New "Top Photos" Feature

Today we are introducing a new <a

href="http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter">Top

Photos</a> feature (previously also referred to as "Filter Photos by

Rating").

 

<p>We wanted to provide a lot of different approaches to ranking "top

photos" and "top photographers", since no one ranking method is fair

to everyone.

 

Here are the ones that we have available now, with more to come.

Unless specified, rating refers to the sum of the Originality and

Aesthetics ratings. In almost all of the ranking methods, photos

are only counted if they have a minimum number of ratings, with the

number required being greater for the longer periods.

 

<ul>

<li><em>Average</em>: the photos with the highest average rating.

<li><em>Sum</em>: the photos with the highest total of ratings.

Every rating helps in this method of ranking, even a 1/1.

<lI><em>Originality</em>: the photos with the highest average

originality rating.

<li><em>Aesthetics</em>: the photos with the highest average

aesthetics rating.

<li><em>Number of ratings</em>: the photos with the highest number of

ratings, without considering what the ratings are. Again, every

rating helps.

<li><em>Number of comments</em>: the photos with the most comments.

This brings photos that are either very good, or very controversial.

Photos of the Week tend to dominate this top ranks of this ranking

method.

<li><em>Number of views</em>: the photos with the most views.

<li><em>Highest of Day</em>: the photo with the highest average

rating for each day in the period

<li><em>Photo of the Week</em>: photos submitted in the period that

have been selected as POW. (Note that the date is the date the photo

was submitted, not the date it was selected as POW.)

<li><em>Photographer's Highest</em>: this essentially ranks the

photographers by his or her highest rated photo submitted in the

period.

<li><em>Photographer's Average</em>: another ranking of photographers

rather than photographs, this presents photographers ranked by the

average rating of their photos from the period. The photographer's

highest-rated photo represents him or her in the list. When

the "All" period is selected, this ranking of photographers is

similar to the "Top Photographer's List", although not identical.

<li><em>Photographer's Sum by Ratings</em>: similar to the previous

one, but the photographers are ranked by the sum of all their ratings

in the period; the photograph representing them in the list is,

again, the highest rated one. This gives the edge to photographers

with a lot of ratings.

<li><em>Photographer's Sum by Photos</em>: similar to the previous

one, but the photographers are ranked by the total of the average

rating of all their photos from the period. This gives the edge to

photograpers with a lot of higher-rated photos.

</ul>

 

<p>You can choose a period of "Last 2 Days", "Last week", "Last

month", "Last 3 months", "Last 6 months", "Last year", or "All".

Because of ratings inflation in the last year, unfortunately, recent

photos and recently active photographers tend to dominate all the

periods, although POW, Views, Comments, Number of Ratings, and

Highest of Day do not have this problem, and people who were active

and high-rated in the past tend to be more visible in the displays

that are based on the number of photos or ratings rather than

averages. We're thinking of ways to compensate for ratings

inflation when longer periods are selected.

Fabulous. This is much more useful than the previous method (and thankfully my shot still shows up as "top-rated"-whew). For some reason though, the thumbnails and images aren't coming up after several searches. I search by say, top-rated by number of ratings and my screen filled with empty boxes. When I click on an empty box, the information came up, but no photo.

Well, this is an excellent feature.

I just wanted to say thanks and job well done!

Ignore what I said about the images not coming up. The problem was on my side. Ooops.

Hi,

With this very usefull feature Photonet is getting better and better.

We all should help you with sending the best photo,s we have.

Thanks for all the work you have done.

Aart.

Very nice, thanks. Now if only we could separate "photo manipulations" from photos.

"Now if only we could separate "photo manipulations" from photos."

 

Yeah, and while we're at it, we've got to get those W. Eugene Smith shots off the walls and out of the photo books.

This thread isn't for debating the digital manipulations issue. I'll let the last two comments stand but, please, no more.

Services, Brian,

 

this sounds like outstanding work! This brings the most important thing back to photo.net, the ability to find great photos to the liking of the individual person. At the same time it discourages manipulation and makes it harder.

 

And it is a strong statement that there is no single wau to determine the best ot top photos or photographers.

 

I'm sure, that this is one of the best moves photo.net has made in the last year.

<I>In almost all of the ranking methods, photos are only counted if they have a minimum number of ratings, with the number required being greater for the longer periods.

</I><br><br>

What are the minimum numbers for each period?

Brian, I was wondering if it would be feasible to incorporate a weighting to counteract the ratings inflation that you mention.

Bernhard, the minimum ratings are as follows for all methods except

the Photoraphers Average and Sum methods:

<ul>

<li>Last Two Days, Week: 5

<li>All other periods: 20

</ul>

 

<p>For the Photographer's Average and Sum by Photos, Sum by Ratings methods:

<ul>

<li>Last Two Days, Week: 5

<li>All other periods: 11

</ul>

 

<p>Also for the Photographer's Average and Sum methods, a photographer must have a minimum number of photos in the period to be included, and this number also varies with the length of the period. For the two days and one week periods, there is no minimum number of photos. For the one month period, it is 3; for all other periods it is 10.

 

This last point is why, incidentally, that the Photographer's Average ranking is different from the Top Photographers list, which is essentially, the "Photographer's Average method" for the "All" period, including photographers with at least 3 (not 10) photos each of which has 11 or more ratings.

 

<p>It seemed to me that the shorter periods were the logical place to give visibility to new stars, so I wanted to make it easy for people to show up in the "Last 2 days" and "Last week" lists without having a lot of photos or ratings. But those people shouldn't dominate the longer periods with only 3 qualifying photos, as they sometimes do in the Top List.

 

Eventually, I'll probably just eliminate the Top List and add the ability in the new "Top Photos" to display any of the rankings for the "All" period as a text listing, and without cutting it off at 500 thumbnails.

Morwen, we'be been discussing that issue in the "Help and Feedback" forum in <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003ZCG">this thread</a>.

Longer periods...is that in sidereal time...?

Oooooh... I like this. This is a great way to be able to look at the photos. I do have a few suggestions, though, as usual :).

 

1) Filter out any photos that are no longer available. (Unless this really slows down the process)

 

2) Be able to reverse the search. That is, look for ones that don't have a lot of comments/ratings. Probably best for this to limit it to ones that have actually requested critique or you'll get all the 0/0's out there that aren't interested in comments/ratings anyway. The reason for this request is I tend to seek out photos where the person wanted a critique and hasn't gotten one. My opinion isn't worth a lot, but at least that way they can see what someone else thought of it instead of feeling ignored.

 

3) Allow us to change how many show up on one screen. I'd rather do something else for a few minutes and let a whole bunch load than keep clicking next and waiting for the next batch.

It's a valuable addition, allowing fast access to interesting

photos and photographers. I'd suggest having a link to

a page which explains in detail what the different rating options

mean, in particular for the benefit of the folks who will not

be seeing this thread. Tuan <a href = "http://

www.terragalleria.com">Terra Galleria photography</a>

I like the improvements. I would like to see the same thing on

the 'request for critique' list as Michelle suggests. Even smaller

thumbnails would improve speed and exposure.

 

Is there a page that describes the politically correct way to get the

first five high ratings? I've had a couple, but frankly, a lot have

been overlooked, perhaps due to my downloading too many at

once. The fan club, and tit for tat approach frankly seems to be

the only way to promote your style of photography.

Carl, I don't think the practice of rating others' photos in the hopes that they will give attention to your photos is "politically incorrect". It becomes objectionable only when the ratings are dishonest and corrupt; that is, when higher ratings are given than one feels a photo warrants, or perhaps even without any regard to the quality of the photo -- in order to create a circle of people who will do the same for one's own photos. This does happen, and as you know, the mutual rating gangs that can form as a result of this behaviour are one of the main problems with a rating system such as we have on photo.net. I do think we have this problem to a lesser degree than some other photo critique web sites -- primarily due the vigilance of Jeremy Stein -- but it is nevertheless still a serious concern.

As Bernard said, "this brings the most important thing back to photo.net, the ability to find great photos to the liking of the individual person". The last step towards that goal would be categories - landscapes, flora, still life, portraits, etc.

<p>

Now, 2 little additional comments:

<p>

1) I do hope the "top-photographers" page is not going to bring back a thousand bogus accounts - it feels like the only little weakness to the system, as we saw in the past... Did we really need to "RANK" photographers more precisely than they were on the list we had...? Of course it is useful information again, but I'm just worried to see the same nonsense happen as in the past...

<p>

2) I do hope that this new presentation will encourage more people to rate images and write more critiques. I personally believe that the efforts shown here by Photo.net should be rewarded by a more active participation from our end. It is our job to do our part, by simply expressing honestly our opinions about images. I have in the past regretted the fact that most of the photographers and critics I admire most had stopped or almost stopped to rate and critique -Tony Dummett, Ian MacEachern, Michael Spinak, etc. I hope this brings them, and many others, back to say what they think. I've already rated a top photo here at 2 in Aesthetics, well if that's what one really thinks, he should say so and explain why. Then these top-rated pages could very much become a lot more attractive. Now the tools to find images are there, and are great, it all depends on us...

<p>

Regards, and congrats again to Photo.net's team.

The only solution that I can think of to reduce the negative impact

of this 'gang' approach will be unpopular because it restricts the

freedom of participants to do as they please. I would prefer not

to have people vote who were not themselves qualified

photographer / judges. No high rated images - no ability to rate.

For everyone else, limit the number of rating opportunites per

time period, per photographer being rated, etc.. Limit similar

images. It sounds like a police state to too many people, I

suspect, but I, for one, would be willing to support the concept of

merit.

"This thread isn't for debating..."

 

My apologies, an acid response has almost become reflexive.

 

Meanwhile, this is a very welcome improvement. The large thumbnails make browsing a pleasure.

the last was in response to Brian . . .

 

Marc. Thank You for your response. I have noticed you taking

the time to provide constructive criticism. I'm not sure I'm as

courageous as you think. I've actual limited my posts. There's a

current image that I very much want to give a 1/1 to for several

reasons, but I'm hoping there's a better way to deal with this

particular image.

 

I would like to hear other ideas on how to integrate critiques and

rating. As I've said, the current set up does not encourage

technical opinions, at least not in this context.

 

I have a little experience judging photo competitions and my

approach is 'how does this image compare to others of it's

genre? If you don't have first hand experience shooting this style,

please don't say anything.

oops . . sorry . . wrong thread how did that happen?

Marc, I am somewhat ambivalent about bringing back the "Top Rated Photographers Page", and it won't be coming back in the old form. Rather, it should be like the new Top Photos feature and provide a variety of methods to rank photographers. In fact, my plan is that it will be basically the same code as the new Top Photos feature, except that for any of the "Photographer ranking" methods and the "All" period, we will allow users to see a text list of all qualifying photographers rather than limiting it to 500 or thumbnails. The text list will make it easier for people to see their own position compared to others.

 

To be quite candid, one of the reasons for bringing back this competitive element is that while it led to a lot of abuse (and scornful criticim) when we had it before, it also created a lot of interest, excitement, and fun. The month after we put in the current mutilated form of the list, the abuse dramatically declined, but so did the number of ratings, photo submissions, comments, and (most importantly for the financial health of the site) the number of people signing up for photocritique alerts at $25 per year. The last number actually dropped by half, although it has now climbed back somewhat. So we feel we need to bring it back for the sake of member interest, and to be honest, revenue, but 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.)

Speaking of ranking photographers, several people have suggested that we should allow people to see which photographers are on the most "interesting people" lists. What do you think? Another idea is to use people's interesting people list to generate various lists of photographers. Who did the people you find "interesting" find interesting in turn?

 

<p>By the way the list of "most interesting" photographers is fascinating, and quite different from any of the other rankings that we are presenting. Here are the top twenty names at present, with how many people find them "interesting".

 

<br><br><table border=0>

<tr><td>Amy Powers</td><td>1140</td></tr>

<tr><td>bourson stephane</td><td>902</td></tr>

<tr><td>Daniel Bayer</td><td>822</td></tr>

<tr><td>John Peri</td><td>802</td></tr>

<tr><td>Tony Dummett</td><td>663</td></tr>

<tr><td>Rene Asmussen</td><td>652</td></tr>

<tr><td>Yuri Bonder</td><td>646</td></tr>

<tr><td>Jonathan Charles</td><td>501</td></tr>

<tr><td>Michael Ezra</td><td>488</td></tr>

<tr><td>Leping Zha</td><td>476</td></tr>

<tr><td>RICHARD DESMARAIS</td><td>467</td></tr>

<tr><td>Kevin Hundsnurscher</td><td>465</td></tr>

<tr><td>D.C. Shelby</td><td>452</td></tr>

<tr><td>Ian MacEachern</td><td>415</td></tr>

<tr><td>Marielou Dhumez</td><td>391</td></tr>

<tr><td>Tom Menegatos</td><td>381</td></tr>

<tr><td>Terry Palka</td><td>374</td></tr>

<tr><td>Dan Heller</td><td>346</td></tr>

<tr><td>Vuk Vuksanovic</td><td>344</td></tr>

<tr><td>emil schildt</td><td>332</td></tr>

</table>