Thanks! I'll take a look at the calendar.

I'll also start a new thread for people who might be interested in submitting pictures.

I dug up the rules for a previous contest. Are they fine to use as is or would people like changes? One thing I noticed to start with was that MTS Staff judged it. Would this still be the case or should we use volunteer judges like for Justpetro's contest?

MTS Official 2016 Calendar Contest: TS2
Official MTS 2016 Calendar Contest: The Sims 2
Use your creativity to showcase your sims in a shot fitting for each month of the year. The picture should be a scene with sims in it representing the "feel" of a particular month. Have the family gathered for Christmas dinner? Beach party in June? Romantic dinner for two in February? We'd love to see what everyone can come up with for this year's calendar. Please use northern hemisphere seasons.Season expansion pack and use of seasons holidays (Love Day, Spooky Day, etc) not required.

Rules
1. 1 picture per entry. You may only enter a month one time but may enter 2 separate months. (If you enter twice, you need to submit two different posts)
2. Only 15 entrants per month. Please no place holders. Each spot is only filled once the picture, that meets all the rules, has been submitted.
3. CC is allowed. However, please make sure to follow MTS rules for CC; no pay content.
4. Pictures must be 1000 (width) x 750 (height).

5. No photo editing.
6. When posting your picture, please make sure to include the month it belongs to.
7. Sims 3 only. For Sims 3 version, please go here and for Sims 4, please go here.
8. REMEMBER: This is a PG-13 Forum! Your entries may not include adult content, pornography, or other inappropriate content.

How to Enter
1. Pick a month and take a picture to represent that month.
2. Upload the picture to any image host - Tinypic, Photobucket, Flickr, ModYourPanties, etc
3. Start a new post on this thread - click Go Advanced, and you can click the little "Insert Image" icon in the toolbar, or just copy-paste the image location into some [img] tags. Make sure to include which month your picture is for.
4. Submit your post - doing so will submit your entry.
5. If you want to do two entries, you need two separate posts.

Duration/Time Period
The contest begins November 1st, as soon as this is posted. Contestants will have until November 30th to post pictures. However, if a month fills up before that date, that month will be closed for new entries and judging.

Contestants
15 per month maximum

Judging and Scoring
Judging will be done by a panel MTS Staff and these are the things that the panel will be looking out for when entries are judged.
Theme - Does your picture represent the month you chose?
Creativity - Originality of idea
Style - Use of space, props, is it pretty?
Rules - CC adherence, no editing, inclusion of month

Prizes
A sticker for both winners AND participants, like these.
A calendar will be made for download with each winning month.
And, of course, the blue ribbons for each month’s winner.

Questions
Q: I already entered 2 separate months for TS2. Can I compete in the TS3/TS4 calendar as well?
A: Yes, you may. You're more than welcome to submit for all the contests, giving you 6 chances to win!

The picture you post will be your final shot - make it good. Posting a random picture of a christmas tree, easter bunny, yourself, etc to reserve a spot is not allowed and it will be deleted.

Once your post has been added to the table, it may not be changed. Do not change the picture, you may not delete it and enter a new month instead, etc. If you choose to delete your entry, you are removing yourself from the contest and no further entries will be permitted from you.

If anyone is notified that they have used pay content, their entries will be disqualified. The spots they had will NOT be held.

@Charity I think they look mostly fine, but you could take out the bits referring to Sims 3 and 4 as we are just doing this for Sims 2. Also Modyourpanties doesn't exist now, we can just attach an image to the post and click the button to get the code to post it.

Photobucket is no longer free, tinypic (which I used to use) no longer exists, and modyourpanties stopped working years ago. I can sometimes get IMGUR to work, but not always. Can we therefore just upload the pictures to Mod The Sims as we do when sharing uploads, in building contests, and indeed most of us now do in the picture forums?

i.e. "Go Advanced", and then use the Upload button.

Agree with simsample and AndrewGloria - otherwise, the rules look fine. Good luck, Charity!

The only calendar contest i entered was the 2019 one. That one had seasons rather than months, and didn't get started till early December, which was possibly a bit too late. It was slow in getting entries and on 18th December I submitted my entry for Summer, mainly because I was afraid that it might not get enough TS2 entries to be able to make a TS2 calendar at all. I used a picture I had already used in a challenge, showing Andrew and Julian outside the Veronaville Swim Centre in their tiny white tie-side swim-briefs, with love hearts embroidered on the front. I got 13 Disagrees (I can now see who) and 6 Funnies! No positive buttons at all! Clearly not what other Simmers wanted on their Sims' living room walls!!! The theme for that year's calendar was "Best Friends", and Andrew and Julian are very definitely best friends -- they were best friends even before they became lovers.

I did perhaps do some good though, in prompting others to enter, and in the end there were more than enough entries to produce a 4 picture calendar without using mine. In view of all the Disagrees, it's probably just as well that my picture wasn't in it! Now Andrew and Julian did consent to me submitting the picture, but Andrew is by nature quite shy, and I'm not sure if he'd really have been happy at the idea of a picture of him almost naked, being pinned up on walls all over the known Sims universe!

So @Charity , I urge you to start the calendar contest in good time, so people have time to submit entries, and you can produce a 12 picture calendar in time for New Year's Day. I'll do my best to post at least one -- preferably two pictures for it. And if I only get 12 disagrees, it will be an improvement on my last calendar entry.

As soon as Charity gets the contest started, I urge everyone to submit pictures for it, no matter or how good or how bad you think you are at taking/making pictures! No matter how bad your picture, you’re most unlikely to break my record of 13 Disagrees!! Make sure Charity and the judges have plenty of pictures to choose from for the calendar.

If the worst comes to the worst, Charity, and you don't get enough entries, you could always make a 4 season calendar. There is of course the complication that you live in the Southern Hemisphere, so for you, as for joandsarah77 and Justpetro, Christmas comes just after midsummer! But I'm sure, if you had to change to a 4 season calendar due to lack of entries, you would know that an Australian-style December picture of Santa Claus having a barbecue on the beach, is a summer picture not a winter one!

A final piece of encouragement for anyone unsure about entering. Despite my 13 Disagrees, I got a sticker for participating! If you look at my profile, you can see it!

Just adding a note: Initially, building contests also required uploading pics through tinypic, etc. etc. It was changed because these 3rd parties changed/vanished years ago.

I think there will be enough entries for 12 months and enough pics to choose the winners from myself - a contestant can only submit 2 pics - surely it does not take that much time to take 2 pics?

Well, seeing as the originals were for all games I posted in the TS3 and TS4 forums to see if they were interested, but ... as of now I have one response for Sims 3 and nothing at all for Sims 4. The one person for Sims 3 sounded very enthusiastic though, so I hope some others sign up.

The original contests were judged by MTS Staff. Will this still be the case or should I ask for people willing to judge?

Contest is up for TS2, but I need more interest for TS3/TS4.

I dunno whether staff would want to judge, as apart from HugeLunatic I don't see many of them posting in the social forums at all. I think they all socialise through Discord, whereas this is really a contest for the forums. I hope it doesn't get taken to the Discord site, I'd rather the Discorders come here to take part!

@HugeLunatic As the calendar contest is usually judged by MTS Staff do you want that to be the case this time or should I try and rustle up some judges? How many judges does it normally have?

I can help judge, but perhaps we can get some community members to also judge?

edit: Didn't we use the agree/love buttons for voting before? And staff would break ties? Should we do that? Then it's really voted on by the community.

That sounds like a great idea. With the new ability to see who clicked on what I can go through and make sure that noone is double voting or doing anything else dodgy.

Well, before I made the calendar contest suggestion, these were the options that everyone was looking at. Seeing as I hijacked the thread I feel morally obliged to unhijack it! XD

So now the calendar contest is over (stickers are being worked on), what contest should be next?

Again, I'm fine with anything.

Yes! What contest should be next?

Thank you, @Charity - I did enjoy that even if I knew from the start I was going to be pretty useless And the calendar is awesome!

Did not grasp at once what the disagrees were for - I thought: who disagrees with having a new contest?

Let's go.

My first thought exactly! LOL!

Hey, your picture was included in the extra pics for the Seasons calendar!

The disagrees do look angry, even when they aren't. XD

Yes! That was such a cool surprise

I have 2 suggestions then (some of this was mentioned before, but I thought a bit about it last night.

Idea 1.

Starters

taking the budgets from the game (since only single sims get 20000, other families get a bit more depending on the size - not sure with which ep it has changed - or we can make it a bit higher for rounds 3 and 4, but not too high - say 35000)?

Keeping the rules simple and see if we can get some new contestants to join.

All of them on 2X2 lots.

Round 1 - for a single sim (also the application round)
Round 2 - for a couple (retired)?
Roud 3 - for a family of 3 sims
Round 4 - for a family of 4 roomies

Idea 2

University Time

Lot sizes - starter 2X2. others no larger than 3X3

1. small starter for a student to rent (also application round)
2. a student park (yes, I know parks are supposed to be easy - no reason not to build one for your uni hood)
3. a dorm - 4 rooms, perhaps 6 - not more
4. an indoor community lot - let us have your suggestions here! A library or a student center or something like that.

Here are my ideas (from earlier in this thread) - Post #10
We DID move (and went without a paycheck for 6 months, while carrying 2 mortgages.) AND survived. .
So... how about a round of Fix It or Flip It - I think I've got some shells stashed away, ready to go.