Photo.net essentially a girlie mag site?

<p>Judging by the tag cloud it's a valid question</p>

<div></div>

<p>Girls, glamour, hot, lingerie, nude, model, woman, boudoir, erotic, explicit, artnude, etc. etc.</p>

<p>That and photos of old barns under black clouds, long exposures of coastlines, and old people with wrinkled faces of course. </p>

<p>Your selection of favorite photos shows otherwise.<br>

Photo.net is not responsible for some search engine orientation and purposeful bias.<br>

You have been Photo.net member since 2002, and should have known the quality of the contents, and there is no need to point to that garbage that you find on the Internet.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>This is photo.net's own tag cloud, on this site, on its "Image Tag Cloud" page. This is not the result of any kind of search and there's nothing biased or purposeful here.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/gallery/tag-search/</p>

<p>Sex sells. Sex creates traffic. If it helps photo.net, why not? Have you looked in the nudes gallery? Some damn nice work there. None of it is obscene. </p>

<p>Steve I agree with you (it seems other people not quite understanding what you mean) - in short anyone paying a casual visit to photo.net posts will be presented with the tag cloud and indeed may get a false impression.<br>

It's also self-reinforcing as the more people who do that the more the tags get biased.<br>

I actually don't think the tags serve any useful purpose - the search engine is quite good enough.</p>

<p>I should have been more clear, sorry. I don't think PN is that, and I of course know that the vast majority of work here actually doesn't even fit those tags. I just found it strange that such a disproportionate share on that page - which seems to be put forth as a general gateway to browsing the site via keywords - fit that theme. I was saying how it could give that impression, and I couldn't resist my snark about photos of apocalyptic barns, silky coastlines, and wrinkled elderly people. Fault me for that.</p>

<p>If I correctly understand how the tag cloud is generated. It's just a reflection of the search activity on this site. It's not something that anyone is putting out there to promote these tags. If a lot of people start typing "wrinkled elderly people" into the search engine, that will show up on the cloud.<br>

It's a result of the anonymity that the web provides. Because we don't have to worry about anyone finding out, we go in search of what we are interested in. The tag cloud doesn't really mean anything, it's a tool to help you find content that others have looked for as well.</p>

<p>Gee, I've got nothing against girls. As long as she is 18 or whatever the age of consent is where the picture was taken and she agreed to pose, I see nothing wrong with any picture. I'm not saying I will like it or think it a "good" photograph, but that is just personal taste. Use whatever search words you want to to look for a photograph. I will not try to push my "values" on anyone. I will give my opinions, though. That's another topic.</p>

<p>It is good that the tag cloud is there to give people ideas for words to try. Sometimes it is just difficult to think of the right word to bring up the type of photograph you are looking for.</p>

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<p>This is photo.net's own tag cloud, on this site, on its "Image Tag Cloud" page. This is not the result of any kind of search and there's nothing biased or purposeful here.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It is important to understand what a "tag cloud" is.</p>

<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud</p>

<p>As Siegfried notes, in our case, the tag cloud is simply a graphic representation of what the most common tag searches by site visitors are. We do not pick the tags that appear there other than to remove any of the more vulgar terms that might appear and we do not dictate what the most commonly searched terms are. Judging by the results, I think "human nature" is what drives those results more than anything.</p>

<p>You can fault Photo.net for having and displaying a tag cloud, given what the results are. But what people choose to search for is up to them, not Photo.net.</p>

<p>In Wordpress a Tag Cloud usually reflects content, not searches, and I think most people's exposure to tag clouds actually happens most commonly through Wordpress-driven blogs and sites</p>

<p>This would be a more logical and useful implementation for PN. What's the point of a tag cloud that reflects search terms? It's not only not useful, but look what it got you.</p>

<p>I would agree that it doesn't look very good when "children" is included. </p>

<p>To be honest, it was a decision that was made simply because the other method (creating a tag cloud out of what tags have been given to images) wasn't practical initially because there weren't enough tags to make such a thing. </p>

<p>I suppose at this point we could switch it up and see what tags people are applying to their images. I'll discuss it with Jin.</p>

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<p>"This would be a more logical and useful implementation for PN. What's the point of a tag cloud that reflects search terms? It's not only not useful, but look what it got you."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.</p>

<p>User generated taxonomies - folksonomies - are inherently selfish, or driven by self interest. That's the nature of the beast. It cannot be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever.</p>

<p>Okay, it's not quite the Terminator, but it's equally driven toward a single purpose.</p>

<p>Tag clouds based on user driven searches will invariably cluster around nudity, lolcats and whatever meme is popular this week. Because that's what people search for.</p>

<p>If you change tag clouds to emphasize folksonomies, users will add their own names to tags in order to ensure they get more attention than the photographer next door. <a href="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/16489912-lg.jpg">As of this writing</a>, that is what's happened to photo.net's tag cloud. It's just a variation of the mate ratings game.</p>

<p>As soon as members realize the tag cloud can be biased by self interests, with a priority toward the most current activity, then people who actually care about name recognition rather than their content will stuff their tags with their own names or whatever it takes to ensure the bigger typefaces will point toward their photos.</p>

<p>Folksonomies work best when the users' best interests are served by accurate representation of content rather than by simplistic cravings for name recognition. When the user is confident his or her photographic content will earn the desired recognition, he or she is more likely to use tags constructively. That's why tag clouds work very well on single-author blogs and increasingly less well on sites with multiple writers. Everywhere else, it's up to Google-type AI to recognize shameless self pimping and SEO shenanigans.</p>

<p>Yes, as Lex points out, we've switched the tag cloud to represent what tags people are applying to their images. And again as Lex points out, people can and will use this to self promote themselves. Thus, just as with the original tag cloud, human nature will once again affect the results.</p>

<p>But we'll leave it this way for a while and see what happens.</p>

<p>I'm not really buying that, it works well on Flickr, etc., and you've already seen what happens with your approach, but I don't really care, PN is not my site.</p>

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<p>I'm not really buying that, it works well on Flickr, etc</p>

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<p>That isn't exactly true. Looking at their 24/hr and week examples. You'll usually see some number self promotion tags in there. The all time tags are fairly clean, that is true. But as you can see already, we're seeing some self promotion tags in the Photo.net cloud. I don't know if flickr removes them manually from their clouds or if they just work themseves out. Like I said, I'll keep an eye on the Photo.net cloud and see what happens.</p>

<p>photo nude site</p>

<p>Typing those three words above into google moments ago had the fifth item as:</p>

 

<h3 ><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&ved=0CDwQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fphoto.net%2Fphotodb%2Ffolder%3Ffolder_id%3D213527&ei=NAdnUOzKC6bC2wXlgYGYBw&usg=AFQjCNG3l_9p0Ll4R-tkFzyUSY5oze1yTQ&sig2=Yt88emqcc2z3Lxwx9h3OoQ"><em>NUDE</em> & EROTIC : <em>Photo</em> Images by Igor Amelkovich <em>Photography</em> <strong>...</strong></a></h3>

<cite><strong>photo</strong>.net/<strong>photo</strong>db/folder?folder_id=213527</cite>

<p>Browse through the <em>photo</em> gallery of images entitled <em>NUDE</em> & EROTIC by the <em>photo</em>.net member Igor Amelkovich. <strong>...</strong> A <em>Site</em> for Photographers by Photographers <strong>...</strong></p>

<p>LADY GAGA beat out this site and but this site beat out TMZ</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I try my best to undermine the girlie aspects of photo.net by shooting boys.</p>

<p>It's because Philip Greenspun loved the ladies and this was his website ;-)</p>

<p>Hi Guys…………. An interesting thread (thanks Steve). <br>

So, having read the thread a few times and checking the links, I ask myself “Why do we need this feature at all?”………………. <br>

For visitors/members/subscribers, give them a “Tag Search” option that allows them to insert a word, that will pull up all images attached to that word….. roses = all images tagged with roses. <br>

Your intelligence saves me stating the obvious, other than this procedure will obviate the “self-serving” element that is creeping in here on PN. <br>

I mean, why do we need to “advertise” the most-searched-tag? The world knows it will always revolve around the female form or parts thereof. <br>

During my time on the net, in numerous photo sites the most misunderstood component of the various site members is that of “tagging”. Here on PN we have 132 tags for f2.8 (go figure). By and large, the majority have no clue……… but that’s another discussion, perhaps. <br>

Is the tag Cloud harming PN?..... if so, get rid of it. <br>

Just my penny’s worth<br>

Regards</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>For visitors/members/subscribers, give them a “Tag Search” option that allows them to insert a word, that will pull up all images attached to that word….. roses = all images tagged with roses.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Grayham,</p>

<p>Please look more closely at the contents of the page under discussion. In fact, the URL itself may yield a clue.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/gallery/tag-search/</p>

<p>Josh, the simple fact is that if people come here and search for things that don't even exist on the site, that's what your tag cloud will be. It doesn't serve any purpose. It makes far more sense to have a tag page (not a tag cloud, that is a silly implementation of it anyway, have a multi-column page with hundreds of tags if you're going to do it all) that actually directs people to the content that exists on the site. Search-driven tag clouds on a site like this are not useful and only harm the site's integrity. You are a content provider, just like a blog. Blogs do not have tags based on search, they're based on content. Lose the search, lose the cloud format. Base it on content, have a big multi-column format with hundreds of entries. That is expert advice.</p>