Photograph of the ******* week

[aaron emanuel litvinoff]

reposted in this forum at the request of site administrators.

 

I never understand 90% of the POTW selections. please explain to me

where the sense is in 15 administrators picking the POW. Why not

create a shortlist of 10 and get the users of the site to vote on

which should be POW for the following week. at least that way we get

more of a say.

[barmijo]

Aaron,

 

Voting on POW would, IMHO, replicate the "top photos" pages.

 

Although I often don't agree with the picture of the week, it seems to me that's part of the point. I get to see something I wouldn't have chosen and hopefully that broadens my view a bit. Accordingly, I'm more concerned when POW becomes too conservative than when abstracts are chosen.

[mottershead]

Bert is right. There is nothing to stop people from commenting on any photo that appears in the Top Photos or prominently on the site. We have two features on the site where photos are selected by something other than the rating system: the POW, and the Featured Portfolio. These are chosen in part for the purpose of bringing work that is worthy of discussion and/or attention that might not have been recognized through the rating system.

[nikos]

My guess is that if your suggestion is implemented we will see at least one if not all of the following happening:

 

1) People will argue about the nominations and claim that they don't understand why those 10 pictures are chose

 

2) Some will suggest that the 10 nominated pictures be selected accorind to their ratings

 

3) You will end up with the top-rated photos front page for nominations and the ratings-sweeper of the week as POW

 

As it is now, even though I rarely am particularly impressed by the selections, I like the fact that there is an alternative curatorial selection than the one provided by ratings. Top-rated pages have the tendency to float up the most commonly appealing images, leaving out some really good work that is just isn't going to have mass appreciation because of style or other curious factors.

 

If you want to know what the people voted for a week, just go to high scoring photos, select 1-week period and either number of ratings or average rating.. and there you are, you can see the full top-20.

[pdoyle]

Whatever the reality of the situation, the <i>intended</i> spirit of this site is supposed to be discussion and debate about all things photographic. As others have said, there are other ways to find the photos that win the popular votes. Ideally, you will like some POWs and not like others, and with other passionate people you'll get in there and get your hands dirty trying to explain why you think that that POW is successful or not along multiple vectors. Then everyone is forced to think a bit harder, see things another way, and maybe learn something new. Thus the POW is not so much a prize (although it's a fine distinction) as it is a means to a desired end (which is to engender discussion and debate about technique, creativity, etc).

[bobatkins]

Please understand that the POW is NOT, repeat NOT, supposed to be the "best" picture on the website this week (whatever "best" is). It's an imge offered for discussion.

 

Perhaps it would solve a lot of problems if the title was changed to "The image selected for discussion this week" rather than "Picture of the Week".

[aaron emanuel litvinoff]

let me get this straight - i propose them coming up with a shortlist unconnected with highest rated photographs; and as far as people complaining about why those would have been chosen, its better for 10 photos to be chosen and then voted for rather than just one which people will probably disagree with. this way another 9 photographs would also get a bit of publicity on photo.net. I think its a better system guys

[livvie]

theres been enough probs with mate-rating, imagine what mate-POWing would add.

 

i like POW as is - you dont need to understand everything in life to enjoy it.

[n_p]

Aaron, welcome to photo.net!<br>If you stick around long enough, you'll get an appreciation of what is meant by the term "reinventing the wheel".<br>Here's a 'wicked' suggestion made by Mary Ball, last year.<p><i>Maybe Photo.net should add a no-holes-barred forum. We could call it BOW...."Battle of the Week". It would have to be members that volunteer to display their work to this type of critque forum. They would have to be willing to accept unchecked ridicule, adoring and meaningless fawning, negative and unexplained "opinions", and name calling directed at the photographer as well as fights amoung members. The photographer can't mind if the subject goes completely off into another photographer's work or into a completely off-topic discussion that has nothing to do with the featured photo. The contributors would need to understand that this page goes against the Photo.net philosophy and that the commenters are all in agreement of this type of critique method. Hmmm - any volunteers? Well - maybe there are. But, I don't think photo.net would want those to be part of it's history and they'd have to be deleted at the end of the week.

<br><p>

-- Mary Ball , November 08, 2002; 01:36 P.M. Eastern</i><br><p>We never get tired of it!

[bobatkins]

I don't think chosing the POW on the basis of consensus is a good idea. Besides, photo.net is not a democracy - it says so in the terms of service, so it must be true.

 

In fact I'd even go so far as to say it would be better chosen by a SINGLE individual - provided it was s different individual each week. We need different, controversial images, expressing a range of different views, techniques, subjects and styles, not something that's an average of what everyone agrees is good. In fact the less people like the POW, the better it is as a vehicle for discussion - though that's not a suggestion to pick the worst image you can find.

[root]

First, let's change the title to conform to Bob's suggestion. This

misunderstanding wastes so much bandwidth needlessly.

 

I would like to see all of the nominations for POW get exposure,

not just the winner of the elves' vote. We could also double the

number of elves, and . . . . oh, never mind.

[robert_fleming]

POW is not BPW (best photo of the week). It is difficult enough to work out the rating system (actually its working, some people dont accept it... a never ending issue I think) so...

<p> you can imagine if we need to decide of 10 photographers (I can read already some comments: who decide? why this photographer and not me? some people are able to decide although they dont post or they post crap pictures?...) who then choose 1 picture (I cannot list the comments here .... to long).

<p> so I think that decision made by site to choose a picture which by definition controversial is not perfect, but is working quite fine as far as you understand that it is not BPW but POW.

<p> if you feel that another picture is worth of being discussed firstly start to put a comment on it and possibly bring it to some forum to initiate a discussion.

[stephen hazelton]

If the site administrators pick a POW, I won't agree that it's the one that ought to be picked. If they picked out 10 pictures, had 5,000 people vote on them, and then got the POW that way, i still wouldn't agree that it's the one that ought to be picked. So, how would that be an improvement? Fortunately, my approval isn't required, and I find lots of interest on the site without paying much attention to the POW.

[lex_jenkins]

What makes you believe the elves who select the POWs aren't just regular photo.netters? How would appointing another group of judges make any difference? It ain't a we/them situation.

[root]

I assume elves are chosen based on their critique history. You're not

suggesting they're randomly selected, are you?

[Guest]

Philip, among others, has expressed it well. 'Pick of the day' in your TV guide isn't always the best programme, just something worth drawing attention to and commenting on. Or not, depending on how you look at things.

 

Nothing more, nothing less.

 

Hell, if someone chose Winogrand for POW, there'd be twenty-******* thousand words about how this was crap - "For crying out loud - this guy can't even keep the camera straight!" - and how Eggleston's photo the week before was so much better.

 

This isn't a high school prom or the American elections. If you don't like the POW, say why or just ignore it.

 

There are many other photographs on this site. Why people fret so much about the POW is beyond me.

[mottershead]

The elves are just regular photo.netters, not "staff" members. The only elf who has been "out-ed" is Patrick H, who has publicly confessed to being the person who organizes the weekly selection process. I think Patrick set it up so that the staff people are elves as well, but the only time I ever voted was to break a tie when Patrick was on vacation a few weeks ago.

 

I don't know exactly how Patrick picks the elves. I would imagine that regular involvement in the Gallery and some evidence of knowing what you are talking about are the main criteria. So if you are a regular contributor to the POW discussion and photo commenting generally you can send Patrick an email, and he might let you into the august group of elves. He'll also teach you the secret handshake.

[marshall]

I think I've said this before, but any time that decisions are made by a selected minority instead of the whole, there will be some inevitable discussion of the process. It's certainly better here than in the POW itself. Of course, given all the recent brouhaha about the photo ratings, there's some evidence to suggest that a majority vote would be just as likely to generate controversy. Anyway, I'd be willing to be that, some weeks, people would complain that none of the 10 selected for voting would be worthy POW's, and we'd be more or less back where we are.

 

A lot of the controversy does come from the idea that certain selections are not "POW worthy," which in turn comes from the idea that an image has to be among the "best" on the site to "deserve" the "honor" of POW-hood. Not true. I personally believe that the image should be of a high-enough quality to merit some exposure on the front page, but the important thing is that it can generate discussion. Better that the discussion be about image attributes and not about whether it's any good, but people are people, and that means sometimes you get opinions.

 

The Elf System has some advantages, and it's probably better that they remain largely anonymous. One suggestion I might make is that it might be nice if there were a way for anyone to suggest images for their consideration, because 20-some-odd elves won't have seen every interesting image that's been submitted. Unfortunately, I can't think of a practical way to implement that thought, and surely someone would get upset if their suggestion seemed to them to be a better choice than the eventual POW.

 

Ah, well.

[pmj]

Before Kyle talked me into publishing POW... ehmm, no wait, before I offered to take care of POW while she was away on a trip with Philip, we already had a list of Elves. I am not sure how they were chosen, but I assume, like Brian, that they simply stood out for their useful contributions. That is also the way I recruited Elves during the last 10 months or so. Some of the Elves have also suggested other people they thought worthy.

 

Indeed, all current Elves are members of photo.net; they may have work posted here and they may participate in the weekly discussions. Except for their identities, there really is nothing secret about them. Oh, yes, and the handshake, of course.

 

Right now, all 23 Elves are invited to vote every week. I have no problem with adding a few voting Elves, eventhough I had not considered recruiting more myself for the time being. I am not sure about having more nominating Elves, unless we limit the number of nominations per Elf even further. Having 30 nominations and 20 voting Elves (not every Elf is always available) makes little sense to me.

 

I wonder if having a webpage with past nominations is a good idea. It would be great to showcase that work: some very interesting photographs don't make it as POW, and people did spend time finding and nominating them. However, I wonder how much extra work it will bring for the moderator -- I can just imagine the numerous posts how this or that image is much better, less contrived, tells a better story etc. Not that such criticism would be "wrong", but discussion might easily slip away from the image we'd like everybody to focus on. Note: I'd very much welcome such comments, if they compare two sports images, or two portraits, i.e. two pictures of the same genre. But I fear we'll be comparing apples and oranges real soon.

[nikos]

Patrick you are right. There are enough "there are better photos in the photographer's portfolio than this one" comments already. The POW forum could be ruined by the opportunity to battle over the merits of the selected photo against the merits of the nominees.

[joe_garrick]

Personally, I'd just like to see more selections. Maybe a photo of the day and a photo of the week or something. If the POW selection doesn't interest me, it seems like a long dry spell until the next selection by the elves comes around.

 

I understand the idea behind the POW and like it, but if they're nominating multiple photos, I would think there would be some "also rans" that might merit a photo of the day or something like that.

 

Of course, that would require some rework to the start page.

[bobatkins]

There are probably 100 images posted on photo.net each week that are "worthy" of attention and we just can't have "picture of the week", "picture of the day", "picture of the hour" etc., complete with a set of the 10 runers up. Even if anyone could organize such features, it would distract focus from where we really want it to be (on the POW), plus many of the runners up will appear in the other galleries anyway.

 

POW is just an image for discussion. I think we are as much interested in the discussion as in the image, though the image is selected to be in some way worthy of discussion.

[root]

You've taken Joe's perfectly reasonable idea and exaggerated it

in order to argue against it.

 

The POW has not been able to sustain interest for anything near

a week. . . a couple days max. Please check out the number of

posts on All POWs after Wednesday. No one is proposing

picture of the hour, and the downside of posting all the runners

up due to second guessing has already been discussed.

 

A POD, perhaps to replace the POW, is a good idea. It might

attract some of the older critics who have dropped off, and would

generate more weekly comments aggragate than the current

format in any case.

[bobatkins]

It would also increase Patrick's work load (and that of the elves) by a factor of 7, not to mention distracting attention from the POW.

 

Not to also mention that we'd then have yet another topic to badger Brian about, with all sorts of suggestions about how it wasn't fair, how the process for selection should be done, who should do it, etc., etc., etc.

 

Luckily (for you) I have absolutely no influence or control over the gallery side of the house, so my views do not represent those of photo.net on this topic!

[root]

Someone might refer to this thread if they're interested in the

POW issue, so I'll respond.

 

"It would also increase Patrick's work load (and that of the elves)

by a factor of 7 . . . ."

 

Not at all. Assuming there are more than seven nominations

each week, the elves simply pick seven instead of one.

 

"not to mention distracting attention from the POW."

 

The POW gets zero attention from mid week on.

 

"Not to also mention that we'd then have yet another topic to

badger Brian about, with all sorts of suggestions about how it

wasn't fair, how the process for selection should be done, who

should do it, etc., etc., etc. "

 

The process would be exactly the same. See above.

 

If it only takes Brian a minute to upload a new image in the POW

slot, he could post a new one daily instead of the current once a

week. You can always refer to the POW archives which is fairly

easy to find. If replacing the image everyday is too time

consuming, then no, it won't happen.