Deletion of old photos

Photo.net member not logged in for over 6 months means we cut out all Unrated and Uncommented photos.

Over 12 months and all Images not linked to are gone, except those with ratings above whatever is average, or more than the average number of comments.

 

All photos with views that only come from the photo.net member themselves are deleted if older than 6 months. . . IE: 1000 Views of my photos from me is the same as 0 view. But, 1000 views from others will keep the image alive.

 

All photos with ratings of 2/2 and under with no comments and no links (if older than 6 months.)

 

Of course the exceptions to be extended to Patrons and Heros would exempt their images from such a purge.

We all realise who the better photographers are, but some good ones are escaping comment and ratings. I recently went through someone's 900+ images, and found 8 of good quality, and 1 that was excellent. Yes, cut some of these out. But, couldn't a group of knowledgeable photographers form a "committee" and do this by consensus? Maybe a group of 10-20 could trawl through this site and agree (75% or more for consensus) which should be deleted. Maybe the elite photographers (made up of all strands, ie, both John Orr & Anna Pagnacco) could also select other knowledgeable photographers to assist. If this does idea is taken up, my suggestions for such a group of photographers are:

 

Thomas Breazeale,

Marielou Dhumez,

Michael Ezra,

Buck Forester,

Atle Gjerlow,

Marc Gouguenheim,

Christian Holst,

Tommy Huynh,

Rhett Jackson,

Pavel Janouskovec,

Paolo Monti,

John Orr,

Anna Pagnacco,

Emil Schmidt,

Nikolay Smolyak,

Mark Tomlinson,

Loreleial Velvety,

 

These I believe are photographers who show great knowledge and execution of their particular photographic forms. I also make myself available, if needed. I am an LRPS [Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society], which may illustrate a certain level of photographic competence.

Okay, just did my part and deleted some happy crappy snappies out of my portfolio. Yes, I'm as guilty as any for putting a few snaps in there for friends to view, but housecleaning has just been performed.

(If you think I'm bad at pitching out the bad ones here, you should see my slide collection!)

 

As for suggestions, seems like anything suggested in here is hashed, rehashed, and burnt to a crisp. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time, and you can't make photo.nettians agree on anything. But I will agree with limiting the number and size of photos, that would probably work for a start.

 

-Rose-Marie

Thanks for the vote of confidence Ashley. I'm not sure about giving any person or group of people the authority to decide which photos stay and which go though. Aside from the logistical problems due to the sheer volume of photos, it would upset way too many people because it's so subjective. People are sure to be offended if they have photos deleted. I like the idea of storage limits though. There are clearly some people that abuse Photo.net using it as some kind of hard drive on the web to house (hundreds of) their photos. I think there should be a limit set and notices sent out to those over it to bring their usage by a deadline. If people don't delete photos to bring their HD usage within limits by the deadline, the images should be removed automatically starting with the lowest or non scored images. Just my opinion...

Thanks for the vote of confidence Ashley. I'm not sure about giving any person or group of people the authority to decide which photos stay and which go though. Aside from the logistical problems due to the sheer volume of photos, it would upset way too many people because it's so subjective. People are sure to be offended if they have photos deleted. I like the idea of storage limits though. There are clearly some people that abuse Photo.net using it as some kind of hard drive on the web to house (hundreds of) their photos. I think there should be a limit set and notices sent out to those over it to bring their usage by a deadline. If people don't delete photos to bring their HD usage within limits by the deadline, the images should be removed automatically starting with the lowest or non scored images. Just my opinion...

<p>

Basically, set a limit of 40 or 50 per person, and let them clean up their room. Simple and easy. Regards.

I agree with the concerns that removing photos based on ratings, can be easily skewed. My vote is for the idea of a finite amount of space allotted per account.

 

I have also just become a 1yr subscriber after reading this thread and following the link listed in an earlier comment. I would have joined earlier but never found a link or information about membership on the main page. I would hate to see a pop up window promoting membership, but it would be nice to have a direct link to becoming a patron on one of the drop down menus.

 

I feel that the information I have gained from this site is invaluable and hope to see a positive solution to keeping it going strong.

Ok. No storm-trooping was intended. But I did look for a pretty disparate bunch of knowledgeable snappers, that photo.net members could trust. I realised it was impractcal, but also wanted the more senior photgraphers (not age-wise!) to get involved with this issue.

Glad to see some of you here. Ultimately, porfolios will be reduced. Then, overall quality will go up? I think very highly of this site. I find stunning landscapes, alternative processes, classy (and sadly classless) nudes, and even forums which Don McCullin (honest!) takes part in. But as this site grows more popular, eventually more determined approaches will be necessary to reduce the picture count.

Since you have noted there has been a mild altruistic response to this post

why don't you simply publicize your needs to delete x photos over the next

month in order to keep photo.net optimal? This could be an annual event.

Hopefully less obnoxious than public TV fund raising but similar in concept.

You could show a tally of the progress perhaps give a few "patronships" or

temporary "hero" icons to random or particularly good deleters.

One simple answer would be the allocation of sever space not image number or size but overall file size.

I would be interested to know the average file space per user and from that maybe an average sensible limit could be set. I agree that more space should be offered to iconies as they are at least not false emails, hotmails yahoos etc.

Any any pics with links or comments could be shrunk and kept for reference.

I made a cock up recently and included the colour profile which sent the file size through the roof, I wonder how many others have bad compression figures.

The problem is the incoming rate!! Restrict this and you will have most of your problems solved - AND - you will be able to plan your capacity expansion better! 3 photo per user per day is plenty!

 

Removing shots is EASY - just take a normal distribution of # of views of shots that are aged 6 months. REMOVE the 10-15% that are the LEAST *viewed*. If somebody gets sore because their shot was removed they can always repost it.

Maybe removing the bottom 10-15% is very extreme now that I think about it. You should be able to get by very well removing the least viewed 3% to 5% or about the second standard deviation for viewes if you can control the incoming rate.

 

Your thoughts?

Images made with a digital P&S are not allowed. Really, do we need to see 65 photos of your damn cat in one day?

Well, there have been plenty of answers to this question, and what I have to say isn't exactly new or different from many of those, but let me say it anyways in order to 'cast my vote' for some of the ideas being tossed up.

 

I've been using photo.net for several years now, and I think this service is fantastic. Why? Because 1) it's free, 2) both very talented professionals and photographers whose skills are still developing (ahem) get a chance at equal exposure.

 

Therefore any decision to delete photos that received low ratings to me challenges the merits of this site. You can store your photos here if we like them? That isn't right.

 

As well, any decision that severely restricts non paying users from uploading photos once again challenges that makes this site great. I'm sure there are a lot of students and others who really don't have the $35 CDN i just put down to support the site, but whose contributions either through their art or comments make them valuable here.

 

I propose that first of all, we delete accounts or photos that haven't been used in a while. Photos that aren't receiving any viewings won't be missed. Whether they are good or bad isn't the issue, but that fact that people aren't looking at them says they really don't need to be here and aren't contrubiting anything to this community. I'm curious how many photos or how much space this would create. Can anyone who works at this site do a quick estimate of this? How much space would be created if dead users and photos were deleted.

 

Second. Obviously it's time for a cap to come in place. 5mb? 10mb? Somewhere around there. Nobody here is good enough to fill that up. And if you do, you can always manage your portfolio to rid yourself of older photos. Some people have 80 photos uploaded. That's great, but of those, how many are still getting viewed after 6 months. I'm sure a scheme to delete photos that aren't getting viewed, combined with a quota would solve these problems.

<i>"That means that photos are not being accessed from within photo.net (via the folders, etc) but are being embedded into emails or pages on other sites, like auction sites and other photo sites."</i>

<br><br>

It should be noted, this is how I found out about photo.net.

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<i>"Images made with a digital P&S are not allowed"</i>

<br><br>

Are you joking or conceited?

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Photos should be deleted if:

<br><br>

*Person has not logged in, in X time.<br>

*Photo has less then X views.<br>

*Person has not paid nor is not a hero.

<br><br>

If you think this is too heavy handed you could add in:

<br><br>

*Person has more then X photos.

<br><br>

If the person wants their photo back, they can upload it again! I don't see what the big deal is.

<br><br>

-jason m

<br><br>

I disagree -- there are a lot of good pictures from inactive users. These should not just be thrown away. Let them stand I say.

I agree that there are many deserving pictures on the site that never get any attention, but there are many crummy pictures on the site as well. In order to keep this site running, we have to make some hard choices. One of those choices is that of limiting the uploads to the site and thinning out those pictures that are already here. If a member does not visit the site, why should they care what happens to their photos? If photos are not looked at, are they really there anyway?

 

When Philip started and ran this site, he got some help from some organizations and he also contributed very large amounts of money to keep the site up. While he paid for it, he ran it - simple idea. Now, it seems to me that those of us who pay for it (or at least contribute to its operation) ought to be the only ones who have a real vote in its operation. Everyone has an opinion, but most of the people who use this site use it for free; they do not value it enough to put any money into its expenses! I know that money is a concern for all of us, and not everyone can afford the tiny sum that photo.net suggests we pay to help the site, but most of us pay much more than that to be on the net at all.

 

So there's my suggestion: no vote for non-paying members, and, to fan the flames still further, a more influential vote for those of us who also work to keep the site running!

So do you mean if, for example, Tony Dummet, and Ian McEchern, and Jonathan Charles get bored of PhotoNet and don't visit for 6 months all their stuff will get nuked? What about other people that haven't been here for a while like Time Inkinien who has stuff that I like and have learned from but maybe is not as well known? I agree that there is a lot of crap that should go, but please please please keep the good contributions. These pictures don't go out of date and removing them would be a loss to the site.

Jeremy,

 

I agree with John Oliver. An excellent portofolio shouldn't be deleted only because it is not visited by his/her owner. Many people go out travelling for more than half a year, and they usually come back with a HUGE amount of the best shots. Do you know what would happen if they find that 50% (or whatever) amount of their shots (good or bad ones) were deleted? Surely you won't have that photographer back again on the site...

 

On the other hand, I don't know too much about the history of the site (I've been here for a year by now), but I'm sure that members like me, that don't patronize, support the site in a very constructive way, giving feedback to others, rating, discussing, etc. I'm sure about how easily all that activity would be shrinked abruptly if you give valid votes to the "payers" and leave us out, the non-payers members. I'm sure that the comercial sponsors wouldn't see that with good eyes...

 

Let us administer our own space, independently from size or quantity of images, but with a limited amount of storage space. Let patrons or heroes have more space, that's fair. Give it a try, see what happens, if it works, nobody will be damaged.

 

Last but not least, why not to implement some other services for patrons and heroes that the non-payers members shouldn't have? For example: out of my last 20 (or so) uploaded shots, only a few of them had interesting feedback, in quality and quantity, and only one went to a "full" rotation. Maybe if somebody could warrant me a minimal feedback, and if that feedback comes from a good photographer (meaning by "good" some well acknowledged one), I would pay. But not if things keep on going like this.

It really is quite simple - if the site is running out of space (Mb), then limit the amount of space that any individual can use (by Mb). Have a basic amount of free space, give more space as a reward to people who are very active (heroes? long time active members?) and, basically, sell space (financial contributors get more). That way users get to decide how to use the space they are allocated (eg ten excellent 500k images, 100 crap 50k images, 50 good 100k images; who, other than the poster, has the right to decide?) If the user needs more space, buy some, or delete some images, or repost older images downsized. Let people manage their own portfolios within preset limits, site management can get on with managing the site.

Prompted by some painstaking work by Jeremy Stein and the discussion in this thread, I studied the distribution of the number of photos that people have uploaded to photo.net.

 

<p>Here is a table that shows the number of portfolios in various size

categories:

<br><table border=1>

<tr><th>Portfolio Size (photos)</th><th>Number</th></tr>

<tr><td align=center>1 to 10</td><td align=right>14851</td></tr>

<tr><td align=center>11 to 20</td><td align=right>3222</td></tr>

<tr><td align=center>21 to 50</td><td align=right>3037</td></tr>

<tr><td align=center>51 to 100</td><td align=right>1118</td></tr>

<tr><td align=center>101 to 200</td><td align=right>417</td></tr>

<tr><td align=center>201 to 500</td><td align=right>129</td></tr>

<tr><td align=center>501 to 1000</td><td align=right>17</td></tr>

<tr><td align=center>1000 to 1500</td><td align=right>3</td></tr>

</table>

 

<p>I must say I was surprised by how many people have huge portfolios. The 570 portfolios with over 200 photos account for over 25% of the photos on photo.net. Some of the people with these big portfolios are prominent photographers on the site, but not very many of them. (At least I didn't recognize a lot of the names.) And I was dismayed at how few of the people with very large portfolios have chosen to become photo.net subscribers.

 

<p>If anybody with a portfolio of over, say, 200 photos is reading this, I would very much like to understand why you have uploaded such a large portfolio.

Nestor, I don't agree with Jeremy's idea that only patrons should have "votes". (Actually, we don't make decisions by counting votes anyway.)

 

People contribute to the site in many ways, other than financially, and the fact is that while many "heroes" are also patrons, many of them are not. We try to recognize and value all forms of contribution to the site.

 

But the fact is that from a financial point of view, we need more patrons. Currently, patrons contribute about 15% of the site's budget. This 15% is very important: one way to look at is that in the last year all of our new computer hardware was paid for by the patrons. Still, this 15% comes from less than a thousand people; and we'd like to double that number over the next year.

 

On the other hand, the other 85% of our budget comes from our sponsors -- and this revenue comes mostly from people coming to this site to learn about photography then clicking through to the Adorama, B&H, Ritz, etc, web sites, and buying stuff. So to keep the site running we need to strike a balance between getting people to subscribe, while also retaining the loyalty of the people who don't subscribe -- that is, not alienating those who contribute in many other ways to the site by seeming to be running the site for the benefit of the patrons only.

 

Striking this balance is not easy: even if we manage to convince 2000 people to become patrons, were we to do this in a manner that drove away everybody else, then the site would be dead. It isn't like a public TV station -- they get people to pay up by making them feel like freeloaders if they don't. But on a site like this, the non-patrons aren't freeloaders; their continued participation is critical, and making them feel like freeloaders is foolish.

 

A bit off-topic, but perhaps you better understand our quandary about how to finance this site.

Interesting statistics, indeed... It is now even clearer to me that the solution is indeed to give each photographer 5 to 8 Mb of space to play with, and more only to those who pay.

<p>

Another interesting thing I read here, and which I proposed already on a few occasions by the way, is this:

<p>

"Maybe if somebody could warrant me a minimal feedback, and if that feedback comes from a good photographer (meaning by "good" some well acknowledged one), I would pay. But not if..."

<p>

There has been a demand of that sort in the air for quite some time now, and for info, I'm getting on regular basis requests by photo.net members to have a look at their work. Normally, I'll just do that. Occasionally, people also ask how to fix this or that problem in PS, and sometimes, I'd try to fix the problem for them - if I can.

<p>

So, in the end, there IS a demand for serious critiquing of complete portfolios... why wouldn't photo.net take this opportunity to make a bit of cash to satisfy this demand ?

<p>

Last but not least, a word about the 25 USD... How interesting to read, the other day, what Philippe Gauthier had to say about his reason to stop participating in this community ! And how interesting to read today what Nestor added to the sentence above... "But not if things keep on going like this."

<p>

I've heard many times about people who were about to leave, even lately. Some of them have written to me, quite desperately asking for critiques and advice they couldn't seem to get. I went to see their work and we talked about it, and they decided to stay... Simple and clear: many people want honest feedback, and don't get it if their shots are weak, or even if their shots are quite good ! That's imo the next thing to make sure about: that everyone gets what he's looking for, or at least part of it.

<p>

I still haven't paid, and I truly want to pay. 2 things are right now stopping me from doing so... 1 of them is a ridiculous practical detail... I don't hold a credit card, because I hate to spend more than I have, and I hate to count... So, the question is: can I use a friend's credit card to pay or not, and if I can, how to go about it ?

<p>

The second reason I had so far for not paying was that I could always pay later IF things would improve... Nestor and Philippe and so many others are just saying the same, basically.

<p>

You know that I left photo.net shortly before the old list of top-photographers was brought down. You might know that I left because of a few hot discussions at that time, but I also left because the whole rating thing was becoming a real nonsense, with all sorts of retaliations and even insulting posts left on my pages by people on an almost daily basis. Shortly after I withdrew most of my images, I heard that the person who persecuted me had been nailed, and all his IDs deleted. But given what Photo.net was at that time, I didn't feel I wanted to be part of it anymore.

<p>

I'm back today because I had hopes that things would change for the better. And to be plain honest, Brian, you are the key element to this hope. We often agreed as for what should be done or not in the past, and that's why I thought I'd give it another chance. And frankly, I'm not disappointed at all, and I feel that all the latest amendments to the system were just plain good. I also appreciate that Jeremy Stein and forum moderators are really doing a great work at trying to keep the hot pages of the site as clean as possible.

<p>

All this is positive, and all this is going somewhere - I'm pretty sure of that. So, I'm just waiting a little more to take the final step. My main concern now would be to see more and better and more honest critiquing on this site, and to see all the last bogus accounts and corrupt or destructive people under control - or out. Once this is done, I believe this community will grow to a fantastic extent... No doubt, at that stage, the 25 USD payments will come in every day, and mine as well...

<p>

Meanwhile, I'm doing what I can do for those who want to learn and who are sincere and dedicated to the exchange ideas on this site. If things get worse - which I doubt -, I would leave again, and for good. If they get better - which I trust will be the case -, I will be prepared to pay, but even to help if my help can be used one way or another.

<p>

Thanks again for all the great moves you've made so far. Saving disk space is one of them. We all shouldn't be too concerned by loosing this or that. We certainly won't loose Ian MacEachern or Tony Dummett, and if you ask me, we will loose nothing else either. We will just have to manage our space, just like photographers have to manage their portfolios. In a way, I find it even highly educative, as it forces people to be better editors of their own work... Regards.

Some people have proposed not allowing people to link directly to a photo. There are a couple of problems with that. Some photo.net discussions contain links to these photos. If I have a photo.net photo on my hard disk and I want to look up information on it, I can use the number in the file name to look up the photo. If the numbers changed, I would have a bunch of photos on my hard disk that don't link to anything.

 

I can rate my own photos, but I might make mistakes. It might be useful for someone else to go through my portfolio and make suggestions about what to delete. Most of my pictures are on my web site, so you could keep thumbnails and provide links to pictures stored elsewhere.

 

Some people use titles that facilitate search engine use and some people don't. Should that be a criteria for deleting old photos?

Michael, I don't think the idea is to prevent all links to photos; only links from outside sites, such as auction sites. So a link from an ebay page to a photo.net photo might be blocked; but a link from a photo.net forum thread page would obviously be OK.

 

Actually, there are two ways one might link to a photo on photo.net. One can use a URL such as www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=XXXXXX.

This gives you the entire photo page, with the Technical details, copyright, photo.net header at the top, photo.net footer at the bottom, etc. I think this is always OK, probably even on auction sites. Following a link like this was how I first learned about photo.net more than a year ago.

 

The other way is a URL like www.photo.net/photodb/image_display?... This gives you just the image. No photo.net context at all. It is this form of URL that is the third highest "entry-URL" to photo.net, and about which I have reservations, since it means that the people are using our servers just to serve images, and if the photo submitter isn't a patron and doesn't ever clickthrough to our affiliates' sites, photo.net doesn't benefit from this, even though it uses our bandwidth and resources. (Bandwidth, by the way, is our biggest expense.)

Brian,<p>

 

<i>I must say I was surprised by how many people have huge portfolios. The 570 portfolios with over 200 photos account for over 25% of the photos on photo.net. </i><p>

 

I don't get these numbers... According to the table you've pasted in that post, you got only 150 portfolios with more than 200 photos. On the other hand, does a huge portfolio means a huge amount of storage space? I think that would be a fair number, after all that's what we're talking about: storage space.<p>

 

Anyway, I've made my own little search. Just went to the GREAT new features for the top-rated photos. For an ALL period in the "Photographer's sum" (I thought this category would show the huger portfolios), I've found that ca. 70% of the 40 first photographers (that is, 28) have portfolios bigger than 150 photos on them, many of them with more than 700 or 900. Shouldn't we be inviting them to delete some of them?<p>

 

<i>If anybody with a portfolio of over, say, 200 photos is reading this, I would very much like to understand why you have uploaded such a large portfolio.</i><p>

 

ok, touchè!! That's me, with a portfolio of... 245 photos. I think is time to delete many of them, after all is a good self-critique exercise. I'll answer your question: as I keep on shooting, every week I have new shots to post that need to be showed and criticized. Many of them are there since some monthes ago, with very few feedback, waiting for it -obviously cause they aren't the best/original/attractive ones. Most of them don't go to the "selected rotation", so they stay there, till somebody makes me the enormous favor to come to my folders and critique ANY of them. As time goes by they get that feedback, so for me at least, it works. <p>

 

If that doesn't fit to the ever increasing community, I should delete soon many of them (100?), but that means that all of those shots would remain with any or really few feedback. If we add to that the strong limitations of the present status of the rating system, even those lately rated shots don't have a real feedback, the've become just numbers. Seriouly, I'm one of those that prefer a O.4/A.8 rate w/out any more explanation, than a (now typical) O.8/A.8 for every uploaded shot that goes to the rotation. That doesn't mean too much for me, isn't real feedback. So, this is going down and down.<p>

 

Again, and now more than my previous post: warrant me that I'll get sincere FEEDBACK, and I would be ready to pay, no matter if I'm limited on storage space.