How does rating work?

Rating refers to members of the community giving a rating to images that other members of the community have entered into contests. Ratings are given during the rating phase of a contest, which is after entries have closed, and before winners are announced. Those ratings are compiled and allow images to be ranked in order based on the preferences of the community.

Activating images

When you enter an image into a contest that has crowd-rating, you'll be prompted to 'activate' your entry.  You'll be given a choice of contests to do some rating in, and by rating 20 images in another contest, your entry is activated and it will receive 20 ratings itself once rating starts in that contest.

You must activate your images in a contest before the activation deadline, which for most contests is a couple of days before the winners are announced for the contest.

To find out more about activating entries go here.

The rating phase

Once the entry phase for a contest has closed, the rating phase begins. Every submitted and activated image will be available for the crowd to rate. Ratings are on a three-star scale - the more stars, the better - and images are presented randomly for each person, so that all images will get roughly the same number of ratings.

Viewing contest entries and current rankings

You can see all the images uploaded to a contest before rating begins, and during the rating phase, but will need to rate images within a contest to see how they’re ranked once the rating phase begins.

Winners announced

Once the rating phase ends, the winners are announced, and the image rankings at that time determine the final results. If the contest is also judged, the judge's results will be announced at the same time.