Options

Announcing PhotoRank

123457

Comments

  • Options
    smhs.imagessmhs.images Registered Users Posts: 137 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    Baldy wrote:
    Very interesting feedback & thoughts. Thanks for nerding out on us, Rutt, and keep doing it. :D

    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.

    I'm with you on this. As much as I appreciate the feedback and or compliments from the pros I equally appreciate that ordinary people enjoy my work. Last time I checked regular people hung art on their walls too!Wicked.gif
    Shawna
    www.shawnaseto.com

    Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.

    Join Smugmug get $5 bucks off!
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    JamesJWeg wrote:

    JamesJWeg wrote:
    Is both pointed down or up working great?

    James.


    No - not great - thanks James - didn't understand you at first, sorry. I see two up thumbs in pdf1, #s 2,3 look normal, #s 4 and 5 look wrong.

    What browser, when was this, etc? We've not had a report or seen this from anyone yet. Details, please?

    Thanks!
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    Andy wrote:
    No - not great - thanks James - didn't understand you at first, sorry. I see two up thumbs in pdf1, #s 2,3 look normal, #s 4 and 5 look wrong.

    What browser, when was this, etc? We've not had a report or seen this from anyone yet. Details, please?

    Thanks!

    That is firefox on a mac, however, it works right on other sites, maybe his java is screwed.

    James.
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    JamesJWeg wrote:
    That is firefox on a mac, however, it works right on other sites, maybe his java is screwed.

    James.

    Probably. FF 1.0, 1.5, 1.52 ?
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    Andy wrote:
    Probably. FF 1.0, 1.5, 1.52 ?

    1.5.0.1


    James.
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    JamesJWeg wrote:
    1.5.0.1


    James.

    We'll keep an eye out. This is the first such report that I'm aware of. Thanks.
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    Based on the past I don't expect this will happen, but is there any chance that the thumbs deal could be tweeked such that those of us who are highly annoyed by the gawdness of it but like that idea could have a non-obtrusive link much like the comments link? Maybe this could be done with some java? I like the idea of photoranking, but the thumbs just look awful IMHO.

    James.
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    JamesJWeg wrote:
    Based on the past

    I don't know what this means, James.
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    Andy wrote:
    I don't know what this means, James.

    Guess I'm still sore about the color choices pushed on us. That was in referance to the fact that IMHO SM has abandoned the idea of a classy looking interface by default. I know I've shared my pennys on this many times before and am always told that I am the only one with such views. However with all my family, friends and other SM users I know, I fail to find even one person that likes the wild colors that SM has started useing. Last night I was sitting down with another pro user at his studio helping him with some SM stuff, I asked him cold (no input as to my views) about how well he liked the photorank thumbs, his response was simply "annoying". I find it hard to believe that SM would have ever entertained the idea of placing some wild colored icons ON TOP of everyones photos wihtout thier choice. The whole idea of do it by default and force people to learn how to disable it if they don't like it, is a very poor way of doing biz IMHO, SM has a few users that I know of who are unhappy with the colors but lack the know-how to remove them. These are people who like me were drawn to SM for it's ease of use and classy look without having to learn some code to have a great looking page, then SM changed this without warning.

    James.
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    JamesJWeg wrote:
    Guess I'm still sore about the color choices pushed on us.

    Pushed? lol3.gif

    We try to make it easier to change colors. We don't force a single color on ANYONE. All levels of account holder can use themes, and power and pro users can style to their heart's content. And we do it for them, too, when asked.
    JamesJWeg wrote:
    IMHO, SM has a few users that I know of who are unhappy with the colors but lack the know-how to remove them. These are people who like me were drawn to SM for it's ease of use and classy look without having to learn some code to have a great looking page, then SM changed this without warning.

    headscratch.gif SmugMug Classic = no colors. How hard is that? ne_nau.gif
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    JamesJWeg wrote:
    I know I've shared my pennys on this many times before and am always told that I am the only one with such views. However with all my family, friends and other SM users I know, I fail to find even one person that likes the wild colors that SM has started useing. Last night I was sitting down with another pro user.

    Thanks for the valuable input. We listen to all of it. We do have many many many subscribers.

    Good thing we make it easy to have it off, for those that don't want it, hmm?
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    Andy wrote:
    Pushed? lol3.gif

    We try to make it easier to change colors. We don't force a single color on ANYONE. All levels of account holder can use themes, and power and pro users can style to their heart's content. And we do it for them, too, when asked.



    headscratch.gif SmugMug Classic = no colors. How hard is that? ne_nau.gif

    Pushed, as in placed on our sites without our consent.

    Smugmug Classic, themes came after the fact, after screwed up color choices, I have not tried removing my css to see what those look like, again this goes in under the idea of change stuff and make people figure out how to fix it. Are the thumbs of photorank removed in classic?

    James.
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    Andy wrote:
    Thanks for the valuable input. We listen to all of it. We do have many many many subscribers.

    Good thing we make it easy to have it off, for those that don't want it, hmm?

    Good thing? That is one arrogant attitude. Attitudes like yours, and the idea of constantly making tastless changes to peoples sites are the reasons I am looking for a replacment to SM, I havn't found one yet but I am looking. I must say that the other parts of SM make finding a comparable replacment hard. For now I am here however, I am far from a happy customer.

    James.
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    JamesJWeg wrote:
    Good thing? That is one arrogant attitude. Attitudes like yours, and the idea of constantly making tastless changes to peoples sites are the reasons I am looking for a replacment to SM, I havn't found one yet but I am looking. I must say that the other parts of SM make finding a comparable replacment hard. For now I am here however, I am far from a happy customer.

    James.

    Horses for courses, James. There's no arrogance at all - we agonize over the balance of new features, and the enable/disable thing all the time. We made it dead simple to remove this feature (which I see you've done) - and if a customer doesn't know how to remove it, they write us. The response to the feature overall, has been great. Still, we know some folks won't want it or won't like it. That's cool with us!


    We know that our customers can vote with their wallets.

    BTW, if you do leave, we even make it easy to leave!
  • Options
    colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    I am going to amend my earlier comment. If the 5-star rating system is underused, it's because it's been hidden by the smugmug UI. Setting PhotoRank aside for the moment, there's no indication that you can rate a photo until you click Add Comment. The heading of the comment section below a photo should say something like "Rate/Add Comment" instead of just "Add Comment," and a five-star bar should be visible down there with the stars outlined, not filled in. Someone could click along the scale and the stars would fill in that far.

    If the original rating system was brought to the surface, I don't see much need for the intrusive colorthumbs. It was explained to us earlier that smugmug is attempting to make ranking as easy as possible, which is great, but again, everybody has seen a 5-star rating system (think movie reviews) and everybody with an iPod knows about interactive 5-star UIs.

    I really like the changes that don't overlay the page composition, like the cool Ajax text fields that open up. I have never liked the changes that plop a pop-up (yes, it may be helpful to think to them as "pop-ups") on top of the page. For example, I "blocked" the Prev/Next thumbnail "pop-ups" as soon as I could, those are awful. To have something pop up on top of the photo itself is even worse.

    My wish is that the thumbs get dumped and the 5-star bar becomes a visible interactive feature under the photo.
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2006
    colourbox wrote:
    I am going to amend my earlier comment. If the 5-star rating system is underused, it's because it's been hidden by the smugmug UI. Setting PhotoRank aside for the moment, there's no indication that you can rate a photo until you click Add Comment. The heading of the comment section below a photo should say something like "Rate/Add Comment" instead of just "Add Comment," and a five-star bar should be visible down there with the stars outlined, not filled in. Someone could click along the scale and the stars would fill in that far.

    If the original rating system was brought to the surface, I don't see much need for the intrusive colorthumbs. It was explained to us earlier that smugmug is attempting to make ranking as easy as possible, which is great, but again, everybody has seen a 5-star rating system (think movie reviews) and everybody with an iPod knows about interactive 5-star UIs.

    I really like the changes that don't overlay the page composition, like the cool Ajax text fields that open up. I have never liked the changes that plop a pop-up (yes, it may be helpful to think to them as "pop-ups") on top of the page. For example, I "blocked" the Prev/Next thumbnail "pop-ups" as soon as I could, those are awful. To have something pop up on top of the photo itself is even worse.

    My wish is that the thumbs get dumped and the 5-star bar becomes a visible interactive feature under the photo.

    Well put, I like this idea a lot. Just to be clear, my only complaints with photorank is the implementation, namly the thumbs ontop of the photos. Your idea is a much better one.

    James.
  • Options
    SheafSheaf Registered Users, SmugMug Product Team Posts: 775 SmugMug Employee
    edited April 16, 2006
    Musings...
    Every single day I wake up and rate a ton of photos. I asked myself today why I enjoyed doing it so much. I don't get paid to do it; in fact the CEO never asked us grunt employees to rate photos and even cautioned us not to rate too much.

    So why do I get up every morning and rate photos for 20 or 30 minutes? Because I enjoy it. It's a fast, easy, and convenient method to browse through thousands of photos that people just like me vote for.

    So why don't I just browse through them? What compels me to vote, both in giving thumbs up/down and occasionally a short comment? I admit that as an employee with a vested interest in the company, I would like to see good photos get to the top and for the system to work. But as a smugmug user, which long outdates getting hired by smugmug, I thoroughly enjoy being able to sort the popular photos by single votes up and down. If I like a photo, I feel some desire to show it to other people. If I don't like a photo, I feel a desire to bury it deeper or hope my vote kicks it off the browse page entirely.

    But, and this is the important part, I wouldn't do it if the system wasn't so convenient and fast. If the only way to rate photos was to leave a comment, I simply wouldn't participate. With the current system, I can rate a couple hundred photos in 20 minutes.

    I'm biased of course, but I think the system is absolutely brilliant. You don't have to be logged in. It literally takes seconds to view and vote for each photo. Your votes matter and you can often see instantaneous changes. Smugmug users get more visibility for their photographs (if desired). But most importantly, it's actually fun to browse through the popular photos and rank them.

    A five star system or one based on comments alone simply wouldn't work the same. It would either be too easily gameable or too difficult/annoying to rate more than a few photos.
    SmugMug Product Manager
  • Options
    Mike LaneMike Lane Registered Users Posts: 7,106 Major grins
    edited April 16, 2006
    colourbox wrote:
    It was explained to us earlier that smugmug is attempting to make ranking as easy as possible, which is great, but again, everybody has seen a 5-star rating system (think movie reviews)
    Mmm, two thumbs up, way up, for movie reviews.
    Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance.

    http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
  • Options
    georgesgeorges Registered Users Posts: 138 Major grins
    edited April 16, 2006
    agree with a twist
    Sheaf -

    I think you are right on the mark when it comes to making the process easy. A small twist could make things even better. If there were a "comment" button just below the two thumbs it would be just as easy to leave a comment as hitting the thumb.

    The graphic design of this would be critical or it would just make the whole thing hard to understand.

    Just a little background. After watching my audience view my galleries I determined the Journal style works best for them. So, I've locked most of my galleries into the Journal style.

    Getting comments in the Journal style is almost impossible. There are no links for individual pictures, and the link for leaving a comment on the entire gallery is virtually invisible.

    It would be great to have a way to make these links more visible.

    See you later, gs
    <http:georges.smugmug.com>
    See you later, gs

    http://georgesphotos.net
  • Options
    SheafSheaf Registered Users, SmugMug Product Team Posts: 775 SmugMug Employee
    edited April 16, 2006
    georges wrote:
    Sheaf -

    I think you are right on the mark when it comes to making the process easy. A small twist could make things even better. If there were a "comment" button just below the two thumbs it would be just as easy to leave a comment as hitting the thumb.

    The graphic design of this would be critical or it would just make the whole thing hard to understand.

    Just a little background. After watching my audience view my galleries I determined the Journal style works best for them. So, I've locked most of my galleries into the Journal style.

    Getting comments in the Journal style is almost impossible. There are no links for individual pictures, and the link for leaving a comment on the entire gallery is virtually invisible.

    It would be great to have a way to make these links more visible.

    See you later, gs
    <http:georges.smugmug.com>

    Thanks for the suggestion. We definitely want people to comment more often, but we haven't found an easy solution yet. We had to add the captcha to the comment fields after the spammers hit us and many people are just unwilling to make a comment with the extra effort required to do the captcha each time. That's the beauty of PhotoRank and the thumbs.
    SmugMug Product Manager
  • Options
    igoforitigoforit Registered Users Posts: 43 Big grins
    edited April 24, 2006
    Popular photos per category?
    Dear,

    I learned about this new feature only yesterday, but I already love it.
    I also like the "popular photos" box on the home page, but I would love to see a "popular photos in this category" type feature.
    E.g.
    People interested in my dance category, would see the best dance pictures at the top of the category page above my galleries.

    Or is it perhaps already possible to do that? I am a power user, but not experienced really with HTML.

    Congratulations and thanks in advance for any help,

    Jos
  • Options
    BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
    edited April 24, 2006
    Sheaf wrote:
    Thanks for the suggestion. We definitely want people to comment more often, but we haven't found an easy solution yet. We had to add the captcha to the comment fields after the spammers hit us and many people are just unwilling to make a comment with the extra effort required to do the captcha each time. That's the beauty of PhotoRank and the thumbs.
    With the SmugMug team empowered and encouraged to be transparent and post here, you'll sometimes here different viewpoints. Mine is that it isn't captcha that slows down people from commenting because we get 90% of the comments we did before instituting captcha. And who knows how many of the remaining 10% were spam.

    But it is true universally on the web that commenting is harder than just clicking a thumb. That's why great sites like Digg have gotten so much traction, you just click. You don't have to think up something to say that others may dispute.

    Stars would be nice but we haven't figured out how to do them without it being too scriptable.
  • Options
    smhs.imagessmhs.images Registered Users Posts: 137 Major grins
    edited April 29, 2006
    Any solution yet on "popular" photos flooding the popular pages... this website http://vamosrafael.smugmug.com/
    has like 40,000 images of this guy playing tennis, and all his fans are on there voting for the photos. While one or two of them may be of interest, there are hundreds in the favorite pages and I stopped looking at other people's photos cuz I was sick of this guys face. (BTW I have voted thumbs down on every one of them but I am only one person mwink.gif )
    Shawna
    www.shawnaseto.com

    Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.

    Join Smugmug get $5 bucks off!
  • Options
    KMCCKMCC Registered Users Posts: 717 Major grins
    edited April 29, 2006
    Any solution yet on "popular" photos flooding the popular pages... this website http://vamosrafael.smugmug.com/
    has like 40,000 images of this guy playing tennis, and all his fans are on there voting for the photos. While one or two of them may be of interest, there are hundreds in the favorite pages and I stopped looking at other people's photos cuz I was sick of this guys face. (BTW I have voted thumbs down on every one of them but I am only one person mwink.gif )
    Amen! I just cruised through today's popular photos. While they may be popular, once you've seen one picture of Rafael Nadal with his mouth open and fist pumping, you've seen them all. This morning there were several pages in the popular photos gallery with nothing else but Nadal photos.

    This certainly minimizes my interest in using the photorank feature.

    Kent
    "Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs."- Ansel Adams
    Web site
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 29, 2006
    KMCC wrote:
    Amen! I just cruised through today's popular photos. While they may be popular, once you've seen one picture of Rafael Nadal with his mouth open and fist pumping, you've seen them all. This morning there were several pages in the popular photos gallery with nothing else but Nadal photos.

    This certainly minimizes my interest in using the photorank feature.

    Yeah, I am sure they will find a way to sort that out, but they need to hurry before everyone forgets about photorank, people will loose interest and not go back into it over issues like that.

    James.
  • Options
    KhaosKhaos Registered Users Posts: 2,435 Major grins
    edited April 29, 2006
    I enjoy the popular photos for my personal page. It gives me an idea who likes what. However, the overall one is falling short for me.

    It's a great idea to see others work, but just like the browse feature, you have to wade through a lot of stuff that does not interest you at all. I know family photos are great for the family, but they do nothing for those of us who don't know the people. So right now, families that like to comment and praise other family members photographs put a lot of shots on the popular pages. I keep my family pages private. I wish others would do the same.

    Also, its starting to seem that a few people are boosting their photos by leaving comments for each other with 5 star ratings and a thumbs up. You can see a pattern of the same groups of people when looking at the comments. I looked because I just couldn't see the attraction of some photos that weren't taken for family purposes and why they were getting so many comments. Lo and behold similar names kept popping up, the same for each shot.

    It's a shame because I do like finding new work by talented photographers. Sometimes the cream does rise to the top, but so many good photos go missing and I feel I'm missing seeing some great work.
  • Options
    onethumbonethumb Administrators Posts: 1,269 Major grins
    edited April 30, 2006
    Khaos wrote:
    I enjoy the popular photos for my personal page. It gives me an idea who likes what. However, the overall one is falling short for me.

    It's a great idea to see others work, but just like the browse feature, you have to wade through a lot of stuff that does not interest you at all. I know family photos are great for the family, but they do nothing for those of us who don't know the people. So right now, families that like to comment and praise other family members photographs put a lot of shots on the popular pages. I keep my family pages private. I wish others would do the same.

    Also, its starting to seem that a few people are boosting their photos by leaving comments for each other with 5 star ratings and a thumbs up. You can see a pattern of the same groups of people when looking at the comments. I looked because I just couldn't see the attraction of some photos that weren't taken for family purposes and why they were getting so many comments. Lo and behold similar names kept popping up, the same for each shot.

    It's a shame because I do like finding new work by talented photographers. Sometimes the cream does rise to the top, but so many good photos go missing and I feel I'm missing seeing some great work.

    Remember, "the cream" is different for everyone. :)

    That's why we designed and called the feature "popular" rather than "best" ... It's not designed to bring certain specific types of photos to the top. Any given day's popular photos are often a mix of art, nature, landscape, celebrity, personal candids, and everything else under the sun - and that's how it was designed.

    Your favorite photos and mine are probably very different. This way, though, we get to see everyone's favorites, yours and mine, side-by-side.

    Don
  • Options
    JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 30, 2006
    onethumb wrote:
    Remember, "the cream" is different for everyone. :)

    That's why we designed and called the feature "popular" rather than "best" ... It's not designed to bring certain specific types of photos to the top. Any given day's popular photos are often a mix of art, nature, landscape, celebrity, personal candids, and everything else under the sun - and that's how it was designed.

    Your favorite photos and mine are probably very different. This way, though, we get to see everyone's favorites, yours and mine, side-by-side.

    Don
    Any plans to limit the number per site?


    James.

    edit: I found another site where I am getting the screwed up thumbs on, realdealphotography.
  • Options
    smhs.imagessmhs.images Registered Users Posts: 137 Major grins
    edited June 21, 2006
    Just wondering... can we have popular photos "of the day" and "all time" on our pages as an option? The way it shows up on Smugmug's browse page and the photo community pages?
    Shawna
    www.shawnaseto.com

    Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.

    Join Smugmug get $5 bucks off!
  • Options
    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited June 21, 2006
    Just wondering... can we have popular photos "of the day" and "all time" on our pages as an option? The way it shows up on Smugmug's browse page and the photo community pages?
    wave.gif Hi Shauna, presently that's not available, but you can always link to this, also:

    http://nickname.smugmug.com/popular
Sign In or Register to comment.