Platform rules

Rules

Participation, voting, moderation, and publication requirements.

1. General Provisions

PhotoVote is a photo contest platform with anonymous viewer voting. By registering on the site, you agree to comply with these rules. The administration may update the rules and publish changes through site news.

2. Account and Registration

  • One person — one account.
  • Registering multiple accounts for participation, voting, or circumventing restrictions is prohibited.
  • A valid email must be provided at registration.
  • The username must contain only letters, numbers, the symbols _ and -, with a length of 3 to 50 characters.
  • The user is responsible for the security of their password and the actions performed under their account.

3. Profile and Public Information

  • The "About me" field is not intended for advertising, links, contact details, social media addresses, or account mentions.
  • Use the separate "Website" field to publish your site.
  • The link in the "Website" field goes through pre-moderation and may be rejected by a moderator.
  • The administration may delete profile content if it violates the rules or is used as spam.

4. Photos

  • JPEG files are permitted.
  • Maximum file size — 20 MB.
  • Uploaded images are automatically optimized and brought to acceptable dimensions.
  • The gallery limit is set by the platform: basic for a regular user and increased for a premium user.
  • By uploading an image, you confirm that you are its author or have the right to publish it.
  • Erotic photos must be marked as 18+.

Prohibited to upload:

  • others' works without permission;
  • images with watermarks, signatures, frames, and other elements that reveal authorship during anonymous voting (the built-in PhotoVote digital watermark tool does not violate this rule — its code is invisible and does not reveal authorship);
  • materials that violate the law;
  • spam, advertising images, and garbage content;
  • pornographic, violent, or other inappropriate content.

A photo that placed in the top of a completed contest may not be deleted, except in the case of account deletion.

5. Contests and Participation

  • All registered users may create contests.
  • The contest organizer cannot submit their own works to it.
  • Administrators and moderators do not participate in contests as authors.
  • The number of works per contest is determined by the contest limits, your author rating, and account status.
  • The same photo can participate in multiple contests unless prohibited by the specific contest's organizer.
  • A winning photo cannot be re-submitted to the same nomination.
  • The organizer can set a minimum work threshold for the contest. If the threshold is not reached by the end of the submission period, the contest is automatically cancelled, and the organizer receives a rating penalty.
  • Collusion, vote coordination, "trophy exchange," calls to vote en masse for a specific work, and other methods of artificially influencing the result are prohibited.

6. Premium and 18+ Contests

  • A premium contest is only open for submission to users with an active premium status.
  • Any registered user can vote in a premium contest.
  • 18+ contests are hidden from users who have not confirmed their age.
  • To submit works, view, vote, and serve on the jury in an 18+ contest, the user must enable the corresponding profile setting.
  • 18+ photos can only be submitted to 18+ contests.

7. Contest Phases

A contest goes through the following phases:

  1. Draft
  2. Scheduled
  3. Submission
  4. Awaiting voting
  5. Voting
  6. Jury voting
  7. Results

Until results are published, works are displayed anonymously: without author names, without positions, and without revealing the current rating.

If the number of active submissions at the end of the submission period is less than the minimum threshold set by the organizer, the contest is automatically cancelled and reverted to draft.

8. Viewer Voting

  • A user cannot vote for their own works.
  • The same pair is not rated by the same user twice.
  • During viewer voting, the author of the work is hidden.
  • For each choice made, the user receives 1 vote.
  • Using additional accounts, bots, external voting rings, and any schemes for artificially increasing influence on the result is prohibited.
  • If a photo violates the rules, it can be reported. Abuse of reports is also considered a violation.

9. Jury and Awards

  • The jury is formed by the contest organizer from eligible users.
  • A jury member cannot simultaneously be an author-participant in the same contest.
  • Jury voting is one-time only.
  • Each jury member rates works from the contest top.
  • The contest winner is determined by the results of jury voting.
  • The viewers' choice award goes to the work with the best viewer voting result.
  • In case of a tie in the final, the deciding vote remains with the contest organizer.

10. Ratings, Votes, and Premium

  • The author rating reflects the success of your works.
  • The organizer rating reflects the popularity of your contests relative to the platform average.
  • The organizer rating affects the coefficient of author rating change for participants in their contests: the higher the organizer rating, the greater the change authors receive when winners are announced.
  • The voter rating reflects the quality of your viewer choices.
  • For each viewer choice, 1 vote is awarded.
  • Accumulated votes can be used to activate or extend premium status. The base price in votes is set by the administrator. For active and conscientious participants, a discount applies: the higher the voter rating and voting quality, the lower the premium price.
  • Jury members receive a bonus to their organizer rating for participation in jury voting.
  • The administration reserves the right to manually adjust ratings or results in exceptional cases: technical failure, confirmed manipulation, abuse of the system.
  • If an author hasn't participated in contests for a long time, their author rating will gradually decrease toward 1000.
  • Only active users without restrictions who have at least one completed contest with published results appear in the public organizer ranking.

11. Complaints, Restrictions, and Moderation

  • The administration and moderators may remove or deactivate works that violate the rules.
  • A user may be deleted or have restrictions applied if their actions harm the platform or there are sufficient grounds to consider them in bad faith.
  • A restricted account may lose access to submitting works, voting, complaints, and public profile.
  • User complaints about photos and other users are reviewed by moderators.
  • Deliberately false or defamatory complaints are also considered a violation and lead to a reduction in the voter rating.

12. Liability

  • Copyright in photos remains with their authors.
  • By publishing a work, you allow it to be displayed on the site's pages as part of the contest mechanics.
  • The administration is not responsible for user content but may moderate it in the interests of the platform.

13. People Search Profile

  • Filling out the people search profile is voluntary.
  • Search visibility is disabled by default; the user enables it themselves.
  • The profile must not contain knowingly false information, others' contacts, or use profile fields as an advertising platform.
  • Only users with an active premium status can view search results.
  • Profile data may be hidden or deleted by a moderator if it violates platform rules or was entered in bad faith.

14. Photosets

  • A photoset is a private photo collection accessible only to invited participants.
  • Photosets can be created by registered users (or only premium users — at the administrator's discretion).
  • The photoset creator invites participants via invite link and manages participant membership.
  • Participants can rate files (like/dislike, rating 1–5), leave comments, and download originals.
  • The creator can hide individual files; hidden files are only visible to the creator.
  • File upload and synchronization is done through cloud storage.
  • Using photosets to distribute prohibited content, spam, or materials that violate copyright is prohibited.

15. Co-authorship

  • The photo author can invite other users as co-authors.
  • The co-author must accept the invitation — only after that do they appear in the photo card.
  • Participant roles (photographer, model, makeup artist, etc.) are specified by the author and co-authors.
  • Co-authorship does not override the copyright of the primary photo owner.