Closed Random Photos selection

[Chlidonias]

has anyone else noticed that the Random Photos which appear at the top of each page now all seem to be recently-uploaded ones? Has there been a change in the programming so only recent photos are randomly selected from, or is it just a coincidence?

(This isn't a complaint or anything, I just thought it was interesting )

 

[Simon Hampel]

Well spotted. As part of some performance optimisations I did a few months back, I changed the way the photos are chosen for display.

Essentially, I store a list of the 100 most recent photos uploaded to the relevant galleries for each part of the forum. Then three of these photos are chosen at random to display on the site.

A side effect of this is that if a lot of photos are uploaded to a particular gallery at once, they will tend to dominate in the photo block for a little while until other photos are uploaded.