Is POTW Dead?
 

Just sent in my vote for this week & Ok so I dont manage to vote every week but a POTW hasn't been announced since 15th Sept :confused:

And I appreciate the time the mods put in to make this forum work... but has this got a future?

I haven't even bothered to vote the last couple of weeks,after checking through all the images each week & making my vote I kept looking for POTW and nothing was happening...I think it is dead & buried for the moment...shame, as it was something to look forward to each week.

To be honest with you after the last one that I posted up the number of people voting dropped down to just a couple and since then the most has been three one week. Down as low a one on occasions. I guess the new way of doing it that we tried didn't work after all. If someone can think of a better way then I'm happy to try something new. However the lack of people voting each week left me assuming that most were not bothered by POTW.

I could not vote for a couple of weeks as I was away from a computer then when I could access the internet I could not remember exactly how to vote nor could I easily find how to do so so I gave up.

That's a shame, but with numbers a low as that it's not really representative.

I honestly can't think of another way other than a small group of regular members doing the choosing and posting. But that's 'back to square one' isn't it?

Guys I know Im new to this forum and please dont think Im stepping on any toes. Ive took a quick read through this and I mean quick so forgive me if its been covered, The forum has 6477 members and out of that number, how many are regulars? I love the thought of POTW as it gives us all an extra jump of interest into photograhy and a great reason to use the forum on a regular basis and from what I cant read, some find it hard to vote, some are not always here to vote, So why dont you try POTM "picture of the month". Each person gets to send in say 5 shots max, ie 10 regular members 50 shots in all, Then the moderator of the forum then pics out the best say 5 shots from 5 different members, then there put on a differnet section on the forum and the members are then allowed to vote on the 5 shots via some sort of forum voting system and that way even if you were away a week or two, you could still get you vote in..
Now Im sure there be alot of holes is this suggestion but they can be filled in through time but as I say Im only new to the forum and my spelling sucs btw..:)

While I like omalanrf's idea in principle, with the challenge there is getting people to enter one photo for the fortnightly comp (guilty :o), and voting in general, I think this is making it more complicated and regrettably think it wouldn't work.

Except if within that small group of regulars each week it was just down to one of the group to make the choice. The following week it would be down to a different person. if the group consisted of only four regulars + the two mods - each person would only have to do the choosing once every six weeks.

And another advantage of having one individual choosing is that perhaps they could include a couple of words saying why they liked that particular photo.

Ok so you might say that the choice of one person isn't representative, possibly not, but then because each of us perhaps look for different things, we would get a variety of styles & types of image.

Also you might say "I dont feel qualified to choose" but it is a personal thing, you know what you like. If you have voted under the present system, or in the fortnightly competition you are making a choice.

It would probably need one person to take overall responsibility for managing how it works & the rota but I dont see that as onerous once the system was put in place (my hand is up but happy to for it to be anyone)

Thoughts anyone? And people like the idea, any volunteers to join the panel?

I would certainly go along with that and volunteer to be a panel member.

it could be worth a try,I would be happy to help,but I do get confused with the time difference.... what do the mods think?

I too only just joined today and having only read through this topic and the one at the top of this sub-forum I wonder if another easier way of voting could be utilised. Obviously, I have no idea what has been tried before either.

Each photo in the gallery has a "Report Photo" link underneath it, click that, select "Other" from the dropdown and type "POTW" into the more information box....job done and voted. Members can now vote easier and as they are viewing the actual photo in the gallery.

On the admin side, emails that are received for a reported photo header can be filtered so that those with "Other" go to one location where they can be counted etc etc.

Steve...:)

Very clever idea :)

Like it!:)

that sounds easy Steve...good idea.... "if we stay with voting"

Or another idea..Admins may be interested to look here http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...ighlight=photo

Steve...:)

I agree with Trenna - its a great idea but it still relies on sufficient members to vote to get a reasonable result. If you look at the voting in the fortnightly competition there have only been 7/8 votes in the last few weeks (I'm guilty of not always voting :o) The risk I think Steve's suggestion runs is that, unless there is one absolutely standout photo we will get a number with the same number of votes... and then someone still has to make a decision.

On the other hand if it was my responsibility once every, say six weeks, I would put. Note in my diary to remind me to do it. Obviously majority decision on this one.

The mods have been quiet on this one so far - do you have a view guys?

Do you not think that if the voting is that much easier, more votes would be cast? Seems to me that sending an email with votes is far too long winded and if I am being honest...its not something I would do. Not because I do not want to vote, but because I have to switch programmes to do it.

And with a little bit of coding done to the site, the vote process could be made into a button, next to the photo, those votes could be logged in the database and a readout for admins/mods produced. It just takes a little thought.

I too would be interested in what the site owners think...

Steve...:)

there are only 7 or 8 people responding to this and that is pretty much all we will get with voting... I think putting up a reminder in the gallery would have helped remind people to vote but that never happened, & it was a bit complicated to vote..... I agree Steve your way of voting sounds a great way to vote if the majority want to still vote...... but what about we try Clives idea and see how we go..... Peter said he is happy to go with what ever we want to try,so lets make a decision and get started on POTW again.
what does everyone else want to do?
vote or have a few people to choose POTW.

Why only 7 or 8?..There are 6 and a half thousand members here, this does not make any sense at all.

Steve...:)

Similar suggestions have been made before, but to no avail.

http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...ead.php?t=3229

I rather like Clive's idea. One thing I have always wanted from the gallery is for people to explain why they like a particular image. Gratifying as it is to get the 'great shot' comments, this doesnt actually help improve your photography. Having one person make a personal selection and explain what it is that makes it POTW in their eyes would be very interesting, especially if as is suggested, it is a different person doing the selection week on week.
I'd be happy to take a turn.
An alternative along the same lines would be to have a sticky thread where anyone could post their personal POTW and explain why. I would suggest that the only rules would be that it shouldnt be an image of your own, and that each person should choose just one image. That might mean that some weeks we had multiple POTWs, but that isnt necessarily a bad thing, and might encourage more people to engage in some constructive comment and critiscism on the site, rather than set up what could be seen as an elite closed group...

I am happy to give anything a try just to get some interest back into the site.

Crikey, suggestions where made 4 years ago...and with 6400 members you get 7 or 8 votes.

I dont think I can wait another four years for something to be sorted out.

With 6400 members, this place should be buzzing...I'll hang for another few days but in the meantime I'll reg at another forum then let nature takes its course.

Steve...:)

I feel that whatever is decided or put into practice is too late for this site. I've felt for a while that we have no leadership, no umph, no interest from those that put these things into place. I believe we have three moderators and Admin Andy. Only one of the moderators periodically pops up and says he too busy or can't get on the internet (surely you have a router and wireless). When I joined the site in 2006 we had at least three enthusiastic moderators who were always on site, always commenting on anything and everything, as well as trying to help new users and beginners (especially Duncan, God bless him).

We have 6400 members and no interest, the regular few 6/7 vote on the bi-weekly comp - setup by the members. I know I'm guilty of not voting, I used to but when there are only 4/5 entries you lose the enthusiasm.

I would love to see the site rise up to it's former glory but we need people to drive it and make new members want to participate. Steve. has come up with some nice ideas but I don't see any evidence of the people who could put these ideas into practice even commenting. Why not??

Rant over.

What a shame Steve, and you have done well to stick around for so long. But website decline is an awful thing to recover from and to do so often means hard decisions need making about staff etc. I joined ere a few days ago because of the 6400 members and though "Ahh good...a busy site"

I closed my own community/gallery a year ago as I was running into a period of life thats extra busy. We only had a few hundred members but regularly had mpre then a hundred votes for POTW, and nearly everyone voted for POTM.

I had coded a system there like I have descibed in previous posts here and it was 95% automatic, we only had to copy and paste the winners list that the server generated for us, and the voting was a rating system so you could easily rate each photo you viewed...without leaving the page.

If anything does change here, someone drop me a mail to let me know.

Good luck to the site owners, you obviuosly have some tough decisions to make.

Steve...:)

I think Steve's idea is excellent, but like Trena I would support giving Clive's suggestion of one person agreeing to pick up the duty for an agreed length of time. I would volunteer as and when the turns come around.

OK I guess I need to reply to this... There is a reason that I have not replied to this yet is that I wanted to see what the consensus was from the active members. I have no idea about how easy or otherwise adding a voting button to the gallery would be or how easy it would be to stop members voting for multiple photos (which in my opinion would make the system less effective) this is something that the tech folk are looking at. The way that I set up recently to try and get POTW going again was never the smoothest but I don't see that sending an email was the hardest of processes. To be honest with everyone on the first week of that we got the most votes and that was less than ten people, within two weeks it was down to six and soon after just a couple a week so clearly it didn't work. I think the system of a rota of members selecting POTW would be the most workable system so long as one person is willing to take on organising this. I am happy to be involved either by being included on the rota or being left in reserve to make a section if for any reason the person who shoud be doing it cannot.

As for the theory that the site needs more activity from the mods to get it going I would firmly disagree. The only way that forums stay active is through the membership, I join in and offer help where I can but I do not have the answers to many questions that are asked. As for me only popping on from time to time there are plenty of reasons for this (I on here everyday checking the site but don't always have anything to add so don't always post) which I am not going to go into right now.

For me POTW has always been a bit of an issue, as previous systems have been quite time consuming. I think if the members want to increase activity on here the way to do it is to post threads that lead to discussion. I would love to see more honest critique in the gallery, I woud definitely post more I there if I received feedback on what I was doing wrong. I also think that the lack of activity in the equipment section is amazing, on most such sites this is the most active section. I'd love to see some reviews of gear going up and some discussions about which lens/camera is best for a certain job. I'd even quite like to see the odd Canon vs Nikon debate as they are usually quite good fun. Perhaps we should look to set up some threads about specific areas of photography where members can ask advice?

I liked PTOW and was really chuffed the one and only time I won and would like to see it back - but its got to be easy.

I've been here since the begining and use the forum mostly to look at other peoples work, gain inspiration from it and to show off some of my own efforts. I comment on what I like and for the most part they are "good shot" comments because unless I "know" someone well I am cautious of critique that may not be taken the way its meant and I wouldn't wish to offend. Thats one of the good things about this site - its friendly and there is no bitching etc.

So how to raise PTOW from the dead. Well for a start 6400 members is irrelevant because no-one ever un-joins a site so that is how many there have been since Dec 2005 - not how many there are now. Reallistically if you look at posters in the forum we might be around 100 or so.

I have sympathy with Postcard's view that the Mods can't do this themselves it has to come from us and as with any club I have ever been in there are a small number of people that do the work and plenty that think it could be done better.

One of the problems I have with selecting a PTOW/PTOM is that I haven't found an easy way to review the last 7/30 days worth of input. (If there is one someone tell me). Generally I would select from those I have commented on and if I could pull them up and run through them I could then allocate a choice. (Bit like the DPReview slideshow voting system) Alternatively a button to allocate a score out of 5/10 alongside the image which then acumulated to an automatic result would work for me as I could do it at the same time as I commented.

Alternatively very happy to join a team where one person is responsible for a given week as has been suggested earlier. Certainly as a non-tech solution this has to be worth a try whilst the site staff look a clever "options"

I to have been keeping an eye on this thread now and Im going to be truthful guys. I looked for another forum from the one I was in and found this one but I find myself being drawn back to the other one because,

1, When I have logged in, theres just too few posts to read.
2, I think it would help if the forum got a face lift and made it clearer and I think then you would have a better chance of getting new members and keeping them.
3 Let the people with more time on there hands to run the forum..

Now to be running a forum for the last 6-7 years is a great sucsess (well done on that)
Im only a new user with views on how it could be made better "please dont eat me for saying the above"

Richard

One of the strengths of this site is that nobody will eat you!
The first point is very valid, the answer is in the hands of all the members. Nobody else can post but the members! The bottom line is you only get out what you are willing to put in.

The design of the site is up to the Mods and whether they agree with you and are willing to put the effort in. The one thing that beat me with the last experiment with POTW was that somehow it was not obvious and how to vote was even less obvious, as I said earlier I gave up trying to re-find how to vote.

good, other forums just go down your throat for saying stuff. This is what I do to show my pictures which I think is easier, I upload my photos onto flickr then I cut and paste the BBcode to the end of this message, Example below

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8335/8...f1e4da8f34.jpg
Grim Reaper by omalanrf, on Flickr

I think it shows all the photos better straight from the word go and when your click on the image, it tell you when it was took and the details of the photo straight off the bat. Anyway something to think about, flickr is free to sign upto btw

There is an issue with embedding photos like the one above. If the person who posts it makes any change to the photo on Flickr then code for linking to it changes so you end up with a dead link in the thread. This makes threads look really untidy and in some case will stop the thread making any sense (imagine a critique thread where the photo being discussed is no longer viewable). By hosting the images within this site we can avoid this happening.

As for the site needing a facelift I am not sure what you are suggesting should be changed? If you have specific ideas please let us know though to be honest I think it is a fairly straight forward site to find your way around (but that might just be because I am used to it). I would also add that the mods are not he ones who make decisions on the way the site looks or is run if anyone has any specific issues with that it is something that the site admin would need to look at.

As for needing people with more time on their hands to run the site I would repeat what I said earlier in the thread. How active a forum is is solely down to the members. All of our members (from those who have been here since the begin go those who have just joined) can start threads, post photos in the gallery, start competition threads, offer critique. Us mods could start more threads but unless I know what people wish to discuss that won't help. If you want to discuss a topic then start a thread, if it is something that I can contribute to I will reply (as will a number of our committed members).

As for photo of the week it seems that we are limited by he software used to host the gallery so adding a voting button doesn't seem to be an option. I think the best way to get it back up quickly is to go with the idea of a panel of judges each taking it in turns to select the winner. It would just need one person to take on the job of sorting the rota (I am happy to be on the panel or held in reserve) I am sure someone said earlier that they would be happy to take on this role.

When I put a photo up on flickr, I have already done all I wanted to do with it via software i.e cs6 and then I dont have to touch it again. I think that way theres no resizing of any images and I think its the easier for new members who just join the forum to get to grips with it faster. You can also make folders on flickr and say entitle them WPF. Anyway as I say, its just a thought.

Although you might not alter photos once they have been posted on Flickr plenty of users do. I have seen loads of threads on other forums with dead links to Flickr photos and it just looks silly, definitely something that I would avoid if possible. I thought that the photo uploading system on here was fairly straight forward (certainly no harder than using Flickr), both for the gallery and tad ding images or threads.

sure thing, whatever works best but do you guys mind if I submit my photos the flickr way?

PTOW & Fortnightly Challenge are two different types of competition.

The FC is with a specific subject (set by the previous winner) for photos actually taken during the two weeks that particular challenge is running. Members who want to enter submit one photos by posting it in the challenge thread and at the end of the fortnight the challenge setter creates a poll of the entries posted (usually between 5 & 15/20 depending on the set subject)

POTW is selected from all the photos posted in the gallery in the previous seven days. Just by uploading a photo to the gallery it automatically becomes eligible for consideration for POTW and can be often 100~200 photos - clearly to create a poll for that many images just isn't feasible.

I have missed out on all this discussion, probably because I've been busy - I do like this forum but do find there are less and less posts - we all tend to be pretty positive about each others pics which can be very encouraging. I don't really have any notion of how to suggest changes. I post quite a lot on FB and have 1 or 2 regulars who comment but when I meet people they tell me how much they like to see my pics. So you really do not know the influence the forum has. Everyone on here have been really friendly and helpful, perhaps we need a getting to know you section, I have been on for a couple of yrs and only feel I am familiar with a few people. Anyway, whatever is decided I do hope it is for the greater good of photography and that we can all participate. Thank you to all who work hard behind the scene.

Marydoll... there is a section at the bottom of the home page "Over Exposed" for chatting about anything you like....I also saw a thread somewhere for people to add a photo of themselves to say hello, that was an old thread..here's hoping we can get a bit more active on here... join in on the proverb photo fun if you like..

are we going to give Clives idea a try and see how we go?
I am also happy to take a turn.

Have a peep over at this site http://www.photography-cafe.com/ it uses smf forum software and coppermine gallery software, they are bridged together meaning one login for the user and both are connected/available.

On the sites home page, they have displayed POTD, POTW and POTM, admin change these as required, simply by inserting a number into a box.

Now click on the gallery link and when there click on one of the thumbnails from the main block at the bottom, your now on a page where you can comment (just like you can here) and you'll also notice a selection of stars, clicking on of these stars will "Rate" the photo from one to ten and you will stay on that page. So you rate then comment and go to the next photo. The ratings are stored in a database and added totaled.

On the admin side of the site a page is written that gathers ratings and displays them for admin to see so they know who has won Photo of the day (POTD). only ratings from the last 24 hours are displayed, so the winner is always a freshly uploaded photo and scores cannot accumulate over the course of a few days.

Now go to this link in their forum..http://www.photography-cafe.com/foru...?topic=18777.0 in here you will see a mini display of photo's, these are the photos that have received ratings within the last 24 hours, and the photo at the top is "POTD" The listing was completely generated by the forum sotware so all the admin has to do is copy and paste the code from an admin page to a new forum topic, this also includes the hyperlinked photos in the list so that if you click one, you can go directly to its place in the gallery and leave a comment

So to sum up, you view a photo in the gallery, rate it, comment..then admin copies and pastes to a new forum topic and then puts a number in a box to set the POTD...simples..

How do I know this, I coded it all and the system that I recommended earlier in the topic is the system that was in use at the cafe when I replaced it with what they have now.

Go have a look and see what you think.

Steve...:)

very interesting indeed, a great system me thinks