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).

<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.

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.

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, 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.

Philippe, I implemented your suggestion. There is now an "Uncategorized" category, which is the default. It is currently empty so clicking on it isn't very satisfying.

Alan, if you mean Workspace, the link seems fine. Perhaps you need to

refresh the page in the browser. The link should be .../bboard/pc-post-new/topic_id=1481

Christopher, over the next two months (before I go on vacation), I'm hoping to be able to implement as many improvements as I can, and which the community agrees would be good. I'll be starting a thread soon to solicit inputs, although this thread wouldn't be a bad place to start the wish list.

 

As an extra bonus improvement, check out "Add a comment" on a photo.

Paul, I think the problem on the home page is now fixed. It was just a question of being persistent and catching it when the server was not serving it.

Patrick, the problem with the link on the Photo page is now fixed;

thanks for reporting it. Your point out a valid concern about the first stage of submitting a request: it will put quite a load on the server and result in somehat of a delay if the user has a lot of photos. Perhaps we can improve this on the next pass.

Paul, there are actually two different problems. The "Critique" links on the home page were not updated for the new critique format; they should have been but the page is somehow locked and I can't change it; so the changes didn't go in.

 

As a result, if you click on that link, you are seeing the Photo Critique forum presented as a straight "Question and Answer" Forum, which doesn't know how to present the photos correctly. If the home page link were working, this wouldn't be an issue. However, I've fixed that, and I hope later today we can get the home page updated.

Greg, the problem is fixed. Thanks again for reporting it.

Greg, thanks for the bug report. It sounds related to the changes that were made today. I'll fix it right now.

Greg, that is a good suggestion. There has been some discussion about tightening up the graphical "look" of that page, and perhaps we can fit in the critique request text.

Alan, the reason the photos with the highest number of ratings are first is that we wanted to make it attractive to rate and critique photos as well as to submit photos for critique.

 

We would like the critiquers to have a rewarding experience so that they will come back frequently to rate and critique photos. This suggests that the first photos to be presented should be the better ones, so that the critiquers are drawn in and rate more photos.

 

Hopefully, excellent photos will rapidly get their twenty ratings and drop to the bottom of the list, letting other photos take their place. Some photos may take longer to rise than others, but each photo is in the list for 30 days.

 

During the time we were testing this interface, I was delighted to discover how many great photos there are to be critiqued in the Photo Critique Forum. They were somewhat buried. Now, they come up right away.

I am already volunteering around 7 hours per week on some administrative tasks; I just volunteered for some "6" tasks, and I could probably do everything on your list except for "9", if called upon. I wouldn't mind helping to moderate the POW and photo critique threads and to help police the rating system.

I would be more than willing to pay a subscription fee to upload photos for rating and to participate in the rating system, which I basically like.

 

Regarding the Top Photographers list:

(1) being on the list should be based on 5-10 photographs, not 3.

(2) the ranking should be based on the member's top 5 photos, not all, even though all qualifying photographs should be shown when you click on a particular photographer. The rankings currently have as much to do with how the photographer manages his portfolio on photo.net as how good a photographer he or she is. For example, if I winnowed down to my highest-rated 3, I would currently be about 100 places higher.

 

Regarding the ratings:

(1) Just have one rating number. Don't label it "originality" or "aesthetics". Just rate how "good" you think the photograph is.

(2) Provide some guidance on how the ratings should be calibrated.

Should 10% of the photos be rated 1 (or 10)? Or is only 1 photo out of a thousand that bad (or good)? Show the distribution of all the ratings somewhere on the site.

 

Regarding the rating system: document the method for submitting a photo so that it will be rated.

 

Regarding the search by rating feature: Remove the limit of 30, perhaps let people page through them N thumbnails at a time, with N not more than 30. Allow search also by how many times a photograph has been "viewed". Let people classify their photograph by one or more pre-defined keywords (Nature, Street, Portrait, Nude, Landscape, Architecture, Child, Pet, Wildlife, Macro, etc.) and include this as an attribute in the search.

 

Other ideas:

(1) There should be a top-ranked Folders feature.

(2) Let people pick their "Most Interesting/Best" photographers/folders/photos, and provide site-wide search features based on this data. Who is on the "most interesting" list of the most people? Provide access to these lists. Who does Tony Dummett think are the most interesting photographers (if he dares to say).

(3) Let each member have his own Photograph of the Week, Folder of the Week, etc and provide access to this. Use this data to put photographs on the front page of the gallery.

(4) The idea of generating rankings/ratings by asking people to randomly indicate which of 2 photos they prefer is fascinating. It would probably require a lot of comparisons, but the results would be much more accurate.