For as long as I've been around here, the unspoken rule was that you could only enter a photo in one contest. (There was one exception to that -- the September 2005 "Reflections" contest hosted by RagingInMiams -- but, in that case, the host made it clear when announcing the topic that he was changing the rules for that one contest, because the previous topic, "Water," was so similar. And, even then, no one took advantage of that rule change; all images submitted were new work.)
In any event, this issue came up again this month. First off, I apologize to ET Awful, since computer problems prevented me from logging on here for a day or so, and I thus missed his follow-up question when I raised this issue in his poll thread, and wrongly assumed the matter had already been settled. Nonetheless, it doesn't strike me as fair to allow a prior contest entry (particularly one that made the finals the first time it was entered) to be used a second time in a monthly contest. But I thoroughly agree that this rule should be made explicit in the future. Since we have several different types of contests now -- monthly, seasonal, and (possibly) calendar --it seems to me that the following rule would be a good one to include in the initial entry post:
A photograph may normally be entered only once in a certain contest type (monthly, seasonal, etc.). It can, however, be entered once in each different contest type. For certain contests (such as those to select photos for a DU calendar), the host may allow members to submit the same photograph more than once. However, any such exceptions must be announced by the host in the initial call for submissions.
What does everybody think? Can you see a better way to do this? Or do you think members should simply be allowed to resubmit the same photos without limit?