If you are not already part of the team, but would like to join for the sole purpose of
joining in with, or posing, Challenges, then that is acceptable. However, you will still be
required to answer Roll Call, and you must be aware that there is no guarantee of the
frequency of Challenges. As they are posed by the members of the team themselves,
it is up to them how frequently they're created.
The idea of the Challenge is to get people to try different types of crafts or materials that they've not tried before, but if any individual is already good at a particular craft that has been chosen as a challenge, they cannot participate.
Any member of the team can pose a challenge. The Challenger will have to be adept at their chosen craft, though it does not necessarily have to be the one they sell through Etsy. If someone sells bags on Etsy, but is very good at origami, then they may challenge others to make bags, or do origami, or anything else they might be good at themselves. The reason they must know how to do their chosen craft themselves, is because the Challenger takes responsibility for the Challenge. It is their job to round up one or more prizes - be they donated from their own shop, or from someone else willing to donate - and to set the start and end date for the challenge. They are responsible for deciding the winners in a non-biased manner, and for either distributing the prize, or collecting the address for the current holder of the prize to distribute it to.
It is, however, the participants' responsibility to be honest and truthful, and to only enter if they know themselves that they have not tried the craft before, or only on rare occasions.
I'll give you an example.
Say the above mentioned person were to pose a challenge for origami. They perhaps started a thread in the forum to find out if anyone would be interested, and they've found a nice handful who are. They then have their prize/s sorted out and confirmed, should they need to be, and have approached the Team Captain or a Leader to request permission to see it happens. They give the Captain or Leader the information they need - preferred dates, time scale (one week, one month etc), prize, craft etc - and they've been given the go-ahead.
They then must write the post themselves detailing their own rules for the challenge. For example, the challenge might be to make 5 different origami animals, one from five different sets of three (totalling a choice of 15 animals) which they have decided on themselves, and each set of three more difficult than the last. Perhaps they have even provided the instructions for each animal. They must write their introduction to their challenge, their own rules along with the ones mentioned above (restrictions on participating), the prize, how entries will be collected, and, of course, the challenge itself. This is then sent to the Leader or Captain they got the go ahead from, and then the Captain or Leader will be responsible for posting it on the blog within a timely manner.
Once it is up, they are responsible for collecting and storing entries (be they pictures of the entries or the actual, physical things, whichever the challenger has requested), and answering any questions people may have concerning it.
Once the challenge draws to a close, they must choose a winner/s. In this case, they must take into account the skill of the five finished pieces, regardless of the animals that were chosen, and perhaps the time taken to create each piece. The materials that each are made of, however pretty, should not be a contributing factor to whether someone wins or not. A plain piece of origami paper is the same value as a square piece of newspaper, or a square piece of scrapbook paper. What counts is the skill involved.
Challenges might seem complicated, and indeed the challenger does have a large responsibility, but at the same time, it is no larger a responsibility than if they were to host a giveaway with one of their own products as the prize. The only difference is that they have to be a fair judge.
If anyone is interested in posing a Challenge, then do get in touch through the links on the top of the sidebar.
