BIRT Exchange Forum: BIRT Exchange Forum -> Help Request for Community Contest Input

I want to invite the BIRT community to help us select winners for each month's DevShare Contest and other contests we're running, such as Plug In 2 BIRT.

Since we dropped community voting last year due to abuses, it's been more difficult to get a good picture of what the community finds most valuable in DevShare submissions and I hope you can help. We want your input.

Why We Stopped The Voting
One of the problems with an open system is that voting can become a popularity contest between web-bots, authors and friends rather than focus on the technical merits of submitted content (and sadly, we saw that happen).

What We Think Should Work
By inviting and using community input as advisory to the judges instead of binding, the effect of conflicts of interest between authors and feedback providers (plus random votes by bots) can be minimized because the judges can review the feedback for good input and ignore (or delete) superfluous postings.

To that end, going forward:

• Actuate will treat any comments you provide as advice (advice we will take seriously).
  
• Actuate will make the final decision as objectively as possible based on advice we receive and our own evaluations.

How You Can Help
I encourage you to show your approval for articles/apps you find useful (please explain why) and express your concerns about each month's DevShare and Marketplace submissions by giving feedback in the form of comments and reviews to their respective pages. Not only does this serve to inform people of the merits and limitations of a submission, but it also gives the author the opportunity to respond or make improvements to their submissions. Everyone benefits.

Of most help to the judges are your specific thoughts and examples about how and why a contribution benefits the general BIRT community. Judges generally award prizes to the most useful contributions — not necessarily the most technically astute (although those are nice too). Problems and/or cool uses of DevShare and Marketplace contributions that you discover can also be very helpful in making a final decision.

Since Actuate contributions are ineligible for contests, look here for the list of eligible April DevShare and Plug In 2 BIRT contest submissions. Feel free to comment on Actuate submissions too, we can use all the help we can get!

Note that the April DevShare contest results will not be announced until after we have chosen the winners for the Plug In 2 BIRT contest since most of the DevShare submissions are also eligible for that contest.

Thanks for your help and support!