I’ve been searching for a rating system that I can adapt for multimedia competitions. My problem is that most rating scripts tag an item with only a single criterion. I need at least four rubrics — preferably n — for serious educational contests. Instead of a typical five-point scale, I’d prefer a more analog slider to indicate a greater range of variations per rubric.
I also need fairly complex security levels. The results from Judges have to be counted and displayed differently than from peers or the public, for example. And I think K-12 teachers will want to submit entries for their students (if only to get around school ISPĀ filtering problems).
Plus, although I plan to generalize the site, I’d like to segregate different competitions to keep each group’s entries distinct. I want some admin tools for managing competition cycles, and I need good file management so I can wipe an old competition clean and start fresh the next year.
I’ve seen some video sharing Content Management Systems — YouTube clones — which might apply, although they cost money. It’s probably easier to hack extra rubrics into their PHP than to build the whole system from scratch.
You’re in somewhat of a difficult situation here. I think you’re right that it’s usually easier to modify existing software than totally write your own from scratch. And at the same time there aren’t really many things out there that do what you want to do.
One suggestion in terms of video sharing systems is Media Core. http://getmediacore.com/ this is an open source platform so you can get it for free and are free to modify the code. It’s a GPL license if that changes anything for you. It’s written in Python and requires Apache as well. Not sure what your Python is like (one of those languages I’ve been meaning to learn and just haven’t yet).