What constitutes a "view"?
I have seen some photos that have only been up a few minutes and have over 1000 views. Of course this thing being world wide may make sense of the number of views, but when the photo is just a snapshot without any real interesting features get 1000+ views? How are the views tabulated?
From what i've gathered by being here a while:
If the image is small enough to fit "inline", then every time the page loads for someone, somewhere, it gets counted as a 'view'.
If the image is too big to fit "inline" then a thumbnail is shown, and a link is put to the fullsized image. Only if someone clicks to look at the fullsized image does it count as a 'view'.
Check out the Wildlife comp thread for examples (it's the worst i've seen so far), some pages there's barely one image that's 700 pixels, and it has a few hundred views, then some that people have just uploaded at 2000 pixels or more wide, have less than 10 'views'.
I could resize them and re-upload
Yep, do that. Unless you can figure out how to make flickr etc resize them on the fly, it's gotta be a dedicated upload. I've been busy cropping and shrinking for all of mine (but they're not uploaded anywhere else yet).
Maybe there should be a form of "loyalty" award and allow only forum members who registered before the contest started to participate, as I seem to see many new members just registering for this contest. 
Same as the Holga comp, most people in that thread still only have a post or two to their name.
But (to be completely cynical), that's not the point. Check out the number of views on the images, some over 1000 times. Then realise that every time that image loads, the automatic CR-bot posts an ad or three on every page of every thread. That's a lot of ad views, I reckon minus the cost of the prize lenses, he's gonna make enough to keep this site going for quite a while...
(and another reason we can enter as many pics as we like. More work for him, sure, but more ad views too
)
Less competition would be nice, but what about someone who's been coming here for years without actually signing up to the forum?
I'm more interested to know what'll happen to all the >700 pixel shots, if they get a friendly warning, or just get chucked out of the judging before it starts (i've seen a 701-pixel shot, i'd hope it's not so harsh that it gets thrown out)?
