Image categories - is there a guide?

(I have copied this from a different thread as it was a little off-topic there.)

Until recently it never occurred to me that reviewers might give significant weight to the degree of correlation

between the subject of an image and the category in which it is submitted. Now, having read through some of the

posts on this forum, I can see how some reviewers might consider this important.

My problem though is that I have very little confidence in my ability to correctly categorise some images;

particularly at the margins. I simply try to do my best but sometimes I find it almost impossible. For example,

consider the attached images that I’m about to add to my gallery and post for critique - I have no idea where to

put them!

To help me, do any of you know if the administrators have published a guide to help us identify the most

appropriate category?

Thanks

Mike<div></div>

There is no official guide that I know of. Such a guide would be almost impossible to write since there would always be some exception. The category names should be fairly self explanatory.

As long as the images aren't obviously out of place you should suffer no penalty. Those images could be in travel for example, or possibly documentary (depending on the context). There may be a couple of other categories which could be appropriate, depending on what the context was in which you took them.

Mike, <a href="http://www.photo.net/site-feedback-forum/00Nggm">this thread </a> from December 2007, might be of

interest to you.<br> An overhaul, or replacement, of the category system might be one of the things that are

under consideration.

<p>Meanwhile, is there an explanation for the continued existence

of <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo-critique-forum/?category=uncategorized"> this link </a> on the Critique Forum

page?

"Meanwhile, is there an explanation for the continued existence of this link on the Critique Forum page?"

I imagine it's there because we have forgetten to remove it. There isn't an uncatagorized category as far as I know, because too many people would use it to avoid having to think! There are very few images that could not be considered as being appropriate for at least one existing category.

The problem with changing the categories is what to do with the bazillion images that are already in one or other category now. You can add new ones, but then most of the images that should be in the new category will actually be somewhere else!

User defined image tags have been suggested, but if you replace categories with that, how to you then do searches which include all the bazillion images without tags? I suppose you could tag all image in a category with that category name, but that's got some obvious limitations. On the other hand, if you do nothing, you can't improve things.

I do not know if there are currently active plans to add tags or otherwise modify categories.

<i>What I would like to do is to ditch the category system in favor of "image tags" more along the lines of what

Flickr uses.<br> I am 99% sure this will happen for the gallery, but I'm still not sure how it will work for the

critique system.</i><br>

<a href="/photodb/user?user_id=20462">Josh Root</a> <a href="/member-status-icons"><img

src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/admin.gif" style="margin:3px 0 -3px 2px;padding:0;"

title="Admin"><img src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub10.gif" style="margin:3px 0

-3px 2px;padding:0;" title="Subscriber"><img

src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/3rolls.gif" style="margin:3px 0 -3px 2px;padding:0;"

title="Frequent poster"></a>, Dec 17, 2007; 10:47 a.m.</p><p>

More than 8 months later, and it appears that this matter is probably much harder to resolve.<p>Thanks for

your response, Bob.

Hi Guys,

Thank you for your replies - I guess I'll just muddle along with out one :)

Cheers

Mike

Image tagging is coming. I just had a large conversation with Jin about it last week. But the fact is that it's a big project and takes a lot of creativity and work to get done.

But it WILL be here. It is a feature that is very important to me.

Mike, it's a puzzle, no doubt about that. Some photos defy easy categorization. A few photo.netters have said they tend to use the Fine Art category because nothing else quite fits.

For some photos context is everything. For others, it's not relevant. Let viewers decide based on the merits of the photo.

Some categories are clear. Some aren't. Should a photo of a Madagascar hissing cockroach go in the Macro or Pet category? Depends on whether you've given it a name. If you call it "Roscoe", it's probably a pet. If you call it "Yikes!", it's probably macro.