No real pre-amble. Please voice your opinions as to how you feel future contests similar to the current one (Get Your Brew On) could be better improved.

1) Bullet point list of all important rules for contest at the top of the Submissions Page. Edit: This includes rule clarity! The "etc" at the end of the kinds of drinks alloed for Get Your Brew On left it way too open-ended

2) Reminders of important rules that apply to all areas of the site, which include contests such as this, within the bullet point list of contest rules (see point one above). EG: a reminder that images found on Google or elsewhere aren't allowed. Please note that Ariel did mention to me in the news comments for the Get Your Brew On voting post that this would happen. This is just one example of many site-wide rules that could be forgotten in the excitement of a contest. (I fell victim to this one.)

3) Instead of there being a restricted amount of characters allowed to describe something (EG: how you could describe the label image instead of drawing it) let there be a restricted amount of words instead but greater than 500. Some labels could be very detailed in someone's mind and 500 words just wouldn't be enough to describe things in. 800 words maybe? That may be too many but a few more than 500. 550-600 maybe. But 500 characters (not words) just is not enough.

4) A 2-part image suggestion: a) put the size of an image allowed in pixels, please, instead of mega bites or whatever so that users can figure things out better. I had no idea what the MB of my image was that I submitted. I just guessed. I think pixels are must easier to comprehend. b) If it's better to have the image size in MBs instead of pixels, please do put a bit of a warning on the submissions page letting you know that it's too big so that your entry isn't disqualified due to size.

5) On the voting page put everything in spoilers except for the applicable images. It'd save a lot of scrolling and keep things tidier and easier to read.

Anyone else have any way they can think of improving future contests like this?

Read the rules. Follow the rules. Simple as that.

With the nature of the Alegarten contest, I'm a little disappointed to hear that some submissions were almost direct rip-offs of real life products and weren't removed from initial pre-screening by staff, before voting was enabled.

I know there are a shit ton of alcoholic beverages worldwide, so making sure none of the entries were direct references is obviously going to be tough. But I would suggest a stricter pre-screening to make certain there aren't any direct rip-offs approved to go to the voting round.

Seriously, everyone should know not to use content that is not their own (Google Images, for one), so I think this is just common sense.

I hope people that used content that were not their own were warned.

I would have liked pagination. 294 entries is a lot of entries on one large page

This I could see having, but did we not have this? They were clearly stated in the news post at least, but having rules in more places can only be better if you ask me.

Why? I don't think it's up to staff to hunt down the relevant rules and link them just because some users can't remember them. If you don't have permission to use the image or if it's not available for free use, you can't use it? Why is that unclear? (I'm not trying to be bitchy, I just don't understand where the confusion is)

I don't want to give anything away re: my submission, but I had a relatively short description. I even thought about ways to make it longer and had nothing. We absolutely do not need 800 words for descriptions. No one wants to read several hundred 800-word descriptions for anything. This is a pet site contest, not a fucking essay grading session. 500 characters seemed like plenty to me. If all else fails, condense what you're writing. I feel like that's on you to do.

No? The reason it's in MB is because it's limiting the file size. You can check your file size in the file explorer of your computer, it's relatively straightforward and if nothing else you can ask someone how to find it.

HELL no. Clicking on two spoilers per entry is absolutely not easier to read. I admit, I didn't read every description. I scanned through for names that caught my eye, and then I read those descriptions, so in all honesty the spoilers wouldn't affect me that much. But staff wants people to read the descriptions, and if you're making people open spoilers for every entry, even less people are going to do that :/

This I would have liked though. Pages are always nice in big lists

But the fact that 6 submissions were approved due to oversight--then removed once users pointed it out--isn't good to hear either. =/

What if users first had to view all entries, then be able to vote for their top 5? Then there'd be no need to randomize and it can be paginated instead. Perhaps an idea to take into consideration?

Staff can't know everything, especially with foreign ales. Like, I'M Canadian, I could have totally ripped off something very local and staff wouldn't have blinked, because they couldn't have known, but an user from my area totally can bust me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think file sizes are measured in pixels. Pixels are the resolution of the image, like height and width, and MB is the actual size of the file. It's how much space the file takes up on your computer or storage. I'm not sure the two are interchangeable. Besides that, on Windows at least, the file size in MB is displayed at the bottom of the screen when you click on the image in its folder as well as in the image properties.

I also don't agree with the description limit. I think limits can help force people to be creative and force decisions. Like, is that part of your description really important? Is this what you want to get across to the other users? Is there any other way you could say this to fit in the limit?

That is true, very much.

I think that's why I like the contests that force us to actually craft our submission outside and away from the computer, then take a photo of it as proof. I still loved last year's pumpkin carving contest, I'd love for that to return again this year. ^^

What I'd have liked to do is to have ten winners : five for microbrew with a pic, and five for a microbrew without

I know that staff has said in the newspost to not just vote for art, but it seems like 300 entries is a lot, and the entries with pics are getting more attention over pics without some. That way, this is going to make art be slightly less of a variable.

I explained that in my original post - site-wide rules can be forgotten in contest submission creation. Having them just there at each contest keeps things fresh and helps you to remember so that players aren't forced to be the ones hunting rules down in the midst of submission creation. Staff knows all the rules by heart and don't have the stress of contest submission on them. It's easier for them just to copy/paste the necessary site-wide rules for the contest into the list of rules than for players to have to hunt site rules down. That way everything's together and there's no debate over what's allowed, what's not and if players can/can't easily find a rule to pair with what is/isn't allowed for the contest. If someone is putting a contest out, it should be the responsibility of the contest holder to put all the rules that are relevant on the contest page instead of making the participants run all over the the place trying to find rules and/or rules relevant to the contest being held.

You can't pair drawing description down depending on what your design looks like in your mind's eye. To be so firmly restricted to a mere 500 character drawing description when you have a great idea is unjust to the submitter. If they can't draw, the only other way they can do soemthing is describe. You can't describe what you have envisioned if you don't have the space to do it depending on what you're imagining. My entry's label was quite detailed and what i would've loved to have seen on that label would have FAR surpassed the 500 character limit. What, are you suggesting that players should be forced to have unimaginative ideas or not be able to submit their idea because they would have no way of being able to pair it down to fit the super small character allotment? What's the point of submitting if it's not fun to be able to do so? Trying to force yourself, which can cause an immense amount of stress and upset, to get a beautiful idea into 500 measly characters takes the fun out of something.

It's not so simple to find the MB size. I had NO idea even with help. Pixels would be MUCH easier to understand as pixel amounts can justify the MB size. Everyone can figure how many pixels are in an image much better than trying to figure MBs out. That can be very confusing if you're not super computer-literate.

If you can't put something in pages to keep things from being overwhelming to read, spoilers are the next best thing. I don't even WANT to vote as seeing that voting page is a nightmare for me to try and want to read with all the text. Spoilers with the name as the header for each spoiler would make it a lot more enjoyable to read than to scroll through all that text

Which rules apply for a contest?

No offensive content, which is a no-brainer

No art/redistribution of content that is not yours, which is also a very big no brainer

English only. Duh

Innapropriate language and filter evasion. That's also very clear to me.

And for the voting part, obviously no cheating/no advertising

There...isn't a very obscure rule I didn't remember when I did my entry, tbh

My question remains, which rule relating to the contest was so obscure people forgot about it?

gives a jar of cookies You guys did your best. ^^

God yes, I agree with you there. When I scrolled through initially this morning, the logo art caught my eyes first and foremost. Of course my attention is drawn to them, and it has probably influenced what my 5 choices will ultimately be.

I'll still read the non-image entries, but I think you're right. 5 should be based on images, the other 5 are description-based.

This doesn't have anything to do with the above options, but as a suggestion for the voting page, rather than either pages or the one loooong sheet, having a few items appear at random and picking one between each of them. And being able to do this multiple times, rather than "here are 300 entries, pick 5) because despite the directions, a lot of people won't read once they've found 5 they like well enough to vote for. By randomizing the smaller selection, you average out the number of times each item is seen and has a chance to get votes, and by doing it multiple times, you can still see a large number of the options. Possible to add a skip button if none of the options suit your fancy, and get another round randomized.

It's also much easier and more manageable to view 5 or 10 or whatever entries and vote for 1 than it is to see 300 and vote for 5. You could still pick only the ones with the most votes, since random chance would have made everyone get an equal shot anyway.

Site-wide rules can be forgotten on any given day in any context. That is irrelevant because it is up to the users to remember and follow the rules, contest or not. There is a very clear link to the rules onsite (and iirc there's one on every page from the footer too, if you aren't using CSS to hide it, which let's be clear does not excuse you from suddenly forgetting a rule).

Again...why? I did. The contest was open for submissions for two weeks. I don't understand why you're acting like it was so stressful to attempt to narrow down your description with two weeks' time to do it? Write your description, if it's over the limit, start figuring out what you can remove, what you can word differently to shorten it, etc. Write it as a bulleted list if you have to, e.g. instead of "The bottle would be a dark chocolate brown with a thick greyish black liquid inside" change it to "-Dark chocolate brown bottle -Thick blackish ale" or something to save yourself a few characters here and there. Again, two weeks time to figure out how to do this.

My only gripe is the long walls of text and the infinitely long page. i basically voted for 5 once i was 1/3 down. (Sorry, those who had bad RNG luck to be spawned at the bottom)

maybe include an X that allows you to hide/remove entries you are not interested in? or a star that lets you mark entries you like, then load a page with only marked entries? idk

Oh this would be nice. A compare tool where you can tick as many as you like, then choose from those that you ticked on a separate page.