Ultimate Photo Battle - FAQ

Photo Battle

What is Ultimate Photo Battle?

Ultimate Photo Battle is a User-Submitted, User-Voted, Online Photography Competition.


Who can enter the competition?

Anyone who is a member and has at least 1 upload credit can submit a photo for the competition.


How to I become a member?

It's easy. All you need is a valid email address. Enter your info on the New User Page and a confirmation email will be sent to you. Follow the instructions on that email to confirm your account and you will be awarded 5 upload credits. After that, click on the Submit a Photo link and you are in the competition.


What are Upload Credits?

Upload Credits are what you need to enter the competition. Each Photo you submit costs 1 Upload Credit. New users start with 5 Upload Credits, but more credits can be earned by voting on battles.
* You must be logged in to earn upload credits

Mods

Moderator Approvals

Every photo that is uploaded gets moderated before it can enter battles. 20 Mods rate the photo out of ten and it is given a Mod Score. Photos that score over 150 are added to the Mod Picks RSS Feed.

Photos that score under 100 are not accepted to battle. This is to maintain a higher quality of photos and to keep battling interesting. Currently only about 5% of photos submitted are not accepted.

Becoming a Moderator

When a user has participated enough in Ultimate Photo Battle, they will find a 'Mod Menu' section on the left Nav Bar. This will enable them to enter the Moderator Photo Approval section. This allows members to earn upload credits by approving photos that have been uploaded. Currently to become a Level One Moderator, you need to have uploaded 10 photos to Ultimate Photo Battle. Also, extra Upload Credits are awarded for doing Moderator Approvals on Saturdays. This is to allow photos to be ready for the weekly battle faster.

Battles

What are Category Battles?

Each photo is put into a category when it is uploaded. Each week, if there are enough photos, currently 40, the photos will go into a category battle. Those photos compete for two weeks against other photos in the same category. After there are 4 completed battles for a category, the winners from the completed weekly battles are entered in a Semi-Finals Battle. Once a year, the Semi-Final winners will enter a Yearly Battle.

What are Ultimate Battles?

Every Sunday, the top 60 photos, as scored by the moderators are entered into the Ultimate Weekly Battle. It includes photos from all battles.
If your photo is not selected in the week you uploaded it, it will remain in the running for upcoming weeks, that way, if it was close to getting in, it might get selected in an upcoming week.

When will my photos battle?

It can vary. A great photo with a high Mod Score will get in the Ultimate Battle the next week.

Every photo that is accepted will get to be in a Category Battle eventually. Some Categories, like Flowers or People, get more submissions and run more often. Others, like Digitally Enhanced, only battle every couple months.

To balance the battles, each user gets a maximum of 5 photos in battles per week. It's possible a newer photo will battle before an older photo, if it is in a more popular category runs or it gets into an Ultimate Battle.

Caption Battles

When we come across a photo that we think will make for an interesting / funny Caption Battle, we add it to the Caption Battle queue. At any given time, there should be 3 photos accepting captions. Members can add one caption in each caption battle and can change their caption as long as the battle hasn't started yet. All captions are scanned to make sure they are clean and not too similar to existing Captions for that battle.

Once a week, a Caption Battle will begin. All you have to do is go to the Caption Battle page and select which Caption you like better from the two that will come up at random. After 3 weeks of voting, the battle ends, winners are emailed, and you can view the results on the Finished Caption Battles Page.

Tags

What are tags?

Tags are just a word or phrase attached to a photo that help to classify the photo. Good examples of tags are: Trees, Sand, Blue, Funny, Black and White, or Close Up.
Bad Examples of tags are: look at this guy, what a dumb photo, dfljgoier, swear words

Can I add tags?


All members can add tags to any photo.


What is a Tag Vote?

When you are in the Photo Solo view, you will see all the tags listed for that Photo. If you click on a tag once, it will turn blue. This means you agree with that tag. Click again and the tag turns red. This means you disagree with the tag. A third click will change tag back to it's original color. When you click on the Submit Tag Votes, your votes will be added to the total for each tag. If a tag get too many negative votes, it will be deleted.

Flags

What are flags?

If you see a photo that you think is inappropriate, contains obvious advertising, etc, click on the 'flag' link at the bottom of the photo to send a flag to us. One flag by itself won't get a picture deleted, but if enough people don't like a photo we will look at deleting it, especially if it on the bubble in terms of votes. All photos get manually approved before entering battle, but once in a while one sneaks through. Flags also help us determine the overall expectations of Ultimate Photo Battle Members.

Future Plans

We've tossed around the idea of each user being able make "Photo Blogs" and add photos to them. For example, if you take a vacation, you could make a blog called "My Vacation" and add photos to it
Photos added to blogs could still be entered into battles, they would also be included in your blog

If you have any ideas that would make Ultimate Photo Battle awesome, feel free to Contact Us and tell us your ideas.