Thanks for the changes in rules. This will certainly discourage people from involving in manipulation but instead look at the quality of the article.

i have a boubt about the following:

Is it mandatory to use pictures in articles to gain moderator's vote/quality points? Certain articles don't need pictures and using pictures forcefully may make it look awkward.

Nagaraja, this rule works both ways. If the pictures are not necessary - you get a good mark for not inserting them. If there are - we look at how relevant they are, etc.

Thanks Dukascopy for recognizing my effort and honoring me in every month of my participation in the article contest. This really thrills me and motivates me to contribute more to DFC community. But I am disappointed with the current rules.

The current “QUALITY points” looks like QUANTITY factor. The more an author writes more points he gets. In this part the one who posts 4 average articles in a month has chances of gaining more points than a person who writes 2 good articles. A writer who gets an average of 75 quality points with 4 articles will gain 280 points where as a writer with 2 good articles with 100 points will get only 200 points and getting 80 points difference in evaluation is really tough.

Here is my advice on points.
Increase the points to 400
Article views + profile views =100
Comments + votes =100
Quality factor = 100*
Evaluation =100
* Please change the quality factor from “per article” to “per author”. This should be the average of all the articles. You may give these points at the end of the month and also consider increasing the minimum article to 2 from current 1.
__________

I read in the end note that “Now to find your article in top10 prior to Expert evaluation you can't purely spam everywhere you can to make people come, read, rate and comment your articles. Now your articles should also comply to certain rules. We like to call it "good sense".

Yes, I do share my article with at least 400 contestants every month and no one has blocked me for spamming their comment box except one. I spend around 20 hours researching, writing, editing, proofing etc of my articles and spend around 5-8 hours for publicity in DFC, Facebook, emails and various other sources. When I have written an article spending so much of hours and efforts I feel it’s my right to share it with people. Just look at one of the writers in top10 who doesn’t spend any time spreading his words has less than 10 visitors to his article.

You talk about “good sense” but looks like you’ve forgotten about “fair sense”. A lot of writers were complaining about not to consider self comment as a comment but you are ignoring their requests. Self commenting adds up to popularity and it boosts the ranking of the article. Misusing of this was started by Doctortyby and is now followed by Adrianws and jllongo and also the current month’s leader Vcardozo. Jlongo had 12 self comments out of the 24 comments he received for his winning article last month. Adrianws had 61 total comments out of which he had 31 self comments. I am not against writers commenting their article which is really a good tool to answer the queries. But don’t let the system calculate author’s comments as comment and added to popularity count. Also, consider 1 comment to be calculated per article from the visitor. There are incidents where in a visitor has 5 comment per article You have these facilities in trading contest but it would be great if you can extend them to article contest too.

With current set of rules, the quality and subject takes the last seat. So, try something where the quality of the article stands on top than other things.

I 100% agree with this, The quality score HAS to be averaged over the number of articles otherwise it is really unfair on those who may only be able to write 2 or 3, but those that write 4 will automatically beat them.

This, in my opinion, is a serious problem that needs to adjusted this month otherwise I do much prefer the addition of Quality marks and diluting popularity with views etc.

Good work.

Adrian.

Hi Nagaraja:

I agree with some of your points of view. Yes, i have made some comments i my winner article in last month contest... But if you see the comments, all of them are about the article and answers to users except two... and some of the questions i have answered via PM too. Considering this, after the midle of the month i begin to send my thanks via PM message to not interfer with that classification with i disagree too.
Other thing i find annoying is - and i don't do that - sending mass messages to users to see article, to vote or comment...
That is some form of contest manipulation too don't you agree ?

And if your intentions are only to share your efforts writting an article, the classification is so important ?
My intentions is only to share and help... if in result i win something, good. If not, good too, as my main objective is done.

I think Dukascopy is trying to do their best for the contest to be fair to all contestants... To be honest, i think the only way is all classification be made by Dukascopy evaluation experts taking care of all aspects of quality, views, comments, etc and only know after the contest ends.

Just my two cents.

Best regards

Trade well and good luck.

JL

jlongo, i have already clarified........
i'm not AGAINST writers commenting their articles you comment 100 then too it's not my botheration. but if you can think neutral, you can understand what impact it can have on newbies. as a big fan of dukascopy, i think i should suggest some remedies regarding the weakness of the point.
i can infact write 100+ comment in this month regarding various issues. but as a new boy in this contest don't you feel it's manipulation?
i've never been involved in any types of manipulalation but only want others to learn from my effort.
i'm actually a self learnt trader and i know how difficult it is in the beginning and i don't want others to suffer like me.
i'm not an escapist. you are free to throw any questions to me and i dare answering that. even though i am not active in the contests due to my personal works, i do spend at least 3 hours a week even when i'm not active.

WHEN YOUR EFFORTS ARE NOT TOWARDS JUST WIINNING THE CASH PRIZE BUT TO TEACH SOME ONE SOMETHING YOU KNOW, YOUR PRIORITIES WILL CERTAINLY CHANGE.

Hey just a question Jlongo, how come you've uploaded 3 articles when can only upload 1 a week, I.e from next week. Mine says next upload date is 16th???

Hi AdrianWS:

Don't know why, but i have clicked by error in post (i want to click save as draft) and the article was accepted...

Now i have the limit to day 16 too.

Best regards

Trade well and good luck

JL

It is unfortunate because one could argue that a user who manages to upload three articles in two weeks has an edge over others in terms of driving traffic to his/her blog.

Hi all...

I'm worried with this situation too and i've emailed Article Contest Support. This is the e-mail and their response:

****
Greetings,

the general idea was to have maximum 4 articles from 1 participant during a month. You will not post more articles than that. If the calendar is "friendly" to you, we do not see any objections with contestants using that for their good.

Best regards,

Contest support

Ticket History
===================
José Longo (Client) Posted On:

===============================================================
Dear Dukascopy Team:

In this month, i don't know why, but your article platform allowed me to
post one more article than other contestants. The last one, by mistake i
clicked "post" when i pretend to click "save as draft" and the system
accepted it (one thing i have observed at that moment is not to have the
blue box saying the date i can submit other article as i have now for 16
April).

I have other article to submit, but i think that is unfair for other
contestants taking in consideration actual classification method. Other
reason is about rules where is defined we can only post one article per
week. What i want to know is your opinion about this facts and if i can
submit this article or wait to next week ? Or i can submit and your
services only approve it next week ? Or submiting it don't go against your
rules ?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards

Jose Longo

****

I've played inside the rules...

Trade well and good luck

JL

Hi all

I already talked to Dukascopy about this. The thing is that because Jlongo posted his first article on April 1st - which was 1st day and week of April - he had his time for posting articles counted in different way.
BUT
Do not be worried as Rules and Regulations clearly say that: ONE USER MAY UPLOAD UP TO 4 ARTICLES PER MONTH - that is one article per week.
Hope this helped.
Cheers.

Hello, Jlongo, as comonium88 says you posted your first article at first of april, at sunday, as me, so you can post your articles a week earlier, as me, but this is the last week for us because this is the fourth article.

Hi Lincoln:

Yes, that is true and i don't see any problem on that... That are the rules and we must play with them. For example my second and third articles are done last month... The first is one ideia that came to my mind at last hour... The fourth i see some lack of continuity for my next articles i will try to do about indicators as i'm trying to learn about them. But i have more ideias, just some difficulty with my english, sometimes it's hard to get expressed in english what i think in my natural language.

Good luck in contest and good ideias too (for all)

Trade well and good luck

JL

Most of the comments in AdrianWS articles are self written in order to increase the weightage given for comments. He is misusing it. He is a cheat.

Just to let you know that Dukascopy allow this as long as it adds to the article (NOT spam) I update my article through comments and Dukascopy award this.

Either check through old forum posts when this was an issue before or just go on contest winners webpage and go back a few months and read the summary on doctorby's article and they say "Great job. And again, the updates are made through the comments. A very cunning way to both show people your interest and attitude."

https://www.dukascopy.com/fxcomm/fx-arti ... nth=201201

Thank you.

When will You learn to spell my name right, dear "guest"?
No offense.