The new comment note under RFC images

The one per day limit in the Critique section won't be the only limit. As I said, there will also be an overall limit on Critique portfolio size, based on participation and reception. Participation is number or ratings and comments GIVEN. Reception is essentially views.

 

People who upload photos that attract visitors to the site are not free-loading and are not a burden. We put advertising on Gallery pages. It is discrete advertising (you could say TOO discrete) but the advertising generates about $0.20 per thousand page impressions on the average. By the time you factor in the typical number of photo views per page impression, it works out that photo views are worth about $10 per million photo views in terms of advertising revenue generated for the site. At that rate, there are in fact a few dozen non-subscribers in the Gallery who generate more than enough views to pay for a subscription, since their photos result in tens of millions of views. There are a couple of hundred non-subscribers with small, highly visible portfolios, that might not generate enough views to pay for a subscription, but which do generate enough views to pay for the costs associated with storing and serving the small portfolios.

 

People who participate in other ways, such as by spending hours per week rating and commenting upon photos, are also contributing to the "business model" of the Gallery enough to pay for the small portfolios that they have uploaded, even though those portfolios don't generate a lot of views and advertising revenue. The site would lose financially (not to mention other ways) if it tried to compel such people to subscribe, and they quit the site rather than doing so. It turns out that a lot of the very active participants and many of the "Top" photographers are subscribers anyway.

 

This is all looking at it from a "business/revenue" point of view. If that were our only concern, we'd be doing something different that was more profitable than this. But, if we want to be able to go on doing this, we do occasionally have to look at the finances. (Frankly, survival has been the paramount concern for the last few years; so we spend a lot of time looking at finances.)

 

The real problem in the Gallery is that about half (I estimate) of the people who upload photos are doing it only because it is a place to put up their photos on the Internet for free, with no intention of submitting them for critique or participating in any way, and with photos that are basically of no interest to anyone but themselves and a few friends or relatives. Some of these portfolios are huge. Those photos cost us only disk space, which is very cheap, since hardly anyone ever looks at the pictures, which would consume bandwidth, bandwidth being much more expensive than disk space. On the other hand, these large portfolios add hardly anything to the site, and other sites charge for hosting personal portfolios. They do harm, in fact, because they make subscribers wonder what they are getting for their money. So, we are going to try to get those people to subscribe; or more likely, we will end up deleting those large dead portfolios.

 

But the portfolios of people with great photos that visitors want to look at and critique, and the portfolios of people who actively participate in critique -- those are very welcome, and will remain so.

I think most of us here would agree with Bailey.

 

Brian you seem to believe that if the high volume uploaders and high raters were compelled to cut back on their activities, then somehow the quality of the TRP, and the number of views they generate, would suffer. The opposite is true. Long time members who follow this issue can give you a long list of people who are better photographers who would jump at the chance to participate in a system that is fair. There are also many images that are just as good, often better, which are not in the RFC list now.

 

I would suggest that there have always been three reasons why images are uploaded.

 

1) Beginning photographers who have had little or no training in traditional camera technique or composition want to learn how to take better pictures.

 

Another smaller group are advanced photographers who want response from other advanced photographers who are familiar with the genre and, ideally with the photographer's other work.

 

2) There are advanced photographers who have images that they are quite happy with and want to share them with the community - for inspiration, instruction, adulation . . . what have you. They're happy to know if someone likes it, but if someone doesn't like it, the reasons offered are rarely of any use to the maker.

 

3) You've discussed the group that uploads a boatload of images intended only for family, friends, ebay, or clients. These were never intended for critical analysis or public adulation. If these images create a storage or bandwidth problem, then they need to be restricted since they have no value to the community.

 

I don't see how the proposed tagging of future uploads properly separates them into these three distinct categories. Critique Circles that don't permit rates are far better venues for category one.

 

There should be no direct correlation between site activity (rates and comments) and visibilty, although 'Curators' who offer constructive criticism could put more images in the TRP queue than those who offer less assistance.

<i>"The photographer has not submitted this photograph for critique and/or rating. It is here for exhibition purposes. Accordingly, please consider this comments thread to be akin to a guestbook; that is, a place for any encouraging or positive comments that you care to offer."</i>

 

<p>but photographers were hoping to utilize the non-competitive section to obtain comment help for improving specific photos they upload. however, this rejoinder would appear to discourage other serious photographers and commenters from visiting these photos! also, I find it sad that there is no contemplated mechanism for publicly requesting helpful comments, short of submitting for critique (read "ratings"). I suppose such a mechanism would unduly compete with the revenue-generating critique mill.

 

<p>Brian, at the very least, why not include language at the end of the first sentence ... "but may be interested in comments specifically helpful to improve the image" to the first sentence, and otherwise amend the paragraph to read:

 

<p>"<b><i>The photographer has not submitted this photograph for critique and/or rating, but may be interested in comments specifically helpful to improve this photo. Otherwise, the photo is here for exhibition purposes, and you should consider this comments thread to be akin to a guestbook.</b></i>"

in the alternative, why not allow subscribers to submit photos to the critique section but with an option to turn ratings "off" (which cannot be switched back, short of re-uploading the photo with ratings "on")? in this way, photographers can specifically request critique "help" without being bothered by rater traffic.

Carl,

 

I didn't say anything about high-raters. But not every issue on this site reduces to the issue that you are concerned with. As for high-volume uploaders -- if his/her photos get views, then a photographer can upload more of them, becoming a high-volume uploader. Likewise if they subscribe or give a lot of ratings or write a lot of critiques. But everybody will be able to submit a 10 or 20 photo portfolio for critique without having to pay anything, or participate much.

 

You want the "right" photos to get the views so that what you see in Top Photos conforms to your tastes and sense of justice and so that photographers who are rewarded with the right to upload a lot of photos are the meritorious ones, not the "mate-raters" and other people who work the system. Nobody can argue with that, although no doubt they would argue with you about which are the "right" photos, and who are the meritorious photographers. And they might not agree on how those photos and photographers are identified.

 

You also say that the "right" photos will get more views. Maybe. But I'm not sure that is true. The evolution of various entertainment industries does not make me hopeful that the public will reward the most meritorious works with attention. The photo sites that get the most views on the Internet are all XXX-rated; so I think you are probably wrong. One thing I am certain of is that *MY* selection

of the best photos wouldn't generate more views than the present system.

 

The site needs traffic at the current level or greater to survive. That is reality. If you want a small little boutique web site that exhibits only photos that you think have merit -- start one. A lot of people have done so; it isn't hard, or even expensive. You might not get much traffic, but that isn't much of an issue for a personal site. Meanwhile, I am sorry to tell you this, but I don't have any interest in turning photo.net into *your* boutique Gallery site. Don't be offended, I'm not interested in turning it into *my" boutique Gallery site, either.

 

In summary: (1) whatever the system is that gets views for photos, if you upload photos that get views in that system, you will get to upload more of them, and if you don't, you won't. (Unless you subscribe or participate regularly in rating and critique.) And (2) that system better produce tens of millions of photo views per day, whether the photos are the "right" ones or not, because otherwise the site isn't going to survive at a level that will pay the bills.

Peggy, if you want critique, why not just submit the photo for critique? Isn't it quite reasonable to assume that if a photographer has not submitted a Critique Request, then he/she isn't interested in receiving critiques, and to remind commenters of this?

 

If that assumption is not correct, and you want people to criticize the photo rather than treat the comments as a guest book, why not just submit the photo for critique? It isn't hard, is it?

<p><i>"<b>Note</b>:The photographer has specifically requested critique (and rating) of this photograph..."</i></p>

<p>Great add. I like it where it is. This is <b>moral persuasion</b> the right way to walk, imho.</p>

Oh, I reread Peggy's post. The issue is she doesn't want to submit photos for Critique because that means "rating", and you can't turn off rating.

 

 

Subscribers will be able to have Exhibition/Sharing/Hosted photos. When I've finished implementing everything, probably the moderator note on the "Exhibit" photos will be gone, since almost all of the Exhibit photos will belong to subscribers, and if you are paying to have photos on exhibition on photo.net, I don't intend to slime your photos with my directions to your guests. You will be able to give them any directions you want, or none. Consider the moderator notes on the photos to be somewhat transitional.

Sorry if I missed it and end up repeating something which was discussed above, but I think there is a problem with this new "disclaimer" that hasn't been mentioned here yet.

 

<p>I posted most of my images at a time when there was still an option in the posting process to designate the images as not being subject to <b>rating</b>. However, I never took that option, because I <b>wanted</b>, and welcomed, ratings. Many of my images did end up getting some ratings, and comments, for which I was grateful.

 

<p>Actively going over to the Critique Request forum and posting a specific critique request is/was a different matter. I did that for some of my photos, but for many I did not.

 

<p>I now find, though, that <b>all</b> of my photos except those that I expressly posted <b>critique requests</b> for, are carrying this disclaimer saying that I posted them to not be subject to "critique <b>and/or</b> rating". That's not true! At least in the way things worked here for a number of years, having an image be subject to being rated, and having an image be made the subject of a specific critique request in the Critique Request forum, were <b>different things</b>.

 

<p>I posted photos here with the knowledge that they would be subject to rating, and with the willingness to have them rated. I also understood that people could post comments on them, and I was open to that as well. I do not like having all of those photos now burdened with this disclaimer suggesting that I didn't want anybody to rate them or critique them. The fact that I didn't post specific critique requests on all of them at the Critique Request forum is an entirely different matter.

 

<p>Can this be adressed in some manner?

Brian,

 

I didn't suggest that non-subscribers are freeloaders and nor did I (or would I) suggest that non-subscribers do not make valuable contributions in other ways.

 

What I am suggesting is that non-members should be encouraged to make a direct financial contribution and that it appears to me that your proposed changes will not encourage this. Limiting non-subscribers to one critique request per day is not much of a restriction, nor is removing this limit for subscribers much of a benefit, unless of course PN is more interested in encouraging quantity than quality.

 

The present PN membership system, which allows multiple identities without incurring any financial cost may encourage advertising revenue but it also encourages alias rating, mate-rating and retaliatory rating, all of which actively discourages the participation of some very talented photographers, several of whom have migrated to sites that discourage these activities.

 

I understand your business model and of course I understand the need to keep (or get) PN financially viable ? but look at the site as a whole; not just at the part that generates the greatest advertising revenue and that has the highest bandwidth costs.

The forums have been totally revamped over the last couple of years, this is an area in which PN has always led, but it is now streets ahead of any other site (although there is still room for improvement, especially in the software). Static content also places PN at the top of the pyramid.

 

This leaves (IMO) two areas in which PN performs badly. The main one is the critique/ratings system, many people have offered detailed and helpful suggestions but the urgent and necessary major surgery never happens and the minor tweaking doesn?t do anything to cut out the disease. The other seriously weak area is in communications, it is impossible to get any query or issue resolved without posting it in a public forum, which is not always appropriate. Emails go unanswered and I suspect that they are filtered to such an extent that few if any are actually read. This can breed discontent among members, who I feel should not be excluded in this way. Presumably advertisers do not experience the same problems.

Mind you, I?m probably just being naïve ? after all, I am a foreigner and so any non-financial contributions that I may make to PN are of no value because I am never going to do business with any of your advertisers.

 

I know nothing about running a business such as PN, but I do know about business in general and I know that the single most important factor in any business is getting and keeping the customers. The customers here are the contributing members, a relatively small percentage contributes in financial terms and an even smaller percentage of the non-paying customers make any valuable contributions. It seems to me that if there were meaningful restrictions on both membership and participation then the numbers of non-paying members would go down but the value of their contributions would increase. At present the situation vis a vis advertising sales is probably similar to that of print media ? 'We have 250,000 readers'

'Yes, but how many copies do you actually sell?'

'Well, about 50,000 but each copy gets read by 5 people on average, so each buyer gets counted 5 times'

Personally I think that advertising buyers would be more impressed by quality than by apparent membership

Gary, I don't think limiting Gallery participation to subscribers only would be a wise move. It is mainly a question of risk. You might be right, and it is possible that if we required a subscription for any participation in the Gallery that enough people would subscribe to make up for the loss of traffic (and advertising revenue) when current non-subscribers who were unwilling to sign up started abandoning the site.

The problem is that most of the revenue comes from traffic and advertising right now and not from subscribers; so your recommendation is a bet-the-site decision. You might be right, but I'd have to be very certain that you were, before I would risk it. We aren't exactly thriving, at present, but we are paying the bills.

 

That means keeping the model more or less as it is right now, and trying to get more people to subscribe without compelling them to do it by driving away non-subscribers. And that means making the site systems work with the considerable majority of the participants being non-subscribers. Unfortunately, this makes issues such as bogus accounts, etc, more diffictult to handle, since the Internet provides us with no universally- (or even widely-) accepted way to authenticate individual users, except charging some amount to a credit card. Obviously, email addresses are no way to authenticate anyone. But there aren't any good alternatives without going to a subscription-only model.

 

Incidentally, on the subject of measuring "circulation", Internet advertisers have this much better under control than print advertisers.

They count and pay for clickthroughs, either directly or indirectly.

In the long run, it doesn't matter how many visitors you have or page impressions you do. All that matters is clickthroughs. photo.net is a very "sticky" site; that is, it has many repeat visitors who spend long sessions on the site. This tends to yield a low number of clickthroughs per page/advertising impression, and therefore relatively low advertising rates.

Brian,

 

I agree that limiting gallery participation to subscribers would be unwise and my suggestion is that participation should be limited to a greater extent than you propose, not that it should be disallowed.

 

Nor do I suggest that you should toss a coin on the future business model (and on the survival of PN).

 

A pure guess, but I would be surprised if the advertising revenue amounted to less than about 80% of the total. The trick obviously is to reduce dependence on advertising revenue by increasing income from other sources. Surely, if the number of bogus accounts can be reduced this will have no impact on the necessary clickthroughs? And if the number of bogus accounts can be reduced it must surely follow that many members who are unhappy with the site at present will feel increased loyalty, will be more likely to contribute their efforts and to subscribe?

 

And doesn't it follow that restricting the amount of participation by non-subscribing members is likely to increase the number of subscriptions as well reducing the amount of bandwidth consumed? Obviously there will be some membership loss, but this should be more than covered by the offset and logic says that the people most likely to clickthrough on ads are those who are also prepared to clickthough on their PayPal accounts.

 

I'm don't have any easy answers but, for all their other shortcomings, sites such as PP have managed to control bogus accounts, mate rating and other similar anti-social behaviour, whilst at the same time strongly encouraging people to subscribe. One simple device is a restriction on the size of image files, which makes it difficult for non-subscribers to show their photos at maximum quality.

 

I don't claim any kind of moral high ground here - although I've always participated in forums and now present some of the Weekly Lighting Themes, I was a 'free' member for years and was only jolted into action by Sandys' generousity. Because of this I feel that I can see both sides of the membership fence.

 

I don't wish to be critical but I do feel that you should try to step back a bit and try to see an overview of the site - not an easy thing to do!

Suggestion: 1$ donation just for comments/ratings. Just to avoid bogus accounts via credit card authentication.

I'm confused by your last paragraph. When you refer to long sessions on this site, do you mean spending a long time on a single page?

 

Rest assured that I'm trying to consider site traffic as an integral part of my proposals. It seems logical that encouraging diversity in the photo critique forum would increase clickthroughs rather than giving benefits to those who've chased away members.

Brian, are you still watching this thread or have you moved on?

<p>Whatever. I'll repeat my rant.

<p>The disclaimer, "The photographer has not submitted this photograph for critique and/or rating", is <b>not accurate</b> in many cases. I, like many others who have been here at photo.net for some time, posted a lot of images with the understanding that they <i>would</i> be subject to rating, and with the <i>hope</i> that they <i>would</i> be rated, <i>and</i> commented on, honestly and critically. I just didn't go through and also post every single one of my images at the "Photo Critique" forum.

<p>I don't like having this disclaimer following up all of my photos, with its inaccurate suggestion that I don't want the images to be rated or commented on honestly. If you want to reinstitute an option for people to elect, when posting a photo, that it be immune from rating or comment, do that, and then put your "sycophants only, please" disclaimer on <i>those</i> photos. Leave it off mine, OK?

Dave, what if you just re-submit?

 

My issue Brian is because it takes up space in the "My Workspace" page, I used to delete the request (when I was able to, now cannot)after a week or so. Now, because of the disclaimer many (self included here) would like to re-submit. Is there a way to put all of my images back in the *critique* category without each image going into my workspace?? Thanks.

OK, Dave, I removed it. However, when we switch over to the Critique Forum versus Exhibition Section, any photo that has not been submitted for critique by then is probably going to end up in the Exhibition section, meaning that (further) ratings will be disabled, and the comments section will be labelled "GUEST BOOK", rather than "CRITIQUES". I don't know how we are going to deal with all the semi-critique photos out there -- photos that were intended for critique but which for some reason weren't actually submitted to the critique forum. I don't know how many photos fell into that category, and it is because I don't know, I'm removing the comment.

Thanks, Brian.

<p>As to your other comments -- sorry, I'm just not getting this. "Photos that were intended for critique but which for some reason weren't actually submitted to the critique forum"? For quite some time, after portfolios and then rating and comment functions were introduced here at photo.net, people thought of posting photos to their portfolio as <i>the</i> way of submitting them to the photo.net community for comment and critique. The volume of posts was such that photos would draw a decent amount of response simply going through the recent uploads qeue. The photo critique forum was introduced to try to channel the folks who insisted on fishing for even more feedback by posting threads on other forums soliciting feedback about their photos. But when did it become taken for granted that <i>every</i> photo was expected to be pushed through photo critique? Guess I've been out of the game too long.

I can see where you are coming from. But I would guess that only about half of all photos are actually submitted with any intention of getting critique. And for about a year, only photos that were "submitted for critique" have been on display in the Critique forum or, more importantly, in the "Rate Recent" list. So, I assumed that at least for the last year, any photos that were uploaded in order to be critiqued would have been submitted to the Critique Forum.

"I assumed that at least for the last year, any photos that were uploaded in order to be critiqued would have been submitted to the Critique Forum."

 

 

There are many older members who upload photos for critique, but not by the newbies who populate the recent uploads list, thank you very much. These members are willing to forego visibility on the TRP because of idiotic rates and sometimes comments (requests from you and Bob that they be ignored notwithstanding). Instead, they count on visits from a few friends and maybe friends of friends who read others' comments. Many don't rate at all anymore and don't have strong feelings either way about getting rates from guests, but I suspect they would be pleased to have some of their images placed on their friends' favorites pages from time to time.

 

I don't know how many there are, but you will hear from them.

 

On the issue of designating photos, it's counterintuative to give images listed for 'exhibition' with 'guestbook' interaction virtually no visibility, while giving maximum views to images that have been uploaded for critique, implying that the maker wants to improve.

 

This is backwards. Images placed in critique cirlces two years ago got more useful feedback than most uploads now. Makers who wish to place their images in a real exhibition are not asking how their images can be improved. They're sharing their best work.