therese

Personally, I would like this option as well. There are times not only at work but at home (young children around) that having the nudes pop up is a problem. I think it reasonable to allow the user to opt out of nudes by being able to click a box so that the photos that come up are everything but the nude category. It is the same as with all other parts of our society -- movies and even video games - the user is forewarned of content and has the option of viewing it or not. I can imagine that perhaps it is not possible with the current software, but it sure would be a great option. The variable is already there (Nudes in Category) so I doubt it would be difficult to program in this user exercised option. Censorship would be the site deciding that the nudes are unacceptable.

Sorry for the typos in previous post. (not enough coffee yet)

 

"The only problem is that you can view photos that way by category but I suspect that it would not be overly difficult to allow folks to do that as well"

 

Should read

 

The only problem is that you can NOT view photos that way by category but I suspect that it would not be overly difficult to allow folks to do that as well

 

 

There's a few others but they don't change the meaning as much :-)

I liked the idea proposed by Pierre Dumas (of the infamous photos satirizing the rating system): Just add up the total points. Let that be the metric that puts one in the top rated recent photos. Most people tend not to rate photos that they don't like. If someone rates a 3 it won't bring down the average. The best photos tend to have a lot of ratings both anonmynous and not. Even if the anonymnous ratings only would use, giving someone a 3 wouldn't hurt.

 

Take a look at the example below

 

3 3

 

6 6

 

5 5

 

6 5

 

5 6

 

Avg 5 5

 

Total 25 25

 

Vs

 

 

Nasty 3 person doesn't bother rating as his 3 only helps the point total:

 

6 6

 

5 5

 

6 5

 

5 6

 

Avg 5.5 5.5

points 22 22

 

 

The average number of anonmynous ratings used for the rating systems now is about 6 to 8 rates. Such a system would prevent a photo from being so dramatically affected by one or two obviously unfair rates. It would remove the impetus for the rates.

 

Folks can always increase the number of anonmynous rates by asking friends to go rate the photo after showing it to them, so that they get more points, but this is better than negatively rating another photographer's image. With the current limits on the high end ratings, it prevents folks from going hog wild on the opposite end of the rating system. I think this might work out nice.

 

In fact, I have been using the total number of points to find the really high quality images on PhotoNet. It works so much better. Check out that option on the top photo menu. The only problem is that you can view photos that way by category but I suspect that it would not be overly difficult to allow folks to do that as well

I think we can see some of the reasons for 3's in Grayson's response. He holds a very high bar to get anything above a 3. I'd argue that given that 3's are the lowest rating, they should represent works that seriously flawed technically or for which there is no attempt at originality. But each person has their own idea. If I knew this about Grayson, I would be be able to jump up and down and shout if gave me a 5 knowing that in his rating system, that is like a 6 or 7 in someone else's book. Maybe what would help would be to have criquer's rating distribution appear along side their anomynous ratings. This would give people a better idea of how to "weight" and interpret ratings.

 

There is such a wide gamut of photographers on Photonet. Grayson's scale is appropriate for professional and advanced amateurs. It is not appropriate for beginners. Maybe the system would be helped by having 2 tiers of ratings -- professional/amateur. The person submitting the photograph could decide which tier they want it to go in. Then the site could have general guidelines for the rating system for each tier.

This problem is persisting and seems to be random. It is a fine line of empty pixels usually in the lower third of photos.

566 error for AOL browser is fixed!

Problem is still occuring. Looks like it was not the Amazon ads as it looks like the ads have been removed. Something else with the redesign is causing the error.

Addendum..note this is with the IE 6.0 browser (non-AOL version).

Making this undocumented feature better understood would eliminate some of the grumblings that folks have had. I know several folks who have been grumbling that good photos did not make it, had indeed submitted them for rating days after up-loading. Mystery solved. Is there a way to put this on the page that explains how the rating system works?

When some photos load they are loading with an empty band in them. Typically

on shots that are long in the vertical direction. Band appears about 15 to 20

percent up from the bottom. It is white (background) in main window and gray

(page background in thumbnail) window. Band appears when rating anomynously.

566 Response HTTP Version Unsupported

This Web page could not be opened with the specified browser HTTP version.

Please contact the owner of this Web page for more information.

 

AOL verison 9.0, revison 4184.5354 using AOL's version of Microsoft 6.0

 

Any page with the new AMAZON ad seems not to load

 

Everything loads fine when I use IE by itself (that is outside of the AOL

software)

I am a paying member so I don't expect to be paying for huge, distracting ads that take a long time to load. I don't mind the discreet small ads, but the large Amazon panel ad is not acceptable. My subscription is up for renewal soon. I am seriously considering going back to non-paying status which really pains me but the site is going down hill. I am seeing too many technically good photos garnering 3's and 4's which is aggravating the advanced semi pro and pro photographers. Many are talking or have left the site.

 

I was an active member in the AOL user community and watched the AOL user community get destroyed because AOL management allowed the stats that determined ad pricing and placement to take over the user environment and experience. In the short run, AOL made money, in the long run they are tanking. Many people became disgusted with the AOL's decision to stop monitoring chat rooms and message boards, deciding that an abusive and antagonistic membership would generate more hits because everone loves a fight. Well, for a while this is true but eventually the novelty wears off as the arguments become more and more sophormoric and nothing can shock anyone anymore. The mainstay of the AOL brand -- its user community -- soon self destructed and with it went the membership, the brand's good name, and company's bottom line. AOL lost the one unique appeal it had over other providers -- a close knit user community of basically decent folks that created a value-added experience for the user.

 

I wonder when providers of websites for user communities will realize that the quality of the community experience is often the most important value metric for the user. The community is both the backbone and the achilles heel of the "product." In engineering terms, this product has a built in feed-back loop with the user community as the resonance point. If a variable trips this resonance point, it can cause unexpected good or bad consequences. The variable in this case is changes to the user environment. Great care has to be taken to protect the user as the user is an integral part of the user experience which IS the product.

Personally, I've found that the rate recent TRP category is not very useful. It is much better to use the Photographer Sum and the simple average. Both of these give you a better chance of high quality images if you want to peruse the best the site has to offer. The rate recent is really too small a sample size to be useful. Usually it is the first 10 or so folks who see the photo.

 

Right now Cyrus has the top 2 rated photos in the Macro world if one goes to average for one month. Cyrus, to my mind, is in the top echelon of the photographers on the site. Technically his work is dead on. More often then not the photos he submits for ratings are not only technically excellent but artistically as well. He presents a unique, refreshing vision. To suggest that

 

Personally, I would argue that for a person to rate a photo anomously he should not have seen that photo anywhere else on the site and the photographers name should not appear on the photo for anomynous rates. This would put a big dent in the buddy ratings. Someone might start posting a similar looking photo to give friends a heads up or send emails to friends alerting to a posting but let's face it, someone that obsessed with beating the system is going to find a way to cheat no matter what system the owners of the site devise.

 

I'd also keep the practice of showing aonmynous rates as one metric and the totality of all rates as another. I think this gives one the best idea of how a photo is perceived. I'd also argue that the sum of the ratings points (ratings multiplied by the number of ratings received -- e.g. 3*2+4*3+5*9+6*12+7*4 = 163) is another useful metric. Some photos are weak but because they receive few ratings (think most members tend to just skip photos that don't interest them), they can end up beating the average an excellent photo.

 

Another observation is that some of the spurious ratings may come from non-paying members looking to rate as many photos as possible to "earn" the right to post more photos for free.

 

Last and most important observation is that its not worth ruining the community of well-meaning folks over a rating system that will never truly be perfect or just. At some point, I think Tim is right, you just have to ignore the cheaters, thoughtless, mean-spirited, altered state of consciousness (don't laugh, I used to host an online chat -- Friday nights were drunk nights) or even plain, unskilled raters. As the site grows this becomes more important.

 

The best way to keep your blood pressure down and a smile on your face is not to presume that someone woke up wanting to ruin your day. The one person who has serious reason to have a high blood pressure is Catalin Soare who was shot at with real live ammo. Now that is someone who is gunning to ruin your day.

I really enjoy photography so, I don't get burned out when I rate a lot of photos. I just usually don't have the time to do it. I find that my ratings tend to be close to the mean or average for most shots so I think my ratings are generally good. I do try to maintain strict standards especially regarding 6's and 7's. Both have to be printable and publishable as is. The 7's are the one's I'd remember after a week or so. An "Afghan Girl" if you will :-)

Walter..my ideas were more brainstorms...I am not attached to them. It sounds like they have been tried before and found not to work. I just wish that there could be some way of accommodating someone like myself who has a pretty good distribution of ratings because I do try to rate everything and provide helpful critiques and

praise when I think it might be of interest to the photographer.

 

One of my degrees is in writing and one of the most helpful things was to hear how others perceived what I wrote. That is the true beauty of this site: to get feedback from people from all over the world or to view and comment on the work of photographers from all over the world. Even with the gamesplayers, I still think photonet has something special. Let's hope people of good will can learn to ignore the games playing cheaters and enjoy what is good: honest crtiques and feedback like what you just gave me on my post!

Bob,

 

I like your idea of expanding the scale. The range in the skill levels of the photographers is increasing on the site. Having more room at the top would allow for meaningful discrimination amongst the semi-pro's and pros and also a sense of accomplishment for the amateurs and advanced amateurs. This would create a more robust community. To make it work though there would have to be some sort of good and clear set of guidelines "10" means an unforgettable shot..think the Afghan girl, "9" top of the gamut shot -- publishable in the best publications, exceptional technical and creative quality, "8" very good shot, publishable in many media, no technical faults, creatively well conceived but not unique, and so on to where 4 is the normal good snapshot -- reasonably well exposed, no fatal technical flaws, and 3 means fatal technical flaws and lack of articstic merit.

Every now and then I get in the mood to look at what others are doing and I

rate a lot of photographs on Photo Net in one sitting. The new ratings

limitation seems to limit the number of photos to a fixed number irrespective

of the number of photos a person rates. If the software is limiting the number

of 7's or low numbers to a fixed number irrespective of the number of photo's

rated by a person, I think this will discourage raters such as myself who rate

in occasional spurts. It would be better to normalize the number to the total

number of photo's rated. Also there should be some accomodation for folks who

are searching through top photos and therefore their ratings will be skewed to

the high side.

 

Last night I probably rated a good 150 photos anomously. As it turned out some

of the best photographer's posted their work. I also happened to check out the

top rated photos and rated several that I really liked. This coupled with the

large quantity of photos that rated anomously caused me to go over my quota of

7's.

 

I tend to rate whatever comes up and rarely skip photos unless I get too tired

to leave text explanations for lower ratings. The distribution of my ratings

is close to a bell shaped curve. I try to never rate a 3 or 4 without leaving

someone a suggestion as how they could improve their shot and also praising

them on the good points.

 

I think a better way to get around folks who are trying to ruin the ratings

systems by giving out indiscrimate 3's, 4's or 7's is to compare their ratings

against others ratings for the same photo. If they are consistently more than 3

standard deviations off of the mean for a photo, the ratings should not be

counted in the top photo calculations. Calculating this might take more

time, but from what I can tell it looks like the systems stores sufficient data

to do this. Using such a system requires that the person's rating for a

particular photo be compared to the distribution of ratings for a particular

photo. It can not be done by calculating the standard deviation for a person's

ratings. Some folks will only rate photos they like a lot and they would be

prevented from having their ratings count.

 

Another good way to force folks who wish to give ratings below 3 or 7's to

leave text descriptions as why they rated it will also reduce the number of

indiscrimante ratings. These folks will either leave a nice explanation of what

was or was not working or elect not to rate the photo.

 

I'd also recommend putting up a more detailed guideline for ratings to help

maintain consistancy and avoid ratings creep as more inexperienced

photographers come on board.

 

PS...the software for this site is awesome! Thanks for all the effort. It

continues to get better and better!

Tried the rubber band and it worked like a charm. I've been too busy at work to do much photography or fuss with this. Finally finished a major project. Very happy to be able to remove the polarizer for indoor shots

The problem may also be in the area where you scan or store your film if they are different from the area where you process it. When you store your film negatives be sure to use clean, non-shedding and non-reactive materials -- no paper products or cardboard. Archival photo storage media are the best. Clean low outgassing, food grade, microwave safe, plastic bins will also work.

PS -- make sure that you clean your equipment -- especially containers for baths and cover them (clean aluminum foil or food grade polyethylene (saran wrap) would work) or put them into clean air tight bins (food grade high-density polythyelene (triangularrecycling code on bottom says HDPE) or polypropylene (recycle code is PP) when they are not being used.

Looks like there are a fair amount of fibers and lint along with general dust. To keep an area dust free recommend the following:

 

a. Remove or cover or bag textiles (they generate clothing fibers)

 

b. Clean all horizontal surfaces with a tightly woven dampened wipe (microfiber optical cleaning cloth would work well -- cotton or paper will shed fibers) or non-shedding sponge daily when you are doing developing work (do not use cotton wipes as these will shed lots of fibers). Hint: rubbing alcohol will evaporate more quickly than water and will also remove finger prints and other oily residues as well (just be careful not to get it on surfaces or materials that are dyed, have printing or writing inks, that have have adhesives or on surfaces that have lubricants as it may attack or remove these. Clean from top of room to the floor.

 

c. Install a HEPA filter air cleaner in the work area. Do not put it on the floor as it will stir up dirt on the floor. Ideally put it above the clean work area so that filtered air bathes your negatives as they dry. You can often redirect the flow by using clean foil or plastic polyethyene bagging but be careful not to restrict the flow of air (keep bagging size larger than opening in unit) as this may cause unit to overheat.

 

d. To test how effective your efforts are you can do this: put out a cleaned sheet of aluminum foil. To verify that it is clean: turn off lights and inspect with a bright (preferrably white LED) flashlight at a grazing incidence angle (shine light horizontally across the surface and position yourself so that you can view the surface edge on -- don't get bright LED light in your eyes). If your sheet is clean you should see no particles. If you see particles you need to reclean the sheet. Then leave the sheet out for approximately the length of time that you expose your wet film to the environment. Then re-inspect it. If it there are few particles -- you are done. If not, start looking for other sources of particles. If the particles are long and skinny that means that they are from fibers. If the particles are all about the same color and round and small look around the room for something that could have produced them (foam ceiling tiles, paint with rough or powdery surfaces, corroded metals, etc).

 

Other possible sources of particles:

 

a. Air ducts for heating and cooling systems. Buy a furnace or vacuum hepa filter material and tape seal it over the opening of the duct. Do not cut the filter material unless you tape seal the cut edges. This will filter the air coming through that duct.

 

b. Clothing -- avoid wearing clothes made from plush or fuzzy materials when developing. Wear clothes made from tightly woven fabrics

 

c. Materials in the room that have rough surfaces in close proximity to the work area -- for instance, painted cinder block walls, powdery painted walls, or rusted oxidized metals. Cover areas or repaint with a low outgassing (low VOC) epoxy paint (make sure room is well ventilated)or glossy polyurethane paint. Remove all optics or while paint is curing as the paint will often leave a depostion of volatile materials on surfaces.

 

c. If you cannot refinish or remove particle sources, bag them with clean polyethylene bagging (white kitchen trash bags work well as you can see the dirt)

 

d. Install an air ionizer near the area where you dry the film -- this will de-ionize dust particles and reduce electrostatic attraction to the film. (Ever notice how your TV set (regular not LED) has more dust on it then other surfaces -- it's because the glass is charged up by the ion guns that generate the picture.

 

e. Keep pets out of the area

 

f. If your skin is dry and flaking, use moisturizers (ones without silicones (di-methicone) on hands and/or wear gloves or long sleeved clothing. Wear a head scarf or hair net if you happen to have especially bad dandruff.

Works nice in Netscape. There are 12 photos to a page. Layout is nice for viewing.

One thing that is not only really bad form but also potentially financially damaging, is to create a webpage that loads the photo from another site into the webpage. Even though this may be done innocently and with proper crediting, the owner's website carries the burden of the data transfer. Many people have small websites with strict data quotoas, exceeding these quota's can result in painfully high data charges (akin to going over one's cell phone minutes). I had someone do this to me with one of the photo's on the website I created for an organization I belong too. Luckily, I found out about it and was able to get the person to stop (it was an innocent mistake) before I incurred extra charges.

 

One can also cause problems if one puts a link to one of these small, data constrained sites, on a high traffic website. It's always a good idea to ask the owner of a site if its ok to link to them if you anticipate generating more than 50 to 100 hits a month for the site.

Brian,

 

Is it possible to put a little note somewhere on the rate recent window that says something like, "For best image quality and remove compression artifacts click on the photo?" It could be put to the right of the autosubmit, comments buttons and thus not take up vertical space.

Dust could even had been introduced if the store used it to demo.

 

Watch out for your camera bag too. Velcro produces a lot of dust and fibers. Stick with fiber free materials. If you want to check how clean a bag is likely to be, put a piece of scotch tape on each different surface in side. Pull it up and examine it. If it is full of fibers, choose another bag.