| Author |
Message |
|
|
# Posted: 16 Sep 08 19:35 - Edited by: zerega
No way limiting the avalanche of images that is a small trickle compared to flickr with 1500 to 3000 images per minute.
Woophy needs much more photos, not less. Otherwise it mayl be a small dubious sect of 80 aficionados, not nearly enough to support this site.
And how to cope with this avalanche? Flickr and panoramio (not yet so much) are using a clever system of at least a dozen factors that determine how interesting or popular an image might be. Comments and views contribute only a TINY part to that factor, because in all photo sites a fair share of the commenting usually tend to be self congratulatory love-ins.
Photos from people not able or willing to take part in this socializing thing are left out going largely unnoticed. There are lots of excellent photos left in the dark in flickr and panoramio, too, but especially flickr does an extremely good job in sorting images when you are looking for something specific and do keyword searches to find it.
Looks like the rating thingy is asking too much of most people's ability of evaluating images. It did work wonderful in woophy's first year with an average rating between 3 and 4 but went astray with the bad and completely unnecessary habit telling everybody how you rated in leaving a comment (of course only a fiver - or did anybody see someone coming up with a <2> comment? And, funnily, some 20 percent are leaving the rating only as a comment without doing the rating thing itself) Anyway since the rate-comment practice habit unfurled, the system went bang, acompanied by occasional downrating incidents. A pity, because in 2005 browsing through the map was extremely rewarding, with mostly the best images being displayed first. That attracted lots of interesting photographers, many of them loosing interest since the dawn of the daft rate-comment age.
Maybe a best-of button like in Panoramio would be better. If you like the image, just press the button and your vote counts toward the combined interestingness factors of the image compared to others of that city. And for f***s sake, don't leave a comment telling everybody that you just pressed this button. And don't display the interestingness factor. Just display the good photos prominently.
Come to avalanches, did you notice the whole populace of Mexico is currently subscribing to woophy? Is there an important blog or newspaper article about woophy recently?
|
|
|
# Posted: 16 Sep 08 23:24
great suggestion Coffeejunkie, the best so far in my eyes. no rating and a gallery, where a picture can be suggested by a member and the members can vote "yes or no".
I like the idea of a gellery also very much. Where all pictures apear that are suggested by members.
But I'm not sure about loosing the rating and especially not of the comments. On this point I agree with Jan.
|
|
|
# Posted: 17 Sep 08 08:32
@ M.Knegt: it is not about getting rid of the comments, just the rating.
as i wrote, there is i believe no solution that does absolute justice. and of course those who are most active will probably be rated higher on average since with those many pictures you need to make someone else aware that you are even around. "wave your hand and yell 'hello' in a mass of people" so to speak.
the gallery will not compensate that completely, yet a picture one has stumbled across that otherwise would be lost in the turmoil could come to the surface.
there have been threads here recommending pictures of people that nobody seems to have noticed. combine that with the general idea of the unofficial contest and you have your gallery.
|
|
|
# Posted: 17 Sep 08 11:33
As I wrote before almost all the commentators in this thread are not regular commentators and / or raters, so I do not qualify them to represent the general opnion of woophians!
There is within woophy a certain division between regular (daily) raters/commentators and authors on the forum. Besides in general those forum visitors mainly limit their activities in woophy to contests and they are also active on similar photosites. The only point I want to make is : Please be careful in accepting the outcome of this discussion on the forum as representative for the community as a whole!
Every suggestion to change the present situations should imho be accepted by the new representative member board!
|
|
|
# Posted: 17 Sep 08 11:59
@jan: i understand your concern and i share it. however, one of the things that makes woophy special in my eyes is, that the members actually play an active role in shaping this website. i haven't found many communities like that.
now the platform to voice your ideas, critiques, suggestions,... is the forum. and as always, there are some who are more active and some who are less. Of course you then have the trouble that you only know the opinion of those who use the forum. Yet you do not know what the "silent" majority thinks. are they happy with the way it is? are they maybe using woophy as a kind of free webspace for their pics? do they have concerns but do not voice them in the forum for whatever reason?
still since this website is not a wholly democratic community the woophy staff and founders still decide what will be changed and what not. they probably have to take more into account than just our opinions. yet i guess these discussions can be fruitful in the sense to get new ideas - with woophy still being in control 
|
|
|
# Posted: 17 Sep 08 17:38 - Edited by: Martin de Rijk
Jan, not everyone is in the fortunate situation to have time enough to have a look at the pictures on a daily basis. When I speak for myself, besides my time consuming job there are other activities and Woophy is just one of them. This doesn't mean I don't conceirn about the site, or that I don't want to spend time commenting and rating. I just do it when I can find the time and I must say lately, due to the amount of uploads I find it a bit boring and sometimes even a waste of time. I try to pick my favorites and add comments when I feel like it.
As far as I can see most of the posters in this topic are well known members with a great history of contributions to this site for over several years.
Please be careful when you talk about representative members.
|
|
|
# Posted: 18 Sep 08 00:36 - Edited by: Paulo Calafate
eu mato-me a rir com esta treta toda 
|
|
|
# Posted: 18 Sep 08 00:45
I don't agree with ratings although I try to encourage woophists who I find good or very good to go on working well. I think that comments should be more complete than nice, beautiful or interesting. I know it takes time but it's much more constructive for us and really shows woophists appreciate what they see.
As we have the so-called favourite choices, there should be a Gallery for the best as some suggest.
Not that I consider very important to win whatever it is for something we do as a hobby or art.
|
|
|
# Posted: 18 Sep 08 10:49
I agree Martin and I have the same beheaviour as he has, for me no time consuming job but a life besides woophy. and Jan, most people in this forum are as Martin pointed out longtime members so they deserve respect for their contribution.
|
|
|
# Posted: 18 Sep 08 17:42 - Edited by: joris
To organize a growing database of over 500,000 pictures some kind of selection or ranking
method is crucial. The reason this is necessary is because we like people to see the most attractive pictures first. In another forum topic there are complains about the lack of differentiation between loads of not so attractive pictures and some attractive pictures.
Since we believe that the community should decide which pictures are ‘not so attractive’ or ‘more attractive’ we (are going to) use your input (more often) in the organisation.
Your input is;
- the average rating
- the amount of rates
- the amount of views
- the amount of comments
- the resolution of the image
- the amount of times a picture is added to favourites
- the average rating of a portfolio (less good photo’s is better than a lot bad pictures)
- the amount of times a photographer is added as favourite
We want to use all this input more in the future to present you the true gems of our database.
We (being very experienced) know that even the best system is still a sorry excuse for a fair rating system. But as zerega remarks correctly in the past we had a very poor rating system but still Woophy was a place where it looked as if only extremely beautiful pictures where uploaded (which was not the case) . In the past I got many compliments about the high quality of the photos on the site.
So please understand.
- Woophy will always have a system which ranks the database.
- Woophy members will always be the ones who give the input for this system
- This system will never be completely fair (unless we invent an automatic photo judging machine)
- If you don’t need a rating system for your own picture just ignore the ratings.
|
|
|
# Posted: 18 Sep 08 18:40
Sounds good Joris, together with a upload limit makes me smile 
|
|
|
# Posted: 18 Sep 08 19:55
Now that we have received an answer from Joris, I think it is time to close the discussion. Thanks to all.
|
Online now: Guests 2, Members 0
