, but the encouragements would come from real comments… If someone says to me how he thinks my design is good or needs ameliorations I believe it is better than a vote. And the “Would buy” rate would give a idea of the real value of my work.
Let’s say I am a friend of yours. you come to me and tell me to come by and maybe hit the would buy button. I would come by but if I dont really feel like wearing it, I would say to you how I think you should improve it. Knowing that I cannot hit the “would buy” button more than 5 or 10 times without honor at least one, would make me think twice. I would not like to get a red label on my profile just because It would please you.
In the other hand, knowing that people will not hit the “would buy” button easily, you would concentrate in the feedback and the improuvement of your work because coping and paste of “nice work” or “visit mine at…” indefinitely, would not help you much.
Hm, yeah I completely forgot the commenting part. I agree with you then. I never vote without leaving a comment anyway, so now that I think of it, my argument doesn’t make any sense, haha.
fabiofranca said: FluentSword… I agree with you… but if votes are not a deciding factor and lots of people are voting just to be nice or polite with friends and alike, then this button should not exist… because it does not reflect anything… the actual rating system just doesn’t work.
Well without the actual data gathered in voting we can’t say either way. We certainly can’t say how much of an effect the “friend & family vote” has, but my gut reaction is that it is highly exaggerated here. I can’t imagine that a designer can submit uninteresting work and win a print by fluffing the vote. And I think that because the site has staff. Staff that appears very active and vigilant. It’s hard to leave the decision making entirely to the voting public as well. If DBH did that we’d probably never see half the shirts that are in the store. You can equate this to film, the best-selling movies are always the safe ones that are friendly to a large audience. The staff must be the final say to make sure the site retains character and is also financially successful. I like the elegant simplicity of the DBH voting system. I don’t think it’s that the rating system doesn’t work, it’s just not ironclad. It’s a guide that the staff uses to make their decisions. Nothing more or less.
I think FluentSword is on point with everything. I don’t think the system is in need of any kind of overhaul, because at the end of the day the staff picks the shirts they want and the spamming has no real affect on anything. The voting/commenting is very necessary I think, even if it isn’t the deciding factor, because it brings us here and keeps us here. It gives us a constant activity to do, so we come back to the site every day to see what’s been submitted and vote/comment, and check our own votes/comments, and it also lets the site see what people think of the submissions. So all in all, even though some users might be a little bit of a nuisance, I think everything works out for the best.
Right FluentSword, and in my opinion votes and comments are more needed for designers. For the DBH team the number of votes or comments are the last things which are taken into account.
Everyone would still come back everyday to see their buying rate and exchange comments. Everyone would also come to see if the buying rate of the shirt he supported is doing well even if, like the votes, this will not decide much. But in another hand DBH staff (still free to choose what they want), would have a better idea of what would sell. Even if DBH supports a specific kind of design, most by its philosophy then by its selling power, the website would attract many other designers who would be interested in knowing the selling power of his shirt among all the other benefits the site has already.
But if you are just happy with this system… what can I say…. It is still a nice website.
What’s this all about then?
The DBH Daily Contest
The ongoing contest at Design By Humans consists of 3 awards: Shirt of the Day, Shirt of Week and Shirt of the Month. Original T-shirt designs are submitted to our website and voted on by the Design By Humans community all over the world. Shirts that garner the most votes become winners and the designer receives cash and prizes. The winning design is printed here at Design By Humans and made available for purchase through our online store.
I know asked about voting before in the forum and got all kinds of wiseass remarks and whatnot, but if DBH itself says this in the rules, then they should either abide to it or reword this statement.
BenjaminPhantom said: What’s this all about then?
The DBH Daily Contest
The ongoing contest at Design By Humans consists of 3 awards: Shirt of the Day, Shirt of Week and Shirt of the Month. Original T-shirt designs are submitted to our website and voted on by the Design By Humans community all over the world. Shirts that garner the most votes become winners and the designer receives cash and prizes. The winning design is printed here at Design By Humans and made available for purchase through our online store.
I know asked about voting before in the forum and got all kinds of wiseass remarks and whatnot, but if DBH itself says this in the rules, then they should either abide to it or reword this statement.
Well if my guess on selection is correct, the language there is not necessarily wrong. I don’t know exactly how many designs are chosen every year, but it’s probably upwards of 250. If a couple of those are chosen by popular vote then the statement is true. It simply says that the shirts that garner the most votes become winners. It doesn’t say that’s the only way to win. We know that last part to be true. Popular vote is moot to the special contests. Perhaps in the bigger picture it’s largely moot to the regular contest, and frankly I don’t think the staff needs to say either way.
Whether or not I agree about the selections the site makes is not important. I’ll be the first person to make my case for a point, but at the end of the day I’d rather focus on making great work than chiseling away at the minutia of the voting process. There’s enough room for plenty of people to win. You just have to understand that both the voting public and the DBH staff are your clients. If you want them to work with you, you have to find what they’re looking for.
Having been a low-lying member since just late in 2008,…I honestly think that DBH does right by all on their site.
They have their own style and created a site that works very well, that mixes it up with a giant base of artists & art apprecianados along w/ a very distinct flavor in what they pick for winners.
I don’t see them following any particular set-in-stone formula to decide winners, other than what they’ve already told us & I think anyone who has been here long enough understands they’re fair in what they do and how they do it.
If someone needs them to re-type that into the “rules” section to feel better then whatever… I personally don’t.
If it’s just a matter of someone not liking what actually gets a print, well that is what art and different tastes in art is all about. Keep it up DBH, everything’s running nice.
FluentSword said:BenjaminPhantom said: What’s this all about then?
The DBH Daily Contest
The ongoing contest at Design By Humans consists of 3 awards: Shirt of the Day, Shirt of Week and Shirt of the Month. Original T-shirt designs are submitted to our website and voted on by the Design By Humans community all over the world. Shirts that garner the most votes become winners and the designer receives cash and prizes. The winning design is printed here at Design By Humans and made available for purchase through our online store.
I know asked about voting before in the forum and got all kinds of wiseass remarks and whatnot, but if DBH itself says this in the rules, then they should either abide to it or reword this statement.Well if my guess on selection is correct, the language there is not necessarily wrong. I don’t know exactly how many designs are chosen every year, but it’s probably upwards of 250. If a couple of those are chosen by popular vote then the statement is true. It simply says that the shirts that garner the most votes become winners. It doesn’t say that’s the only way to win. We know that last part to be true. Popular vote is moot to the special contests. Perhaps in the bigger picture it’s largely moot to the regular contest, and frankly I don’t think the staff needs to say either way.
Whether or not I agree about the selections the site makes is not important. I’ll be the first person to make my case for a point, but at the end of the day I’d rather focus on making great work than chiseling away at the minutia of the voting process. There’s enough room for plenty of people to win. You just have to understand that both the voting public and the DBH staff are your clients. If you want them to work with you, you have to find what they’re looking for.
Ok. Why don’t they say that there are other ways to win in their rules?
BenjaminPhantom said:
Ok. Why don’t they say that there are other ways to win in their rules?
You got me. Were I to continue the snowballing guesses I would say that they don’t change the wording because it sounds better to the voting public to keep it that way. It’s actionable, it’s possessive, it’s communal. It’s a good marketing pitch. Alas, so many good marketing pitches are a tall glass of contrivance with a twist of honest truth.
BenjaminPhantom said:FluentSword said:BenjaminPhantom said: What’s this all about then?
The DBH Daily Contest
The ongoing contest at Design By Humans consists of 3 awards: Shirt of the Day, Shirt of Week and Shirt of the Month. Original T-shirt designs are submitted to our website and voted on by the Design By Humans community all over the world. Shirts that garner the most votes become winners and the designer receives cash and prizes. The winning design is printed here at Design By Humans and made available for purchase through our online store.
I know asked about voting before in the forum and got all kinds of wiseass remarks and whatnot, but if DBH itself says this in the rules, then they should either abide to it or reword this statement.Well if my guess on selection is correct, the language there is not necessarily wrong. I don’t know exactly how many designs are chosen every year, but it’s probably upwards of 250. If a couple of those are chosen by popular vote then the statement is true. It simply says that the shirts that garner the most votes become winners. It doesn’t say that’s the only way to win. We know that last part to be true. Popular vote is moot to the special contests. Perhaps in the bigger picture it’s largely moot to the regular contest, and frankly I don’t think the staff needs to say either way.
Whether or not I agree about the selections the site makes is not important. I’ll be the first person to make my case for a point, but at the end of the day I’d rather focus on making great work than chiseling away at the minutia of the voting process. There’s enough room for plenty of people to win. You just have to understand that both the voting public and the DBH staff are your clients. If you want them to work with you, you have to find what they’re looking for.
Ok. Why don’t they say that there are other ways to win in their rules?
From the submit page:
4. How Are Winners Chosen?
Winners are chosen depending on many factors such as the number of votes the submission has received, the rate at which it has received the votes, where the votes are coming from, the comments on the submission, and where/from whom comments are coming from. If a submission is performing extremely well it will be chosen as a winner. Submissions that are chosen as one of our winning Shirts of the Day will then be eligible to be selected as a winning Shirt of the Week and/or Month. For more details on the contest and prizes go here. Fraud voting is tracked and will not be considered in the overall score of a design.
Maybe there are some other nuanced things they could add, but it seems clear enough.
You know, I like a lot this website. It has a clean design and the submissions are up pretty fast and can be easily removed too. I like the style that DBH decided to defend and how they present their shirts in the shop area. We just feel like buying it :)! We feel also like producing ideas and t-shirt designs. I saw lots of sites and this one got me so excited that I was throwing out more than 10 designs in one week, so inspired I was getting… :))) just for the fun.
But this does not mean that I have to defend DBH in a no questionable way. Again, the vote thing just doesn’t work. I don’t even vote anymore, I just leave comments if I am interested. It is impossible for DBH (with its actual success) to keep track of the way the comment was posted + from where they are coming from + is it a fraud or not? + are people spamming or not? and so on….
For my designs, I prefer a good and well placed comment than a vote. I also hope that my style pleases the DBH team, but I really don’t care about the votes. DBH has a business model and is choosing t-shirts that can fit it, not the most voted ones.
But sales power is important too and DBH for sure needs to sell a lot from time to time so they keep the business up and running well. If I like the design of a shirt, I would like to be able to give it a serious support, so it would increase it’s chance to come out for sale. And there is no better way than engage myself so DBH will know it’s selling power. If DBH choose still not to print it, I know that my artist know that is just a question of business model and style and he is still able to sell it some place else.
You cannot use a democratic voting system (yes democracy sometimes is not fair), with a “maybe” after. Votes are votes… who gets the most (as long as they are not fraud) has to be printed, otherwise, change the system. I’m sure people would not be unhappy with it, because this website is much more than this…
It may not be the system you prefer, but if it works for the site, why should it change? The important thing is that good designs have a fair shot at getting printed, and people are encouraged to participate. It’s not impossible at all to see where votes are coming from, it’s pretty easy to see most of the time.
I don’t think people would use a “would buy” button any differently than a vote, and if we start having a system that restricts people from supporting because they didn’t buy a shirt they said they would or something, people would stop participating, I know I would.
Please do not take this personally, it is just a supposition :
If you would stop participating after promising to buy a tee more than 10 times without honoring at least one of your proposals, than DBH would be free of a user that has no place to be in its t-shirt supporting pools. Seems fair, don’t you think?
I don’t take any of personally, I just have a different opinion. No, it doesn’t seem fair to me. Just because I haven’t bought a shirt within a site’s given time frame doesn’t mean I don’t plan to. I may be waiting for pay day or have bills I have to get out of the way or anything. Then I see I can’t participate anymore? It would make me wary of supporting shirts no matter how much I liked them. There are lots of shirts here I eyed for months until I finally bought them, and I’m sure a lot of other users hold out til they have a little surplus cash to splurge. I like being able to support a shirt without it being an obligation. Also, sometimes I’ll support a shirt even if I wouldn’t buy it (like a shirt for girls, that I can appreciate).
I don’t know… I wouldn’t feel great about a site that punishes users for not spending money soon enough. Seems like it would kill the easy going spirit of the site to me. I don’t think it would be solving anything either. Spammers do more harm to themselves than anything else, so I don’t see the need to overhaul the system because of them.
fabiofranca said: Please do not take this personally, it is just a supposition :
If you would stop participating after promising to buy a tee more than 10 times without honoring at least one of your proposals, than DBH would be free of a user that has no place to be in its t-shirt supporting pools. Seems fair, don’t you think?
How practical is that though? That’s more work for DBH and, more importantly, for the consumer. The average voter is not going to want to go through the hassle of registration and bear the responsibility of honoring an “I’d Buy it” vote. Everything and anything you do to inconvenience your customer or to make things more complicated is one more reason for them not to shop with you. It just seems a little silly to me to go through that kind of trouble for T Shirt voting. Voting for representational government maybe, but not for this. Again, this is why I really love the simplicity of the DBH system. I think it’s very appropriate and painless.
You can support the shirt through comments, blogging, social network, forums without have to click on a “would buy it” button… DBH people, the artist and the community would see your support better than a vote. In the end you are not obliged to buy anything…
See the shop? They have a “buy” button… when you are out of cash you dont click this button. But you can still leave a comment saying… let’s say… “Dammit! As soon as a have some cash I will come and buy it”. You see it does work like a charm… you support it, you wait… but you are responsible enough to do not click the “buy” button.
i kind of get the gist of this all.. but.. someone had a commnt saying if it works for the website then why should they change it..
fair enough dont change it..
but im sure there r alot of members who joined because they thought the focus was on the designers producing quality work.. and fair enough in a way it is… but if its 90 percent about the benjamins for dbh then its a bit sad as its not about designers providing quality work…
You propose something like Threadless system, but the true is, the quallity of winner designs is superior here than winners in threadless and Inkfruit. I think DBH is not the perfect place but is the better I know jet. In this case I think you must to understand that this is a bussiness and DHB is like a parner, and he put the material and I the ideas, then I apreciate they trust in artist like I am, I didn’t win jet but I think when I upload my ideas I saw others and recognize they deserve win, then here is like anyplace you can win, but you depends not only the voting system, that is only a little part of this, around the world being a big amount of great artist, and what happend when fifty of them decide to put a disign here the same dy, maybe the fifty designs deserve win, but only one actually do, then I think you must to put more interest in your designs than the voting system.
They do not have to change anything if they happy like this… but hey… this is a discussion forum, isn’t it?
i think alot of people are thinking that people that are questioning the voting system or spam methods have sumthing against dbh
but il speak for myself atleast.. i think this website is brilliant.. no doubt alot better then its competition.. but there r sumthings that have areas that can be questioned.. and as fabio says its a discussion forum.. so every1 is entitled to their opinion..
In my profile I am already asking people to vote for my art only if they are thinking in buying it, otherwise just to leave a comment.
Like this DBH chooses me if they feel like and people live their opinions.
I don’t think that people will vote in my art just to spam me. If they do so, then the system is really needing changes.
In the end if DBH does not pick me (because my work is not suitable for them, or because there are better ones, or because their designer friends are sending good propositions in the same day or week), at least I will know the selling power of my shirt…
fabiofranca said: See the shop? They have a “buy” button… when you are out of cash you dont click this button. But you can still leave a comment saying… let’s say… “Dammit! As soon as a have some cash I will come and buy it”. You see it does work like a charm… you support it, you wait… but you are responsible enough to do not click the “buy” button.
What is the point? There are already ways to show support. And it’s not hard to look at your votes and comments and discern the “selling power” of your shirts, plus there’s the myriad other sites you can post at and get an idea of how popular your shirt could be.
All I’m saying, is if the system is getting the desired results, what is the point of a drastic rigid overhaul? For the site to go through all that trouble to change the entire way it works, the system would have to be severely flawed, and it’s not. They get the shirts they want. People get to see what others think of their shirts. We get to support the designs/artists we like, and bring in new people. Seems like it all works out to me. There are the spammers, but I don’t think your plan would do anything to stop them, unless we banned comments too.
thestray said:BenjaminPhantom said:FluentSword said:BenjaminPhantom said: What’s this all about then?
The DBH Daily Contest
The ongoing contest at Design By Humans consists of 3 awards: Shirt of the Day, Shirt of Week and Shirt of the Month. Original T-shirt designs are submitted to our website and voted on by the Design By Humans community all over the world. Shirts that garner the most votes become winners and the designer receives cash and prizes. The winning design is printed here at Design By Humans and made available for purchase through our online store.
I know asked about voting before in the forum and got all kinds of wiseass remarks and whatnot, but if DBH itself says this in the rules, then they should either abide to it or reword this statement.Well if my guess on selection is correct, the language there is not necessarily wrong. I don’t know exactly how many designs are chosen every year, but it’s probably upwards of 250. If a couple of those are chosen by popular vote then the statement is true. It simply says that the shirts that garner the most votes become winners. It doesn’t say that’s the only way to win. We know that last part to be true. Popular vote is moot to the special contests. Perhaps in the bigger picture it’s largely moot to the regular contest, and frankly I don’t think the staff needs to say either way.
Whether or not I agree about the selections the site makes is not important. I’ll be the first person to make my case for a point, but at the end of the day I’d rather focus on making great work than chiseling away at the minutia of the voting process. There’s enough room for plenty of people to win. You just have to understand that both the voting public and the DBH staff are your clients. If you want them to work with you, you have to find what they’re looking for.
Ok. Why don’t they say that there are other ways to win in their rules?
From the submit page:
4. How Are Winners Chosen?
Winners are chosen depending on many factors such as the number of votes the submission has received, the rate at which it has received the votes, where the votes are coming from, the comments on the submission, and where/from whom comments are coming from. If a submission is performing extremely well it will be chosen as a winner. Submissions that are chosen as one of our winning Shirts of the Day will then be eligible to be selected as a winning Shirt of the Week and/or Month. For more details on the contest and prizes go here. Fraud voting is tracked and will not be considered in the overall score of a design.
Maybe there are some other nuanced things they could add, but it seems clear enough.
I appreciate you pointing this out. I guess I was on a different page where it said that. It makes sense to keep the system as is.
i love the simplicity of the voting system… a vote is a vote, and thats it.
i think they have their spam issue under control, as in yes its still there, but none of the spammers are getting printed. jimiyo mentioned that in a forum topic here… and hes the one who picks the designs if im no mistaken, so id believe him.
i also like that they dont follow their rules 100% – if popular vote were the only factor, this site would of failed within months because of shit designs getting fraud votes. and not always is the most non-fraudulently popular design the best design – there have been great designs on here with 20 votes that have gotten printed… i think that spices things up. on other sites if your score isnt high enough you wont get printed, on here it isnt like that. here you are printed based on your artistic and design abilities, not on mob rule by the voters.
For me votes are a vote of confidence whether it be from somebody I know personally or from someone else on here. I always make comments about shirts I like or would buy if I had the money (and often those shirts never get printed anyway). I never expect return votes or comments but sometimes it does result in that. And when I do make comments I just ask that person to check out my designs. Some will vote and/or comment while others may look and not vote or say anything at all. And of course some won’t even bat an eye. Feedback/critique is important.
Also, maybe DBH could have more than one shirt of the day or of the week, etc. because alot of great shirts end up just going by the wayside. Just a thought.
I don’t think spam is that big a deal to be honest. Raw votes are clearly not the only criteria to getting a design printed and as that’s the case spam has no real effect on, well, anything. I think it will likely die down as people realize that.