Smugmug Popular Photos

David Evertsen · March 27, 2008

Everyday I ususally peruse the popular photos on Smugmugs front page. I go through pretty much all of them everyday. I have never seen this happen though like today. There are 2 sites just dominating it. How do your photos get on popular? Just curious if this is normal or strange..

David
www.phabulousphotos.com

SteveM · March 27, 2008

MrPhabulous wrote:

Everyday I ususally peruse the popular photos on Smugmugs front page. I go through pretty much all of them everyday. I have never seen this happen though like today. There are 2 sites just dominating it. How do your photos get on popular? Just curious if this is normal or strange..

David
www.phabulousphotos.com

Hi David,

We've been keeping an eye on this for a couple of weeks now, and we're right there with you. This is obviously not our intention for the popular pages, and we'll be looking into some ways to rectify this. Thanks for letting us know this is curious to you as well.

Mr. 2H2O · March 28, 2008

SteveM wrote:

Hi David,

We've been keeping an eye on this for a couple of weeks now, and we're right there with you. This is obviously not our intention for the popular pages, and we'll be looking into some ways to rectify this. Thanks for letting us know this is curious to you as well.

It appears to be self-promotion. Each day the same person writes for the surfing gallery and props it up for the dailys.

- Mike

David Evertsen · March 28, 2008

A full 30 pages at least today
This is irritating to me, I stopped counting at pages of 1 persons photos at 30 today out of 67. It started last evening about 11 pm it was about 10 then..

DrDavid · March 28, 2008

I say you reset all the vote counts for his images (or give all his photos a huge negative score to begin with

)

I want variety... Not only surfing..

David

David Evertsen · March 28, 2008

Comments on Photos
Are all from the same few people with at least 5-10 on the same day. For every picture..

That is strange, You can't buy the photos either..

David

www.phabulousphotos.com

Markjay · March 28, 2008

Irritating it certainly is!
I've been watching this for a few weeks now and I can tell you that IF I were a potential Smugmug customer and started to look around to see how this site works and, to see what kind of work viewers are finding popular / uploading and / or what kind of talent there is on the site......

and I saw page, after page, after page of one photographer's work (up to as many as 30 pages of ONE photographer's work...

I'd promptly LEAVE the site and do my photo viewing elsewhere.

here's the first impressions I would get from that experience

1. it would tell me how inefficient and useless the "Popular Photos" page is
2. it would lead me to believe that this site "doesn't have it together"
3. it would tell me that the chances of MY photos being viewed as popular photos (IF I'd been considering joining Smugmug) were slim to none if this is how their system works?

It's my little old lonely opinion that this is a BIG problem that should be addressed quickly.... not shuffled around in roundtable talk.
(not suggesting you ARE treating it this way but... the problem is still there, isn't it?)

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit strong here guys but, first impressions DO count and, you are not making a very good one this way.

SteveM wrote:

Hi David,

We've been keeping an eye on this for a couple of weeks now, and we're right there with you. This is obviously not our intention for the popular pages, and we'll be looking into some ways to rectify this. Thanks for letting us know this is curious to you as well.

richW · March 29, 2008

Markjay wrote:

It's my little old lonely opinion that this is a BIG problem that should be addressed quickly.... not shuffled around in roundtable talk.
(not suggesting you ARE treating it this way but... the problem is still there, isn't it?)

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit strong here guys but, first impressions DO count and, you are not making a very good one this way.

The images on the Popular pages are put there by the community by 'thumbs up'. The community can remove too by 'thumbs down'.

As a dgrinner I'm thinking, should the Community or SmugMug police the Popular pages?

Would you be upset if I as a Support Hero I regulated YOUR images on the Popular page? Who is to say what a 'good image' is ?

With that said, I won't give you my real opinion. Just fanning the flames

darryl · March 29, 2008

Hey Markjay:

Smugmug != Flickr. If you want random people to see your photos and admire them, well, that may happen through Smugmug's popular photography gallery or (as it appears to have happened) it may not.

But being a community/Web 2.0/crowdsourced photo site has never been what Smugmug is all about. As I understood their original mission statement, Don and Baldy wanted to share their photos with friends and family. If random folks end up finding and admiring them too, great.

I believe they've grown this mission to include supporting professional photographers, who put their portfolios and proofs up on the site, and can customize the heck out of them. But again, this is a very different kind of "sharing" than Flickr.

Smugmug has repeatedly admitted that they are not Flickr. Heck, they've recommended that people that want to share photos with a community, take advantage of group tagging, pools, etc. go with Flickr. They do that kind of collaborative Web 2.0 stuff better. Also Flickr can more easily draw people into pools, etc. (yes, Smugmug does have "communities") because of their free accounts.

Finally, I've never thought of Smugmug's home page or "popular photos" page as anything but an advertisement for Smugmug's service. NOT a place to come and browse photos.

--Darryl

Markjay wrote:

I've been watching this for a few weeks now and I can tell you that IF I were a potential Smugmug customer and started to look around to see how this site works and, to see what kind of work viewers are finding popular / uploading and / or what kind of talent there is on the site......

and I saw page, after page, after page of one photographer's work (up to as many as 30 pages of ONE photographer's work...

I'd promptly LEAVE the site and do my photo viewing elsewhere.

here's the first impressions I would get from that experience

1. it would tell me how inefficient and useless the "Popular Photos" page is
2. it would lead me to believe that this site "doesn't have it together"
3. it would tell me that the chances of MY photos being viewed as popular photos (IF I'd been considering joining Smugmug) were slim to none if this is how their system works?

It's my little old lonely opinion that this is a BIG problem that should be addressed quickly.... not shuffled around in roundtable talk.
(not suggesting you ARE treating it this way but... the problem is still there, isn't it?)

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit strong here guys but, first impressions DO count and, you are not making a very good one this way.

David Evertsen · March 29, 2008

What I have become good at..
Dance Photography in low lighting during competitions. I am marginally good with HS football. I look at popular photos to try to get better, get ideas and see what people are doing with their photography passions. If that was not the intended use of the popular photos I am sorry.

With that said I really enjoyed looking at popular photos until it was taken over by a small group of people. I thought the surfing photos where cool until they appeared over and over day after day. Yesterday with over 500 photos was horrible.

Markjay you had a ton of photos on there as well the other day. Where you trying to make a point? I saw them over and over, not nearly as many as Surfing but there where quite a few that was for sure.. You couldn't make it through every couple of pages without seeing one.

I don't think we want people to "Moderate" the popular photos but, when someone has figured out a way to work withing the system to make it shall we say "NO FUN" for the rest of the world, it may need to be looked at.

Markjay · March 29, 2008

It's a matter of fact......
Hey, I'm happy to know some of my work is appearing in the popular photo area. The assumption is that viewers who are viewing my work are showing an appreciation for what they are seeing. What people decide which photos of mine are enjoyable to view or "good" (in their mind) is not something I have ANY control of.

Maybe with some luck, all the hard work I put into keywording / tagging my photos is helping but, I'm not sure that has anything to do with the popular photos area, maybe that's just a product of the browse / search area?

So: I most certainly do not wish to see policing of that area of the site.
However, my point (which could certainly have been more moderate in expressing) is that for those who are using the popular photo area as you described, it's not a great experience to see page after page of ONE particular photographer or other. That having been said, IF those photos are there just as a result of their popularity, then they most certainly belong right where they are.

You made mention of surf images. I saw some of those and was in awe of how beautiful those photos truly are. I only wish I had the opportunity to photograph wave action like that, where I live here on the Gulf of Mexico side of Florida...... there are hardly ANY waves to speak of unless we have bad storm weather :-)

Apologies to RichW for the way in which I epressed myself yesterday. You won't find too many fans as die hard a fan of Smugmug than I am....
http://cmac.smugmug.com/gallery/152400 mine is the last / bottom fanatical message :-)

MrPhabulous wrote:

Dance Photography in low lighting during competitions. I am marginally good with HS football. I look at popular photos to try to get better, get ideas and see what people are doing with their photography passions. If that was not the intended use of the popular photos I am sorry.

With that said I really enjoyed looking at popular photos until it was taken over by a small group of people. I thought the surfing photos where cool until they appeared over and over day after day. Yesterday with over 500 photos was horrible.

Markjay you had a ton of photos on there as well the other day. Where you trying to make a point? I saw them over and over, not nearly as many as Surfing but there where quite a few that was for sure.. You couldn't make it through every couple of pages without seeing one.

I don't think we want people to "Moderate" the popular photos but, when someone has figured out a way to work withing the system to make it shall we say "NO FUN" for the rest of the world, it may need to be looked at.

ivar · March 30, 2008

The surf shots should be going down a bit, guys

I'm looking into what exactly is going on.

DrDavid · March 30, 2008

ivar wrote:

The surf shots should be going down a bit, guys

I'm looking into what exactly is going on.

So, want to share what exactly is going on?

David

ivar · March 30, 2008

DrDavid wrote:

So, want to share what exactly is going on?

David

Not at this time. Maybe once everything is sorted and figured out. I don't want to say things that might not be correct

.

David Evertsen · March 31, 2008

Thanks very much.. Let us know what was up when you can...

ivar wrote:

Not at this time. Maybe once everything is sorted and figured out. I don't want to say things that might not be correct .

suchit · April 1, 2008

A different perspective
I want to add a few comments/points:

I post my images at other forumns and link the gallery and I do find visitors come to the gallery. And they rate images. Often I find visitors to my site look up "Popular Photos" in my personal gallery main page and rated TU for the first few images over and over again. So the same images appear in the site wide SmugMug Popular Photos quite often.

On Smugmug's Personal gallery, the site keeps 1,000 popular images and on the site-wide it resets and starts the images at some point each day (probably at night in US). So what happens is that those in Asia are awake and rate images TU and those appear quickly on the popular photos and as the numbers go from 10 to 50 to 100 and so on the site-wide popular photos gets more balanced. However, in the first say 30 images, 10 or more can be from the same person since they are being rated TU.

While I don't think policing is the answer, the rating system needs to be overhauled.

~ Suchit

402photography.com · March 26, 2009

Is there a way to customize the Popular Photos gallery? I noticed that the viewer can choose the style. Can it be forced somehow to default to the other gallery styles?

Allen · March 28, 2009

402photography.com wrote:

Is there a way to customize the Popular Photos gallery? I noticed that the viewer can choose the style. Can it be forced somehow to default to the other gallery styles?

The style for the popular, keyword and timeline pages can not be set at this
time. Visitors will see whatever style of a gallery last visited, it is saved in a
cookie I think. That's why I do not hide to style picker, it is frustrating if the
style is locked in something I don't like.

402photography.com · March 28, 2009

Allen wrote:

The style for the popular, keyword and timeline pages can not be set at this
time. Visitors will see whatever style of a gallery last visited, it is saved in a
cookie I think. That's why I do not hide to style picker, it is frustrating if the
style is locked in something I don't like.

Makes sense. Thanks Allen.

photography402 · July 12, 2009

Now the Today's Popular Photos are being taken over by nighclub photos (atlexposed, etc....). Maybe you should rename the gallery "photographers who really love their own photos".......can't keep with with all of the thumbs down.......I reverted back to the All-Time Popular Photos for the really exquisite photos.

Andy · July 12, 2009

photography402 wrote:

Now the Today's Popular Photos are being taken over by nighclub photos (atlexposed, etc....). Maybe you should rename the gallery "photographers who really love their own photos".......can't keep with with all of the thumbs down.......I reverted back to the All-Time Popular Photos for the really exquisite photos.

Hi, i went thru the first couple hundred, saw no nightclub photos. Where are they?

jfriend · July 12, 2009

Allen wrote:

The style for the popular, keyword and timeline pages can not be set at this
time. Visitors will see whatever style of a gallery last visited, it is saved in a
cookie I think. That's why I do not hide to style picker, it is frustrating if the
style is locked in something I don't like.

You could hide the style picker if it's Smugmug style and let it be in the page if the style is something else.

Allen · July 12, 2009

jfriend wrote:

You could hide the style picker if it's Smugmug style and let it be in the page if the style is something else.

It's not there to hide.

jfriend · July 12, 2009

Allen wrote:

It's not there to hide.

That's odd. I have one in my page http://jfriend.smugmug.com/popular and I didn't do anything to put it there.

denisegoldberg · July 12, 2009

jfriend wrote:

That's odd. I have one in my page http://jfriend.smugmug.com/popular and I didn't do anything to put it there.

The style picker is missing from my popular photos and keyword galleries too. And I didn't deliberately remove it.

--- Denise

Andy · July 12, 2009

denisegoldberg wrote:

The style picker is missing from my popular photos and keyword galleries too. And I didn't deliberately remove it.

--- Denise

Probably related to the smugmugBlack and smugmugWhite CSS issue, we're fixing it now and hope to make it live soon

photography402 · August 1, 2009

Andy wrote:

Probably related to the smugmugBlack and smugmugWhite CSS issue, we're fixing it now and hope to make it live soon

Wow - no nightclub photos? How about pole-vaulting? We must be seeing two different pages......

Andy · August 1, 2009

photography402 wrote:

Wow - no nightclub photos? How about pole-vaulting? We must be seeing two different pages......

Could you elaborate? I'm not really understanding your post. Thanks!

RuSu · August 5, 2009

"Popular photos" puts SM to shame...
I'm a new SM'er & one of the reasons why I joined SM is because of the quality & beauty of the work of so many of the photographers here & because of the ability to customize one's pages [which has been a bit of an ordeal].

I look at the day's popular photos almost everyday & I have to tell you, I think many of them are a disgrace. I'm not a professional photographer &, perhaps, it's not for me to "judge", but the popular photos seems to totally go against the quality of work which can be found on SM! For example, why today are there SO many shots by raypeoplesphotography.com? Nothing against Ray, but these are proof shots of various guys, probably taken for senior graduation. Maybe they're the most popular because someone gave them the thumbs up 1,000 times - but they DO NOT represent or enhance SM's image.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Markjay's comments on what a turn off it might be/is to people exploring SM. I was with flickr for a while & have to say that I found their daily "interestingness" photos generally more interesting & of overall higher quality - sad considering the quality of so many SM'ers.

Sadly, today's popular photos were so bad/boring/repetitive that I didn't have the stomach to browse through all the photos to find the good ones...

Hawkman · August 16, 2009

RuSu wrote:

I'm a new SM'er & one of the reasons why I joined SM is because of the quality & beauty of the work of so many of the photographers here & because of the ability to customize one's pages [which has been a bit of an ordeal].

I look at the day's popular photos almost everyday & I have to tell you, I think many of them are a disgrace. I'm not a professional photographer &, perhaps, it's not for me to "judge", but the popular photos seems to totally go against the quality of work which can be found on SM! For example, why today are there SO many shots by raypeoplesphotography.com? Nothing against Ray, but these are proof shots of various guys, probably taken for senior graduation. Maybe they're the most popular because someone gave them the thumbs up 1,000 times - but they DO NOT represent or enhance SM's image.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Markjay's comments on what a turn off it might be/is to people exploring SM. I was with flickr for a while & have to say that I found their daily "interestingness" photos generally more interesting & of overall higher quality - sad considering the quality of so many SM'ers.

Sadly, today's popular photos were so bad/boring/repetitive that I didn't have the stomach to browse through all the photos to find the good ones...

I believe some people are "cheating" (I am not referring to the example above) and giving themselves unlimited thumbs up. I think the people that do this, sadly, don;t have the greatest talent.

RuSu · September 19, 2009

Suggestion for SM re: popular photos
In light of the fact that so many people choose to give multiple thumbs up to their own photos, and considering everyone generally agrees SM shouldn't censor the day's popular photos, I would like to suggest that SM perhaps limit how many photos a day the owner of a photo can give his own work the thumbs up. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to give a thumbs up to their own work, but perhaps limit it to 1 or 2 photos a day? Just a thought...