A really good example of Bob's issue is on display right now starting on page 8 of the Todays Most Popular. There are a couple of solid pages of shots from an event for Vietnamese Americans held at the University of Texas.
Without critiquing the shots, it's fair to say they are of limited interest as photography per se. It's fairly easy to understand how they got there: participants and their friends and family scanning through all the shots of the event and maybe giving a thumbs up to many of them. And in some sense that does make them very popular.
But is this the kind of popularity SM is looking for?
I thought about Bob's suggestion a little more. Here is a slightly different idea. Rate the popularity of galleries instead of pictures and show the most popular shot in the gallery as the representative of the whole gallery. That won't stop people trying to game the system, but it will stop innocent incidents like this. And it will tend to call attention to more of a photographer's work by showcasing an entire gallery instead of just one shot.
Rutt, thanks for making the clarification and backing the concept of limiting the number of photos per site in the 'today's popular photos' listing.
And, it is great that Andy has brought up the issue internally.
For example, the "Found on Smugmug" section...how do the photos end up in this section? Who chooses them? Are they based on the rankings?
And then there's the "Critique Photo" section. How does one get their own gallery listed in this section to be critiqued?
And can I rank my own photos by clicking thumbs up/down on my own photos? (I'm not saying I want to do that, but I'm just curious if the rankings represent only those ranked by others, or includes the photographers own ranking). It certainly makes being at the top more impressive knowing that a photographer can't rank himself.
About Today's Most Active Keywords - do those keywords represent keywords that were searched. Or do they just represent keywords attached to the most popular photos?
About Browse Categories - are those the most popular categories? Or are they just random categories? And if the most popular, then based on what? The rankings?
About Popular Photo Communities - are those based on number of members in each community so that the communities with the most members will always be on top? I just think it would be nice to see some different communities without actually having to search for a specific comunity. When I click on "See All", I see the same top communities and if I want to see what other communities there might be, I have to actually type a specific name, or view list alphabetically. The problem with that is some of the communities only have 1 member and no galleries. I guess it would be nice if we could filter out those inactive galleries.
Anyway, thanks for your patience with all these questions. Once I started typing...I just kept going..
And can I rank my own photos by clicking thumbs up/down on my own photos? (I'm not saying I want to do that, but I'm just curious if the rankings represent only those ranked by others, or includes the photographers own ranking). It certainly makes being at the top more impressive knowing that a photographer can't rank himself.
About Today's Most Active Keywords - do those keywords represent keywords that were searched. Or do they just represent keywords attached to the most popular photos?
About Browse Categories - are those the most popular categories? Or are they just random categories? And if the most popular, then based on what? The rankings?
They are all or nearly all our cateogories - not custom cats of course.
About Popular Photo Communities - are those based on number of members in each community so that the communities with the most members will always be on top? I just think it would be nice to see some different communities without actually having to search for a specific comunity. When I click on "See All", I see the same top communities and if I want to see what other communities there might be, I have to actually type a specific name, or view list alphabetically. The problem with that is some of the communities only have 1 member and no galleries. I guess it would be nice if we could filter out those inactive galleries.
Photorank question.
If I disable PhotoRank using the Code Andy posted in his thread, is there any need to go through the customization menu in each gallery and click the PR option to "no" ?
I think it's a neat option, but as one other pro user stated, it just does not give me the impression of a professional photog site....
Thanks for all the help....
If I disable PhotoRank using the Code Andy posted in his thread, is there any need to go through the customization menu in each gallery and click the PR option to "no" ?
I think it's a need option, but as one other pro user stated, it just does not give me the impression of a professional photog site....
Thanks for all the help....
If you disable it, via the javascript command, it will be OFF for your whole site, Anthony.
You'll be missing out on 2million eyeballs on the /browse page of www.smugmug.com that can get a chance to see your stuff. I recommend leaving it, or at least making a porfolio gallery enabled. I am already hearing from pros that are getting new business from being found in this manner.
If you disable it, via the javascript command, it will be OFF for your whole site, Anthony.
You'll be missing out on 2million eyeballs on the /browse page of www.smugmug.com that can get a chance to see your stuff. I recommend leaving it, or at least making a porfolio gallery enabled. I am already hearing from pros that are getting new business from being found in this manner.
All the best,
I love the feature. My friends and family are having fun voting on their favorites and the more exposure for me the better!
ThanksShawna
About Popular Photo Communities - are those based on number of members in each community so that the communities with the most members will always be on top? I just think it would be nice to see some different communities without actually having to search for a specific comunity. When I click on "See All", I see the same top communities and if I want to see what other communities there might be, I have to actually type a specific name, or view list alphabetically. The problem with that is some of the communities only have 1 member and no galleries. I guess it would be nice if we could filter out those inactive galleries.
Andy,
I was wondering this myself. By most popluar you mean most looked at or what? And if they stay on top the home page of communities then won't they stay most popular?
Also the search for communities. I though you could type in a search word like Paris but found that you have to know the name of the community which I don't like at all. I wanted to see other communities that may have the word paris in the name (like mine lesphotosdeparis) but I had to go through every letter to browse. Too time consuming. Couldn't there be a most popular and a random section to let people see what other communities are out there.(or search communities by catagory instead of first letter?) I love this idea but it took me too long to find all the communities I wanted to be a member of... and also to determine if a certain community already existed before I started it.
If I see something really terrible listed as most popular I give it thumbs down. It basically cancels out one thumbs up.
That's exactly the type of behavior that will make the system work. If people don't like a photo, it shouldn't be counted as "popular."
SmugMug Product Manager
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Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
edited April 14, 2006
...Sigh...
Sometimes, another mouthful of customization feels like a mouthful of soap or seawater. Bleah!
The photo ranking thing strikes me as a bit too cheesy for both my "fine art" (though I hate calling it by that equally cheesy name) nature photography, AND my wedding / portrait / event photography.
I don't claim to have photos deserving of classy presentation, but classy presentation is what I'm after nonetheless. And subjecting my portfolios to a quick-and-dirty voting system akin to the "hot-or-not" craze is NOT classy.
I know this probably just won't happen, but I'd love to be able to opt "out" of future changes, in that they get introduced to my Smugmug in the "off" setting. Memories of the booger-green text introduction still haunt me...
And I'm still confused about using
displaySmugPopular = false;
...because I could have sworn that I put it into my CSS immediately and while the thumbs are not on my main page anymore, (I did that manually though) I still have the annoying thums up/down button popping up on top of all my photos in my galleries. I manually turned it off for my most important portfolios, but don't have the time to turn it off for the oodles of private event galleries. Hopefully I am wrong and somehow it just didn't get into the CSS, but I can't check that right now because Smugmug is down at the moment.
Wait, Smugmug's back up- yes, I've got that exact CSS in there, but still see the thumbs popping up on my images... So what gives? Do I need a different bit of CSS?
In the end I may embrace it, to be honest. The idea of having my top most popular images known to me is kinda neat. But I'm still turned off by how annoying the button looks when popping up on top of images. Couldn't a photo ranking device be derived from the 1-5 star rating that we already have, which is visually integrated so well? Nobody ever takes the time to give 2-4 stars anyway I bet; at least I know I've left it on 5 stars since the day it was launched. And now that "no rating" is an option, I've left it on that I think...
Maybe Smugmug could do away with the 1-5 star rating system, (since I'm guessing it isn't too heavily used if so much time went into producing the new photo-ranking tool) ...and turn it into an option for commenters to place a thumbs up/down vote when they leave a comment. Optimally, they should be allowed to vote without even leaving comment text. (or filling in the comment security field) This way I could remove the thumbs up/down from on top of my images but still be able to let people know which images are the favorites of the general public...
Now that I've pissed and moaned enough, I must sing praise and admit that I am IN LOVE with the SMUGLOUPE!!! ...I wish Adobe Bridge had this and am jealous of Apple Apeture which does. (Why can't it be on ALL the styles, not just critique?)
Sorry to hear it, Matthew. It's a difficult decision for us whether to enable a feature as default or not when we release it. A huge proportion of our users never go into their control panel or check their messages through our messaging system. So if it had been off by default, they may never have known about it in the first place. It's good to hear your feedback though and we'll make it an even more heated discussion for future features.
By the way, I just checked your customization and noticed that you have the line in your CSS rather than your javascript.
SmugMug Product Manager
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Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
Sorry to hear it, Matthew. It's a difficult decision for us whether to enable a feature as default or not when we release it. A huge proportion of our users never go into their control panel or check their messages through our messaging system. So if it had been off by default, they may never have known about it in the first place. It's good to hear your feedback though and we'll make it an even more heated discussion for future features.
By the way, I just checked your customization and noticed that you have the line in your CSS rather than your javascript.
Javascript? Oops, I thought it was a CSS tag. Looked kinda odd for CSS though. Thanks for the tip.
I'm deeply contemplating whether or not I actually like having the thumbs up/down on all my images, and I guess I'll leave it on for a week and see how things go. If there's one thing I've learned about managing a photo gallery, it's that 99% of the general public pays zero attention to the tiny nuances of aesthetic design that I can be so picky about... Go figure!
Having said that, I'm not surprised to hear that most don't delve into the control panel stuff that much. But still, if in the control panel Smugmug had an option "update launch default on/off", you would do no harm to the people who don't know the option is there. (It would default to "on" of course, and they'd find out about new features the "surprise!" way...) But those of us who ARE picky about new features can change the option since we check our control panel for news updates and private messages regularly...
And usually, when I read about a new feature, I embrace it and praise Smugmug for being so cool. I managed to trick out keywords to be a categorization of all my printable images by size and genre. And I've embraced so many other things, by creating pages dedicated to things like getting a Smugmug referral, ordering prints from Smugmug, teaching visitors about Google Earth's team-up with Smugmug, and so on and so forth... So by and large, for what it's worth I love what Smugmug does and it's my opinion that no other image host even comes close to what Smugmug offers me. If photo ranking can get my photography more publicity, then all I can say is "Sweet!!"
...I just wish the thumbs up/down didn't have to appear right on top of the image...
...I just wish the thumbs up/down didn't have to appear right on top of the image...
Take care,
-Matt-
Viewing habits of visitors are NOT such that they leave their mouse on top of the image all-time, Matt.
If you disable it, via the javascript command, it will be OFF for your whole site.
You'll be missing out on 2million eyeballs on the /browse page of www.smugmug.com that can get a chance to see your stuff. I recommend leaving it, or at least making a porfolio gallery enabled. I am already hearing from pros that are getting new business from being found in this manner. Being found=$$ if you are a pro, no?
Well, I didn't receive permission to nerd out here, but I also didn't receive any response at all to the request, so I suppose I'll take it as a yes.
This feature is great in that it's helping to turn up some really nice shots and also providing some feedback about my own shots (not directly, but I can see which ones are most "popular".) On the other hand, it also shows that the concept of popularity doesn't exactly correspond to the concept of photographic quality or of general interest. For example, there are lots of group shots which don't have much going for them, but which probably appeal to the friends and family of those involved. Any picture, no matter how badly exposed or focused which shows a large breast seems able to get some traction. There are lots of examples of this kind of thing.
Nothing wrong with popularity, I suppose, but maybe we'd like to explore something a little less, err, democratic. So here is an idea I've been thinking about, with apologies to some of the orignal work which ultimately led to the founding of Google and Amazon.
Here's the Amazon approach. I guess this is the "De gustibus non disputum est" idea. OK, so fine, I don't like out-of-focus, badly composed, and badly exposed pictures of girls with big breasts. But I know lots of people do. Why should my taste effect what they see and visa versa. Popularity may not be a relative concept (but anyone with a child in middle school or high school may question this.) But appeal sure is a relative concept. The simple minded approach here is to show each viewer a personalized list of shots. The sort order is determined by considering the viewer's votes and comments with stars and trying to find pictures "popular" with those in best agreement with the viewer. For example suppose I vote yes on pictures X Y and Z and no on A B and C. Now cosider another view who votes yes on A B and C and no on X Y and Z. His vote shouldn't be considered at all, or perhaps even should be reversed when ranking shots to show me. On the other hand a viewer who ranked these shots the same as I did but also liked W would be a strong hint that I should be presented with W.
Implementing this idea releys on a relative concept of Taste. Taste(x,y) is the amount of correspondence between the preferences of viewers x and y. It can be negative or positive. Just for example, if only votes are considered, Taste(x,y) is calculated by considering the photos that both x and y have voted on. Add 1 for each agreement, subtract one for each disagreement. Then use Taste(x,y) as a weight in determining the pictures to show each viewer.
The taste idea has a couple of drawbacks, though I think it would work really well in practice assuming it could be implemented effeciently. The most important drawback is that it is relative. So Andy can't say, "Hey, so and so, your picture made the top of the popular list yesterday." Also, if I am only exposed to stuff that has a close correspondence to my own taste, I will miss the opportunity to see pictures which might surprise me and expand my horizons. In the physical world, that the job authorities such as art critics. So what's authrority?
One appraoch is jsut to rely on the concept of taste. A person's athority is a function of how many others share his taste. In other words, sum a person's taste relative to everyone else, and that's his authority. Then you can weight his votes with his authority.
Another approach is less democratic and objective. Start out with a few "arbitrators of taste". Say, Andy and me, for the sake of example. Then the authority of everyone else is their taste with respect to us. By an iterative process we can remove the initial seeding and allow for a growing and changing authority. Each day we use the previous day's authority to weight the calculation of that day's authority. Soon, the fact that we started out with a few particular people is lost, but presumably the initial high standards will influence the ultimate direction.
OK, I'm done. I tried to hold this back, but when I have to nerd out, well, that's it. Note I wasn't trying to reverse engineer SM's actual implementations here. Nor do I expect that these ideas will be implemented in anything very close to the form I've presented. I'm just hoping they are interesting and perhaps will influence Don & Co as they work on making photo rank more mature.
I am considering shutting off the popularity feature on my site because I simply don't have the visitor volume to push a photo to the smugmug popular photos page on a regular basis, so that stops being an incentive. It seems more likely that other users' ordinary snapshots voted up by large families or groups of friends would end up "popular." The only incentive I would have is to display my own list of of popular photos, and I'm not feeling the need.
The garish red and green hand icons tend to overpower photos with subtle tones and colors, and that's caused me to start turning off PhotoRank in galleries (I might reconsider if I replace the hand icons).
What I have come to realize is that I would greatly prefer that there be a single rating system, with 5 stars, and that when you move the mouse over an image, you see a subtle narrow grayscale rectangle with five stars on it and you can click along the scale to rate. GreenCine.com uses a similar horizontal 10-dot system to rate the movie you just rented.
I would prefer the "five-star click" approach for two reasons. One, it would be consistent with the rating UI in digital asset managers and image browsers, and also with iTunes/iPod, which everybody uses. Two, smugmug would have a single consistent rating system, instead of two systems on different scales (binary thumbs and five stars).
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Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
...The garish red and green hand icons tend to overpower photos with subtle tones and colors, and that's caused me to start turning off PhotoRank in galleries (I might reconsider if I replace the hand icons).
What I have come to realize is that I would greatly prefer that there be a single rating system, with 5 stars, and that when you move the mouse over an image, you see a subtle narrow grayscale rectangle with five stars on it and you can click along the scale to rate. GreenCine.com uses a similar horizontal 10-dot system to rate the movie you just rented.
I would prefer the "five-star click" approach for two reasons. One, it would be consistent with the rating UI in digital asset managers and image browsers, and also with iTunes/iPod, which everybody uses. Two, smugmug would have a single consistent rating system, instead of two systems on different scales (binary thumbs and five stars).
Colourbox, I think I'm in agreement with you. (Though the rating vote mechanism appearing on top of my images is NOT something I'm digging) I'm simply not sure why we need both the 1-5 star rating and the thumbs up/down rating, it seems a bit redundant. And if I could pick a rating system to be able to showcase on my main site and possibly become popular enough to show up on the smugmug.com/browse page, it would be the much more "aesthetically modest" star rating system that doesn't show up on top of my photos.
But Andy, you are also right, indeed it takes a second or so for the rating thing to show up, and most people don't leave their cursor hovering on top of images anyway, cause that detracts from the viewing pleasure too of course. So in the end, I'm leaving it on for now. (And Andy, you're doing a lot of cut-and-paste in your replies on this topic, I noticed. lol...)
Oh and Rutt, you are indeed a nerd. I didn't understand a word you just said lol... But I am a geek/dweeb, so it's okay. There is hopefully still hope for guys like us.
Not that my girlfriend thinks there's hope for guys like us. She and I took "history of photo" together and when we got to the part about how big a tech-dweeb Ansel Adams was, she blurted out "that's SO YOU!"I'll take that as a compliment, for now! -Matt-
I am too tired, to concentrate, so I will just say this, and hope it relates.
I have told no family or friends about that feature. I have a blurb on my dgrin sig, but I didn't know what it was about when I put it there.
However, I have no family or friends voting. At this point I have not had a chance to mention it to them. If I did, they would probably be too busy.
I have noticed when I put my photos up, say on the daily photos, I have noticed that if I just click the green thumb once, my photo shows up on the favorites.
now that is a vote of one, so I am not sure how this works either. I don't sit there and vote more than once. I usually don't vote, on mine, just if the thing pops up in my face.
I have figured that there was little activity for the most part.
I am exhausted. I am trying to keep up with the daily thing............I am not sure how much longer I can do this, and I am going to have to discuss it with someone. I have enjoyed it, until I HAD to follow rules and get a photo every day. I have been up at night til all hours.
When I shoot I come back with a gazillion photos. Why is there not more leeway? It was serving a good purpose for me! Now it is destroying any life I might have had outside of photography.
But for you all who wonder, ONE click will put my photo up with the faves.
Also, all the boards appeared cleaned off this AM. That was after my photos had been up since only about 2 AM.
Well, I didn't receive permission to nerd out here, but I also didn't receive any response at all to the request, so I suppose I'll take it as a yes.
[taste based ranking]
Actually thanks for writing this down. I find your ideas fascinating even though I probably not understood everything in detail.
Matter of fact this would bring up the need to ID every visitor/browser that isn't logged in to a smugmug account with a cookie, but google & co. are already doing this so this shouldn't be much of an issue.
The more I think about it the more I like the idea. We all know it from amazon - when you click on a product they also show you what others bought additionally to it or they give you suggestions on what other books could interest you after you bought a couple of books.
I don't see a reason why this shouldn't work for smugmug. If you don't like the selection smugmug selected from your profile as 'your taste' there should be an option to reset 'your taste' to the standard popular view we have right now from which on you can train 'your taste' again to what you like. With every vote you make the smugmug server further learns about what you like and what you don't like.
Simply awesome and unique idea in terms of photo sharing!!
I hope you'll give this some serious consideration even though it'll be tough to come up with a solution from the programmers standpoint, I guess.
BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
edited April 14, 2006
Very interesting feedback & thoughts. Thanks for nerding out on us, Rutt, and keep doing it.
It's early and we're watching it closely and adjusting as we go, but here's one way I think about it:
If you take your finest shots and exhibit them in a studio, the audience you'll attract will likely be somewhat small but very appreciative of the lighting, composition, colors, etc. They'll walk slowly past each shot and comment to each other about them.
You get to do that here at Digital Grin and online at various photographic forums.
But SmugMug's browse page is a little like taking your shots out of the studio and into the international terminal of the San Francisco airport. The traffic becomes 1000x the traffic in the studio and what catches the eye of the people hustling by is quite different. No longer is it the play of shadows on the steps of the Louvre, but the way the Eiffel Tower looks at night when fireworks are above it.
The hustling masses love great photos too but they don't spend time writing comments, they just want to click when one does something for them.
It's not unlike movies, books, Google ranking, etc. The Academy can give Oscars and it counts for something and should, but how many unwashed walk off the sidewalk and into a theater counts too. In order to harness the taste of the masses, it has to be dead-simple for them to cast their votes.
If you disable it, via the javascript command, it will be OFF for your whole site.
You'll be missing out on 2million eyeballs on the /browse page of www.smugmug.com that can get a chance to see your stuff. I recommend leaving it, or at least making a porfolio gallery enabled.
... turning off popular photo/thumb up/down feature doesn't appear to prevent my photos from appearing on the smugmug browse page. Or I should say, mine is off and I'm still getting web hits from the smugmug browse page whenever I update my galleries. Disabling the popular photo feature does keep my photos off the smugmug popular page and does keep people from voting on them-- but that's okay for me. I'm still getting those coveted 2 million eyeballs on my stuff!
Right, Baldy. So we can't require people do do anything very complex to rank a photo. I think you guys have that part right. But it seems there is room for some nerdly fun in figuring out how to make use of the information that results.
Just for the record, since I was a little verbose, there were really three suggestions:
Relative ranking ala Amazon. Calculate Taste(x,y) the degree to which any two viewers, x and y, vote the same and use this as a weight for votes. This results in a personalized list of shots to show each viewer.
Taste based popularity. Using the Taste relationship as in 1., sum each viewer's Taste with respect to all other viewers. This give the Authority of each viewer, the degree to which others agree with his taste. (Perhaps this should be called conformity.)
Seeded, evolving authority. Start out by designating a few arbitrators of taste. The authority of each viewer is the degree to which he agrees with this group. In subsequent steps (days, perhaps), you can choose new arbitrators from the group with highest authority.
Clearly I've just scratched the surface of possibilities.
It's not unlike movies, books, Google ranking, etc. The Academy can give Oscars and it counts for something and should, but how many unwashed walk off the sidewalk and into a theater counts too. In order to harness the taste of the masses, it has to be dead-simple for them to cast their votes.
..I am exhausted. I am trying to keep up with the daily thing............I am not sure how much longer I can do this, and I am going to have to discuss it with someone. I have enjoyed it, until I HAD to follow rules and get a photo every day. I have been up at night til all hours.
When I shoot I come back with a gazillion photos. Why is there not more leeway? It was serving a good purpose for me! Now it is destroying any life I might have had outside of photography...
I just noticed a little problem with the thumbs deal that could result in some messed up voting, just moving the mouse off of and back over the photo changed it randomly. check out these screen shots.
Comments
Thank you again, Rutt. I already have brought this up internally.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Rutt, thanks for making the clarification and backing the concept of limiting the number of photos per site in the 'today's popular photos' listing.
And, it is great that Andy has brought up the issue internally.
Bob
My questions are about some of the things I find here:
http://www.smugmug.com/browse/
For example, the "Found on Smugmug" section...how do the photos end up in this section? Who chooses them? Are they based on the rankings?
And then there's the "Critique Photo" section. How does one get their own gallery listed in this section to be critiqued?
And can I rank my own photos by clicking thumbs up/down on my own photos? (I'm not saying I want to do that, but I'm just curious if the rankings represent only those ranked by others, or includes the photographers own ranking). It certainly makes being at the top more impressive knowing that a photographer can't rank himself.
About Today's Most Active Keywords - do those keywords represent keywords that were searched. Or do they just represent keywords attached to the most popular photos?
About Browse Categories - are those the most popular categories? Or are they just random categories? And if the most popular, then based on what? The rankings?
About Popular Photo Communities - are those based on number of members in each community so that the communities with the most members will always be on top? I just think it would be nice to see some different communities without actually having to search for a specific comunity. When I click on "See All", I see the same top communities and if I want to see what other communities there might be, I have to actually type a specific name, or view list alphabetically. The problem with that is some of the communities only have 1 member and no galleries. I guess it would be nice if we could filter out those inactive galleries.
Anyway, thanks for your patience with all these questions. Once I started typing...I just kept going..
Make a new gallery, force it to critique style. Leave it alone for a few hours after you've captioned, arranged, etc. Boom.
Most active for the day - these are new photos They are all or nearly all our cateogories - not custom cats of course.
Just like it sounds, our most popular commnities
I hope this helps!
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
If I disable PhotoRank using the Code Andy posted in his thread, is there any need to go through the customization menu in each gallery and click the PR option to "no" ?
I think it's a neat option, but as one other pro user stated, it just does not give me the impression of a professional photog site....
Thanks for all the help....
If you disable it, via the javascript command, it will be OFF for your whole site, Anthony.
You'll be missing out on 2million eyeballs on the /browse page of www.smugmug.com that can get a chance to see your stuff. I recommend leaving it, or at least making a porfolio gallery enabled. I am already hearing from pros that are getting new business from being found in this manner.
All the best,
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I love the feature. My friends and family are having fun voting on their favorites and the more exposure for me the better!
ThanksShawna
www.shawnaseto.com
Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.
Join Smugmug get $5 bucks off!
Andy,
I was wondering this myself. By most popluar you mean most looked at or what? And if they stay on top the home page of communities then won't they stay most popular?
Also the search for communities. I though you could type in a search word like Paris but found that you have to know the name of the community which I don't like at all. I wanted to see other communities that may have the word paris in the name (like mine lesphotosdeparis) but I had to go through every letter to browse. Too time consuming. Couldn't there be a most popular and a random section to let people see what other communities are out there.(or search communities by catagory instead of first letter?) I love this idea but it took me too long to find all the communities I wanted to be a member of... and also to determine if a certain community already existed before I started it.
take it under advisement
thanks
www.shawnaseto.com
Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.
Join Smugmug get $5 bucks off!
www.shawnaseto.com
Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.
Join Smugmug get $5 bucks off!
That's exactly the type of behavior that will make the system work. If people don't like a photo, it shouldn't be counted as "popular."
Sometimes, another mouthful of customization feels like a mouthful of soap or seawater. Bleah!
The photo ranking thing strikes me as a bit too cheesy for both my "fine art" (though I hate calling it by that equally cheesy name) nature photography, AND my wedding / portrait / event photography.
I don't claim to have photos deserving of classy presentation, but classy presentation is what I'm after nonetheless. And subjecting my portfolios to a quick-and-dirty voting system akin to the "hot-or-not" craze is NOT classy.
I know this probably just won't happen, but I'd love to be able to opt "out" of future changes, in that they get introduced to my Smugmug in the "off" setting. Memories of the booger-green text introduction still haunt me...
And I'm still confused about using
displaySmugPopular = false;
...because I could have sworn that I put it into my CSS immediately and while the thumbs are not on my main page anymore, (I did that manually though) I still have the annoying thums up/down button popping up on top of all my photos in my galleries. I manually turned it off for my most important portfolios, but don't have the time to turn it off for the oodles of private event galleries. Hopefully I am wrong and somehow it just didn't get into the CSS, but I can't check that right now because Smugmug is down at the moment.
Wait, Smugmug's back up- yes, I've got that exact CSS in there, but still see the thumbs popping up on my images... So what gives? Do I need a different bit of CSS?
In the end I may embrace it, to be honest. The idea of having my top most popular images known to me is kinda neat. But I'm still turned off by how annoying the button looks when popping up on top of images. Couldn't a photo ranking device be derived from the 1-5 star rating that we already have, which is visually integrated so well? Nobody ever takes the time to give 2-4 stars anyway I bet; at least I know I've left it on 5 stars since the day it was launched. And now that "no rating" is an option, I've left it on that I think...
Maybe Smugmug could do away with the 1-5 star rating system, (since I'm guessing it isn't too heavily used if so much time went into producing the new photo-ranking tool) ...and turn it into an option for commenters to place a thumbs up/down vote when they leave a comment. Optimally, they should be allowed to vote without even leaving comment text. (or filling in the comment security field) This way I could remove the thumbs up/down from on top of my images but still be able to let people know which images are the favorites of the general public...
Now that I've pissed and moaned enough, I must sing praise and admit that I am IN LOVE with the SMUGLOUPE!!! ...I wish Adobe Bridge had this and am jealous of Apple Apeture which does. (Why can't it be on ALL the styles, not just critique?)
Take care,
-Matt-
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
By the way, I just checked your customization and noticed that you have the line in your CSS rather than your javascript.
I'm deeply contemplating whether or not I actually like having the thumbs up/down on all my images, and I guess I'll leave it on for a week and see how things go. If there's one thing I've learned about managing a photo gallery, it's that 99% of the general public pays zero attention to the tiny nuances of aesthetic design that I can be so picky about... Go figure!
Having said that, I'm not surprised to hear that most don't delve into the control panel stuff that much. But still, if in the control panel Smugmug had an option "update launch default on/off", you would do no harm to the people who don't know the option is there. (It would default to "on" of course, and they'd find out about new features the "surprise!" way...) But those of us who ARE picky about new features can change the option since we check our control panel for news updates and private messages regularly...
And usually, when I read about a new feature, I embrace it and praise Smugmug for being so cool. I managed to trick out keywords to be a categorization of all my printable images by size and genre. And I've embraced so many other things, by creating pages dedicated to things like getting a Smugmug referral, ordering prints from Smugmug, teaching visitors about Google Earth's team-up with Smugmug, and so on and so forth... So by and large, for what it's worth I love what Smugmug does and it's my opinion that no other image host even comes close to what Smugmug offers me. If photo ranking can get my photography more publicity, then all I can say is "Sweet!!"
...I just wish the thumbs up/down didn't have to appear right on top of the image...
Take care,
-Matt-
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
Viewing habits of visitors are NOT such that they leave their mouse on top of the image all-time, Matt.
If you disable it, via the javascript command, it will be OFF for your whole site.
You'll be missing out on 2million eyeballs on the /browse page of www.smugmug.com that can get a chance to see your stuff. I recommend leaving it, or at least making a porfolio gallery enabled. I am already hearing from pros that are getting new business from being found in this manner. Being found=$$ if you are a pro, no?
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This feature is great in that it's helping to turn up some really nice shots and also providing some feedback about my own shots (not directly, but I can see which ones are most "popular".) On the other hand, it also shows that the concept of popularity doesn't exactly correspond to the concept of photographic quality or of general interest. For example, there are lots of group shots which don't have much going for them, but which probably appeal to the friends and family of those involved. Any picture, no matter how badly exposed or focused which shows a large breast seems able to get some traction. There are lots of examples of this kind of thing.
Nothing wrong with popularity, I suppose, but maybe we'd like to explore something a little less, err, democratic. So here is an idea I've been thinking about, with apologies to some of the orignal work which ultimately led to the founding of Google and Amazon.
Here's the Amazon approach. I guess this is the "De gustibus non disputum est" idea. OK, so fine, I don't like out-of-focus, badly composed, and badly exposed pictures of girls with big breasts. But I know lots of people do. Why should my taste effect what they see and visa versa. Popularity may not be a relative concept (but anyone with a child in middle school or high school may question this.) But appeal sure is a relative concept. The simple minded approach here is to show each viewer a personalized list of shots. The sort order is determined by considering the viewer's votes and comments with stars and trying to find pictures "popular" with those in best agreement with the viewer. For example suppose I vote yes on pictures X Y and Z and no on A B and C. Now cosider another view who votes yes on A B and C and no on X Y and Z. His vote shouldn't be considered at all, or perhaps even should be reversed when ranking shots to show me. On the other hand a viewer who ranked these shots the same as I did but also liked W would be a strong hint that I should be presented with W.
Implementing this idea releys on a relative concept of Taste. Taste(x,y) is the amount of correspondence between the preferences of viewers x and y. It can be negative or positive. Just for example, if only votes are considered, Taste(x,y) is calculated by considering the photos that both x and y have voted on. Add 1 for each agreement, subtract one for each disagreement. Then use Taste(x,y) as a weight in determining the pictures to show each viewer.
The taste idea has a couple of drawbacks, though I think it would work really well in practice assuming it could be implemented effeciently. The most important drawback is that it is relative. So Andy can't say, "Hey, so and so, your picture made the top of the popular list yesterday." Also, if I am only exposed to stuff that has a close correspondence to my own taste, I will miss the opportunity to see pictures which might surprise me and expand my horizons. In the physical world, that the job authorities such as art critics. So what's authrority?
One appraoch is jsut to rely on the concept of taste. A person's athority is a function of how many others share his taste. In other words, sum a person's taste relative to everyone else, and that's his authority. Then you can weight his votes with his authority.
Another approach is less democratic and objective. Start out with a few "arbitrators of taste". Say, Andy and me, for the sake of example. Then the authority of everyone else is their taste with respect to us. By an iterative process we can remove the initial seeding and allow for a growing and changing authority. Each day we use the previous day's authority to weight the calculation of that day's authority. Soon, the fact that we started out with a few particular people is lost, but presumably the initial high standards will influence the ultimate direction.
OK, I'm done. I tried to hold this back, but when I have to nerd out, well, that's it. Note I wasn't trying to reverse engineer SM's actual implementations here. Nor do I expect that these ideas will be implemented in anything very close to the form I've presented. I'm just hoping they are interesting and perhaps will influence Don & Co as they work on making photo rank more mature.
The garish red and green hand icons tend to overpower photos with subtle tones and colors, and that's caused me to start turning off PhotoRank in galleries (I might reconsider if I replace the hand icons).
What I have come to realize is that I would greatly prefer that there be a single rating system, with 5 stars, and that when you move the mouse over an image, you see a subtle narrow grayscale rectangle with five stars on it and you can click along the scale to rate. GreenCine.com uses a similar horizontal 10-dot system to rate the movie you just rented.
I would prefer the "five-star click" approach for two reasons. One, it would be consistent with the rating UI in digital asset managers and image browsers, and also with iTunes/iPod, which everybody uses. Two, smugmug would have a single consistent rating system, instead of two systems on different scales (binary thumbs and five stars).
Colourbox, I think I'm in agreement with you. (Though the rating vote mechanism appearing on top of my images is NOT something I'm digging) I'm simply not sure why we need both the 1-5 star rating and the thumbs up/down rating, it seems a bit redundant. And if I could pick a rating system to be able to showcase on my main site and possibly become popular enough to show up on the smugmug.com/browse page, it would be the much more "aesthetically modest" star rating system that doesn't show up on top of my photos.
But Andy, you are also right, indeed it takes a second or so for the rating thing to show up, and most people don't leave their cursor hovering on top of images anyway, cause that detracts from the viewing pleasure too of course. So in the end, I'm leaving it on for now. (And Andy, you're doing a lot of cut-and-paste in your replies on this topic, I noticed. lol...)
Oh and Rutt, you are indeed a nerd. I didn't understand a word you just said lol... But I am a geek/dweeb, so it's okay. There is hopefully still hope for guys like us.
Not that my girlfriend thinks there's hope for guys like us. She and I took "history of photo" together and when we got to the part about how big a tech-dweeb Ansel Adams was, she blurted out "that's SO YOU!"I'll take that as a compliment, for now!
-Matt-
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I have told no family or friends about that feature. I have a blurb on my dgrin sig, but I didn't know what it was about when I put it there.
However, I have no family or friends voting. At this point I have not had a chance to mention it to them. If I did, they would probably be too busy.
I have noticed when I put my photos up, say on the daily photos, I have noticed that if I just click the green thumb once, my photo shows up on the favorites.
now that is a vote of one, so I am not sure how this works either. I don't sit there and vote more than once. I usually don't vote, on mine, just if the thing pops up in my face.
I have figured that there was little activity for the most part.
I am exhausted. I am trying to keep up with the daily thing............I am not sure how much longer I can do this, and I am going to have to discuss it with someone. I have enjoyed it, until I HAD to follow rules and get a photo every day. I have been up at night til all hours.
When I shoot I come back with a gazillion photos. Why is there not more leeway? It was serving a good purpose for me! Now it is destroying any life I might have had outside of photography.
But for you all who wonder, ONE click will put my photo up with the faves.
Also, all the boards appeared cleaned off this AM. That was after my photos had been up since only about 2 AM.
ginger
Matter of fact this would bring up the need to ID every visitor/browser that isn't logged in to a smugmug account with a cookie, but google & co. are already doing this so this shouldn't be much of an issue.
The more I think about it the more I like the idea. We all know it from amazon - when you click on a product they also show you what others bought additionally to it or they give you suggestions on what other books could interest you after you bought a couple of books.
I don't see a reason why this shouldn't work for smugmug. If you don't like the selection smugmug selected from your profile as 'your taste' there should be an option to reset 'your taste' to the standard popular view we have right now from which on you can train 'your taste' again to what you like. With every vote you make the smugmug server further learns about what you like and what you don't like.
Simply awesome and unique idea in terms of photo sharing!!
I hope you'll give this some serious consideration even though it'll be tough to come up with a solution from the programmers standpoint, I guess.
Thanks,
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
Ginger, what exactly are you losing sleep over?
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
It's early and we're watching it closely and adjusting as we go, but here's one way I think about it:
If you take your finest shots and exhibit them in a studio, the audience you'll attract will likely be somewhat small but very appreciative of the lighting, composition, colors, etc. They'll walk slowly past each shot and comment to each other about them.
You get to do that here at Digital Grin and online at various photographic forums.
But SmugMug's browse page is a little like taking your shots out of the studio and into the international terminal of the San Francisco airport. The traffic becomes 1000x the traffic in the studio and what catches the eye of the people hustling by is quite different. No longer is it the play of shadows on the steps of the Louvre, but the way the Eiffel Tower looks at night when fireworks are above it.
The hustling masses love great photos too but they don't spend time writing comments, they just want to click when one does something for them.
It's not unlike movies, books, Google ranking, etc. The Academy can give Oscars and it counts for something and should, but how many unwashed walk off the sidewalk and into a theater counts too. In order to harness the taste of the masses, it has to be dead-simple for them to cast their votes.
... turning off popular photo/thumb up/down feature doesn't appear to prevent my photos from appearing on the smugmug browse page. Or I should say, mine is off and I'm still getting web hits from the smugmug browse page whenever I update my galleries. Disabling the popular photo feature does keep my photos off the smugmug popular page and does keep people from voting on them-- but that's okay for me. I'm still getting those coveted 2 million eyeballs on my stuff!
Portland, Oregon Photographer Pete Springer
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Just for the record, since I was a little verbose, there were really three suggestions:
Clearly I've just scratched the surface of possibilities.
Ginger ... gurrrrl u are too funny
your post had me lol
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture1.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture 2.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture 3.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture 4.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture 5.pdf
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
Your links are no good, but that's ok, we know what you mean
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The links are no good because it chopped the spaces in the file names. So you've seen that one already?
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
Seen it? I see thumbs all day long. They're working great.....
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Is both pointed down or up working great?
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture1.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture2.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture3.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture4.pdf
http://mail.edgefield.k12.sc.us/jjw/picture5.pdf
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com