mmarengo

Assuming that we really want the Top Rateted Pictures page, the drive by rating interface

linked by the first page cannot be totally abolished, since most of the ratings come from

it. I totally agree though that those ratings tend to promote "average" pictures that appeals

to the general public (pretty landscapes, pretty girls, etc...) and miss many interesting

photos. It is also essentially useless as a source of feedback, because the critique requests

do not appear on the form (unless one actually clicks on the photo) and is very rare to get

comments on specific questions through this interface. Finally I agree that one aspect of

the problem is that the interface indiscriminately shows pictures from all categories.

 

To summarize, I propose the following:

 

1) only photos submitted for critique (critique requests) are rotated in the interface. This

way all new photos will have a category (I think Brian already said that this may be

implemented in the near future). Older photos will not have a category but they don't go in

the rating interface anyway.

 

2) the link on the front page going to the "all categories" interface is removed, leaving in

its place a link to a page with the list of links to the "category based" interfaces.

 

3) the text of the critique request is added to the interface above the rating/comment box,

so that the there is some chance of getting meaningful feedback from the interface (at

least the few people leaving a comment knows what the question was).

 

I believe these are relatively simple changes that may improve the utility of the interface.

Yes, I also gave up using the rating interface for the same reason. And I agree that the present interface is mostly used by people new to PN, as the 4 rates that I usually get from the interface are probably the less useful I ever get on my photos (sometime ranging from 3 to 6 on the same photo, without comments...).

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I agree that if we want to make the interface useful in providing feedback to the people who want it, we need to reduce the total amount of photos in the queue (to have them stay longer -more than 4 rates/3 days- and thus get a more equilibrate set of "first ratings"). Ratings are not that useful as feedback, but are used for the top pages, which in turn are the only way for new photographers to have their photos seen and thus receive feedback. We also need to weed out the photos that are not posted to receive feedback at all (rolls of family photos to show to grandma and not to fellow photo-netters, or snapshots intended to be linked for an EBay auction).

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I think Brian in another thread already proposed new criteria for the selection of the photos going into the queue. Whatever are those criteria, I think they should be <b>opt-in</b>.

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Using the request for critique queue is certainly a good idea, but probably not enough, as maybe is too much restrictive (in terms of number of photos per unit time). Also there are members that wants critiques but tends to be upset by rates and may prefer to avoid the rating machine (or maybe they post the photo only for asking some technical advice, knowing that the photo has other problems, and don't want to have a comment: its blurred (2/3), as they already know that).

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An alternative/addition can be to put back the "for rate" checkbox in the photo upload page, but with a different meaning than before. You check the box if you want to <i>send the photo into the rating queue</i>, but that does not prevent the photo to be rated if somebody goes directly to the photo page and rates it. I remember the original (opt-out) checkbox was removed because it was creating too much load on the server (had to be checked each time the photo was accessed, right?). In this opt-in format for the queue, the checkbox status will be used only once at submission to know if the photo should be added or not to the rating queue, and then ignored. Since it is opt-in, one can expect clueless first time users will not check it for all their new baby roll. Some limit in the number of photos to be inserted into the queue can also be set (e.g. 5 new photos in the queue each day, etc...).

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I don't think that putting by default all subscribers new photos in the queue (I think that was also proposed at some time by Brian) would work, because of the EBay images (there is one subscriber user that puts hundreds of wrist-watches images, and another Star Trek memorabilia photos... ok for me since they pay, but we don't want to rate that!).

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Finally, it would be very useful to change the name of the interface from "rate recent photos" to "critique recent photos". Its just basic psicology but may help new users to understand that PN is more about constructive criticism, than the rating game. In this sense, it will be useful to have written in the interface, above the photo, the eventual request for critique. It is annoying to submit a photo for critique, asking specific questions, and then have the question ignored except for the 4 rating interface rates and, if you are lucky some comment that has nothing to do with the critique specific request.

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Of course this will not solve the rating game problems, but maybe would restore some usability to a feature of the site that right now is not helping at all in selecting the photos for the top pages.

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Just my 2 cents...

Bob, I think Carl is referring to the fact that all downloaded photos for the first three days goes into the "rating mill" interface <a href="http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/">http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/</a>, and are thus subjected to critiques and ratings even if not explicitly requested by the photographer. Maybe we should pass through the photocritique interface only the photos whose critique has been explicitly requested (maybe leaving them in the queue for a longer period of time). I think this would be a double win. Photos with a critique request will get more exposure and comments, while photographers that use PN only as a web hosting service, or that for some reason don't want their photos rated/commented, will not be bothered by unwanted attention.

About te origional proposal from Brian:

 

1) Remove comment requirement for 1,2 and 7? Maybe, the system is abused anyway, I have seen lots of photo that have "." as comment for a 7, and no comments for 1 or 2 (comment removed after the rate... I even got a comment that was "zzz").

 

2) That would probably just reduce the number of comments. True we can easily live without 1 word comments, but if the comment requirement for 1,2 and 7 rates is removed, these short comments will probably go away with it. If not, they are harmless, but I don't think that a lower limit in the number of words will make people think harder (they will just avoid to leave a comment at all, which is fine).

 

3) I see this difficult to implement with success. If somebody wants to cheat and give a 7 to his/her friends, would just have to go through the rating interface and give some random (or not well-thought rates) to the first 20 photos to get the right for another 7. Without a double blind system we will have always somebody to do some effort to cheat (people even creates multiple identities...). To implement this system will not prevent cheats, but will harm other people getting meaningless rates by somebody trying to reach the quorum for another 7.

 

The problem for me is that we are too much obsessed in the bell rate. Nature not always has a gaussian statistics. I am a physicist: if I try to apply gaussian statistics to all physical problems I have to solve, I would be bound to a professional disaster. Clearly the PN society shows a statistics that is not characterized by a bell curve, having a skewed average value. We shouldn't try to change the statistics of the physical phenomenon to please our wishes: a better approach is to understand what kind of statistical law the phenomenon is following, and leave with it. So I would say: no point in trying to force people to give 1 and 2 if they don't want to.

 

If I remember correctly, the main reason for reforming the rating system is that the average rates have changed with time, and old photos have disappeared from the top pages. If this is the main concern, just add some options in the top pages to show the top photos in given periods of time ("top 1999 photos", "top 2000 photos" etc...). These pages will have to be computed only once, after the year has ended, so can be served as static pages and will not be a load on the servers. Is it difficult to implement this feature (that I think was already proposed several times)?

 

Bob's idea of removing the numeric labels to the ratings is also good. You still use the numbers to do the average, but in the rating forms just write the bad, good, etc word. Then, instead of writing the numeric average just write the word associated to the numeric average. So 5.12 will be "good", 5.75 and 5.86 will be both "very good" and maybe we will be less obsessed with the ratings, if we don't see too many decimals. This should also be easy to do, as it only requires to change the templates for the rating interfaces (removing the number labels), and then to write a little script that converts back the numbers in words.

 

Finally, about the double-blind system. I like it a lot, even though it will mean quite a lot of work from Brian. It will also give more reasons for people to subscribe, which is good. I will be happy to submit photo anonymously if that gives me the chance to have them posted into a place where I have more chances of feedback, without having to complete (for visibility space) with the snapshots of the users that are not interested in critiques, but that only use PN as a web hosting place to show family photos to friends. If this system is implemented, though, an initial period will be necessary to allow people to adapt their rating habits to conform to the rule to become anonymous raters (I bet a lot of the people writing in this thread have given each other much more that 10 ratings ;-) I guess that what we want to avoid is not the maximum number of rates to allow from any photographer to each peer, but their distributions (e.g. no more that 20% of the rates to a single friend). If somebody has given 5,000 rates, who cares if 20 of them go to the same good and very productive photographer? But you cannot be an anonymous rater if you gave 20 out of 50 rates to the same friend. You get the idea, it's not the absolute number, but the percentage.

 

That said, I appreciate the effort that Brian is doing to improve the system, and I think we should all thank him for this. Maybe it would also be a good idea to post a link to this thread from the main page in the left column, so that more people will notice it and participate.

I disagree with Bob. As long as the person who replace an image clearly states the changes made, it is useful to preserve the thread of discussion leading to the changes. It is often educative for the person posting the image, and for other members of the site. When I leave a comment to somebody's photo suggesting the change, I often come back to the same page to see the reaction, and look at the result if my suggestion is taken into consideration. If the page is gone, and the changed photo has been downloaded as a new post, then the link is lost and I wouldn't know where to look.

Brian, thanks for the temporary fix, which at least solves the problem for the photos that where already updated. I understand the importance of the cache, and I have noticed the improvement of performance, after a period in which the site seemed to be sluggish. Let us know when you find a way to solve the problem. Thanks.

Quite scary... this explains why somebody complained about the fact that after an attemped update the photo seemed to be degraded. At this point it seems to be quite a serious bug. Brian, is there a way to force the purging of the cache for individual photos, once a particular event takes place (in this case, the submission of the edit photo form)? If not maybe you want to set up a cron job clearing the whole cache in a moment of low traffic (e.g. during the night), and put a warning about this in the edit photo form (not ideal, but better than nothing)...

Bernhard, yes, you are right. Right now it is impossible to update fotos. I opened a thread on this last week (<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004TbG">http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004TbG</a>), but apparently Brian didn't have time to investigate or replay. Right now I don't think that there is a solution, except to delete/re-upload the photo, and losing all the comments/rates in the process (which is something that you may not want to do).

Alberto, yes, I was also able to do the update succesfully a few months ago... But now it does not appear to work anymore. I'm wondering if Brian can help us a little with this...

A few weeks ago there was a thread about problems in updating old

photos via the "edit image info" function. The problem was that when a

new image was downloaded through the form, the old image was not

replaced. Brian at the time was sick, I think, but it was mentioned

that this was connected with the cashing of the old image on the

system, and the new one would appear after some time.

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I think that the problem is in fact more serious and should be treated

as a bug. The images that I tried to replace are still unchanged after

a couple of weeks. Today I tried to replace again one of them, but

still without luck. If it is a cashing problem, then I think the

expire time is too long (maybe it is reset each time somebody look at

the photo or its thumbnail, as I'm doing to check if it has updated?).

If this is the case, maybe the solution is to force a reset of a

cashed image if a new file is uploaded.

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In any case, as it is now, it is impossible to replace a photo with an

updated one, short of attaching the new version to a comment (not

ideal because it is a waste of space and bandwith, and does not affect

the thumbnail view), or posting it as a new image (interrupting the

comments thread). Or maybe there is a better way, other than the "edit

image info" function, and I'm missing it.

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Example of two photos I tried to update, in case somebody can check

what is going on on the photo database:

<ul>

<li><a

href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1073840">http://www.photo.net/photo/1073840</a>

<li><a

href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1188757">http://www.photo.net/photo/1188757</a>

</ul>

Thanks in advance for any help!

If the chashing system works as I suppose, the timeout necessary for the photos to be refreshed is reset each time the photo is requested for view. This means that, since we are checking constantly our portfolio to see if the photo is updated and to look for comments, the photos will never be really replaced. If this is what happens, the solution would be to forcefully purge the chash for each photo which is updated.

 

For the moment I posted the updated version of my photo attached at a comment, which I will remove when/if the bug is corrected.

I fully agree with Marc, and I think that a daily limit of 1 photo plus a weekly limit of 2-3 photos would be preferrable. Higher the chances of getting feedback, higher the utility of this site. It may be extreme such low limit, but I noticed that posting a photo during the weekend effectively guarantees not to get any feedback, because the chances of having it lost in the flood of the weekend posts is very high. On the other hand, if I post later in the week (Thursday or Friday) I usually get some feedback. Limiting the ability to swamp the photo rating/comments queue would help to give visibiliy to more people. It would also improve the general quality, forcing everybody to think before posting three photos of the same cat. And if people is less concerned on their own photos, maybe they will spend more time looking at the others portfolio, which is another way of learning.

Temporary in which sense? It is a temporary bug, or it is temporary in the sense that the cashed copy is not replaced for a certain amount of time, and one has to wait for that time to expire? I'm asking because I did the replacement three or four days ago, and I'm still seeing the older version. Thanks.

I have the same problem. I have even tried to look at the photo from another computer, just to be sure that it is not a refreshing problem with the browser. I succesfully updated photos in the past, but at least since the beginning of this week it does not seem to work anymore.