Banned from designcontest.net
Tue Sep 13, 2011 4:18:11 pm

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I got banned after only three days. I should have anticipated this. I had a rough start when I couldn't submit an entry after working on it for two hours. The problem is that they demand 10 forum comments/posts before anyone can participate. Many of the posts that I looked at were closed. I found a few that I could comment on but not enough. My work was wasted.

I considered abandoning the site at that point, but I gave it another try. I eventually found their "hangout" thread and completed the necessary requirements, but a few of my comments got deleted and were responded to with hostility by moderators. I wasn't trolling or being argumentative, but they did not like the obviousness of my attempt to get 10 comments.

I finally submitted something, but it was rejected. It wasn't because I submitted crap. All submissions that comply with the rules are accepted regardless of how awful they are. They simply get voted out in the judging process. My submission was rejected because I used 3D graphics software. This is a really stupid reason to reject a submission. Their official explanation is that vectors can be resized and raster images cannot, but 3D can be re-rendered at different resolutions. It's technically a 3D vector but the administrators are only familiar with 2D vector technology.

A simple rejection of my submission would not have been so bad. What happened is I submitted twice. The first submission was missing the name of the company, so I submitted a revised version. Both of my submissions for this specific contest got rejected. There is a 30 point penalty for each rejection and I only had 10 points. That means I now have -50 points, which is an automatic ban.

This was the submission that got me banned:

I am amused that their server still hosts the image that got me banned.