Announcing Changes to the Photo Critique Forum

[justthings]

Dude! thanks for making that change to the 'add comment' dialogue...! you're working overtime on this stuff - great enthusiasm and thanks again!

[struan_gray]

Brian, I don't know if it's a bug or deliberate, but when I click on

the individual catagories I don't get a list of images I get the first

one - i.e. I jump straight to the process of rating individual

images without getting any overview of all the images in that

catagory, not even a text listing.

 

I can see that this might be a way of encouraging people to rate

lots of images, but I invariably back out and don't rate any, much

less comment. The inability to get an overview of the submitted

images, or to browse them visually, is the singest biggest thing

that stops me getting involved in rating or critiquing images here.

You may not care, but I suspect I'm not alone.

[mottershead]

Struan, I gather that what you'd like is to be able to see thumbnails of the images that you are being invited to rate so that you can pick which ones you will spend time on.

 

I would like this too, and in fact there is a very primitive interface like this that is used by the person who selects the images for the "Rate recent selected photos", which I've done a few times. The main problem that I can see with it is not a user interface issue, since it would be nice, but rather the impact that it might have on server load and bandwidth, since fetching thumbnails is a lot more expensive than fetching text.

 

I can see arguments both ways: on the one hand there would be a greater impact from fetching the thumbnails, but on the other hand, people wouldn't be fetching larger size images that they were unlikely to critique and rate (or like).

 

We'll have to put some serious thought into your idea.

[mottershead]

Oh, another point concerning Struan's comment: you can still get a text list of the images in the category by clicking the "(List)" link next to the category name.

[struan_gray]

Ah. Thanks for the 'list' link, I should have moused around a bit

more :-)

 

I can see that serving lots of thumbnails might overload the

server, but if a balance can be found I think it would be popular,

and even useful. Can/does the server cache thumbnails, or is it

generating them anew every time?

 

In general, I feel that it takes too many clicks to see images here,

both in the critique forum and when browsing the lists of

photo.net members. I have some ideas, but will wait until you

invite suggestions rather than drag this thread off topic.

[philippe]

<p>

Hi Brian,

<p>

I've got another little suggestion, after just commenting a photograph: As one now directly gets to the image with the rating menue (what I like), one has not seen the technical details when directly continuing via the 'add comment' link. Often I read them just as a kind of reflex. But since now they are not immediately there anymore, I was missing the information once I was on the comment-form page (that now nicely has the image on it).

<p>

It might be an idea to give some technical fields on the comment page as well. Also, it could be a great option to give ratings directly on the comment page, even though this could be in conflict with the already before shown rating menues.

<p>

Sorry, your work is great and I don't want to overload your nights, but it just came into my mind.

<p>

Thanks again, Philippe

[pmj]

Brian, one more thing I noticed. The links in "My workspace", section "Your Questions" seem to be broken. That is, the links to questions posted in the Critique forum. They seem to miss a value for the photo_id: <tt>http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?topic_id=1481&msg_id=002EQM&photo_id=&photo_sel_index=1</tt>.

 

<p>

The same applies to the Critique forum links presented here: <a href="http://www.photo.net/pvt/full-bboard-history">http://www.photo.net/pvt/full-bboard-history</a>

 

 

<p>Note, I still think you're doing a great job for us!!

[mottershead]

Patrick, I'm a little embarassed at having missed these; you're obviously more familiar with all the little corners of photo.net than I am. Anyway, those two problems are fixed. Thanks again for reporting them.

[christian deichert]

Perhaps I'm being redundant, but I'm not seeing any thumbnails coming up, nor am I seeing the list of categories to the right. This is at 1300 hours Mountain Standard Time (1600 hours Eastern Daylight Time), 13 May 2002.

[philippe]

Christian, you might have the same problem as I had at the beginning: I was accessing the forum via a bookmark that was old. Try once to access the forum via the dropdown menue on top of this page (community > Forums > Photo Critique). This solved the issue for me.

[mottershead]

<p>Christian, Philippe is probably right. If you are accessing the Photo Critique forum with a URL that looks like this:

<blockquote>www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1481</blockquote>

then you will be displaying the forum as a simple "Question and Answer" forum. This should sort of work, but you won't see any thumbnails, or the new category links. But to access the forum presented in the new style, you need to access it through a URL that looks like this:

<blockquote>www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1481</blockquote>

 

<p>The easiest thing is to navigate to the forum through the regular photo.net pages and bookmark it again.

[mottershead]

I decided that probably quite a few people will have the sort of problems that Christian is seeing with bookmarks to the old Photo Critique forum. I've added some logic so that the old URL's do the right thing (I hope).

[christian deichert]

Actually, I was using the link from the drop-down menu, but apparently it has since been fixed.

[nikos]

Three cheers for the new critique/rating system, I agree that the ordering algorithm based on number of ratings will indeed help to surface the most interesting pictures and give more pictures a better chance at getting exposure. There are two suggestions I´d like to make:

 

1. On the rating page (the one with the radio buttons that walks through the list of pictures giving ratings) it would be very useful to have a summary of image information, such as Title, Critique request text, Place and Technical Comments. A title or the place frequently provides a different viewpoint for understanding a picture, and the photographer´s request for critique tells us what he/she wants to find in our comments.

 

2. As the system currently stands, on the display page of a photo, one has to first click on ´Ratings´ tab to have the page reloaded with the rating menu and then rate. I believe this extra step discourages users from rating an image at many cases, I know that it does discourage me, who have ended up rating only pictures I feel strongly enough about to bother loading a couple of extra pages for it. If the rating menu were on the default page of each photograph, I guess there would be more ratings... Of course, you might actually want to avoid this effect, preferring to get ratings mostly from people who feel strongly about an image, and not casual "lemme-stick-a-number-here" ratings... That is for you to know and decide.

 

Thanks photo.net for a great service, and for your dedication at constantly improving it.

[lstavast]

I continue to get these messages from time to time, on 2 different computers, while rating photos. I get to the ratings process from the main menu, Forum, Photocritique. Happens immediately after clicking the 2 required radio-buttons:

 

This is an unexpected error logging for debugging: Error for gallery/photocritique photo_user_id , rating_type random photo_id 758922, new_photo_id , comment , aesthetic 7, cleverness 7, folder_id , skip_photo_p

 

I think I'm not doing anything wrong ...

 

Hopefully someone can address.

 

Thanks -

Lyle Stavast

[mottershead]

Lyle, if you are able to reproduce this problem with any consistency, I would appreciate it if you would send me an e-mail the next time it happens. Once it shows up, does it go away immediately, or does it stick around?

[mottershead]

I think Lyle's problem is fixed; it helped to be able to study it knowing the user-id of a person who had experienced it.

[nancy_patrick]

Brian the biggest problem in critiques I see is aesthetic.

The photos are displayed in the limited Windows sRGB color space which is unavoidable as the browers only function in this realm. Most users edit in Adobe RGB with photoshop. The save for web command does NOT fix the color space mismatch.

 

But to make matters worse we're viewing the images against a bright white background. This changes the apparent gamma by shutting down the eyes visual feedback system. The net result is colors, especially dark colors and shadows get washed out. Replacing this with an 18% grey level or black background, at least where the photos are displayed would fix this. See the way PhotoSIG.net net does it. Many submitted photos have had the saturation cranked beyond belief to get around this problem. A poor solution at best.

[peter_langfelder]

Brian, thanks a lot for the good work! After a few days of use I must say it's a HUGE improvement on the old system!

 

Best,

[michael_alexander3]

If unrated photos drop to the end of the list, then almost nobody will see them and they'll remain unrated. Would it be better to intermix high rated and unrated photos?

 

Moving the picture up on the screen would reduce the amount of scrolling I have to do. I would still have to scroll for large pictures, but that's unavoidable.

[mottershead]

Michael, the unrated pictures don't drop to the end of the list; actually, it is the pictures with 20 or more ratings that drop to the end of the list. I've been monitoring it, and what seems to be happening is that pictures cycle up the list, some faster than others, as I expected. Some photos do languish near the bottom of list with only a few ratings, not climbing fast enough to stay ahead of the new pictures coming in. But the higher-rated pictures do seem to make their way to the front of the list within a few days, especially if they pick up a few ratings from other places in the system.

[peter_langfelder]

Just a minor suggestion - I understand the reason for putting photos with a higher number/value of ratings up front in the list is to present the good (better) ones first; however, it also makes photos that have no ratings from other places on photo.net languish at the end, unreached by all but the most persistent critiquers. How about presenting photos with say 4 and fewer ratings in random order (it would be consistent with not showing ratings for photos that have fewer than 5 ratings on photo.net in general)? It would make it a bit easier for photos with none or one rating to start to move up the ladder.

 

Just a thought... (may help one of my photos with one rating :-))

 

Best,

[mottershead]

Peter, it does seem that photos with no ratings are languishing near the bottom of the list for a long time, unless they get help by being rated in other parts of the site.

 

It is true that the Photo Critique forum is intended in part for photographers who need exposure, since the people who are already established on photo.net don't have much difficulty getting ratings in other venues within the site. Perhaps we have also tilted the PC too much towards displaying good photos, making it less useful as a vehicle for new people to gain recognition.

 

It is somewhat of a dilemma because a lot of weak photos are submitted to the PC forum and I doubt that critiquers' patience would last long if they were compelled to click through a long series of them. If we presented the photos with fewer ratings higher, a few lucky ones would get some ratings; but overall there would be fewer ratings, I believe.

 

Personally, I find the new system a delight as a viewer because I get to see a lot of great pictures that I wouldn't have otherwise seen, but maybe we need to take the interests of the less established photographers a bit more into consideration.

[andrys_basten]

Brian,

Why not have an alternate list in reverse, make the one you have now the default, and the alternate (reversed order) one just be offered via a link for those who want to see the the non-rated ones first?

[lstavast]

how about continuing to show from the higher rated pictures list, but have every other one be a low rated one - would you not accomplish visibility for both sets of interest ?