Dear memory sharers
We are so honored and thankful to all of your beautiful memories contributed to this event. Travel broadens the mind, and we all have something to learn from one another. Everyone is the winner when many people get inspired by the wonderful places and different cultures in the photos, videos, and the words from your gentle sharing. What can make this memory contest meaningful is not who win the big prizes, but to feel enjoyed during sharing and appreciating a memorable moment.
In accordance to our initiative of this contest, we have been working hard to keep this contest as fair to the majority participants as possible. We are so thankful to the honest suggestions from many of our dear sharers, and now make following proposal.
Proposal of refining the winner selection process
We propose to divide the winner selection process into two rounds.
ROUND 1: Public voting. End on 29 February 2012 as originally planned.
Top 18 entries based on those receiving the highest number of valid votes by the cut-off date of 29 February 2012, will each be awarded the 3rd. prize - $1000 value ethnic handicrafts.
ROUND 2: Penal of judges to decide the final winners. Start in early March 2012.
There will be 20 finalists in the second round. 10 finalists are the top10 entries in the ROUND 1 based on the highest valid public votes. Plus Odyssey Tours select another 10 entries from the rest of all memory entries based on quality and meaningfulness. Total = 20 finalists.
We will invite some reputable editors, bloggers, and journalists from travel related websites or magazines, as well as some qualified applicants from our customers to comprise a panel of judges. We will have a page to introduce the judges.
We are now reviewing all votes manually, though with technical support it still takes time. As long as we have gather enough evidences we will make a pending vote valid. Please do not worry too much about your pending votes. As long as they were voted legitimately by real people without double voting to a same memory entry, they will turn valid soon.
Each judge has 5 votes in the second round. Every time a judge votes an entry, he or she will make a comment on why the entry desires this vote. The most voted finalist wins the 1st Prize - $10,000 Tibet Tour. The second most voted finalist wins the 2nd Prize - $6000 Thailand Tour.
Please kindly vote for our proposal before Sunday 26 February on this page: http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/community/currentevents/poll21feb.php
We will make final modification on the terms of memory contest according to majority's opinion.
A further explanation of above proposal
This event was initiated with the idea to create interactions between our customers, the real travelers from all around the world, through sharing and appreciating each other's travel memories. Everyone, including us, makes contributions to it like a community, and all together to turn a single trip of a small group of people to an eye-opening experience for many people. Hence online interaction was considered as an important part of the contest, including allowing people to show preferences by giving votes, and express their opinions by leaving comments.
After voting started, negativity of public voting has shown. Some participants have argued that public voting gives those who have a large social network unfair advantage over others. Thus quality of the entries would not be necessary for winning this contest. It leaves a room to injustice.
As the organizer of this event, we are responsible to keep this event in its original nature, and we feel we should listen to the voice of majority. Many participants have replied to our first two announcements and suggested that a fairer way of selecting the winners is to turn the voting contest to a drawing contest, or in-house voting by an appointed panel of judges. We thank sincerely to all of your opinions and suggestions. However, to cancel the public voting will create another means of unfairness to those who have already make effort to promote their memory entries. This is why our proposal still keeps public voting for ROUND 1, and rewards the participants based on number of votes.
Though public voting is not sound for judging the entry quality, it is still a partial indicator. This is why we propose to send the top10 straight to the ROUND 2. Another 10 finalists picked by Odyssey Tours' in-house selection conducted solely based on the entries' quality. The panel of judges will then decide which two of the finalists win the 1st and 2nd prizes based on the entries' quality and meaningfulness.
Last but not least, we hope everyone can take time to appreciate every memory shared in this event. When we forget the votes and the prizes for a while, we would see all the touching moments in these shared photos, videos, and words. This is our first time effort in organizing a community event. As the organizer, we sincerely apologize for our inexperience and the flaws during the process of this contest. We will sure make hard improvement in our future events.
Please kindly vote for our proposal before Sunday 26 February on this page: http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/community/currentevents/poll21feb.php
We will make final modification on the terms of memory contest according to majority's opinion.
Sincerely yours
Community Event Team
China Odyssey Tours
Indochina Odyssey Tours
