"Manipulated": why boolean?

<p style='text-indent:35px;'>In my humble opinion, the selection for

"Manipulated" (upon uploading a photo) should be from the following

choices:<blockquote><ul><li>yes</li><li>no</li><li>unknown</li></ul></blockquote></p><p

style='text-indent:35px;'>Everything that is currently "yes or

unknown" can be set to "unknown". </p>

Why?

 

It's fair to assume that if it's not marked as unmanipulated, it's manipulated, since that is the default. What's the purpose of an "unknown" category? If the photography doesn't know then by definition the default is that it is manipulated.

 

Unmanipulated requires an affirmative choice. That's the way it should be. It requires the photographer to read the definition and to say that it is unmanipulated. That way they can't weasel out later.

Because "yes/unknown" <b>doesn't</b> require an affirmative choice; as such, we have little recourse for differentiating between a lazy submitter that uploaded an unmanipulated photograph, a very skilled Photoshopper, or a photograph uploaded before the distinction was created. It is a default value, and thus of little value.</p><p> An alternative to altering the contents of your SQL table is to change the HTML widget to a listbox, and make the default value something rejected by the server - i.e., "Choose below" or simply blank.

Or I s'pose you could change it from "yes/unknown" to "yes." That'd get a lot of the old photographs updated in a hurry.

My personal view (and I don't speak for photo.net or Brian) is that if a photographer cares to make it know that his/her work is unmanipulated then they should go through their portfolio and classify their images. If they don't care or they're too lazy, we'll just assume they are manipulated.

 

Today the safest bet is to assume all images ARE manipulated. That's the world we live in. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago I'd have assumed all images I saw were unmanipulated unless told otherwise, but today the exact opposite is true.

 

If we ever decided to offer users the ability to browse or view top photos on the basis of whether they were manipulated or not, then it makes sense to have "manipulated" and "not manipulated". It makes no sense to have an "unknown" category. "Unknown" means manipulated by default and unless and until the photographer reclassifies the image.

Well, then let's rename it from "Unknown" to "Yes."

Not my call I'm afraid. Brian runs the gallery. I'm not even sure we should, since "yes or unknown" does accurately describe the state of those images.

 

If we did a sort, the "yes" and "unknown" images would be displayed together anyway, since unknown status images are assumed to be manipulated by default. If the photographers don't like that and their images are unmanipulated, they should check the "unmanipulated" box.

Having three boxes Yes, No, with neither checked by default ("Unknown") is an improvement on what we have now. That would put Yes and No on equal footing.

 

When we instituted this checkbox, 100% of the images were Unknown, and 95% of them still are. The intent of the checkbox was to segregate the unmanipulated images for special attention, reckoning that people who were proud of their unmanipulated images would mark them, and might even go and edit the flag on their previous images so that they wouldn't be shown as "Yes/Unknown". I don't think people with manipulated images have the same motivation. Many/most of them don't even care about this issue, and may not even "get" why it is an issue for others. They might bother to check "Yes" if it were an option. Their images end up as Yes/Unknown.

But we wouldn't have three boxes would we? We'd have two boxes, "manipulated" and "unmanipulated". We could have three categories, the third one being for those who checked neither box.

 

However I'd prefer a scheme with two boxes, one of which must be checked in order to upolad an image. Do we want to be able to give people the ability to classify their images as "don't know"? I suppose it's a way for the confused to have a category to select, but what would you do with it?

 

I can see the validity of a search based on "unmanipulated" or perhaps even a search based on "manipulated", but what's the point of a search on images that the photographer can't figure out how to classify!

 

The old, unclassified images would be "unknown" of course, so they'd never get presented in either a "manipulated" or "unmanipulated" serach. Perhaps a better category name would be "unclassified" rather than "unknown".

 

Better to lump them in with "manipulated" until the owener reclassifies them. I presume there would be no complaints if unmanipulated images were found in the "manipulated" gallery, while if manipulated images were found in the "unmanipulated" gallery, there would be loud complaints, or worse as we have recently seen.

 

So while there could be three categories, oe even maybe three checkboxes, there would effectively only be two real categories since you'd have to lump "unknown" and "manipulated" togther for any practical use of the categories (galleries, searches etc.).

 

If the categories are never used except for passive decoration/information, then it doesn't matter of course, but I'd hope to see them used at some point in an active way. I for one would like to be able to view the top unmanipulated images without having to look at each of the current images to see if the box was checked. I'd really like to be able to browse photography rather than the work of (possibly highly talented) graphic artists, and if I was going to spend my time rating images, I'd rather be able to give that time to those doing unmanipulated work since that's where my personal interest lies.

I think putting manipulated and unclassified together devalues the manipulated

images. If I spent hours in photoshop making a manipulated image of which I was

very proud, but which could be mistaken for an unmanipulated one, I would be

distressed that the effort could be missed.

 

I can also envision wanting to find manipulated images, in order to get ideas about

what other people are doing, and how, and possibly initiating discussion about it.

 

More information is better.

 

Thank You Kindly.