Decision to Randomize the Captions

[Frankie Chestnuts]

I have a bit of an issue with the decision to randomize the captions for the voting.

I have certainly noticed that the early entries often get a lot of votes. This may be due to voter fatigue. But I also think that the obvious ideas are put in early. I make a point of trying to enter early to get an obvious caption in before someone else does. I've also seen that a lot of captions that are put in early get special mention, but the winner is often half way down the list. Again, the obvious jokes, which are funny, get votes, but the really thoughtful caption or hilarious pun doesn't get put in right away. And it wins.

The big problem I see with randomizing the entries is the duplicates. Many weeks an obvious caption gets put in 5 or 6 times. For the recent Ferengi /Porthos Caption, there were numerous entries along the lines of "So Captain Archer, we finally meet!".

What does everyone else think? Am I taking this too seriously? Maybe I'm just too competitive ...but it is called a competition.

[IanKennedy]

Whilst I can see what you are saying it's not fair that the same people win each week. It's a massive disincentive for people to enter. When we used to select the winners ourselves then we would not always pick the first version of a given caption. If the later ones were better phrased then they would be selected in preference. Another issue is that the randomness of the list is different for each person voting, you can see this yourself if you simply click the vote link more than once. Because of this the chance of a duplicate caption getting more votes than another simply because of the ordering is not very significant.