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nomade

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I have nearly 100 images up over the last 18 months. Some have got a lot of rates. I can

only speak from my experience.

 

Things are different now with the use of 'average' filter. I and many other posters here saw

the pattern ALL THE TIME that one got rates to 10 or 15 and then you hit a brick wall.

 

It never struck me that you Brian didn't know how this affected the images posted.

Amazing , considering the amount of posts there have been. The way an image is

controlled by you in the critique list has a fundamental impact on it's visibility here on the

site.

 

My experience is that most critiques come from the critique list and very few come from

anywhere else. The sole exception is if you get into the top 3 pages in the'3 day' TRP when

you will probably then get as much visibility as needed to get a valid reponse from the site

membership.

 

The mate raters played the system by getting their near automatic 10/15 rates and on top

they got the extra 5 or more rates from mates which got them into the top '24 hr ' TRP

which then moved them into the top 3 pages in the '3day' view and from there they got

more rates (often one suspected they ended up with considerably more than they deserved

compared to others who didn't play the system). The main point was that getting to the

top few pages WAS necessary to get decent visibility and lots of rates which was what they

wanted in the first place. For those of us who didn't care about rates but did seek 'critique

comments" we knew that the number of comments we got was very closely linked to the

visibility (number of rates you got) on the site. VISIBILITY used to be directly tied to the

rating controls and that was the reason I have always disliked the way images are

managed in the critique list.

 

Can I suggest another area that might be interesting. When viewers access the TRP 1.

which

choices do they make? How many just browse the default '3days' etc. 2. When they look at

TRP how many pages deep do they go. Do they look at all the pages or just the first one or

two?

 

The above would explain to you why members here were / are so energetic in their

criticism of TRP/rating schemes and it would also help you understand how to better

organise the TRP galleries.

 

I think the use of 'average' has been a really good change to the system.

 

Regards

Louis

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The fact is that the space available for the highest visibility (the TRP or whatever forecoming system) will **always** be very reduced. And that has nothing to do with a rating system, critique circles or whatever web designs that might be implemented; it is only the limited nature of the media.

 

Simply and easy: no matter whatever web/system design is implemented, very few shots will have MUCH more visibility than MANY others. Then, always there will be people asking for changes or improvements, people blaming the site, the design, etc. for not having the expected (usually high) visibility on theirs shots.

 

To expect to conform everybody is unrealistic. I know that Brian is acquainted of this fact.

 

Visitors of this site are the ones that should accept that there's not enough space for every good image to have the highest visibility most of the times, and as this is not an objective science, always there will be people stating the same thing: "why this crappy shot is having right now so much vibility, when this other one that's so good, has zero rates/comments/views/etc.?"

 

With this "improvement" (yes, I doubt it is one...), now we have some good shots losts in an infinite list of people asking the same: comment / donnot rate; and those images, mixed together with pure crappy ones, just like it used to be since the starting of the times.

 

This have been asked for many people for a long time, they should be asked now how they will manage to get the preciously valued visibility to get those comments that they were/are asking for... Or do they expect that now comments will come quickly to theirs shots simply because they asked "just" for comments...???

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I hope the good photographers who have been uploading photos to this site will not all start hiding them away in the "Critique Only" department. If they are subscribers, they are supporting the site, and they will be entitled to do that.

 

But I'm biting my lip hoping that they won't. I hope that they will let their photos be rated, let them be given the high ratings they deserve, and let the world see their fine work.

 

It seems that many people would prefer to hide their great photos away and let them be seen and commented upon by a few friends they have made on photo.net, rather than risk the minor irritation of receiving a low rating or two from faceless people on the Internet. Even though those few low ratings hardly affect the averages at all, are often deleted within a day or two, anyway, and don't prevent their photos from having high average scores and being visible, the low ratings are apparently so annoying that people will forego the visibility and wide admiration their photos deserve (and would receive) just to avoid a few stray low ratings.

 

It doesn't make sense to me, actually. I would expect to be seeing average photos where people really don't expect them to be high-rated and are only looking for input to be in the "Critique Only" section. Instead, we are getting a lot of very good images that deserve to be in the TRP, where they belong. That bothers me a lot. To be honest, it almost seems a bit selfish to hide such talent in the "Critique Only" department.

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Brian

If it helps I have posted some identical images to photopoints and my experience

was that the way they rate there is extreme ie images get maximum points from everyone.

 

I queried this and took their option to have comments only. What has now happened is

that I am getting at times more comments than I get rates on photonet. A recent image

which got 15 comments on PP got 3 comments on PN , another got 12 comments on PP

and 2 on PN (+14 rates).

 

I prefer PN to PP. I hope the above is of some passing interest.

 

Is it a surprise that some people prefer comments from a few people they can identify to

lots of anonymous ratings which they can give no value to.

 

I value a 6/6 from some members much more highly than several 7/7 from those whose

work I do not regard as highly.

 

I am not suggesting you identify raters just saying that a critique or comment for some is

often considerably more valuable than ratings and so NO ratings is not a loss.

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Louis, it is a loss to the site, and to all the people who were enjoying the work of its photographers. Visibility is what the ratings are about. Opting out of the ratings means choosing to make the photos invisible.

 

As I said, I understand that some people have an interest only in comments, and no interest in letting other people see their work (except for people prepared to comment in detail.) But I think that attitude is very unfortunate, when it is held by someone whose work should be seen.

 

If someone is a subscriber, and is paying for the space and the bandwidth, I guess I'll take the money; but I can't say I like good photographs being hidden away. I'm not really running photo.net as a camera club where photographers comment on each other's work. I think of it is a Gallery putting photographs on display for the world, and the Critique-Only department is not really consistent with this.

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Bryan, if you want ALL photos to be equally treated, is it too difficult to implement the option of seeing the TRP with the choice "Critiques Only - Most Commented and/or Most viewed"? I do not know, maybe it is to hard to implement it...
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You can't expect all the 'good' photographers to embrace the current version of the subway.

 

You've stated that you think the TRP images are very good, on the whole, and don't seem to be concerned that many of us would like to see different content that we think would meet both our needs for diversity and feedback and your need for quality that attracts clicks.

 

Please go to the default TRP and ask yourself if there is anything about the top 21 images that might cause a good photographer to say "I don't want any part of this."

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For what it's worth, I think the *experience* for the photographers has been diminished somewhat (with all due respect Brian -after all, you are seriously trying to improve things). It's not that photographers do not want to have a "few low ratings" as mentioned, so instead run those same images through the Critique only section now. It has more to do with the fact that those lower ratings are anonymous now. That basically there is nothing you or anybody can do about it. There is a greater frustration level with all the changes if you are a photographer. I received several ratings on older images that are now totally meaningless. No idea what they were or who took the time. Why even bother rating the older work of other photographers??...there is little benefit if any that I can think of. Another important element here for people known as the *community connection factor* has been significantly diminished as well. Simply rating images is even more time consuming now. I've mentioned this before, but for experienced photographers to post their best images without monetary compensation, the *experience* then, better be a good one. Perhaps that is why Louis mentions the greater level of feedback at that other site. Perhaps it's a more satisfying experience for the photographers. As it is, the forums seem to offer a more interactive experience than the gallery/TRPs. Very liitle communication, ratings, or interaction in my opinion.

 

I know in my own case as well as a few other photographers that have held back from posting new images somewhat, that it's not a direct conscious decision not to post images as some type of demonstration against the changes. It has much more to do with just not feeling compelled. The changes have simply taken too much of the fun out. Perhaps if things stay the same, it will come back around. I am not quite so optimistic however. The older system, at least parts of it, were just better for the photographers.

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Brian has already answered your question above, on this same thread:

 

"As the TRP is presently structured, photos must have at least one rating to be in any of the rankings, even the ones that otherwise don't ostensibly depend on ratings, such as "Number of Comments" or "Number of Views". "

 

I wonder if the "present structure" of those two sections could be slighlty changed to include these photographs, that now are beeing sent to the "Oblivion" list. Ooops, I meant "Only Critique" list.

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Views isn't a very frequently accessed ranking, anyway. Besides it is the most self-reinforcing winner-take-all one of them all, since thumbnails displayed on the Views TRP count as a view. As for "Comments", counting comments doesn't tell you anything, in my opinion. It just reflects which photos are the ones that happen to have debates break out on them, or which photographers have the most friends.

 

If "Critique Only" becomes popular, we better get a lot more subscribers, because otherwise the Gallery is sunk.

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there is nothing to prevent, save the megabyte quota, a photographer from posting the same photo twice, first for non-rated critique only, next for rated critique. okay, that would halve one's subscriber's daily quota, but patience could have its virtues, such as increased exposure of the same work in two (or more) forums. anyway, the photographer can presently or eventually delete one copy or the other.
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Brian, I wouldn't worry too much, in the last 4 days less than 50 images have been posted to the critique only section of the gallery. Most people will still want the limelight of the TRP pages. BTW one of my images posted to the critique only section has managed to accrue two ratings.
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What kind of balance can be expected between 'diversity' and 'quality' on the TRP pages? At this moment the top 21 contain around 7 birds, 7 figures, and 7 landscapes. We now have over twenty genre/categories of which three or four are represented. Is that OK?

<p>

OTOH (looking only at the thumbnails) 3 seem to be very weak shots, half of the rest are average, and maybe 10 have serious potential. Is that OK?

<p>

That's a quick eyeballing (prompted by Carl's question on who'd not want any part of this) ... and I'd guess it might be both "a typical day" and not very different from a month ago. What do you think ... is maintaining max-diversity <i>and</i> max-quality feasible, or are the needs of the site loaded on one side?

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The photos on the front pages of the TRP are what the raters rate high from the photos that are uploaded. The default view is the last 3 days. The Gallery has been on the web now for five years, and there are about 900,000 photos available for viewing.

 

I never expect the uploads from one day, or even 3 days, to have any photos that are comparable to the best photos in the Gallery, and I'm always satisfied if there is even one memorable photo in the uploads for a day. But a lot of them are very nice, especially if you take subject interest into consideration and aren't too exigent about originality.

 

The quality (meaning how much I like the photos) fluctuates. Today seems a bit heavy on birds, which aren't MY favorite subject, but apart from that I would say that the selection is about normal -- not bad, but not spectacular, and far from best day I've seen. I don't notice that the quality has changed that much since we made all the changes on the site. Normally, changes take longer than a couple of weeks to become apparent, in any case.

 

One nice thing that has changed recently is that there has been a dramatic upsurge in the number of subscriptions, especially on the weekends. We used to average around 4 to 6 subscriptions per day. Now we are hitting 6 to 9 per day during the week, and over 10 per day on the weekends. Part of this is due to our sending out reminders before an expiration, and then actually expiring subscriptions when they end. So we are getting more renewals. But part of it is probably due to the Gallery changes, and to the more generous allocation of space for photos to subscribers.

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My point has as much to do with fairness as variety and quality.

 

Seven of the top 21, fully 1/3, were uploaded by only two photographers. Two more were on the next page. That's seven slots that could have been given to seven good shots by seven different photographers.

 

An image that starts out with only a few high rates now goes to the head of the line immediately rather than slowly accumulating rates which was the previous default. This means that a very good image will get bumped by an image whose higher 'quality' has been determined by just a few people. Then the halo effect sets in.

 

Both these features should be fixed.

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How much of that might be due to 21 divided by 4 requests per day? I'm not suggesting that the correlation is exact because there are other 'certain' factors, but if people tend to work in batches and make, say, 12 requests in three days ... would we see them again for a week or so? I've never looked for any particular behavior over time, but you might have observed this.
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I think we should have to let some time to pass, and see how the whole thing re-accommodate. Probably we are only seeing some reminiscences of previous undesirable behaves. Brian has already stated that it usually takes a couple of weeks. Let's see.
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Some people do seem to prefer uploading images in groups, and if someone likes an image that they see on the TRP, it's easy to go check out their portfolio to see what else may be of interest.

 

My point is that tweaking the sorts can have a considerable effect on what gets shown, by whom, and how often. I would have thought that variety would be a high priority so long as the quality of images shown doesn't suffer. But of course that's subjective, and the quality of what we're seeing now has been the subject of many debates.

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I disagree. The life span of a typical 5.0 - 5.5 photo on this site is effectively three days. Kudos for giving us the option to see if anyone has left a comment on an image after we did, but statistically it's not significant. Neither are folder views or portfolio views. My observations are based on a small sampling of photos uploaded just before you changed to 'average', so time is pretty much a constant. I suggest that others who are interested in this question and who upload regularly check to see if my observations hold up over time.
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Of course I've seen some lowered attention focused on my images, but I wouldn't blame the changes introduced simply for that. I should test the whole thing for longer periods, with different kind of shots, and then try to arrive to better-funded conclusions.

 

In the meanwhile, I assume the usual in these cases: part is lack of interest in the themes I posted, part maybe not masterly executed images, and another part can be bad luck. Maybe my next postings would have a better reception, and I'll find equally difficult to explain why they were better received.

 

On the other hand, it happened sometimes that the images presented in the TRPs were mostly not of my liking, a taste that obviously was not shared with most of the community members... But that's ok, next time could happen exactly the opposite. I mean that I cannot be so blatantly arrogant to believe that my taste is the only, unique, absolute mesure to judge which images are fairly exposed or not in the main TRPs. It's about beauty, messages that reach the right heads at the right moment, or whatever! But it's not a science.

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I've been here a short time and I agree that sometimes fabulous work gets buried due to lack of visibility. I think this happens for a couple of reasons, one being that certain individuals always rate every picture by people they like or know. Secondly I think the average viewer tends to rate certain types of photos higher than others. For example landscapes, especially those which have been heavily enhanched via photoshop, always do well. Some are indeed very good, but I think too many dominate the first few pages. Same with nudes because, well men are men and are likely to respond even to the most mediocre images.

 

So this is what I would love to see. The ability to access the top rated photos in individual categories. For instance click Street or Abstract and you get the top photos of the past few days in those categories.

 

Also I would love to see some type of "date" search so I can look at more photos from several years ago. Some of my favorite shots I have found through other people's favorite lists. I'm sure there are so many more undiscovered gems out there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know the thread is dead, but I missed this the first time through:

 

"People who are active raters/commenters can also get a lot of ratings and comments by people clicking on their names and looking at their portfolio, but this does not explain most of the ratings that occur in the first 3 days, since someone looking at a portfolio is no more likely to rate a recent photo than an older one."

 

Although we don't officially keep track, I'll bet you a week's pay that a very high number of rates generated by clicking on someone on your interesting person's list, or anywhere else that names are clickable, are given to one of the three most recent uploads displayed on the member page. For active raters and uploaders, that includes images in the three-day rotation.

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