Dumpdiggers Arena: Best Bullet Battle

It's almost midnight and the Best Bullet Battle inside the Dumpdiggers Arena is about to end. The winning photo will be prominently displayed in the Dumpdiggers Hall of Fame for the rest of time... But who will win? This is what the final hours of the first real battle looked like:


The Arena photo battle, inside the new Dumpdiggers.com antiques and collectibles social networking community website, has been the subject of some criticism. The question, 'Who needs it?" and the complaint, 'Its too competitive' are the most common bits of negative feedback that I encounter, but also there is controversy, and confusion on the part of the developers. Its true the battles have grown from a murky lagoon of confusion and doubt, right up until this point when I can declare... Eureka! It works.

Vindicated, I believe the Best Bullet Battle proves my silly notion works, and diggers and eBay collectors deep inside their niches, perhaps even deeper and more obsessed than I, will find this to be a pleasant distraction and healthy competition.


This is what the administrator sees on the other side of the battles. The check box marked Chose This As Winner is present under every photo in case there's a tie. Using the check box the Admin can choose and make final decisions. If all boxes are left unchecked, the winning photo (the one with the most votes) will automatically be transferred to the Hall of Fame, and the winning member will be rewarded with 25 shovels and have his or her photo displayed in the uppermost section of his or her own mydiggerspace as a 'Blue Ribbon Photo'. In a perfect world, this honour would pay that member a stipend of 1 green shovel per week per blue ribbon photo, but that's something the developers seem to be having a real hard with...

In this battle you can see that eleven people have voted and four of the images have received votes - that means that eleven green shovels were dispensed to voters, and eleven shovels were issued to four members that submitted these 'Grey Ribbon Photos'. CORRECTION That's what it should mean, but when I check my own shovel bank account I can see that I, BobbyC did not get rewarded for voting, this time... But with more beta testing and notes to developers, I'm sure it will be corrected for next week's battles.

Next week's battles will include 'Freshly Dug Prizes' and I hope members will write stories about the recovery of their prizes in the allotted space on the image cards. I also hope the developers will fix the bug that enables the image cards to be viewed before voting occurs.

Arob's Blue Ribbon Photo:

Unless there is a sudden rush of votes for another contender, this is the image that will win the Best Bullet Battle in a few short hours.

This image was uploaded by Arob - the image card reveals that the items actually belong to stonebottles but they were photographed by Arob with his own camera, on his own hand. The dynamic composition and quality of ther image alongside the accompanying text is probably why it was chosen as the winner by five members.

This image will be visible in the Hall of Fame and indexed as Best Bullet Nov 9-15, 2008 for the rest of time. Arob will have this Blue Ribbon image displayed in his mydiggerspace and (hopefully) will earn one green shovel per week, forevermore.