I agree that entering competition with teh chopper-gods definitely is an awesome thing. It does inspire, and I've been inspired several times.

I for one enjoy it and am not really in it to win. My post wasn't a complaint about being at the bottom or not winning. Most of my chops are 10-20 minute jobs that are for fun. Even the ones that I spend longer on look like they only took 5 minutes because I suck at photoshop.

The reason why I posted was that there was some conversation somewhere that the site was small and that people were leaving and new people weren't staying, etc. A nub contest would provide new people with more recognition than they would normally get and maybe a few more votes.

Maybe the idea has been advanced before but all I'm saying is it may be a worthwhile thing to consider if y'all are looking for more people entering contests and more users to actively participate on a regular basis.

My PSC score is too high. I tell myself it isn't important, but I find myself admiring it too much, like a good credit score, I don't want it to go down. It takes me way too long to do a chop that I feel has potential to score high, so I don't chop very often. That is not a good thing.

So I recommend contests which allow you to forfeit the reception of votes. Comments only. The entry will not affect the PSC score. It can be a separate group of contests, or, I prefer it to coincide with the existing daily contests. During submission, you can check whether or not you want votes or not. Choosing 'no' will prevent you from winning of course, but at least you can submit something, (perhaps at a reduced size resolution to save space) so that other people can see your work and comment on it. Voting entries and Non-voting entries would probably have to be separated in the contest page, so voters can choose to only view the entries that qualify for voting. This will take stress off of the "competing" factor that new users learning Photoshop get intimidated by.

Pros and Cons

Pro: Artists can get feedback while learning Photoshop
Pro: No worries about the PSC score.
Pro: More people enter daily contests
Con: More people enter daily contests (webhosting hurdles)
Con: Extreme scenario, Perhaps out of 50 entries, 40 choose not to get votes
Con: Lots of tasteless junk get entered for humor

Before you say it, I don't think the Forum is the most exciting place to do a similar idea, as far as getting non competition image comments, like we have done in the past.