Does that mean that if everyone picks one picture and no one picks the other, everyone gets a strike? That would be kind of weird. But then, so is "tie = strike for all".

I think the game would be the same, but it would just be more random. You would have to decide what picture everyone thinks to vote for and then decide how many decide not to try to find the lowest and in the end you are just as likely to guess correctly.
The way it is now, people actually have to look at the pictures and decide.

I think reducing the number of points is a step int he right direction, but I think you may want to consider a daily cap on TP from picathon.

I see people racking up thousands of points (10,000-20,000) just from picathon. And it seems rather unfair that people who have worked hard at solving puzzles can be pushed down or off the leaderboards buy someone who sits and plays picathon all day long.

I still think 1 TP/player is way too much. This is now the easy way to get TPs and look at the completion rate of other stuff on the website. Everyone does the Picathon....and little else. (And in your self interest, if all they do is the picathon - when do they buy anything?)

I would like to see the points reduced further by slowing down Picathon. ! game per hour starting at the hour (or the half-hour to avoid the puzzles if you wish). This lets folks plan to join (bigger parties?) instead of being glued to their screen hoping not to miss the Picathon.

The way the Picathon works now, most often a minority (often none) of the players receives a strike on a photo choice. If you reverse the rules, more than half (and sometimes all) of players would receive a strike on each photo choice. As a result, a game would be over much faster. Thus, people could play many more games in the same amount of time.

o I think it would be fun to mix it up and have some be Majority pick and others be Minority pick.- it would keep people on their toes a bit. You could change the background to make it obvious what choice is being required for each selection pair.

I'm against "slowing it down" - if people want to play - why not let them play?

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o I would like to see a better quality of pictures from which to select... it seems that now that the picathon has gone live, we've gotten into the pool of "everybody's uploaded EVERYTHING from their digital camera onto flickr - blurry, sideways, accidental - with no tossing of the dreck" so a majority of the pictures to choose from are uninteresting and/or just plain bad photography. Also - there are a lot of "this photo unavailable" given as a choice. I think it seriously detracts from the enjoyment of the game.

While the selection during the beta test was limited, at least the pictures were good.
Perhaps there could be a Tanga section at flickr where we could start amassing good pictures (perhaps some of the volunteer moderators could help populating the good picture pool)

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o re: points - "fair" interesting concept - especially here at Tanga.
Everyone has options in playing different things, and getting points at Tanga. The puzzle solving people have the option to sit and play picathon all day long too... or maybe they can't - or maybe some others can't be online at 10pm to be able to take advantage of the huge TP bonuses available to those who can - or maybe someone spends the time crafting questions and puzzles and submitting, and others don't....

The leaderboards are only for the "hard working" puzzlers ? There shouldn't be other ways for someone to be here, have fun and get points? There are a lot of puzzle solving people who haven't purchased one thing here at tanga (or perhaps only one) - is that fair to the people who have made purchases (and put real money into Tanga's coffers)?

When the leaderboards were instituted last year I know of many very involved puzzle solvers who left and never came back as the tone of site became more competitive, and less collaborative. - overall, I think the leaderboards are not a good thing - and I realize there are a lot of people who disagree, so we'll need to agree to disagree.

BTW "hard working" is in quotes - because you don't HAVE to be hard working to enter the answers, when the answers are posted outright in other forums. That said - I want to say I absolutely know there are many truly Hard Working Solvers, and not everyone takes advantage of the other sites that just post the answers - and there is little that is "fair" for them when it comes to amassing Tanga Points.

The bottom line, as Drew Carey said in Whose Line is it Anyway:
"Everything's made up and the points don't matter"

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edit: I just want to clarify that I don't have anything against the other forums that are being used to share the puzzle-making fun (remembering that the points don't matter). I wish that Tanga had a spoiler function so that we could share saltier hints here with everybody instead of having Tangagrams flying around.

I agree with much of the comments made in [6] and especially like the idea of a Tanga section at Flickr and the moderator's input. I am not really familiar with Flickr's workings but if the information was posted as to how to do such a section I would gladly volunteer some time to help out!

btw - there is still a problem sometimes with the picathon where it tallys the votes before the countdown completes...

I think switching from majority to minority would make it much more interesting - would the majority of people pick the less attractive of the two pictures, thus making the more attractive the correct choice, or would more think that everyone else would switch?

It becomes much more thoughtful that way.

Why can't we have both? How about picathon and uniqueathon?