How about a "recent submissions" or a "grab bag" page?

This morning I submitted a tongue-in-cheek visual critique of the

rating system, specifically the TRP by number of ratings. I entitled

it "TRP Executive Summary," and ﾗ no surprise to anyone here ﾗ it

consists of a montage of all the "naughty bits" I encountered in the

first few pages of today's TRP (ratings) page. Within a half hour of

posting, it garnered three comments, all positive, but only one

rating. (It's now gotten a (very) few more ratings, plus another

comment, also positive.) I conclude that the image speaks to people,

particularly those who have spent some time on Photo.net, but it

somewhat defies ratings. Heck, I don't know how I would go about

rating it. Original? I suppose. Aesthetic? Umm, no. But worth looking

at? I think so.

 

So here's the problem: I doubt the thing is going to garner many

ratings, and it's certainly not going to get high ratings. That means

it will rapidly drop off the radar screen. And yet I think it speaks

directly to a lot of the heartburn over the ratings system that people

express ad infinitum in this forum. I think there's a real audience

out there for such images. In fact, I think there's a real audience

out there for lots of the images that get submitted to Photo.net, but

which never make it through the filter of the bots and whoever happens

to be on line when the image first comes up for rating. I know that

when I get the chance to look at images recently submitted for

critique, I often find wonderful images that few other people, judging

by the ratings, and the number of ratings, find similarly wonderful.

At the same time, when I look at the various TRP pages, I see a lot of

what to me is just monotony: insects, breasts, pudenda, sunsets,

birds. I know there are lots more interesting images ﾗ at least to my

taste ﾗ being submitted all the time. And yet, Photo.net does not

offer me an easy way to see for myself pictures that haven't been

filtered for me by the ratings system. I can't spend all day online

plowing through the "rate recent" lists.

 

My proposal: why couldn't there be a page, like the various TRP pages,

that just displayed the most recent submissions, in the order

submitted, no filtering, no rating; the exquisite mixed in with the

awful? Or how about a "grab bag" page that randomly selected images

from the past day or so? I think either one would make the site more

fun, would allow submitters a better chance to have their photos seen

by a variety of people, would allow viewers a better chance to

discover images and photographers that might be more to their personal

tastes, and would therefore attract eyeballs and boost ad revenue. It

would also provide a place where bots and cranks couldn't play, and

might just lower the incentive for them to play in the first place

(though I wouldn't hold my breath).

 

How about it, guys?<div></div>

I hear ya bro - but it's just tooooooo faaarrrrrrrrr ooooooooouuut there dude.

 

Besides - who said your experience here is supposed to be FuN!?

 

Read more and say less and you'll even tually under stand what you see

is what you get.

What you're asking for already exists:

 

gallery > critique requests

You have to actually click on "gallery" first. It's not one of the pull down menu options. (I wonder why?)

 

You can also then click on "new" on any one of the categories to see a page full of thumb nails of the most recent uploads.

Actually, I was aware of the critique requests page (hence my reference to the "rate recent lists"), but that doesn't do what I'm talking about. It displays the most recent 16 images only; beyond that one has to go to the "list" version, which displays no thumbnails. I'm talking about something that would look like the TRP pages, where you can scroll through page after page of thumbnails and click on any that look interesting. That way you wouldn't be limited to seeing thumbnails of only the images uploaded in the last half hour or so, as you are on the critique requests page. The "rate photos" feature doesn't do it, either, because that doesn't give a thumbnail page; you just have to go through one-by-one.