Closed Missing Photos
- Thread starter snowleopard
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- purge the great purge
I know this is slightly tangential, but whilst moderators are being discussed, I would strongly recommend the appointment of one or two general (ie, forum) moderators from North America. This would result in moderators who are likely to be able to respond to any issues in all three of the regions that have lots of Zoochat members. That means that no matter what time it is, there's a reasonable chance that there'll be a moderator who can respond to it at a convenient time for them.
I agree to that - one suitable US moderator would have been Okapipr if he was still here, short posts but to the point and no extreme views as I recall it.
with regards to photos, what's really annoying me at the moment is that people are still uploading photos that are absolute rubbish and should have been binned. This one (http://www.zoochat.com/578/los-angeles-zoo-190985/) isn't the worst but is an example of how not only are the posters seemingly proud of the effort that it took to produce an abysmal photograph but you always get other members defending the upload!
I'm pretty sure Sim is already in the process of trying to find more moderators (for both forum and gallery), so one can only hope the chaff gets weeded out of the gallery soon. [sorry for mixing my metaphors
]
I'm pretty sure Sim is already in the process of trying to find more moderators (for both forum and gallery), so one can only hope the chaff gets weeded out of the gallery soon. [sorry for mixing my metaphors
]
Ituri would be very suitable I thinkBaldur said:
Zooplantman
Well-Known Member
I heartily agree
To think that we may have five views of the many moods of some antelope (all close up!), while entire zoo galleries are being purged is too awful
also I rather think that certain really bad photos will be getting lots of views because people will be opening it simply to see what the hell it is showing, and therefore that awful photo will remain unpurged.
(disclaimer: I do understand the reasons behind the purging and that it had to be done, but it is very annoying in its indiscriminate nature)
(disclaimer: I do understand the reasons behind the purging and that it had to be done, but it is very annoying in its indiscriminate nature)
adrian1963
Well-Known Member
This will probally be my last post here so please be gentle with me
On the subject of photographs in the galleries why don't we have a moderator for each country this mod would then be able to concentrate on there countries photographs only.
On an appeals mod this person must be someone who as NO prefferable zoo or country and be able to command the respect of ALL this sites members and for this I would like to put forward Gentle Lemur as I think everyone on here respects his photography skills and his impartiality on many debates.
Anymore nominations
On the subject of photographs in the galleries why don't we have a moderator for each country this mod would then be able to concentrate on there countries photographs only.
On an appeals mod this person must be someone who as NO prefferable zoo or country and be able to command the respect of ALL this sites members and for this I would like to put forward Gentle Lemur as I think everyone on here respects his photography skills and his impartiality on many debates.
Anymore nominations
Ituri, Arizona Docent, mstickmanp, Meaghan Edwards, jbns99b - there are plenty of suitable candidates. There are very few trouble-makers on this forum, which should make the job relatively straightforward. At least compared to the pains in the back passage that I've dealt with in past stints as a forum moderator!
I'd like to echo, also, the problem of page views being used to determine which photos survive and which don't. I would prefer that the rating tool already available be used. It shouldn't be too hard to establish rating photos as an almost automatic action when looking at photos. Of course, it's open to abuse in that some people will see fit to rate all their own photos as 5 stars... but effective moderation will nip that in the bud.
NZ Jeremy
Well-Known Member
Thanks Baldur but I cannot invest the time needed...
Chlidonias would be excellent... Anyone but Sun Wukong (if that guy still posts)...
I think a criteria based deletion and moderation programme with an appeals process is the fairest way of administering such a wonderful resource and to ensure it's ongoing quality... There seems to be more than enough responsible daily members to achieve such a goal...
Another idea would be to limit an individual zoo's photos to a maximum of, say, two thousand, maybe with an article link page, youtube, flickr, photobucket, home webpage and wikipedia links all within the zoo's gallery as a method of compensation... Server space cannot expand exponentially without an increase of member numbers, an increase in advertising or content charges - that's just the reality...
I remember one Saturday a few years ago I decided I was going to view the whole gallery (it was about 5,800 photos at that time) and I could do it in half a day... I remember at the time thinking a few things:
- There are some crap photos here and some very repetitive ones
- This Snowleopard character is going to catch up to me in posts and photos soon (hey it was years ago)
- A system of acceptance of photos by criteria and a formal moderation system is going to be needed soon (to be perfectly honest I'm suprised it took so long and my personal opinion is that it should have been pre-announced)
To be honest I think the loss of 50,000 photos, many of which are irreplacible, while some popular individual animals in major zoos have dozens of poor photos of them still remaining is a tradegy and must be fixed - it has cost the site passionate members...
Ultimately it is up to Sim, it is his site and he can run it however he likes, I cannot write code worth a damn so I have no idea how hard it would be to introduce what is proposed... At the end of the day, this ain't no democracy...
Indeed.
The beauty of using the star rating tool is that it's already there, ready-made. It requires no code. It's intuitive to use - everybody is familiar with star ratings. It's stratified - so depending on how much space we have we can keep photos rated 2 and up, 3 and up, 4 and up or only keep those worth the full 5 stars. And finally, it's inclusive. There's no need to rely on subjective opinions by moderators with a time-consuming appeals process. The more people who use the system, the more reflective it becomes of general Zoochat opinion.
Just my two cents:
Because there is a problem of storage of the photos, and due to some very poor and duplicate photographs, could they just be deleted by the person who posted them? I realize for a moderator, that might be difficult considering the amount of photos. But if each person could do that to their own photographs, that might clear some space. For me personally, accidentally add some zoo photographs that I did not necessarily want in the galleries.
Another point, if every member made a conscious effort to think before adding every single photograph from their trip and ask "Is this photo worthy of being put in the gallery?" "Does ZooChat really need ANOTHER shot of this exhibit?" This would certainly clear up hundreds, if not thousands, of duplicate and blurry photographs and put an end any "photo competitions" between users.
Thanks
Because there is a problem of storage of the photos, and due to some very poor and duplicate photographs, could they just be deleted by the person who posted them? I realize for a moderator, that might be difficult considering the amount of photos. But if each person could do that to their own photographs, that might clear some space. For me personally, accidentally add some zoo photographs that I did not necessarily want in the galleries.
Another point, if every member made a conscious effort to think before adding every single photograph from their trip and ask "Is this photo worthy of being put in the gallery?" "Does ZooChat really need ANOTHER shot of this exhibit?" This would certainly clear up hundreds, if not thousands, of duplicate and blurry photographs and put an end any "photo competitions" between users.
Thanks
I figured it was time to update everyone on the situation here.
After months of searching and quite a few hundred dollars spent on trying to recover data from failed hard drives, I've officially given up on trying to recover these backups I had
Unfortunately I only had one copy of the photo gallery data which was purged and the drive it was contained on died and I have not been able to recover it.
I am truly sorry for not being able to restore any of the photos that were deleted - indeed, I regret the whole exercise - even though I still consider that it was necessary at the time.
It hit home a few months back just how annoying this must be to everyone when I myself went looking for a photo in the gallery I knew I had uploaded, to serve as an example in a discussion. When I couldn't find it, I looked further and discovered that many of my own photos I had intended to use were no longer online - victims of the purge.
So, please forgive me for not being able to follow through on my promise - when I get a chance (perhaps over Christmas), I will be going back through my photo collection and re-upload some of my more interesting photos to the gallery that were purged - especially from smaller zoos which don't have many photos.
Just for the record - the photos that were deleted were only those which had no comments made on them - so no discussion was lost during the purge.
Now that the photos are being served from Amazon's cloud servers rather than our web server, we have effectively unlimited storage space - although costs go up as storage used increases.
I still think we need to consider some form of sanity-check for some of the large galleries which are full of photos of the same things. However, a bulk-purge is definitely not the solution I will consider again - something much more subtle and controllable will be the preferred approach. I will need some more time to think about this.