How does the 'system' handle the tie votes?

Granted, lower in the ranks it is mostly irrelevant, however, in two categories there was a tie for 1st place, which is significant in determining which photo is entered into the best of show running, and also the category 'win', and ribbon and acorns and fame and acclaim and whatall.

In Wildflowers and Native Plants, both the first and second place photo had 19 votes.

In Daylilies, both the first and second place photo had 14 votes.

How was it decided which photo was in first place for the category win and best of show voting?

And in the final--technically, there is a tie for first (both the first and second place photos have 24 votes) and second (both of the next two winning photos have 17 votes each).

This, then becomes significant in terms of the prizes...fortunately the same person tied for first place with the first and second place photos so it is easy to determine who gets the first place prize (Congratulation again Ken!), but with a tie for the listed third and fourth place photos, how is it determined whether Julia or Elena get the second or third place prize?

I was curious about that as well.

Where do you see how many votes each pic received? I'm not seeing that.

plantmanager said:Where do you see how many votes each pic received? I'm not seeing that.

Karen go to this page:
https://garden.org/ideas/view/...

Than scroll down to the various categories listed on the left side and click on that particular category.
For example: the first category that shows up is "Daylilies". Click on Daylilies
You will see a green colored bar above each flower with the number of votes.

In each of the categories it shows vote counts for the top five
and here it shows best of show vote counts for the top six
https://garden.org/apps/photoc...

Thank you to both of you. I'd never noticed the vote counts before.

@dave I understood that there were to be no names on the photos that we entered, yet there were photos in just about every category with the name 'Steve Shaw Photography'. He has a first place in Hibiscus, I don't know how many others he has yet as I just started checking the winners and runners up, and I noticed the name. To me this doesn't seem fair, if one or 2 can have their names on their photos, then we should all have our names on the photos.

I think Mr. Shaw had his own watermark on his photos (as opposed to the ones offered by this site). I did notice that as well, although it had no sway on my votes. Not sure why he wouldn't have cropped it out, but oh well. I was just looking at the pretty pictures.

The watermark on Mr Shaw's images should have aromatically disqualified his photos from the contest.

Good question, Dirt.

Funny, I never saw that watermark until it was pointed it out. He has so many beautiful pictures. Sure it was just an oversight.

I believe that the people running this contest do a fabulous job. However they are humans just like us and will certainly miss a few things.

I'm curious about the tie votes as well. I have a hypothesis and waiting to see if I'm right.

Hoping no one gets up set by the discussion here. Everyone has there points but sometimes can seem to be an attack. I feel like that a times, no knows why things were done because we don't walk in others shoes.

I automatically disqualified myself from voting for anything that had a watermark name, there were many.

Sorry, not trying to be attacky w/ the question--I just want to know what the deal is with the tie votes.

Not my pics, but if they were, I'd want to know why, if my pic tied for first place in a category, that it was designated as second place and not allowed in the best of show voting, for example.

My guess is that the system is automated and doesn't care about tie votes, just recognizes them as equal value, and then defaults to the auto-sort for items of equal value, which is by the time-stamp they were entered into the contest--so the pic entered earlier is ranked higher than the pic entered later when they have an equal number of votes.
I realize I could be totally wrong about that, so I am asking, because it does matter in the instances explained above.

As, far as the watermark names--there was no prohibition in the rules against that. Perhaps people didn't want their photos being stolen from the contest pages and didn't consider it an advantage or disadvantage to identify themselves. Fair enough. Has no bearing on the original question, though.

dirt, sorry I hijacked your thread. I would like the know the answer to your question too.

I am not trying to be attacky either, but in the past it was my understanding that it was a blind photo contest, names were not permitted. To me it would not be much fun if everyone knows whose photos are entered, and for sure someone will play favorites and vote for friends. JMHO

Calif_Sue said:I automatically disqualified myself from voting for anything that had a watermark name, there were many.

I set my own 'rules' as well. Not that it really matters, but...

But back to the question, I am also curious how the ties were resolved.

No worries Margaret! I'd prefer a nameless contest myself, and be happy to offer up a slew of additional preferences, too, if anyone ever wants to know what I'd like

Dirt, I would love to hear about your additional preferences, but it's probably better that we don't go there.

As one of the tie winners I am curious as well. Don't get me wrong, I would fight them to the death with a shovel at this point if it was taken back, but I am curious!

I also noticed several ties and made note to self

Every Vote Counts !! that is a good thing in a world where we some times wonder.

In the case of ties the software picks one using a method that I am not certain of.

I count the votes for each entry like this:

for each vote {
$votes[$eid]++; # $eid is the entry ID
}

Then I reverse sort them by their count:

arsort($votes);
while (list($eid,$count)=each($votes)) {
// The first one here is the first place winner.
}