Group: Prime lenses (fixed focal length)

Maybe have a themed contest but only close and judge when then are 10 entries, so no time constraint. Also post a photo in the group pool at the time of announcing the contest, in the theme, with a link to the discussion. Some people may not look at discussions.

I like the concept of winner choosing the next topic and selecting their favourite.

There are some very good points made here. Yes, i think, we should keep the competitions. But we have to find a way to promote them better. Discussion threads in groups tend to be invisible for many if not most group members, as most of them don't follow them but only follow the picture stream. So we should make sure to (re)post pictures for competitions freshly to the picture stream (by adding them freshly to the group) and add something to the title/sublines. Maybe others, who browse the pictures in the group as well as at the photographers stream may be more aware of the competitions?

That said, i think, Dynamos and Gillians thoughts about the duration are worth to think about

Photo contests are "fashionable". You can find contests everywhere, I administrate one on the same basis as this ine here, on facebook. I didn't start it, it was already there but 3 years ago it was a quite important contest with participation from our two countries (Portugal and Spain), and the administrator had no time in summer and asked me to take over, after he asked me to keep running it. What I did.
One and half year ago participation started going down and has been dropping since. We added to the winner an A4 size edition of the presented pic, even though...the participation did not go up significantly.
The only reason we see is the existence of too much contests of the kind.

The truth is that four weeks ago I promised George that I would try to with some new idea about our competition.
And I honestly tried but nothing came :(
I am so sorry, George!
What shall we do?

Thank you everyone for your comments and feedback on this. I hope I'm right in summing up the suggestions this way:
* we should try running the comps for longer to allow maximum time for people to take their shots and enter.
* we should run the comps for either two months or until we have a minimum number of entries (maybe 10)
* we should place a marker in the group photo stream to make the comp more obvious to group members
* we should hope that the reason for the lack of entries is not because people have become tired of too many competitions.

Thank you, Marta, for returning to the discussion following your time away. If you would care to email me through the site, we can begin to think about a subject for our next group comp. (A reminder to all, Marta won our most recent comp but has been away).

I would suggest we pick up on all the ideas provided - that we run the next comp until we have EITHER a set minimum number of entries (let's start by trying for 10) OR for two months, whichever comes first. The comp to start on 1 May and I will arrange a place marker to go in the group photo stream to promote it. Does that sound OK to everyone?

Ok with me!

Perfect!