05/02/08

On Covers, Voting & Comments

I’ve been enjoying Coversourcing, I really have. It was quite a gamble for us, and even more for Random House, and we’re still really pleased they decided to go with it. There have been some fantastic entries, but there’s also been an increasing amount of sniping and bad sentiment in some quarters, and I’d like to address a couple of these issues.

First of all, the voting. The voting system works by asking every visitor to give a score out of five to each entry, and as most people give most designs either a 1 or a 5, the scores tend to average out between 2 and 3 - the current top entry has a score of 3.22 out of 5, the 20th has 2.47.

One of the criticisms levelled at the voting system, which is entirely valid, is that new designs have their score artificially inflated by early high votes - a design with just two votes can go straight to the top of the chart. This is true, but it doesn’t usually stay there long, as it’s quickly voted down if it’s not worthy. This is the reason we decided when we set out the competition to have a two-week period after the entries had closed for voting to continue - we think this will even out some of the disparities between those who entered early and those who have only just arrived. But no system is perfect.

There have also been a few individuals who’ve taken it upon themselves to second-guess the judges and the competition, and vent at a number of other participants. We’re all for open and constructive discussion, but some of this has verged on the trollish, and we’ve emailed a few asking them to tone it down (in most cases they’ve been immediately apologetic and helpful). We will be being a bit more active in the comments ourselves, both commenting and taking steps against those who abuse others or us. This is supposed to be fun.

Then again, it’s the internet, and passionate argument is part of its DNA. Even on Threadless, one of the shining examples of the crowdsourcing concept (and a big part of Jeff’s book too), I’ve frequently been shocked by the viciousness of the comments, but I’ve been equally charmed by the quality of the work. (It’s worth noting that they use the same five-point voting system too, although they’re a lot less transparent in telling you the overall score.) To accusations that it’s a popularity contest, we can only reply… yes, yes it is.

Everyone has different ideas of what makes a great cover. Personally, I’m pretty enamoured with John Slade’s contributions, but what do I know? The fact that some designs that I consider great and some I consider complete dogs are all represented in the Top 20 makes me think the voting is working pretty well. If they all looked the same, something would be wrong. That’s the nature of the crowd.

So please, keep those entries coming in, keep voting, keep commenting (nicely!) - and remember, it’s a big experiment, none of us are sure how it’s going to turn out, and it’s certainly not over yet.

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Update: To make it easier to keep up to date with the competition and with the Coversourcing blogs, we’ve created a dedicated RSS feed that brings them altogether: Coversourcing RSS feed. We highly recommend subscribing to this if you want to find out what’s going on - and who’s won!

Posted by James in coversourcing.