Best Entry contests

There are two updates on the contests that were open for best entry submission. In the first contest, there was a potential fraudulent payment and we will be refunding the money to the original contest holder.

https://www.squadhelp.com/domainContest/4963/Need_an_unique_name_for_a_company_which_has_many_d

In the second contest, we had originally put this on hold due to some payment issues. Although the payment issues are still not resolved, we do not want to keep the contest pending, so we have opened it up for best entry nomination. Please nominate your best entries and we will select a winner in 2 days:

Hi Janice
I clicked on the link for Luxury Jewerly, there is absolutely no rating activity in this contest showing on my end. How will the winner be determined in this case?

*luxury for you contest

By selecting your 2 best entries for SH to vote on.

Thank you for your reply. ā€¦Yes that was my understanding of the best entry selection option. I donā€™t understand however. in a contest where the ch did not rate any submissions, how can a winner be chosen from best entry when none where marked as such?

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You have to go to your entries you submitted for the contest and choose up to two entries and spend 50 points each if you want to mark them as best entries.Thereā€™s a drop down box that you can go to on the entry page and mark your choices as best entry.

Thank you hollygirl. ā€¦Think I will sit this one out. .lol as ch didnā€™t not rate any submissions leads me to believe they just werenā€™t interestedšŸ˜•just my thoughts.

The contest holder is gone. You choose your two best entries and then Squadhelp chooses which name they think best fits the brief from anyone who wants to submit names-- and pays a winner the prize.

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@Janice or @dan I know this contest reopened but shouldnā€™t this be ready for best entry by now? https://www.squadhelp.com/domainContest/5079/Need_a_seafood_brand_name

https://www.squadhelp.com/domainContest/5283/Name_and_Domain_for_a_new_business#tab-2 The oil and gas contest was cancelled. What happens next? Does that mean they didnā€™t like the names? Does SH still pay out any bonuses? Do my 3 liked names have any merit? Iā€™m not sure how this works. Can you please help? Thanks!

When a contest is cancelled, it usually means they didnā€™t find a name they liked well enough to choose. It wasnā€™t a guaranteed contest, so that in essence means thereā€™s no payout.

Your names will not be used by the CH,but if you think they are good names, you can save them for future contests and reuse if an appropriate contest comes along.

Sometimes contest that had ā€œlove itā€ ratings are still cancelled for various reasons. Until or unless your name is chosen either by the CH, or SH if it is a guaranteed abandoned contestā€¦then you wonā€™t earn any money for names, regardless of what they are rated.

Gotcha! Thanks for letting me know. So it looks like I may just want to spend my time on Guaranteed Contests. :smile:

Even if it was guaranteed, there is no payout if the contest is cancelled.

Yesā€¦I misspoke,thanks for correcting.I meant to say non guaranteed contests might not pay anywayā€¦where abandoned contests that are guaranteed may go to best entry. Cancelled contests are just thatā€¦cancelled and over. Thanks for catching.

I thought contests like these is why we use best entry,


Unless one of those top three were bought,

There has been lot of discussion about Best Entries, and I would like to address this as openly as possible.

The unfortunate aspect about Best Entry selection is that every time we pick a winner using this process, we sense a general disapproval from several contestants who are unhappy with the selection. In many cases, we receive direct messages challenging our choices (when the contestant feels that their entry was better). In other cases, we hear that SH is favoring certain group of contestants and not others. If the winner happens to be new, we are told that we are favoring new users. If the winner has won before, we are told that we are not giving an opportunity to new users to win. If the name is not selected from list of top rated names, we are asked why did we ignore the top rated choice by CH. If the name is actually selected from the list of top rated names, we are asked what is the purpose of Best Entry selection, if we were going to pick a winner from top trending users. We are even told that sometimes we select a winner if someone complains enough in the Discussion forum, or sometimes it is the complete opposite that we purposely do not select a winner if that person has been more ā€œaggressiveā€ in the discussion forum.

Of course every one is entitled to forming their opinion and expressing them. I would only state for record that none of the above aspects have any influence on our decision to select a winner. The only thing that matters is the quality of the name and the CH ratings (if they exist).

We understand that quality can be subjective. The name that we may find to be the best quality may not align with someone elseā€™s view of high quality. We appreciate that. However, the point is that we select these names after taking several aspects into account. We read the CH comments, we read the private messages between CH and the contestants. we look for explicit and implicit signs to gauge which entries were best appreciated by CH, and we then pick a winner. If despite all of the above, there is still no clear winner, we then pick a winner based on what we believe to the highest quality.

We have no desire, or reason to pick poor quality names, or to favor certain contestants over others. At the end of the day, the names that show up on the winner board directly represent the quality of Squadhelp brand. Therefore if we purposely pick any low quality names, we are actually hurting our own brand.

Frankly, we would rather not play this role of winner selection because we are concerned that this process is resulting in an unintended erosion of goodwill between SH and several contestants. It would be very easy to go back to the old process of selecting winners purely on the basis of CH ratings. However, as discussed in several other threads, that process has its own flaws. Therefore, we would welcome any suggestions about how to change the Best Entry/ Winner selection process where the role of SH is minimized.

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@Dan, Current system serves the needs of creatives well, but to address your concerns by the widest margin-free error, one might need to look at benefits of the absolute, albeit partial, solution not to all but some issues stated, capable of removing the clutter of impediments to perceived subjective interference, i.e. a blind winner selection process. It may prove challenging when it comes to scanning through private message exchanges between the creatives and the CHs (which would have to be suspended out of consideration in its present form) in search of decisive leverage. Everything else being retained as is, with a ranking system among entries assigning to each its individual weight based on metrics of a well-earned merit, preference or intrinsic value ( a quality judged by how well it measures against the brief), the only novelty is introduced by way of an anonymizer function.

Wow, Dan. First, I have to say that Iā€™m impressed that you and SH are taking this stance and recognize that thereā€™s a problem even if SHā€™s trying to pick the best winner possible. I want to say that youā€™ve selected some amazing choices. Thereā€™s so many: Seezallā€™s recent tagline was one. I thought I had a pretty competitive name in a recent jewelry contest, but the winner was really amazing. And thereā€™s many more. But Iā€™ve seen so many others that seemed to ignore the directions or didnā€™t make sense to me. One thing you should realize is that when certain contestants win a lot of unrated contests, especially if theyā€™re new, the longterm contestantsā€™ radar goes up. And especially if our collective opinion is that the names lack substance. Iā€™d like to think this over more. But I applaud you for being sensitive to our concerns.

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I admit Iā€™m biased because Iā€™ve won a few SH-selected contests, (on the other hand, Iā€™ve also lost out on some where I was top trender, so my bias balances out,) but Iā€™m pretty happy with the current system. Much of the time Iā€™m impressed with the winners chosen (Swoop is fantastic). Other times Iā€™m not so impressed with the selectionsā€¦ but the same goes for CH-chosen winners. As has been said, itā€™s all subjective. And from all Dan and the team have said, it seems to me that theyā€™re putting a lot of thought into the process. Thereā€™s never going to be a result that makes everyone happy, (unless itā€™s to declare all of us winners every single time, of course :wink:).

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I am more than happy with the current system Vs. the old as the old system, in the old system there was not even a chance to win in these cases, and yes it is very subjective. A name I think is good someone else will say is Kaka and vice versa, And please donā€™t take this personally but I thought the pick on what I posted above was ā€œlazyā€ (just my opinion)

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