Can someone give me an explanation ?

 

There is something I don't understand about the popularity percentage. I have two photos in my portfolio I haven't submitted to the curators, therefore nobody curated them, not even the members since those photos could not appear when the members click on photos then "curate".

 

So, could anyone tell me where those percentages come from ?

 

Thanks for your answers :-)

 

Marie-Claude

Hello dear MC..

Now when I read your post I went to look at your image of Central park which had a 13 percent popularity rating....

So I posted a comment and made it a fave..its a very nice shot BTW...and then I looked and your popularity rating went to 21 percent.

So now this is just one small test and not scientific...but I am thinking that is how it happens?

 

I think if it has gone for curating the story might be different...

Try this one of mine..and see if it makes a difference..

 

Try this one...

http://1x.com/photo/261606/all:user:21245

 

Phyl

Hi Phyl,

 

LOL doesn't seem to work if you only write a comment, your photo was already in my favorites, after writing one more comment, your percentage didn't go up.

 

Was 46% and remained at 46% after my second comment.

 

Well, my question was only out of curiosity, I couldn't care less about those percentages...quantity is not quality...

 

This is really childish as a matter of fact and will certainly not help to increase the level of this website in my opinion !

 

Besides such popularity percentage without any clear explanation given to the members is utterly useless, I think.

 

Doesn't matter at all anyway...

 

MC

 

Yes..I understand.

Yet, it is a good question and one which others will have.

Maybe it only works if a photo has not gone for curating? Not sure.

 

So can you please try one more..a comment and a fave..dont worry you can always remove the fave. :)

 

We are just testing to understand...This photo has not gone to the Curators...I uploaded it for a group purpose only.

 

I agree with all the rest of what you have said....

Yet it still would be good to know. Yours went up immediately....but it had not gone to the curators..so lets try just once more..

I hope this is okay..and then we can drop it..if it just not work and say yours was a miracle. :))

Phyl

 

I submitted yesterday a couple of pictures that I had for a while, with Popularity under 20%. It shot up pretty quickly :-)

 

Thanks Anna.. To be sure I understand.

After you submitted to the Curators then it went up?

That would suggest that voting makes a difference also.

 

In the end maybe it is a secret recipe. :)

 

Phyllis

Hi

 

one month ago the 1x-blog tells us:

 

"See how popular your photos are

 

It's now possible to see the result from the member curation in the info panel in the toolbar below each photo, under "Popularity". Please notice that this is the result from how the members voted and a high score does not mean that the photo will be published and a low score doesn't mean that it will necessarily be rejected, it's just an indication of how popular it is. Unlike some other photo sites, 1x is not a popularity contest. However, the curators always take the score into consideration when making their decision.

 

From now on we will try to make sure that every photo uploaded to 1x gets a score so all photographers get feedback on every image they upload. This means that we need more help to vote on images in "Photos" > "Curate". Your votes are important!"

 

then follows something like a discussion

 

enjoy reading

Harry

 

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck but everyone says its a chicken you are more inclined to call it a chicken. Thats what the rating is.

 

To understand more of what I am referring to look up "Asch conformity experiments" or the "Asch Paradigm."

 

There was a company which did something similar for their movies in the past and it worked. It wasn't ethical but thats not what they were after. Google "fictional movie critic."

 

Yes.

 

I suspect that the mere fact of submission to curators is one of the components of the formula.

 

One of the aspects - sure.

Wouldn't it be nice if they just told us what it is and how stuff like this works?? But...here we sit steeped in speculation and experimentation...

I think its good not to tell. Some would try to raise their images. A gain for popularity might be the outcome, and that's not wanted.

 

Founders did not tell the formula of ratings in former times and they will jot in future I assume.

 

The number of views M-C is one aspect, the way of usage and of course the regards you get by comments and favs

Hi Christoph,

 

One thing I don't agree with in your answer : "I think its good not to tell"

 

I don't think it's good simply because when you respect people you explain things, especially when they are member of a group you rule.

 

Second point : "Some would try to raise their images. A gain for popularity might be the outcome, and that's not wanted."

 

I thoroughly agree with you, human beings are what they are and most of us are driven by vanity.

BUT in this case this system of "popularity"/"votes" doesn't make much sense, just ask your friends to high rate your photos....

 

If rules are not clear, if people don't know them whereas some others do and have the possibility to divert them, then those rules can't be efficient, this is my feeling.

 

Third point : "Founders did not tell the formula of ratings in former times and they will not in future I assume."

 

I have no opinion about this sentence, or rather my opinion can be read in the reason I gave you why I don't agree with part of your answer.

 

Fourth : "The number of views M-C is one aspect, the way of usage and of course the regards you get by comments and favs "

Maybe, but I can tell you I sometimes viewed several times photos in which I found lots of flaws, such as a very badly done post processing, just to make sure I was not mistaken.

I 'm not that sure the number of views is a criteria of quality...

 

And I'll end with something funny and maybe interesting.....

 

First, I'll tell you, I don't vote on photos, I did so at the beginning but thinking of it I 'm not sure my photographic culture allows me to judge other people's work.

Whether I like it or not is not important and "won't change the world" LOL

 

However, I like viewing the photos presented in the curate section of the site and the way it works on the iPhone is easy to watch one after the other, just "for the pleasure of eyes"

 

So while sitting over a cup of tea this morning, I logged to 1X on my iPhone started watching those photos presented in "curate" and I could "view" one of mine I submitted to curators last night......

 

Well all this is not essential, I even don't care about the popularity of my photos, I'm just glad when one of them is published.

 

Thanks to all of those who tried and answer to my question :-)

 

Marie-Claude

 

I edited to add a word I had missed out and add my signature.

 

 

I'm pretty sure this is not meant to be a measure of "quality" but rather "popularity"...two VERY different things all together, especially in this context.

 

It's easy enough to figure out what drives this formula as this thread clearly shows. So the idea of manipulation would not be exacerbated by disclosure imo.

Popularity score has now been changed and is simply an average of how people voted in curation. This means that you get an honest number on how popular your photo is from anonymous voters. Experienced voters have a higher weight in curation. If the image has not been in member curation it will not have a popularity score.

 

Popularity is of course not the same thing as quality, in that case there would be no need for curation at all. This is what makes 1x different from and more honest than other buddy-voting and popularity based sites.

By the way, curation now only has two buttons instead of five stars "Reject" and "Publish" just like for the official curators. This is more honest since the result of each decision only has two possible outcomes.

 

You can now also see comments in curation which can make it easier to take your own decision. You can also rate comments, which will affect the weight of your votes and your level. If you write very good critiques in curation you will rise in level faster and thus have more influence over what is published or not.

 

We very much encourage to write comments in curation but remember to be through and explain why you like the lighting, composition or idea etc of the photo.

 

We are working on a curation info panel where you will be able to see the score and number of votes, comments from member curation and curation status of the image.

Hi Ralf,

Thank you very much for answering in such a thorough way, explaining things.

I appreciate your taking the time to do so very much.

Things look far clearer and better as they are now.

This is more like "the idea of 1X" I have :-)

All my best,

Marie-Claude

 

You're welcome, glad you like it!

 

There's now also a "Curation info" panel in the cog wheel where you can see comments on your own photos by other members, the popularity percentage and number of votes as well as the curation status.

Thanks for clarifying it Ralf and I do like the easier 2 option choice.

 

Other things I would love to help with the curation process is to know under which category an image is grouped. Some images will have context weighing more in their favour because of the circumstances it was taken in while in others if its not pin sharp because it was staged it's a refusal.

 

In my work I'm more specialized in a certain aspect that I am comfortable dealing with it while most of my colleagues will have difficulties. Same with photography, certain aspects I am comfortable with due to hands on experience in the past and in other fields I'm as blank as a white paper.

 

Some images appear not sharp on my screen and it could have something to do with the upload of the image rather than the sharpness, could we also have the image size displayed somewhere.

 

Thanks for not turning into another V+F site.

 

A Almulla

That's very interesting, Ralf! The 'Not published' status is back, I assume on popular request.

 

Popularity of some of my non-published images shot up to respectable levels now, which is sort of satisfying. This image though, http://1x.com/photo/178099/all:user:45800, has a popularity 0%. Does it mean that it did not go to member voting at all and a curator rejected it right away? Not sure either way if this is still done.

 

Also how does it work with curators? If they press Reject- is it rejected with no member voting? And if they press Publish, it is actually subject to member voting first and then there is a final Publish?

 

Anna

Thanks for being so explicit, Ralf... thus showing, contrary to one opinion above, that you also opine that, at least in this context, being, open, transparent, telling IS good.

In this new system, when I put in an image for curation. Half an hour later there is the mention that my image is "not published". A bit quick in my opinion. Even when it maybe was a not such a good image.

 

Just to give solace, Ben, half an hour was the time also in my case today.

And that is on 1X curating ?

 

;-))) you just made my day... It took an hour with mine (but during the night...and it is for sure not THE award winning picture...) I am at least happy that 37 members had the time to look at it....;-)))

yes, I submitted it this morning for curation.

My latest did one hour to get " NOT PUBLISHED". There is a lot of attention of the curators. They took one whole hour to judge my image ! WOW.

LOL !

 

Half an hour, not even sure for mine :-))))

 

Never thought it took so little time to decide whether a photo is interesting or not !

 

I thought one had to view it several times, leave it, come back before deciding !

 

I was entirely mistaken or our dear curators are really so good they can decide at a glimpse!

 

How eye opening !

 

I know the true value of my photos now ! Half an hour worth on 1X !

 

Never thought I was a great artist but I'm sure of it now.

 

I am always glad when people tell me what they really think of my photos since it has helped me and still helps me improve my skills.

 

The comments made below the photos by the members are always enriching especially when one reads some in depth, helpful comment like the following one made by a member below one of my pictures :-)))))

 

"Nothing of interest"

 

Great ! Thanks so much, this is going to help me improve my photo for sure ! LOL

 

Fortunately, we have the possibility to delete all our crap and avoid complete shame.....

 

Marie-Claude :-)

 

Marie-Claude

You just said it all. 1X was so good because of curating. One could rely on it. When an image got published, it was of high quality. It could take weeks before curators decided. Now it takes just half an hour.

 

Ben van der Sande

 

I'm no artist either so thats two of us ;)

 

 

Be happy, you got one word more than I did on a street photo I took

 

"nothing special."

 

The only comment. Seriously, if you have nothing constructive to say please say nothing. On another "street" shot I was told to move one of the people a few inches one direction and the other ..... Seriously, can I have what they are smoking ?

 

I am feeling the new curation changes need curation of their own. Please don't choose any of my pictures for publication but bloody don't insult with idiotic remarks.

 

Picture categories should be included in the curation window as well as the authors title and post, just don't include his name. An unsharp documentary could worth 10 sharp perfectly lit model shoots. A slightly blurred image of the Earth from the Moon can be worth all the best shots from this site for the next year.

 

I don't know if I said it all, I'm just surprised the decision can be taken so quickly.

 

I never minded when my photos were rejected, i thought the decision had been made by photographically speaking educated people, i have always respected their choices and was very glad when I had photos published but i was not aware they were not actually chosen.... The value of all this has lessened a lot for me, now i can see it takes so little time.

 

BTW my last one which was still in curation the "of no interest one" has just been rejected did not last long either :-)))

 

To A Almulla : "Be happy, you got one word more than I did on a street photo I took

 

"nothing special."

 

"Seriously, can I have what they are smoking ?"

 

Will you share ???? LOL

 

I like your sense of humour !

 

In conclusion, I agree with you and i think it's a waste of time to submit photos to the curators if they make their decision in such a short lapse of time, now I'm aware of that all interest has disappeared for me, sorry.

 

I'll stop here about this topic.

 

Marie-Cllaude

And I'm surprised that you are surprised.

 

There are 10 (or 11?) official curators for probably hundreds of submitted images per day and they have to take a yes/no decision with the constraint of only saying yes to a small number per day (in order not to flood the front page)... So it's no surprise that a "no" can be given very quickly, don't you think?

 

The idea that curators would have to look at every single image for a big time, then forget about it, then come back to it a few days later... and think about it some more seems very romantic but quite unrealistic for how 1x.com works. If we were limited to one submission per month then, sure, we could expect such a curation, but we can send 10 pictures a week with a pro account and "we" are a lot of people so curating time per photo can only be inversely proportional to the number of photos submitted... Maybe it's our fault for submitting too much?

 

As far as the comments are concerned: they reflect what normal members (I say "normal" as opposed to the official curators, no further assumption) say about your picture. Again, there's one way to change this: you (and I) as normal members can give better critique to other people's images.

 

One last general thing: when you spend so much time talking about something it's hard to believe that you don't care about it...

 

I would suggest curators to only communicate their decision one week after taking it, that way we can naively believe it took them one week to decide ;)

So, the number of photo's one can submit to curation is far to big.

The simpel solution make it fewer.

One thing for sure, a half an hour gives virtually no time for member voting.

 

Is this new string of "extensive critiques" the new Critique?? Probably. Wouldn't surprise me. They have talked about revamping Critique. Watch and see if the old one goes away and people are directed to something like we see in Curate.

You are wrong Clyde. With my latest submission, it took 20 minutes and one negative member comment to decide against publication.

 

Hi "Clyde Beamer L1 PRO" (sounds like a code name for a robot or something, doesn't it?) ;)

 

Well if the "extensive critiques" become truly extensive critiques without the irony I wouldn't mind... It is a tragedy that so many people "curate" without giving an interesting critique... It is difficult to force people to give an "interesting" critique/comment because who judges what interesting is? But if you couldn't curate unless you write, say, 100 characters, it could bring the level up a bit.

 

Sure, there would be people who'd post "Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice Nice " or "Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap " but those could easily be flagged :)

 

My 2c.

 

Half an hour is actually not a short time at all to evaluate a photograph, great photographers and critics can give very insightful critique in just a few minutes.

 

Below each comment there are five stars to indicate how useful that comment is. Use this rating wisely and it will lead to members writing better comments because you get feedback on what you write. You can also see which other comments got a good rating and try to write more like them.

 

If you write comments which get high scores you are going to get a lot of bonus points and will rise in level more quickly, which means that your vote will carry greater weight.

 

Also, make sure to write a lot of in-depth comments on your own to encourage others to do the same!

 

Not if you're only using crew screeners to decide, it's fine, even better than two weeks imo. BUT if you're trying to both stimulate and include member voting, it's no time at all.

 

BTW, can the level indicator next to our names be turned off in Account Settings? I would be nice please. Some folks don't participate in all aspects of the site and not everything needs to be a competition and have a ranking so prominently displayed.

on the other hand it seems to stimulate, as the number of comments in curating zone shows.

And to motivate to participate can't be too bad?

 

and to address those who participate in this aspect and in many might be the intention?

Ralf,

 

What is exactly L1-L5, now by our names, mean? Only how well we vote or something else as well?

 

Anna

 

So it's meant to "shame" us into participating? I know that's a strong word, but it's a common term in English to explain one dynamic of the motivating aspects of displaying the level for all to see.

With Anna I am wondering where this L1-L5 is coming from. No changes are discussed, they just happen. Or didn't I pay attention ?

L4 mage looking for a group to explore the Abyss of Curation with.

 

I'd rather not see the other gamers, I mean members levels. My short time on this site I have seen more contributions from Clyde than what I have managed to give and he is a "L1".

 

As for the curation part, I'd rather wait a few weeks, have my image glimpsed at for a few seconds by someone who knows what to look for rather than some bozo who has no idea what to look for, wants to raise his level and can't write a decent remark. I'm not a professional photographer because it's not a stream of income for me and on the other hand I'm no idiot to a have twit give me a stupid remark.

 

I won't mind looking at an image and writing something sensible or not writing anything but having to assess someone else's remarks too !! No thanks.

 

If I wanted a tear down I'd post my images for critique. I don't even mind if someone leaves a comment saying he doesn't like something on my images and I have obtained suggestions that way which have improved a couple of my pictures.

 

Maybe I should open an account on the V+F site or the site where you get a glittering image and "we choose your image to be added to the awesome twits group."

 

End of rant .... So who was looking for a level 4 mage ?

Normally I write never anything on a forum. I was glad here at 1x. No, I'm also no artist but from time to time I'm a little proud of my images. And the process before to send an image to the curators gave me the illusion that someone takes time and effort to judge my image. And I get the result weeks later- and also if it`s negative it was ok for me. But after half an hour- not seriously. And the so named democratic process with popularity- I'm not here to be popular but to hear from time to time- ok, this one is good enough for us. It's not my community but it is not further more a community I want to stay- similiar things I can have at photonet oder more badly on flickr. I will leave.

Ralf -

My ability to vote is not working, or perhaps I am not understanding.

 

I wrote my comments.

Then attempted to hit publish...

nothing happened.

Then I tried hitting the heart and then publish

nothing happened.

Then although it was not what I wanted I tried reject....

nothing happened.

 

Is there anything else I should be doing?

 

BTW I tried on the next picture which appeared when I closed the screen and again nothing happened...

 

Please advise?

Thanks,

Phyllis

ADDENDUM

I tried again and again...and it worked maybe 30 to 50 percent of the time. All the critiques of course were lost as it would not publish...

Is there by chance a limit on the amount of words you can write?

for those who didn't see it ; the L1-L5 is a rate members get for the number (time) they spent in the curating zone. It has nothing to do with photographers levels, just how much he (she) helped (?) the screening.

I guess the problem with the "publish" or "reject" button should come from the countdown system (or the time needed to write things away in the database system?) … because just waiting a little bit makes it work again

 

This said,

- I'm not really happy with this "score" added to the profile everywhere … I understand (I guess) it is to push people to participate more … but I fear it can create much other collateral damage on the site like we see on other sites.

- The question is will the curators look at it ? Or will they consider it in their evaluation ?

- Like it works now, I have the feeling the curate zone is in fact changed in what was the critic zone! I will not help much the curators, make their work much more time consuming if they have to read all those comment , I feel who wants feedback can go to the critic zone …

- Is it fair the curators can hide in anonymity, while the volunteers wanting to help them in the screening are publicly nailed ?

______

 

What I didn't discover already is what happens when you click on "is this comment useful ?

And I forgot to mention the multilingual aspect of the oven feedback is also questionable, even if - as a non English native- I understand the problem of outing yourself with limited knowledge of English

It is working for me now.!

I believe I began to sound like a broken record...in my comments...

 

One thing is certain for me. If I am going to continue to spend time with extensive comments I would like to have two things which he Official curators have.

 

The first is a title. There were so many times when the photo was not so clear as a concept was being presented...but no title was offered to determine if the artist had achieved their objective. This time I voted to publish even though I did not understand the concept fully -as I did not want to be punitive toward the photographer for something they have no control over.

 

However, to continue to do this makes no sense to me..The colors can be fantastic...in fact everything about an image can be top notch..but without a title most photos will not give you the full meaning of what you are seeing. Therefore the impact is lessened or confused.

 

Please give us titles.

 

Thanks,

Phyllis

 

i like the idea to increase the feedback and think it is successful to motivate.

 

I will give it a try and test the outcome.

This curation system is going to be ridiculous.

How ridiculous are the comments I can see now during curation

Incompetence, superficiality and no respect

Time to go

Bye

Bitte entschuldigt, mein Englisch ist so schlecht, dass ich jetzt einfach in meiner Muttersprache antworte. Ich hoffe, das ist in Ordnung?

 

Ich verstehe das mit diesem neuen "System" jetzt hier nicht. Was soll das denn bringen? Wenn ich Kritik zu meinen Bildern haben möchte, dann kann ich sie doch in die Rubrik "Kritik" stellen?

 

Ich verstehe das jetzt wirklich nicht. Schafft das nicht nur Unfrieden?

 

Liebe Grüße

Steffi

Ich versuche es zu übersetzen...

 

Steffi's message, if my german is still not too bad says:

 

"Please excuse me, my english is so bad that I'd rather write in my mother tongue. Hope that's OK?

 

I don't understand this new "System". What should it bring? If I want to have a critique on my pictures I can send them to "Critique", right?

 

I really don't get it. Isn't it just getting people upset?

 

Regards,

Steffi"

 

Now Christoph or someone else can come around and make sure I was truthful to the original message but I think I was, more or less at least.

 

And my reply:

 

Yes, I think you are right Steffi. I think not everyone wants critique from everyone in every picture they send to curation. It should, imho, be possible to participate in 1x by sending pictures to the official curators without having critique from everyone. Personnally I don't care, but I can understand that some people do care and we might lose people because of this... (cf: Roberto's message just before).

 

I do not think my English ranks to give constructive and satisfactory critique in English. I use Google tranlate to expressing myself on this page and it is not always optimal.

I'm sorry ! I have misunderstood the new curator system and believed that you had to write a detailed critique before you could click the buttons Publish / Reject :-/

I am glad to see that it's not how it works :-)

If you are not interested in critique, then just don't go ahead and read it. Personally I think that it's always interesting to know what normal people and not just photo experts think of a photo of mine, because the majority of people viewing my photos will not be experts.

 

One important aspect of this new system is that it will be a way to recruit new official curators. When you have reached level 8 (the highest level) you might be recruited as an official curator. The better comments you write the faster you will become an official curator.

By the way, for this system to work, please rate the critiques below the photos. Guidelines for how to rate here: http://1x.com/blog

 

If this rating system is used well it will make sure you will get only good critiques on your photos, we can hide the bad ones with low scores.

Ich möchte aber doch gar kein offizieller Kurator werden?!

Ich bin Fotografin und das reicht mir eigentlich voll und ganz.

 

Hmm...

 

Trotzdem danke für die Antwort. :-)

To further develop the purpose of this feature: Feedback on photos was the single most requested feature in the survey we made last year and something many photographers are missing on other sites. On the buddy-voting site for example you will never get honest critique. If you don't want critique at all, just don't go ahead and read it.

"another nude image" or "unattractive rendering (rendering? I do photography not photoshop) is an honest critique Ralf?

Or "too much desaturated color" under a long exposure photos is an honest critique?

 

Those are telling only what kind of "experienced voters" are leaving feedback

 

Come back soon, jujst a suggest

Bye

 

What does "buddy-voting site"?

I'm trying it now time with a translation program ...

This is not so easy. :-)

Hopefully it works ...

 

Perhaps there are also photographers who want to exhibit only their photos here easily and where ever is not about criticism. Positive and negative ...

 

I'll try and explain it in a simple way :)

 

I know Steffi, I see one bad picture from Steffi. I put picture in favourite and say picture is good to get better picture rank.

 

Steffi knows me and goes to my bad pictures and also favourite and votes my picture.

 

Me and Steffi have 1000 friends and we all do this.

We are all bad photographers. Our pictures are on the front page.

 

Sorry if it sounds too simple, I wanted to avoid words that need to be google translated :)

 

A Almulla

I answer for the rest and explanation in private Steffi, to do it in German.

 

Buddy voting means voting for friends like fotocommunity:

you vote for me i vote for you

Du wählst für mich, ich wähle für Dich, egal wie mir das Bild wirklich gefällt.

 

Buddy voting might happen, but apparently does not help as we are curated by the curators.

 

a suggestion is, to make it optional in settings, whether we want to see comments on our images or not?

 

i can only repeat, without the critique of 1x members in comments and critique i would have missed a lot.

 

 

If everyone makes sure to rate comments using the stars, we can filter out the bad comments.

 

About these particular comments, if someone had written them on my image, I would find them quite useful, because this is how someone actually perceives my image. Even if they are not photo experts, this is what it looks like to them, and that information is interesting, because the majority of your audience are not experienced photo experts but normal people.

 

If a lot of people thinks that my image looks like a rendering even if it's not, I might consider how to make it look more natural if that's the style I want. If only one person says that it looks like a rendering and five persons say it looks very natural I might ignore that single person. Not all commenters are experienced (but to me their opinon is still interesting), however all critique is honest since the voting is anonymous and there can be no buddy-voting.

Quite Useful?

Normal people?

Is this a photographic community or a theme park?

I haven't buddy here and I expect that my photos are evaluated by someone who knows what is looking for.

By the way,as a prof, I hope the founders would consider in the next the options to create a qualified curation crew involved in every branch of photography

Stay well you all

Bye

 

Can some explain why my picture

http://1x.com/photo/271972/all:user:219960

 

Showing 100% Popularity and only one vote ? ! My picture has looked like this last month ! - Why ?

Sorry I do not understand Englisk so well, and maybe I do not fully understand the new voting and rank system ?

 

I find that member curation provides feedback not provided by the official Curators. I know that some of the comments are not very informative but many do provide constructive comments and criticisms. I also like seeing the percentages provided by member votes. These provide a barometer that helps gauge the opinions of my peers of my images. Sometimes we can get so caught up in our work that it's good to get the objective opinions of other photographers.

 

My question is: How long are images available for member curation? Is it for a specific time? A specific number of views? Or, is it until a Curator decides that it is not to be published? If this is the case it seems quite arbitrary. I understand that the official Curators have a large number of images to review and this contributes to an assembly line approach without comments of any kind. However, member curation and comments are valuable to me as a member and I think that all images should be available uniformly in terms of time/views for member curation.

 

We already have a very qualified curation team, with experts in every genre of photography, but like you request a big point with this new system is trying to find even more qualified curators by analysing how well you write comments.

 

It's because one person voted 5 and then the photo was published by one of the official curators.

 

I agree with Clyde on this.

 

Please do not confuse quantity with quality. For me the continuously further popularization with curator levels, award points, buddy votes, etc is so against what I was used to...

I have ti agree with Clyde and Frederic.

 

I also support Clyde, Frédéric and Ben and, honestly, this system of member curation is ridiculous. This afternoon, I submitted a picture to curation and 15 minutes later the status was already "not published" with two member comments, but a few hours later, there was even a third member comment, although the "not published" statement was alread done earlier.

 

I wondered about that yesterday. Very interesting. Seems counter-intuitive at best.

I like the way the member curation is developing, but I'd be wary if I were the 1x team. The problem, as always, is that algorithmic or automated systems for separating quality feedback from poor feedback are remarkably easy to manipulate over time. You can't just turn them on and hope they remove the labor-intensive task of having hand-picked curators make some direct judgment calls or intervening from time to time. Every community manager of every high-traffic Internet forum for the last ten years has discovered this sooner or later--no matter how good the design for feedback is, if there isn't a group of human beings who have some rough agreement about what the rules, parameters and goals are monitoring and controlling the system, it will get destroyed sooner or later.

 

I'm already seeing a few signs of "reciprocal revenge rating" of comments, something that pretty much wiped out 500px's algorithmic approach to identifying high-quality images. There also desperately needs to be a button for flagging inappropriate comments--there's a user called Ima Troll who is doing exactly what his name suggests, for example.

 

I think over time it would be best for some of the 1x team to use member curation as a way to identify starred or preferred commenters--you can't just "hide" the weak comments under a significance threshold, you also have to have a direct human way to recognize and privilege the kind of comments that are what the designers are seeking or hoping for. Otherwise what eventually happens is that the people who are taking the time to write critique/curation get tired of struggling against a wave of "me too" and "great compo!" comments or get annoyed by revenge-ratings.

 

The main value of this site has been its commitment to a more hand-curated, high-value approach to publishing photography online. Give that up and it's just the latest refugee camp for photographers fleeing from the Instagrammafication of the web.

Timothy, I see a contradiction in your post. You say you like the way the member curation is developing but you also emphasize that hand-curation as a main value of 1x could be endangered.

 

I think member curation is useless when it only takes 15 - 30 minutes for curators to reject and image. In such a limited time frame curators cannot seriously consider member votings and comments or, if they do consider, don't act with more prudence and qualification than the random member curator.

Oh Ralf... It's yours. It's your website. You can decide whatever you want. And naturally you defend your decisions. It' s ok- but it's not really helpful to say: Don't read it. If I do a portrait I don*t want to read a critic from someone who makes bad photos from flowers. Not really. I'm tired of sentences like it lacks sharpness. Make sharpness a great picture?

 

I would be very interested if images of Rheims, Lindbergh or some of the great photographers would be presented at such a forum... and then to read the critics.

 

I was so glad to find this forum. To present my photos to god-like creatures...with thumps up or thumps down. But the situation now is not far away from other photographic forums- and at this places I could write in german. You lose the difference.

 

And nobody could tell me that anyone in the world is not be influenced of critics he read before he judge. (okay maybe gods).

 

Unfortunatly I paid till November but you could be sure that I 'll never send another image to the curators and also I'll finish to make advertisment for this place at "photographic collegues".

 

Thanks for your great feedback. We are looking to introduce a system that will promote the comments of selected members who write very well and also incease their voting weight in curation even more. We will filter out bad comments and it will be possible to report abusers. Members writing in-depth comments will gain from getting more points and thus have the chance to become an official curator much faster.

 

Like I said in a previous post feedback on photos is the single most requested feature on 1x and I think a lot of photographers will appreciate all members making such a great effort to give them honest useful in-depth critique.

 

We are of course not giving up hand-curated images! The whole point of 1x is a hand-curated selection free from buddy-voting and popularity contests.

Okay then make a button....send to "popular critics" or to the curators....

 

Ja!

 

 

When you design an internet site you want to have as few options and buttons as possible or otherwise it will make people confused, especially new users, and it will be very hard to explain how it works.

 

Ralph, it seems you have misunderstood how the system works. The final decision of each photo is always taken by an official curator, just like before. The only difference is that there is more feedback from members now, and if you don't want that you don't have to read it.

But I do' t want comments. Really- I hate comments. But if somebody write something- I read it and then I begin to hate- sometimes... :-)

 

But I've written it above- your website- your decisions....

Please don't consider what I will type now as flaming. Its just something that cracked me up on one of my images I sent for curation, I got two posts only which isn't an issue but here the time line:

 

First Post:

Blah blah good, blah blah good, blah blah good. I like this genre. You don't have a subject.

 

Popularity barely 30%

 

Second Post:

I think the subject is (whatever)

 

Popularity rose to 40% and curation ended a short period after the second post.

 

70 something votes ...

 

My future images will have a Post It with an arrow indicating the subject. Curation gave me my laugh for the day.

 

Anyone else got anything fun in that regards to share ?

 

My personal fun was that curation time dropped from 30 minutes yesterday to 15 minutes today but that member curation was still open when "real" curation had already ended.

 

I don't understand, if you hate comments why do you read them? If you don't like comments just ignore them. You have to specifically open the "Curation info" panel in the cog wheel below each photo to see the comments.

 

Ok, so if we remove the curation status, will that make you more happy? If someone has opened the window and started to write a comment before an official curator has taken a decision but finished writing the comment after the official curator made the decision, it can still get another comment even though a decision already has been taken. Otherwise the comment would simply be deleted which would be quite unnecessary since it can be useful for the photographer.

It is nonsensical comments simply can not be read. For many other people read them and be influenced by them. That's so ... unfortunately.

Ralf,seems you don't have if you are trying for new curators looking at how well are writing comments... ( hope you just kidding)

If you need more qualified curators I think you need to look at other details....for example portfolio and professional status...

Ralf....

 

I think we have different opinions and this is ok. You are here the boss... but you can´t tell me: Then don' t read it.

 

I will finish here. After this, this place it nothing else than other websites- so on it's more convenient to go to place where they talk my language.

 

Roberto:

I do not need to be a hen, to realise or decide, whether an egg is good or not :-)

Christop, this is a paid photographic community not Master Chef for free.

:-)

Yep- you are right christoph but you also know that most amateurs tend to judge over a photographs only about technical matters- they don`t understand mood or atmosphere....

 

So on I don't want chicken to judge about my images.

 

Totally agree. Most comments are redundant. Each of us has his personal style of creating pictures. Sometimes people like them - sometimes not. It's unnecessary to comment a photo. How can I assume to critique someone's photo?

 

What only i can do is to decide if i like a photo or not. When i read comments like "perhaps better in square format" or "why not in b/w", i can only shake my head. The creator of this photography decided to realize his photo in his own personal way and like to send it to the curators. Either it will be published or not. Without any comments. That's good.

 

If someone like to get critiques or comments for example to learn or to enhance his skills in photography, it's better to post it in "Critique".

 

Mycle

 

I love you.

The idea of providing feedback is a good one.

The way it is done is obviously not.

I did not write any comments on any of the photos because I don't think I am competent to comment on the subject. Most of the people that did are definitely not competent. Only curators and maybe a selected (by owners) few should be allowed to make comments. The rest is just useless (and insulting). It's opinions and we each have one. Simple yes or no would be just fine. And that's my opinion.

P.S. "I'm a Troll" is just pointing the same thing in a funny way. Some of his/her comments just made me laugh. Kudos!

From my years in critique I know, that chickens can be the greatest critics and can be of excellent help

 

Of course its opinions.

But if well explained this opinions show how my image I percepted. The buddies or haters can be identified and ignored.

 

Those who help of course only do on a subjective personal. Base. But I can evaluate the use for me. It is about how others see my image.

And that is why we show them.

 

To me it is of help.

But for the chickens also need to have corresponding monitors and good eyes ...;-))) Not many chickens know it to calibrate their monitors. For example ... Sorry! ;-))))

 

Good one Steffi you gave me a good laugh. Its wonderful seeing this community has a decent sense of humour.

 

And I love the openness.

 

I have to laugh myself! :-) Thank you very much!

 

;-))

 

Chickens are naturally not equiped for speaking or writing. Not without any reason ...

But they lay eggs!

 

Ja! ;-)))

Chickens are good with potatoes......every chef is teaching that!!

Curator says:

 

Most of the members are like chickens and also useful.

Is there any reason why images cannot be allowed 24 hours for member curation and comments before official curation? This would provide a much better opportunity to get member comments and suggestions. I realize that many comments are not very helpful, but many are. This would be infinitely more helpful than what is provided by the official Curators since they don't provide any helpful suggestions.

On a related topic, the new pre-screening curate procedure contains no information about the photos. At a minimum the title should be included. Half of the time I don't know what I'm looking at or why. I suspect that I'm not entirely alone here. And yes, I can already hear people saying that a photo (or any graphic work of art) has to stand on it's own. If you looked at the Mona Lisa with no knowledge of its history and the artist, or if you looked at it with full knowledge, would your appreciation be any different? Or would you call it tainted? In the previous procedure we were doing final cut after the pre screening. Or so it appeared. Is that what you're looking for? Only photos that can be appreciated without a title? I should have made this a separate topic, but I wasn't quite sure how to do that. Sorry. The proverbial bottom line is that I can no longer participate in the Curate activity. I don't feel that I have enough information to be fair. A title can make all of the difference in the world.

Here we go, that one is punished with the rating-tool for critical remarks. This is still a lot of fun here ;-)

For me members comments "as is" are actually very interesting. In the vast majority of places you get an either positive comment or none, as a matter of courtesy. So here is a possibility to get the "real" (it is still skewed to some extent) feedback. Even if people say nothing, they still vote, negatively or positively. I am personally interested why they vote the way they vote.

 

Titles in voting are needed. Otherwise there is a discrepancy between what real curators see and what members see. In some cases it makes a huge difference.

Harry K. Yes, Sociology 101, power will always stomp on the rebel. Or something like that. :-). Really, all I want are the photographer's Titles. Geez.

Thank you Anna.

Awards disappeared but apparently nobody noticed :-) . Top members order is still by awards though...

@Ralf, this must be frustratingly ironic to you. After years of folks complaining that screening takes too long and there is no report of outcome, now folks are complaining about it happening too quick and too much feedback. I truly feel for you my brother!

 

Here are my 3 biggest comments about the new system:

1. As I said earlier, the level indication beside folks names in the Forums should be voluntary. I don't want it to turn into a status symbol or a shaming into participation thing.

 

2. When one opens the curate page they are presented with an image and scrollable list of previous comments. This is an awful way to judge a photograph. I REALLY don't think folks should see the other comments until after they have made their own evaluation. This is far more reasonable to me. I would never want to see others' opinions before I formulate my own and the same if ti was my image. I don't want one set of comments impacting the members mind, I much prefer if they evaluate the image all on their own. Then if a screen of comments from other pops up and they want to they can read, BUT NOT BEFORE please!!

 

3. In the survey you mentioned, I'm pretty sure folks were looking for feedback from the official screeners not the general membership. Just about every single forum post about it leading up to the survey indicated that. So I don't think this new system addresses that much at all, if any.

 

BTW, I'm ambivalent about displaying titles during screening. I do everything I can to not look at the titles when viewing photos on this site until after I have formed my own reaction.

 

Clyde

 

Seems like 1x is in constant flux. A true work in progress. a.k.a. WIP

In my business WIP's are never show to the public...

 

BTW, if you can't see awards anymore, how do you know that the order is still based on them? But if they are...I'm sure Yvette is happy!!

 

Because the very top member order did not change. And I specifically doubt, like 99% doubt, that some of them vote at all.

 

 

Stay tuned...it's not tomorrow yet...

Clyde, well I have to agree with you on 1, 2 and 3. I rarely do a critique after first reading the comments of others, and I apologize beforehand if I'm repeating something.

But I still feel strongly about the need for the Titles. Have you done any of the new curating? Much of the stuff is pretty raw, and I think these people deserve decent comments/critiques. Much of it is also really good, but without a title, for many you go "Huh, What?" I don't think this is fair.

Leigh

Well, it feels like I've opened a can of worms, and I'd love to get a photo of that.

But in the morning my hope is that all I will see is a "Yes, titles will now be included." Then I can get back to trying and trying to do a photo of 1X quality. Before I die.

About titles, I don't mind if they're there, either way is fine with me. BUT I do agree that it should be consistent between what crew and members see.

 

And I've just opened a much bigger can of worms. The anonymous screening should also be consistent between crew and members. It should ALL be anonymous, but we've had that discussion many times before and I've never won!!

 

Leigh,

Somewhere up above your initial post I also requested titles.

 

I spent two years as a Sen Critic in the Critique section here. I can say without any hesitation that a title is essential 'if' you are unclear about the meaning of a photograph and want some understanding of what you are seeing.

 

For a Creative Edit it is critical as many CE's are surreal or vague and this is acceptable..but we need more info to understand before we evaluate.

 

For a photo with atmosphere or emotion of some kind ...what does the photographer want me to see? Do I see it? How do I know without a title?

 

For a conceptual photo - very often, I would say almost always - the concept becomes complete by proper use of a good title that supports the concept.

 

A photograph is not like a film where one scene follows another and the general idea comes through across scenes.

 

And I can give more examples, but I will stop here.

 

I cannot write a valid, worthwhile comment without a title. It is unfair to the person who has submitted their work.

 

We need titles.

 

Phyllis

 

Clyde,

I kind of agree with you about the anonymity thing, but about an hour ago I got an angry response to one of my curate comments. The photographer was absolutely right, and I appreciated what he had to say.

It contained no death threats, though.

Leigh

 

My point about anonymity was more to do with the fact that IMO, neither the crew nor the members should know who's photo they are looking at when doing their evaluation. Currently and for years, the crew screeners do see who is the photographer but members do not. I think neither should.

Thank you Phyllis,

I suspect that many of us are on the "same page."

Leigh

Clyde,

Ah, I didn't realize that. How can you make an unbiased judgement with the artist's name attached? If you saw some piece of c**p with, say, the name Leigh Pelton on it, would you feel the same way if instead it said Jackson Pollock?

Well, probably in your case you'd spot the difference, but not everyone necessarily would.

Leigh

 

I mentioned it over a day ago. You can't be unbiased if you see a name or see an image of someone you know which you have previously seen because you follow them.

 

Anna Golitsyna has a post which may clarify the bias part by hitting closer to home

 

First, I agree with Clyde's points and Phyllis's need for titles. Second, I applaud any attempt to make improvements because inertia is deadly.

 

That said, I've tried to go along with this new way of doing things, but these questions remain:

 

1. What is the difference now between Curate and the Critique section? I doubt that a large percentage of members send for Curation to receive detailled peer critiques. I'd be more comfortable writing comments if the photographer somehow indicated they wanted them.

 

2. Not only do you want voting, but you want detailed critique according to exacting standards. Furthermore you want voting on the comments themselves. Looking at the evaluation of my own comments, I don't have the impression people are following the criteria you set out. I'm not learning anything from the marks I've been given, and should I write any more comments (doubtful at this point), nothing in my style would change unless, in turn, you require detailled criticism of the curation comments themselves. (My brain is sprained.)

 

As solutions, I'd suggest:

 

- setting up an opt in procedure to request member critique when submitting for Curation ("critique, yes or no?");

 

- doing away with the comment evaluation, thus freeing up the members for more useful activity on the site;

 

- encouraging participation in the dedicated Critique section for those who want thoughtful reaction to their images.

 

1. Please, no anonymity. Trust me--and if you've been on other sites like 500px, you won't need to trust me--anonymity is a way to open the floodgates to meaningless comments. It's important that people who are engaged in mutual critique be at least notionally knowable to each other. That's how you make community.

 

2. 1x has a chance to help people to develop their ability to meaningfully think about visual culture. That doesn't mean that we all have to rehearse the same comments about the rule of thirds and all that, but we could all stand to figure out a way to explain, "I like this image" that goes beyond just liking something and starring it. That will run into language difficulties, sure, but that's what the site can build: a common way to talk about visuality and photography. That is what is now *absent* in most of online culture: algorithmic rating is replacing talk because it is too labor-intensive to maintain a standard for talk and too hard to start a new community where people aren't used to monitoring each other. But this will take work: you can't just make a better ratings design. The people who do the high-quality curation and critique already will need to commit to educating users--to showing models for how to respond, for flagging good comments and saying why they're good.

 

3. At some point 1x has to decide how to limit or bound what it does. Every other site that has free accounts (I'm a free user, mind you!) has to decide at some point: how is it going to keep from drowning in a flood of uploads? The answers that haven't worked so far are: paid accounts and strict upload limits. The right answer, imho, is to make a community that has a strong enough culture, a strong enough sense of what it is and is not, that people who aren't engaged by its sensibilities don't want to be a part of it. That doesn't happen without effort. The curators have to come out from behind the veil and educate a bit, to talk about what they value and why they do, what they think is good, interesting work and what they think isn't. Galleries do this by demonstration and because they work with a very small number of very rich buyers who are willing to trust the gallerist. That's not going to work here. It's going to take acculturation: helping people to see what the vision is, justifying it, modifying it where necessary, embracing an educative as well as curatorial vision.

 

Timothy,

As I've noted above I made a curate comment that was not accurate (I mistook a processing for HDR). Because the photographer knew who made the comment, he was able to respond both publicly and directly to me.

This was a very good thing.

Shouldn't we have critical give and take? To a point? The parties involved can always quickly concluded to "agree to disagree" and leave it at that.

I believe what Clyde was referring too was anonymity of the photographer for screening purposes. Do we want to be influenced by the photographer's reputation?

Leigh

Ralf, cudos for getting the members to comment in the curate section, just by adding a level L1- L8 you have open a flood gate of comments that are both helpful and down right rude. I’ve posted positive comments and some more to the point one that could be taken the wrong way, we are all human, to see if there would be any repercussion, but I always added a suggestion on how to improve the photo. Glad to say i did not get any nasty messages unlike some others have reported.

 

What I do not understand is how does one get to level 5 with simple comments “I find it a bit dull, to be honest”? L1 / L2 maybe but from a L4 on up I would expect a good critique. The comment should be followed up as to why its “dull” without it the comment itself is “dull” and useless. Just having persons click on one of the voting buttons or simply putting “great photo” is not a way to get your countdown to 0 in order to get to the next level. The other thing that I’ve notice, there are quite a few of the rude or useless comment coming from persons that have open a free account, have no photos posted and spamming the critiques. This looks like and smells like attempt at vote rigging, even though this is not going to work, as the site photo curation is being done by our Senior Curators. I would highly recommend that you restrict the curated critiques to the paid membership, this will eliminate a lot of these so called attempts. As for just hitting the vote buttons to move up in level, it should work along the line of the awards 1/100 of a point per vote, in other word you want a point write a proper critique, write a great critique and get bonus points. As to who gets to rate the critics, I would leave that to the crew, yeah I know we all need another thing to do :-), thus keeping the rating fair, 5 stars for “Great colours and contrast” really!!

 

I do like the fact that the persons name appears beside each comments, it keeps thing honest but hate the Level being displayed. If you are using this as a yard stick to find our next Senior Curators, I recommend that you keep tracking in private or have it displayed in the persons private profile to let them know how their comments are appreciated.

 

It’s a great start but it need to be tweaked for it to be a benefit to the photographer, I do not mind good or bad critique as long as they are constructive and accompanied by suggestion on how to improve our work. Personally I follow my own mantra “do you like it, yes, then that all that matters” what other persons say about your photos is just their point of view, some will like it others will not.

 

Just my two cents,

Marc,

With the curent system anyone can get from L1 to L~ by just clicking. So you get to L~, so what? And what if you do actually make comments, are they actually critiques? Is there anyone judging clicks from useful critiques?

Nice idea, but it needs a little work.

Leigh

 

Timothy, as Leigh pointed out the anonymity I raise is not what you talk about here. Of course if folks are going to write comments to the photographer the person writing should be clearly known.

 

What I was talking about was to make the crew screening and the member screening consistent. Consistent in two ways:

 

1. Titles should be either seen by both or not seen by both. Most folks seem to want titles, so fine. Currently the crew screeners can see titles but member screeners cannot. So, turn on titles for the members so it's consistent with the crew.

 

2. The name of the photographer submitting the image for screening should not be seen by either the crew screeners or the member screeners imo. Currently, again it is not consistent. Now the crew screeners know who each photograph submitted for curation belongs to but members screeners don't. This has been discussed for a couple of years now. I have never read one single comment by the members who thinks the crew screeners should know the name of the photographer when evaluating the photographs submitted. But still the policy is that they can. I just think now that there is a vibrant discussion about the screening process and a whole lot of new members here, it's time to raise this very important issue again.

Well, after reading most of it I think as a kind of incomplete résumé :

 

- change is needed to get better, because innerly is somehow dying. So bravo for trying to change things, to improve curating, to search for new ways and people.

The discussion resulting from it is quite interesting opening all kind of perceptions.

- Of course the first trial is not perfect … so let the discussion go on in a constructive way

- I feel a lot of people would be happy with titles. Think about it. It's indeed somehow difficult to help in curating if what we see as image size and information is very different from what the official curators see .

- The main urgent problem is - based on overviewing all the comments - by putting those L1 to L8 behind the profile (name) on all places; you probably forced people to comment who in fact didn't feel the urge to comment or analyze; and are doing it now a lot just to get rid of the negative feeling to have a L1 or L2 behind their name. So hide this L… on most places, and probably the flood of non helping comments will dry up.

 

This said, after all it was not bad a lot of people woke up , and became aware of the participation in the curating. Just one question will always stay open ; how does the curating theme feels all this stuff as helping them, and how much do they take it into consideration.

Stupidity has caught up with grading curation comments too.

 

I thought it was used to assess one's "attempt" at adding feedback. Write something detailed and get 1/5

 

Although this doesn't affect if I'll keep writing or not it does show how low the standards have gone recently. I've never published anything other than on 1x because I saw it as the least bad of whats out there.

 

Curation turning into a joke, fine I got over it and started to find the humour reading some idiotic responses. Gives me a good laugh, and keep going.

 

Few days ago decent comments got 4 or 5 stars. Since yesterday they are getting downgraded not only for me but for others too. "Stupid" have found the "curate" button.

 

And I'm sorry, who the elfin wants a comment from someone with no pictures on their account and who knows when they created the account ? If you aren't part of the community, you haven't shared with the community, were not asked to look at images as a guest then please "gtfo".

Ah, I see, I misunderstood re: anonymity. Yes, I also would like to at least see the title. In some cases, I've also felt the need to see the photographer's oeuvre.

 

The problem of weak comments plus a "levelling system" will exist as long as 1x management leave the system on algorithmic automation. You can run a system like that for a while, but then you need to step in by hand and 'harvest' the outcomes. As folks have already noted, people are already beginning to form 'reciprocity rings' by which they raise the reputation of their own comments. The algorithm will never know the difference between "Great capture" and a long, careful comment, and if sufficient numbers of participants don't care about the difference but only their own ranking, then there will be no data that allows a live management team to distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly.

 

I suggest 1x consider running the curate system as-is for a while, then step in and read through the results. Then start turning off the ability to participate for users who don't try to make somewhat meaningful comments. If there aren't eventually consequences within a system of this kind, then participants never try to live up to a community standard.

Also, the other thing the system really needs is the ability to edit your own curation. I just hit "publish" on a shot that I meant "reject" on, but I don't think there's any way to change that?

Besides knowing the title, knowing the category would be a good thing also, as touched on by others above.

 

I don't think you understand, amateurs are not judging your image, just giving you extra feedback. The official curation team, which consists of experts only, are still taking all the decisions.

 

It's really unfortunate if members abuse the system and rate a bad comment with 5 and a good comment with 1 just because they like the person or not. If this proves to be the case, we will only allow moderators to rate comments in the future.

 

It might also be a good idea to turn the commenting feature off for people who are abusing the system. I'm also thinking about only being able to write comments if you are level 2-3 so we get rid of spammers who open an account just to spam and ruin it for the other people who actually make a great effort to write a good critique and for the photographers who want feedback.

Ok, my 5 cents. I didnt want do write here, but im watching what happens here and emm... I have strange feeling about it. Firstly - I'm not pretty sure if it should bye anonymous - ok maybe it should be - but sometimes it's unbeleveble to judge just one photo from whole serie if you are making whole theme. Maybe it should be anonymous, but for example it would be easier to read for example "info" part, where author can write about his work. For example the hard part for judge here is an abstraction or documentary. There are some photos too that you think its totally abstraction but in fact it musn't be - but how do I can know it without any informations about it? Of course, sometimes picture can be judge how it stands - for example landscapes, macro, portraits, BUT NOT ALWAYS. Sometimes we just design whole story and its impossible to say if its clear for me to understand it, if it made well WITHOUT knowlage about what story it says - where is start where is beginning of whole story? Next... I don't see any reasons to have for example next to my nick/name or whatever 544537645 pt. or L32653. I mean, it can be for example bit deeper in your menus - I believe the best would be in my opinion if there will be only in example "PLUS", "Pro", "Crew".

Next thing - for me pretty good - now its a minimal time to sign curate or to not - it works fine. But I m not pretty sure if there is need to comment about how does that picture look's like or not - sometimes its really well made and everything you can say is "whoa - fantastic" - but its not good critique - its only opinion. But well... sometimes there is need to see what some users think about your job. But wait! There is a "critique" place, when you can put your image. Come on, I think almost everybody here is an adult person and we know that if there is possibility to learn something its great occasion (or if you are not shure about your picture), the greatest place is to write in critique section than send photo to curators and then curators must searching for really really nice stuff. The better way for my opinion if you afre not sure about your work - put it to critique section, and after while, if you are still proud of your image - try with curators - less work for everybody, and you can learn something.

 

Cheers!

Ralph,

AFAIK, the levels are only a measure of quantity, not quality. Excluding the lower levels might therefore not guarantee that the quality goes up. Just my 2 cents.

Best regards,

Frédéric (ex-Senior Critic and L1)

Hi Ralf

 

maybe I´m not able to shoot great photographs. But I´m not stupid I have understood how this system functions but nobody on this world is not influenced of comments he reads before he judges.... Some people more, some less but uninfluenced never.

 

As the founder of this website do you think your pictures are curated objective?

 

But last night I´ve wrote it several times...your decisions. But you'll never convince me that this way to do it , is better than before.

 

I was so glad to find this website here. It was really different. Judgement about my images without any explanations. God like decisions- I loved it. For "test reasons" I send last night a picture into the curation process.... and I've read the comments. I'm not a great photographer but also not really a beginner- maybe one have understood the picture- nobody realize that's in the back is a mirror etc...

 

A few minutes ago I see a great picture of a small female child going away...in a mostly graphic ambiente- two people are not ashamed to write that they want to see the child in front... a totally differnent picture.

 

I don*t want to read such garbage about my pictures. Ok- you are right I don*t have to read it- but I am not god like....

 

Maybe it's necessary to be like the others- maybe because of economic reasons. But you have also to accept that a few people are not happy with this...

 

Have a nice weekend.

 

I know the picture you are referring to and I also agree about the stupidity. The majority of those who comment have no imagination, they want studio controlled images.

 

Monkey see, monkey do.

 

But I think the interpretation of this will be lost.

 

I'm all for member curation being only by paid customers since you will have their info on file, or add a minimum photo and time duration before they can comment, as well as limit till they get to a certain level.

 

This is a site of people who love photography and the minimum skill level should be beyond the other sites.

 

If Leonardo Da Vinci uploads his Mona Lisa here he'll get comments like "I don't like it, too dark on the bottom, not enough space over the head, the sky has a weird colour"

 

Next thing we know he quits 1x, not because he was bad but because he was misunderstood and non-artists told him he sucked

I take a look at the image you mentioned.

 

I agree- too centered, it lacks sharpness on the eyes, the fifth finger is cut.. how bad...and the landscape behind has total unrealistic colours. But with a little effort he could improve it...

 

 

Well, in an ideal world people should look for the point first and then for broken rules. And remember that sometimes rules have to be broken to accentuate the point or even to create it.

 

Saw a symptomatic comment today: I would not hang it on my wall. So? Not everything is meant to be seen many times a day. The whole class of highly unpleasant but gripping art, for example. Or war/natural disaster documentary. Not for every owner of a living room...

 

I don't understand what you mean with "be like others"? I don't know any other website where you can get this much critique on your photos. Take 500px, all comments are only positive and never contains the least bit of critique. This means that you will never be able to improve your photos if you only get "Fantastic!" comments. How does "Fantastic!" help you to improve your photography? Even a master photographer can benefit from comments by beginners, because the majority of the audience watching photos are not experts, and there might be some things that the master didn't realize or think about. The master is free to ignore those comments, but it can still be interesting to know what ordinary people think rather than not knowing.

 

If you want even more really in-depth critique and also have a dialog with the photographer you should go the the critique section. The comments from curation are just a bonus and something a huge number of our members have requested, but if you are not interested in them just ignore them. You don't need to be a "god" not to read comments.

 

The final decision is always taken by an official experienced curator, just like before. Yes, our curators have enough experience to ignore comments that are not relevant. Nothing has changed in how they take decisions. The point of this feature is mainly to give feedback to the photographer not the official curators, they already know what to look for. The other point of this feature is to find good critics who will be considered for the official curation team in the future. Writing good comments is one very important quality of curators, but of course not the only one.

This is almost a different topic, but I often think about Van Gogh vis-a-vis Art. I believe that on those occasions when one of his works comes up for auction, it always sets a new price record for a painting. And yet during his lifetime he sold, what, one maybe two paintings.

And what he was doing was quite different from what his contemporaries were doing. It doesn't appear that he was influenced by them.

But he had genius. He had found a new way to graphically enable people to feel.

In retrospect, would we today have wanted him to have even vaguely considered the opinions of the general art community? Or the public at large?

If only the real 1x curators could be people returning from the future. Wouldn't that be perfect.

Ralf,

 

You're not going to be able to use L2, L3, etc. to separate good content in the comments from bad content, because the levels are only a measure of quantity. You're not even going to be able to use the user feedback to separate good commenters from bad commenters because the system is very easy to game.

 

That's what happened at 500px: way, way back when it started, people used to leave good substantive feedback. But then sometimes a photographer who didn't like the feedback would retaliate against the critic by downrating the critic's work. More importantly, what people started to realize is that they could just say, "Good composition!" or "Great capture!" and that was a way of telling someone that they had liked the photo (you originally couldn't see who had liked, only who had favorited) and then the commenter would get a "like" on their photo in turn, which would boost both photographs in Pulse. And so rings of people who were boosting each other started forming.

 

Without a direct human intervention at some point, there's no way to know the difference between a "real" like and a like that's just working the system. Keep an eye on curation here and I almost guarantee what you'll start seeing is the following:

 

1) Some user curators whose comments get downranked because they're simplistic or generic will start downranking everyone else.

2) Some users will start mutually upranking each other so that they appear to be highly reliable commenters.

3) Some photographers with a lot of work in the curation system will start punitively downranking anyone who writes negative constructive criticism.

4) Free accounts will start to be abused more often.

 

And much of this will not even be because people are malicious or destructive deliberately: this is simply the behavior that automated ranking systems have trained Internet users to follow.

 

Your crew will eventually have to step in and read the comments directly and use what you've got to separate people who are trying to build up a community that offers useful feedback and meaningful discussion from people who are just trying to play around with your algorithms. You will not be able to use any automated feature to do that job for you.

 

 

Such art is of course extremely hard to rate before the artist has become famous, especially when he's before his time like that. At the same time, many artists sell for very high prices ONLY because they are famous. Yes, they might have made some genius art works, but they also have made many bad simple sketches with only outlines or unfinished works which still are sold for top dollars only because they have a famous name.

 

Anyway, there is a difference between being original in a good and bad way. I can take a photograph with a completely unbalanced composition and say how original it is and that I'm a genius. The difference between a beginner and a master being original and breaking the rules is that the master knows the rules before and is deliberately breaking them. You have to master the craft first and then you can break the rules and be original. But you can't begin by breaking all the rules, unless you are a born genius and natural.

 

The public at large is not a good judge of what art is, take a look at the flickr most popular images, there is no art there, only eye-candy. That is the very reason we have curators at 1x. Of course judging art is extremely difficult for anyone even experienced curators.

 

A time machine would definitely be helpful!

 

You might be correct, if the system is abused, we will have to appoint moderators who rate the comments. But I sincerely hope that members here will rate comments in a neutral unbiased fashion or otherwise it's not going to work like you point out. We will see how it turns out.

I think there is an alternative and much more predictive way to determine the "value" of ones votes. Why not just compare ones votes against the final decision from the curators? A high correlation would mean that this person has a good eye for what the curators are looking for, and therefore this person's vote may be valued higher. Much better than the number of clicks, IMHO.

"You have to master the craft first and then you can break the rules and be original."

 

Ralf,

 

You're of course quite right. Picasso could draw/paint anything. And as his art developed, he chose a more abstract expression but with the same skills.

 

And, yes, if a work or artist is famous, the price goes up. Art is a business just like any other. Just look at the current best selling books list. They are almost all by best selling authors that the publishers know they can make money on. Balzac actually wrote a novel on this almost a hundred years ago.

 

How soon will you be getting the time machine?

In response to Leigh and Ralf:

 

Curators of today create art of the future.

 

Van Gogh was not in total obscurity during his life. He had several exhibitions before he died. Ambroise Vollard, an art dealer, a curator if you will, was instrumental in shaping Van Gogh posthumous fame. And Cezanne was "eternally grateful to Vollard for rescuing him from obscurity".

 

Something for curators to remember :-)

 

I agree that there should be more context, like title, category and description. Especially in documentary this is very important. Generally however, an image should speak for itself and not require extra explanation. A bad title can also ruin a good image.

 

If you like an image, describe in a few sentences why you like it so much, which specific examples and details. "I like the mood and tones, because it reminds me of my childhood and it makes me feel like a child again... etc". If you like an image but don't want to write an extensive in-depth comment, it's better not to write at all and only click "Publish". We want to encourage in-depth comments.

 

The levels are important to show because they give you an idea how experienced the person commenting your image is. Right now in the beginning, some experienced people are still at low levels, but this will be different after a while. We are also looking to increase the number of parameters that determines your level, like how many published photos you have and what your publish/reject ratio is, to give experienced photographers a higher level.

 

"Anna Golitsyna L3 PRO

Posted 5min ago

Quote

In response to Leigh and Ralf:

 

Curators of today create art of the future.

 

Van Gogh was not in total obscurity during his life. He had several exhibitions before he died. Ambroise Vollard, an art dealer, a curator if you will, was instrumental in shaping Van Gogh posthumous fame. And Cezanne was "eternally grateful to Vollard for rescuing him from obscurity".

 

Something for curators to remember :-)"

 

Something indeed.

 

Yes, this is also going to be implemented as one of several parameters deciding the weight of each vote, we had such a system before in one of the previous versions of 1x.

One thing I appreciate about this site is the openness between members and its administration.

 

 

I'm no master but like some here have tried the rules and are now just doing our thing. Then a bozo who has read the rules somewhere, has no idea whats being shot or what is meant by a certain processing goes off teaching us ABC ...

 

As for the official curators, I've seen their comments on images and at least they are constructive. The recent change has been a major one and has taken us out of a comfort zone. It has some good and some bad. The "badness" is mostly from idiotic comments.

 

Consider limiting comments as I have suggested earlier and maybe add the option to upload for curation with or without comments.

 

I'll personally opt to upload with comments on just to either read the good feedback or laugh at the idiotic ones.

 

Yes, that's true, a big responsibility indeed and something for everyone to keep in mind!

The other parameters probably won't work either. Skilled artists are not necessarily skilled critics, or even skilled curators for that matter. Many great artists actually can't see very far beyond their own work, or can't (or won't) articulate the principles behind their preferences. Some artists are in fact very jealous towards other art and can't really get beyond that instinct.

 

When you ask users (or anyone!) to curate, you're asking them to do something other than create artistic work. If you want quality curation, comments, critique, you will need a way to recognize that which doesn't just rely on whether someone can make a great image. Sometimes people who are only fair-to-middling artists get just enough insight from their creative work to be great critics, just as some great artists are terrible critics.

Timothy has an excellent point. The art of critique in any field is an "art" of its own.

As is curating. How much personal photography did John Szarkowski actually do?

I don't know the answer to that, but he's better known as a curator than as a photographer.

 

I totally agree. Sometimes I just press for example green button without any explenation - I see no reason to write crap about how good it is and blah blah blah - sometimes its easy to say its just good -I wont write critique WHY i pushed green because sometimes there is no reason. And sometimes there are such photos that its pretty hard to explain why they are so bad - they are just bad as hell and nothing will change it - it need to take another one... Maybe you are right with this marks on right side of nickname - I ll see how it works after few week. Best idea in my opinion was time limit to choose.

 

That's true, I've experienced the same things. We will have to fine tune this to see which parameters are most important. The idea is to hand-pick the best critics from the top rated critics from curation.

Just had it happen again. One of my pictures was hovering at 30% then after someone commented "Beautiful street shot" it climbed to 50% before curation ended.

 

I guess if the first two people posted its a wonderful piece of art while its actually crap, I might have ended closer to 70-80%.

 

Its all in the eye of the beholder.

Ralf,

Does this mean we will be getting Category and Title? Without those I don't feel there is much point in trying to contribute.

For example a very good table wine and a fine vintage wine, would you judge one against the other? No, they're in two separate categories.

We really need Category and Title, or perhaps everything except the photographer's name.

I have to say that I am also skeptical about the new system and don't really understand what the purpose it.

 

In order to try it out I uploaded an older photo from me which I know is of very good quality and very popular among my "fans" on other sites. As expected the photo got a very good rating (86% of 244 people voted for publish) and the comments where also overwhelmingly positive (the only point for critique was the sharpness in some areas).

 

However, the photo didn't get published.

 

So what can I take from this kind of curation process? Obviously the curators didn't like it or felt it was right for the collection. But in the old system the end result would have been the same for me (not publish). I didn't get anything new from the comments or the voting results.

 

If we want to have some kind of "public rating" or critque I think this should be another part of the site. Right now it seems the new system tries to mix two things together that do not mix well (i.e. popularity against curation). I think in the end most people want to know why a photo was not published, not what the other members of the site think about it. But this information can only be obtained from the curators themselves.

 

How do you know that? There has been some confusion about the notifications in "Curation info" panel. What was the sequence of notifications?

The non-anonymity of member curation has developped into a new dimension, at least in my case. I got an unsollicited comment to one of the pictures in my gallery with the same wording that I used for a comment to a picture in curation. However, my picture has not been in curation yet.

Thomas:

 

There's a small group of folks who've been around the site for a long time who've made a habit of plagiarizing other people's comments on an image, sometimes posting the comments to a different image. I've seen it before in Critique too--some people do it in order to make the requisite three comments that they're supposed to make for every image they post.

 

Well, it was first "In curation" (yesterday) and today the status was "Not Published". Sounds pretty clear to me.

 

I also want to make sure that I have no problem with the photo not being published, it's the decision of the curators after all. I just wanted to point out the irony that the photo is very popular, got a very high rating percentage, but didn't get published which is against the idea of the new curation system giving helpful information.

 

As I said: The only helpful information could be obtained from the curators themselves. The real ones.

The official curators I think want to operate like gallerists or museum curators, which is ok with me. Generally a curator in that role doesn't have to explain anything to an individual about why they do or do not select a work for exhibition unless they want to build a relationship with that artist. However, many museum curators and owners of galleries do make coherent public statements about what they think is important artistic work, and why they think so. A curator is often expected to contribute some kind of writing to a show catalog, for example.

 

It wouldn't be a bad thing for 1x's curators to try writing up a "guiding statement" that lays out at least some of their thinking. I've tried to identify what I think seems to govern their decisions, and most of those principles seem sound enough to me.

 

There is also of course the basic problem of selectivity. If you decide to set a threshold like "no more than 10% of submissions should be accepted", you are going to have a hard time clearly explaining all of the decisions that will follow. That's familiar to anyone who has judged any kind of selective process--grants, admissions, prize competitions, you name it. If you sit down with any group of roughly like-minded colleagues to judge a very large pool of submissions with only a small number of "yes" choices allowed, you generally find that there is quick agreement about a handful of "yes" submissions where the excellence is so indisputable that everyone agrees and quick agreement about a substantial number of "no" submissions where it is equally obvious. But in the middle of the bell curve, trying to figure out what distinguishes a "just-good-enough" from a "not-quite-good-enough" is never going to be easy to explain.

While standing at the bus stop last week, I noticed a woman staring at me. Eventually she walked up and said..."You're weird!" I laughed and answered..."You're ugly!" When considering The Great Cosmic Scheme Of Things...I was satisfied with the exchange.

:-)

 

for those of you who where or feel insulted, please contact one of us mods.

 

We can help and will help

 

best

 

Christoph

I'm going to make one more suggestion for a modest tweak to the system. The management team has done a good job aggressively tweaking it so far.

 

I think what you need to do is say, "This is a system for advising the hand-picked curators, who will largely continue to make their decisions behind an opaque wall. What we're looking to do is have the community serve as a sort of check-and-balance on hand curation. If there is strong consensus on an image, we won't be publishing it necessarily, but it will go into a flagged queue for review by the hand-picked curators. We'll read the comments, look again at the image, and sometimes (hopefully) be influenced by the community's wisdom."

 

And then, in support of it: hide the popularity percentage. We should never know whether an image is getting lots of votes or few votes. We might be able to guess by reading the comments, but who knows. If you combine that with the effort being made to weed out poor-quality comments, you might really create a system where people who want to participate in curation can, but where it doesn't become a clicking-machine that gets overworked by people who are trying to beat the algorithm.

 

No. Thanks.

 

I would like two buttons: Direct to the curators and the second: I want to know how popular my image is and also send it to the curators.

 

And if someone is bored to hell could he click on my ENDORSEMENT button please. This is the only thing I've missed here so far.

I think it's ok for the photographer to know how his image is doing.

 

I think the mistake is telling the community how their votes are counting up. That forms a very powerful feedback loop at other sites like 500px--once people know how their liking and voting and acting is actually accumulating or not, they begin (sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously) to coordinate their actions. You'll start to see it soon here, if you haven't already.

Was just searching for some clear definition about the official curation process - " how photos get published on the site" - WHICH I HAVE NOT FOUND SO FAR.

 

Have only short termed experience on 1x.com - At first sight was quite amazed to find a site where it seems not to be all about POPULARITY including the obvious

challenges about tweaking the system ( BUDDY VOTES, fake interest in photos expressed by comments like " GREAT PHOTO ... LOOK AT MINE")

 

Even more important for me: Not too many of the usal "perfect landscape" photos out of " the handbook for trendy landscapes" : .... look out forsome stream, some lake ... do a wide angle long time exposure with some big sharp stones in FG and improve colours ..."

 

Instead I got the feeling there are more photographers/photographs I like ( BTW really hate the terms "good/bad" ) and much room for creative shooters, technical experts and documentary photogs who want to tell astory as well....

 

By chance I found the button "send to curators" ... just picked one of my pics and did so - Next day - like the child on christmas day I was really nervous and curious to find some first comments on "status on curation": 38% (47 votes) - Status NOT PUBLISHED. Seemed promising - after just one day already such a big response ..... one "comment during curation: " slightly out of focus or trepidated" which I partly still dont unterstand ..... some astronomical term used during curation of a portrait of an animal ( which btw was part of a commercial project which has been sold for good money - lucky me the customer was no Astronom and just liked the result.

 

Recently had to find out this was the final result of the long curation period ( supposedly to take minimum of one to two weeks )

 

Anyway, seemed it was not good enough - will never really find out why - but

no disaster ... deleted the proof of shame and went on discovering the site.

 

Invested some time - found some irritating details: A CRITIQUE button where I found many use comments like: "Bad Photo" "Good Photo" "You have to..."

and much too many "Agree" and "Agree with" - almost the same result with CURATION button, unfortunately. Funny enough I - the new user - was asked/allowed to curate photos as well - being 1x.com the "last resort for quality photos" with specialist curators who make all the difference

 

BOTTOM LINE AFTER ONE WEEK (FREE) MEMBERSHIP

 

- Still like the variety of (in my opinion) very interesting photographers.

- Still searching for a clear process description "HOW PHOTOS GET PUBLISHED"

 

- CURATION:

should be Privilege of skilled curators - even would be interested who they are - what makes them skilled - any serious photo competition ( the inclusion on official 1x.com site is nothing less for me ) is proudly presenting who is included in the Jury - parallel curation from users makes no sense to me. Why is "percentage" still mentioned if it has no effect on curation ???

 

- CRITIQUE:

Need more info - at least which category - can excuse much more from a beautiful Portrait from a documentary than a staged studio / outdoor Portrait where I expect much more - maybe the Title - will lead to the true story she wants to tell

 

Quality of critique always questionable - "Who am I to critizise" - But a Rating System for Critiques is highly questionable - Always rate the negative ones and cheer the good ones

Why not replacing it with TUTORING button - Can be clicked when uploading

if critique from fellow photographers is appreciated

 

Other peoples comments should be blended out - Instead of BUDDY VOTES there are too many BUDDY CRITIQUES with all the "agree withs" .... instead of

own opinions / thoughts

 

Much too many (sorry) unqualified and meaningless critiques ... or those who try much too hard to find faults ..... was reading some like "hard to critizise - cannot find a mastake" and much too man "good" "bad" "you have to.." or even offending comments there ..... people tend to force to make as many critiques as possible just to raise levels

 

Love the comments from MYCLE and RALPH SCYLLA - and really hate to see some really high skilled, interesting photographers leaving because of obvious reasons - and really sorry to feel like some of the founders of this amazing place (congratulation ) start feeling partly offended by some of the comments

 

Sorry for the long story - Cheers Wolfgang

 

Hi Wolfgang,

 

go to Members than Crew and you will find also the names of the curators.

http://1x.com/members/crew

 

 

thanks a lot

Wolfgang Scheu welcome to 1x.

 

There are two curation processes and both are independent as far as I know

Members curation - members see images and leave comments if they wish and hopefully constructive comments

Official curators - they have their own process which overrides the member's process.

 

Critique - you get comments from other members without going into the curation process.

 

thanks a lot - cheers Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,

 

welcome to 1x

 

when you click on "about"

there is some short FAQ like description

i summarize:

 

You upload an image into our portfolio.

Eveyone who knows you and is friend of your gets to see this image on the tab "following" at the very right of the site where you can see photos

 

In the cogwheel you can do a lot of things

 

send to curators.

Thsi is a process, where the official curators decide whether to publish the image on frontage or not.

While they do and seemingly a bit longer the members too can vote and comment the curating opinion. By that the image and the comments are part of an evaluation process.

 

send to critique

the critique section is a separate part. you have to give some in depth critique. After you did, you can post a request by yourself. The image will be discussed and critiqued intense. This section is heavily moderated by us. We only accept ling detailed and in-depth critiques, to keep up a standard we think to be unique worldwide

 

send to weekly theme

if your image fits the actual weekly theme you can send it there. Voting and getting votes for a ranking The winning images are published (the only way to get published beside the decision of the curators)

 

I hope i told the most important

 

best

 

Christoph

thanks a lot - exactly the kind of detailled info I wa looking for

 

thank you very much - appreciated

Hi Ralf

 

my two cents to this (and without desrespect of any kind).

 

Even the curation process is kind of a good idea and somehow i find it a contest for 15 minutes of fame of been on the front page for few minutes until new ones come up, but never the less is a recognition for many people doing really great work, and that there is not buddy voting is a good thing.

 

Sometimes i am shocked, and without desrespect, still not finding what for example in your published photos make it to be a curated photo, therefore i always thought like many other sites do (or National Geographic for instance), the photos that get published have a comment from the curators indicating the reason behind been curated (honestly i have seen better pictures not curated in this site than many that got into the front page).

 

Second, still trying to understand if this is a photo site or also to represent artistic ramifications of photography (which i thought it was), not sure what is the reasons for a photo to be decided to be curated and front page, but not taken into consideration the artist intention and not present a title or the information of the photo in the curated process can lead only to valuing a photo for its sharp or over exposed or not, therefore the member curation for me is pointless.

 

As much as i appreciate any comment (even those saying 'i don't see anything here' ... which many times probably i won't give a f*ck as i am sure they didn't read the info or the intention in the photo), know why a photo is selected it will help everybody i think.

 

Also some poeple understand better certain type of photo than others, be able to select the category you want to curate or give input it will be great, otherwise you get input from someone not interested in your type of work or not enough knowledge to judge.

 

lastly..., but not less important..., i think you should consider some refund in the memberships fees, because it is still today unable to know how you are giving the 'Be seen Higher position in list of photographers' for the fee, because there is not direct relation on the fee and the level you are on, the list of photographers or any type of positioning in the site.

 

PS - Say in the site info a photo can take up to two weeks to get curated and already have passed the sharp knife in thirty minutes and not enough time for members curating process make all the information really a joke if as previous post you (your site) indicate that curators will take in consideration members curation votes and comments.

 

Every day i am finding this site just a joke in the process and 'curation' idea, and only great for the great community of great photographers in many areas of it, where people can actually interact with others. Perhaps just lacking the option to open up a bit to the option of 'latest submissions' where other great work can also be seeing (as not everybody will go to critique or different forums pages).

 

ahhh.... and please... present the title of the piece in the front page together with the name, for many of us the title of the piece is as important as the work.

 

:)

 

Hi Ralf,

 

I just want to say after so many years wondering around the photography websites I am so glad I come to 1x, simply because your high levelled curators and non-buddy-voting system.

 

I have experienced on site watching how professionals pick out top 10 photos out of fifty thousand pics in three day, yeah it’s right, fifty thousand pics (there are many Chinese people on this planet, and probably half of us have a camera on hand :) ), and that was not one of the largest contests. It is not a easy job for the pros but they definitely know what they are doing. As I see the front page publishing pics, I trust the curators decisions. In fact, I think most people do, otherwise, 1x would not be as famous as today among the photo webs.

 

My first two photos just got published, and it is first time for me to read people’s critiques (sorry I still need a bit time to learn the system). I have to say, after so many years experience and knowledge learning, most of the critiques I can skip, I would very much appreciate valued ones of course, but, hey, every high valued stuff takes time to become valuable, that’s the reason they are rare. When there is one or two pieces, I would be very happy already. More knowledge we have ourselves better we can judge which critique is constructive. As for the rest, "I don agree but I will defend their rights to say it“ (not the destructive ones of course).

 

My full respect to the whole 1x hard working team. Wish 1x another good year to come!

 

Kind regards

 

Yang

 

Why can I not find Clyde Beamer after all these years ? Has it to do with comments ? Is it because he says what he thinks in his own special way ? What kind off community is this that longtime members can dissapeare suddenly ?

I've been gone from the site for a while. Was reading up to see what this new (to me) popularity/vote thing on some of my images is. Read through most of these posts. Has the curation info panel under cog been removed? Looks like it was active, some people didn't like it, suggestion of removal, but then nothing. Thanks in advance.

 

Hi Peniole,

Well, since yo have been gone there has been an informational posting answering questions about the Curation Process. It is a long thread but that is because it has a great of information in it. You will find the answer to your question there also.

It would be important to read it all, and also the links to the blogs which have even more information about this process.

 

Now this thread is not for opinions about how you feel or what you think about the process. It is only for information so someone like yourself who has been away can come to read and learn. Keep in mind that other threads have discussed opinions - it is just this one that is informational only.

 

If after reading this you still have questions then feel free to ask the question in that thread. I hope this helps you.

 

My best,

Phyllis

Forum Moderator