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New "Top Photos" Feature


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Brian

 

Use of the most interesting feature: This could be very helpful, if I could see other photogs list, not just the totals. Very often I look at certain people's (those whose shooting style I like) community member page, to see what photos they commented on. If I, for example knew what's on the watch list of Ian MacEachern, this would help me find photgraphers I'm interested in. I think every user should be able to decide, if he wants his list to be public or not.

 

It would also be very, very nice if you could expand the mark as interesting feature to individual pictures and make them publicly visible, creating a way to assemble a list like our homemade private gallery selection pages to let others know what you like. This would serve the same purpose, finding good pictures via photographers you value.

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"We hope we can avoid some of the abuse this time (mostly by being more vigilant and using some automated tools to detect abuse faster.)"

<p>

Great. Glad to read that you are now more prepared to face abuse that might occur based on the new features...

<p>

Hoping we can have the better without the worst...:-)

<p>

Regards.

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Excellent and exciting new features!<P>

 

<i>Here are the top twenty names at present, with how many people find them "interesting"</i><p>

 

I'm curious... How was this defined? I mean, who voted this people? It's not I disagree with that rank, it's quite interesting, (many "interesting" people was left out, but I think that was just an example). How would this voting system be implemented? Anyway, that would be <b>really</b> fine. <p>

 

There's an intrinsecal risk of fostering the abuses we saw at the times of the "Top ranked photographers" list though, but it seems you're working on that too.

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Nestor, the "Interesting People" tally isn't achieved by vote, per se. It's simply the sum of all photo.netters who have, independently of one another, clicked on the "Mark this person as interesting" option that allows us to more easily revisit those pages. Those names appear on the "My Workspace" page. Since I have a poor memory for names it helps me remember whose pages I'd like to revisit periodically. Next to the names are dates when their pages were last updated.
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I wonder how many realize that most of the photographers who

are marked by the greatest number of members as 'interesting'

shoot nudes . . . primarily or exclusively. What an eye opener that

was . . in more ways than one.

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This is a vast improvement on the previous 'top rated' page, and

finally allows users to take advantage of the fact that photo.net is

backed by a database and not just a diskfull of flat files. I think it

is great that Brian making or driving a genuine attempt to

respond to users' requests.

 

That said, I don't find most of the photos coughed up by the 'top

rated' pages terribly interesting. This doesn't surprise me - I

know already that my taste is not that of the photo.net majority -

and I am not interested in trying to force my preferences on

anyone else. But I wish there were way for the minority interests

to use photo.net to find each other, to learn from and encourage

each other, and to avoid being buried beneath a self-reinforcing

majoritist definition of what is 'good'.

 

This isn't a whine, more a plea. If some programming time and

server capacity could be set aside for simple thumbnail-based

browsing of the entire, unfiltered image database, photographs

that are never going to win the beauty contest might have a

chance of speaking to their intended audience. As it is, they get

throttled and left for dead in the photo.net backwaters within a

few hours of being posted.

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<b>Carl,</b><p>

 

<i> I wonder how many realize that most of the photographers who are marked by the greatest number of members as 'interesting' shoot nudes . . . primarily or exclusively. What an eye opener that was . . in more ways than one.</i><p>

 

If you take a care look to each of those listed above, 5 of the 20 (that makes <b>only</b> 25%) photographers listed there shoot nudes, and not exclusively. Everyone of them, does it in a very creative way, with new and different eyes for an overdone theme. They really deserve to be there.<p>

 

One other interesting feature, lost from the times of the Top-rated photographers list: the Top-rated Photos page of a given photographer. That allowed to the viewer a quick approach to the most rated (if that could mean something...) shots of that photographer. This page is still accesible, but in a very difficult (almost impossible) way. Would it be possible to have it back?

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Nestor, one of the enhancements I have planned to add (yes, there is already a "wish list" for this new feature) is in the "Photographer" rankings, when you click the photographer's name, you get a page of the images supporting that photographer's rank. So in a "Last Month" view you would see the images of the photographer in the last month that qualified him or her for the rank. And so forth.
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These changes are nice and useful, but they won't make me an active participant in the Gallery as I used to be. Retrieving some good pictures is enjoyable, but what I'm really looking for is advice and comments on my own stuff. And the system doesn't deliver that anymore.

 

The fact is that unless you're one of the few truely great photographers of this site or unless you have quite a bunch of friends voting for you, comments and ratings are hard to come by. I uploaded perhaps 40-50 pictures here since late February. Barely one in four were selected for the photocritique page. Of those, perhaps half didn't get 11 ratings - and sometimes not even a single comment.

 

The pictures that weren't chosen for the photocritique rotation suffered a worse fate. Most of them got 1-2 ratings, sometimes a comment or two. Some didn't get a single rating nor a single comment. And they were, most of the time, some decent pictures. I was about 90th or 100th of the top photographers list when it was removed, so I just cannot imagine how bad it is for the vast majority of users.

 

The point is, Brian, that I've pretty much lost faith in a system that delivers so little. As a result, I almost completely stopped rating and commenting, even though I was one of the most active at that some time ago. I also upload less and less, and usually not because I hope to get some useful advice, but because the portfolio is handy when I want to show my pictures to friends.

 

And the improved feature won't change much to this. Actually, it will probably make life a bit more miserable for me, as raters/commenters will spend more time admiring the work of a handful of very good guys (and a few not so good guys with a lot of complacent friends) and less browsing my work.

 

I'll pick up some new photos at the lab tomorrow. Will the best of them find their way to PN? Not sure yet. The previous batch didn't.

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Imo a little weakness in this new system... I should have read more carefully the above:

<p>

" The minimum ratings are as follows for all methods except the Photoraphers Average and Sum methods:

Last Two Days, Week: 5

All other periods: 20 "

<p>

I went to check the last 2 days' top-rated pictures, and I saw only 9 of them... This minimum of 5 ratings required to enter the last 2 days page, may I ask what purpose it serves...?

<p>

It seems to me that it is actually - unless I missed something - a sad way to condamn many pictures... I mean, what's the guarantee that even a good shot gets 6 views within 2 days if it is not selected for the rotation ? That seems to mean that those who have 6 faithful friends would be able to make it, and not many others...

<p>

I used to find 50 or 100 shots on that particular page - which happens to be the start for everything else by the way -, so why was it changed, please ?

<p>

Regards.

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Philippe, since February other people have rated your photos 895 times and written 257 comments on them. During the same period, you rated other people's photos 359 times and have written 350 comments.

 

I would guess that your policy is essentially to rate only photos that you comment upon. This is resulting in your receiving approximately 2 comments for every 3 that you write. But your activity is generating more ratings for your photos than you give -- by a factor of more than two. You don't value the ratings, apparently, seeing them as a tool for getting comments, but it seems to me that your contributions to others are more or less balanced with their contributions to you, and depending on how you value a rating versus a comment, one could argue that in the balance of giving and receiving you were ahead in this period. As for the fact that the ratings and comments are concentrated on a few photos, that seems normal to me.

 

One of the problems with the dishonest mutual rating and comment that we experience here is that it tends to make honest and sincere mutual rating and critique seem sleazy. On the contrary, mutual rating and critique is what the photocritique section is all about. Some people are so brilliant or well-established on photo.net that they can get ratings and comments on their photos just by uploading them. But most people are not in this group. Like most things in life, in the photocritique section, except for the very talented or lucky, you get out what you put in. This applies equally to the dishonest people, by the way. In return for a lot of effort to give dishonest, corrupt ratings, and build their little cliques, they get a lot of dishonest, corrupt ratings in return, not to mention the disdain of the honest people.

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Marc, 5 ratings was the default threshold before, and 30 was in theory the maximum number of thumbnails that you could see, even if you lowered the threshold. Some people discovered that there was a bug, and that you could enter up to a 100.

 

In implementing the new version, I carried across the minimum of 5 ratings, and made the maximum in that view 300, I thought.

 

The reason there is a minimum number of ratings is that I didn't want one or two early, eccentric, high ratings to give a photo undeserved prominence. But perhaps these thresholds need to be tuned.

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Is there a bug, or am I missing something? Right now 7:20AM Eastern,

there are only 12 images on the two-day list. The lowest is 7.1 so I

guess 7 is the cut-off. I have an image with a 6 ratings, 7.5

average, all ratings dated 8/4. It has never appeared.

 

I have an 8.2 image with ten ratings which is just past the one week

range. I can't imagine how it will get the ten more ratings required

to reach the 20 minimum for the month list. The last thing I want to

do is reach out to a frind and say, "hey, man, I know you've preferred

some of my other stuff, but I'm a rating short."

 

 

There must be a better way.

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Carl, there could be a bug. More likely, it is simply that the two day list hasn't been recomputed yet. It isn't updated in real time for performance reasons. I've already received the feedback that 20 ratings is too many for the one month list. I'm going to lower it, probably to 10. Another bug I'm fixing is that the "Views" and "Comments" rankings have a minimum number of ratings, which isn't logical.
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Carl, I looked into it a bit further. If the one you think should be in the two-days view is "Rails and Posts", that was submitted on 8/2 at 1:00 AM. The periods are based on the date the photo was submitted not on when the ratings were made. So that photo is now out of the 2-day (i.e. 48 hour) window.

 

Since 5 ratings for the 2-day view is perhaps too many, I've lowered it to 2 ratings. Of course this means that a couple of eccentric high ratings right at the beginning is going to strong bias the order of photos in the 2 day view.

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" 5 ratings was the default threshold before, and 30 was in theory the maximum number of thumbnails that you could see, even if you lowered the threshold. Some people discovered that there was a bug, and that you could enter up to a 100. " Thanks, Brian. I didn't know that.

 

" Since 5 ratings for the 2-day view is perhaps too many, I've lowered it to 2 ratings. Of course this means that a couple of eccentric high ratings right at the beginning is going to strong bias the order of photos in the 2 day view. " Great fix ! Thanks. That's where I'll now go fishing for good images that deserve more exposure...:-)

 

Last question: Could the whole thing ever be readjusted in real time or would that involve too much resources ?

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" One of the problems with the dishonest mutual rating and comment that we experience here is that it tends to make honest and sincere mutual rating and critique seem sleazy."

<p>

AGREED !!

<p>

"Like most things in life, in the photocritique section, except for the very talented or lucky, you get out what you put in.

This applies equally to the dishonest people, by the way. In return for a lot of effort to give dishonest, corrupt ratings, and build their little cliques, they get a lot of dishonest, corrupt ratings in return, not to mention the disdain of the honest people."

<p>

TRUE. BUT... what matters more to me than what THEY get is what others DON'T GET because of these corrupt raters. Somebody rated one of my pictures today, and I tried to understand the exact meaning of this rating. I understood by reading this person's latest comments: he's corrupted to death.

<p>

Here are the consequences I see of these corrupted ratings:

<p>

1) I wasted my time to find out whether this rating meant something or not. Found out it didn't mean at all what the comment seemed to mean. If this happens to 10 ratings a day, I'll have wasted 10 times half an hour research, and that seems to be pretty discouraging. Time is better spent watching and critiquing pictures.

<p>

2) While cheaters cheat, they surely get their pictures seen. And if they do, OTHERS DON'T. Each picture in pushes a picture out; and many more pictures further in the pages. What's great with your system is that we can now go to see further than before and still see other pictures.

<p>

3) One problem remains, which is that cheaters have discouraged raters by their retaliations, and that many members right now don't dare to speak their mind - basically real critiquing is dying. I was stunned today to read the comments on Anna Pagnacco's "Headache" picture, where someone openly declared he was a bogus ID, and that he was using a bogus for his critique in order to avoid retaliation !!! I would never do anything like that, but honestly, can we really blame the guy. I mean, if retaliation is ok and kills honest critiquing, that is a motive for victims to create fake IDs. I faced a few retaliations already and the choice now is: either to stop critiquing "retaliators" OR continue speaking out my mind, and face the consequences, which will most likely be that my uploads won't be found in the main pages anymore due to retaliations - less exposure = less critiques.

<p>

Can we honestly say that all this is ok, or can we assume that it's time to really come down on all these people who corrupt the whole system ? I'm very sad to read what Philippe wrote, here. And I do believe that the 3 points I stated here are the cause of the general decrease in participation. Can we please have a serious (possibly archived for a month or so) thread about this corruption issue. I bet you, if you launch a survey asking WHO the corrupt people are, you would get 100s of people naming the same few people, and possibly Photo.net already knows who they are and what they do. So, what's planned on that side is what I'd like to know. Philippe used to be a very good critique and to write very good comments - USEFUL comments. I wish more people like him would be around, and less cheating.

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FWIW, I applaud the continuing efforts to improve the photo.net system. If my participation doesn't seem to reflect this it's only because my slow modem connection determines the quantity of photos I view and comment upon (I seldom rate).

 

So, as always, thanks a bunch, Brian, elves, volunteers.

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