The new Statistics Pages

[parpho]

The latest message from on high says they are still working on. So to all the whiners enough already. When it's fixed it's fixed not a second before.
Michael

We are now opening the betting pool and taking bets on how long before someone starts a new thread saying, "My total page hits haven't been updated since the crash, is anyone else having this problem?"

Now that you mention it...............
M

[akmc_in_au]

C'mon Alan, it's never as bad as all that. This complaining is just a minor subset of the whole. A class of individual who finds fault no matter what gets done or doesn't get done and finds the need to punish anyone for their feelings of helplessness...as we are with what's happening with Pbase.

I agree that there are some who will bitch and moan no matter what. In relation to the stats I'm mystified by people who complain "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind" only to be told about third party stats, then to see them reappear the very next day crying "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind!" as if a solution was not in their very own hands. (Especially given that the New And Improved stats don't seem to have any way of filtering out 'bot visits or even our own page loads. I don't really see the point of knowing that an image got 7 hits if you don't also know that 6 of them were indexing 'bots and one of them was you.)

But as I said, the stats in and of themselves aren't necessarily the point. They are for some, but not for all.

I believe that the overall functionality of PBase for most members on most days is fine, otherwise the membership levels would have really fallen off a cliff. Most of the time it's possible to upload images, edit galleries, view other people's images, comment on them and so forth. At least, that's so for those (both members and visitors) who don't get hit with the speed issue which is doubtless real for some, though I couldn't hazard a guess as to exactly how extensive it is.

However in determining whether it's as bad as all that, there's another "it" which is confidence in the future of this site. And more importantly, the question of whether it's really worth putting in the time and effort here if the site is going to turn out to be an evolutionary dead end with a diminishing number of both viewers and users. I'm not saying that that is unquestionably the case, but there are signs of it, with the departures that both Ron and I referred being just another one. It's not a question of following people around, it's a question of there seeming to be more and more people, once dyed in the wool PBasers, moving on. (I thought Tom had been rather quiet since I got back...) As I said it's not an iron-clad sampling method, but I'm seeing a noticeable difference compared to what has happened in the past. While there are still a lot of great PBase photographers that I haven't encountered yet, that's also not the point. The point is that as people leave, will they be replaced?

PBase's reputation probably isn't what it once was. If you see a magazine article on photo sharing sites you'll always see Flickr mentioned, frequently see Zen or Smug, often see a few others, never once have I seen PBase mentioned. That doesn't mean that it's never happened, but I haven't seen it. I suspect that comes from two things; (a) a management that won't even communicate properly with its own membership, much less put any effort into promoting the site externally (I came across PBase by looking through old Usenet postings, but that's 3 years ago now and things were different then) and (b) the writers knowing about reliability issues which do seem to be a little more prevalent here than at many sites (of any type). So there's strike 1 against long term renewal of the membership base.

But suppose that someone does stumble upon the PBase home page; let's look at some of the links that they might follow. "About PBase", where they can learn all about the development of PBase... up until half a decade ago. Or the link to the latest Show & Tell competition which shows that hey, this place isn't a ghost town after all! Except that they then take a look at the thread list and, since they lack the Foes option, there's Scottley, spamming his little heart out with his street trash. Then they head off to SmugMug and see blogs which have been updated by site management giving up to date information about what's happening at the site (and noting the fact that there ARE things happening on the site), and help files which are up to date and don't contain conflicting information on the terms of service and... oops, just lost another potential recruit.

Then of course there's word of mouth recommendations. Will the people who have left recommend that friends and colleagues join PBase? Unlikely. Will the people who are still here? Some will. Some won't. I used to, but I can't do that any more simply because although it works for me, most of the time, I don't have any confidence in the way that the site is run any more. Frankly my loyalty to my friends and colleagues is greater than that of my loyalty to PBase, and I'm not prepared to be the cause of them risking time and effort in constructing galleries that will work until whatever-goes-wrong-next happens, as Ron alluded to. That doesn't mean that I'll trash the place; if asked, I'll give my honest opinion about PBase and its competitors, both the pluses and minuses of both. But if asked straight out whether they should join PBase, I won't say "No"... but I won't say "Yes" any more either. (The only one that I'll explicitly say "No" to is Flickr, along with my reasons.) I'd be extremely surprised if I'm the only one in that boat.

I don't use PBase as a storage site for images either; they're just copies of files on my hard drive, which are arranged in folders comparable to my galleries here. But even with my meagre few hundred images setting up on a new site would still take a fair amount of time. Galleries would need to be recreated. Captions which link to external sites and other images would need to be re-done. Comments? Kiss them goodbye in a move. And it would be an order of magnitude worse for those with thousands of images. The longer the move is left, the worse that will get, which I'm sure that those who have moved on are aware of.

If I felt that this was a well run site it would be possible to have confidence in it coming back. But that's the "it" that really matters, at least to me; as I said, I don't have any faith in that any longer. Stats should be a relatively trivial thing yet here it is, taking weeks... and still not working properly. It doesn't fuss me that they're still broken. The possible reasons why they're still broken do. As for the "couple of days" thing? As I've said previously any project can slide due to unforeseen complications, but to give an indication of a date let it slide for literally weeks without a word in between is both rude and doesn't reflect well - at all well - on how much things are under control. Things get broken, things get fixed, yet the approach to it almost seems to be random. And as for new developments... [Sound of crickets chirping].

If you look behind a lot of the snarkier posts, it's not hard to see that annoyance at the stats not being fixed is a reason. But a bigger reason may be discomfort at how well (or not) the site is being run. But the biggest reason is that people feel like they're being ignored, and that, above all else, is what will tick people off transcendently. Granted, there's finally another update message, but it really doesn't say much and the next one will probably be... whenever. Yes, that's the pattern, yes, it's a "take it or leave it", but if enough people leave it there's not going to be a lot of point in the rest remaining.

Frankly I for one don't want to leave for one reason only; I think that this still has the best display layout of any site. Simple, straightforward, puts the photos first. But I'm not at all sure that staying around is a great long term investment of my time, and I can't blame those who feel likewise.

UPDATE: I noticed I'm getting zoned in again for treating the "dire problems of the afflicted" with jest. Why can't I make a little joke now and then? We get friggin post after post of snarky shitty comments about the place and I'M THE ONE being taken to task for one of my own?

I'm assuming that you mean in comments or PM's. Meh, just black-list 'em.

[gunnarhorpestad]

akmc_in_au say...............

Then of course there's word of mouth recommendations. Will the people who have left recommend that friends and colleagues join PBase? Unlikely. Will the people who are still here? Some will. Some won't. I used to, but I can't do that any more simply because although it works for me, most of the time, I don't have any confidence in the way that the site is run any more. Frankly my loyalty to my friends and colleagues is greater than that of my loyalty to PBase, and I'm not prepared to be the cause of them risking time and effort in constructing galleries that will work until whatever-goes-wrong-next happens, as Ron alluded to. That doesn't mean that I'll trash the place; if asked, I'll give my honest opinion about PBase and its competitors, both the pluses and minuses of both. But if asked straight out whether they should join PBase, I won't say "No"... but I won't say "Yes" any more either. (The only one that I'll explicitly say "No" to is Flickr, along with my reasons.) I'd be extremely surprised if I'm the only one in that boat.

DITTO

[madlights]

akmc_in_au said:

I agree that there are some who will bitch and moan no matter what. In relation to the stats I'm mystified by people who complain "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind" only to be told about third party stats, then to see them reappear the very next day crying "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind!" as if a solution was not in their very own hands. (Especially given that the New And Improved stats don't seem to have any way of filtering out 'bot visits or even our own page loads. I don't really see the point of knowing that an image got 7 hits if you don't also know that 6 of them were indexing 'bots and one of them was you.)

Oh man I just wore out my third mouse today. and who said hit counts didn't count??? I've tried to put a paddle on my electric drill..but I've hurt myself...

[gunnarhorpestad]

akmc_in_au said:

I agree that there are some who will bitch and moan no matter what. In relation to the stats I'm mystified by people who complain "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind" only to be told about third party stats, then to see them reappear the very next day crying "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind!" as if a solution was not in their very own hands. (Especially given that the New And Improved stats don't seem to have any way of filtering out 'bot visits or even our own page loads. I don't really see the point of knowing that an image got 7 hits if you don't also know that 6 of them were indexing 'bots and one of them was you.)

Oh man I just wore out my third mouse today. and who said hit counts didn't count??? I've tried to put a paddle on my electric drill..but I've hurt myself...

[gunnarhorpestad]

Ladies & Gentlemen
Here we go.......................

PBase Update
23-Nov-2009[/size]
We are still working on the hitcount totals that show on your image, gallery, and profile pages. We know that many of you use it to sort the images in your galleries. It will be back as soon as we can integrate it with the new stats system in a way that is fast and efficient.

Your patience is greatly appreciated.
-The PBase Team

Ya................................
It's ongoing....................
Well done.................
Keep up the good work....................

[daanstringer]

what i don't understand: when i open the pbase statistics, in the most viewed image column it shows many "deleted image", and in the most viewed gallery column it shows many "empty gallery". A view weeks ago i deleted a lot of galleries and images. But how can the show up now as "most viewed", they don't exist here anymore..

[jonathantr]

The Pbase team is happy to accept your money, now, for a product that may or may not ever be fully functional, and that may or may not ever be supported in a businesslike and professional manner, and that may or may not be available at any given time.

You may or may not be provided with accurate and consistent hitcount information at some point in the future, after we deliver, or do not deliver, the recently-promised lightning-fast speed and bulletproof reliability.

Please continue to disregard the occasional service blackout, communication blackout, and premature "it's fixed" announcement. We appreciate your patience and continued patronage for a substandard product.

We understand that you understand that what we really mean when we say "it's fixed" is "we're starting to think about prioritizing thinking about a fix to the recently-implemented but not entirely successful fix." It's so nice that we don't have to say all that.

Thanks for supporting our hobby.

[ronsc]

The Pbase team is happy to accept your money, now, for a product that may or may not ever be fully functional, and that may or may not ever be supported in a businesslike and professional manner, and that may or may not be available at any given time.

You may or may not be provided with accurate and consistent hitcount information at some point in the future, after we deliver, or do not deliver, the recently-promised lightning-fast speed and bulletproof reliability.

Please continue to disregard the occasional service blackout, communication blackout, and premature "it's fixed" announcement. We appreciate your patience and continued patronage for a substandard product.

We understand that you understand that what we really mean when we say "it's fixed" is "we're starting to think about prioritizing thinking about a fix to the recently-implemented but not entirely successful fix." It's so nice that we don't have to say all that.

Thanks for supporting our hobby.

Well said, Jonathan.

I see you have migrated to Zenfolio. Good luck over there. Maybe it's not a flood of people leaving PBase, but the drip, drip, drip can add up over time. Apparently the owners of PBase don't give a damn.

Ron
http://www.ronwrightphotography.com

[alangrant]

what i don't understand: when i open the pbase statistics, in the most viewed image column it shows many "deleted image", and in the most viewed gallery column it shows many "empty gallery". A view weeks ago i deleted a lot of galleries and images. But how can the show up now as "most viewed", they don't exist here anymore..

It's the same for me - I also deleted quite a few images a few weeks ago and my "most popular" image is now a deleted one. I assume the stats are counting all attempts to view an image at a particular URL even if it no longer exists. The attempts may be coming from links on other websites or forums, or perhaps from search bots, I'm not sure.

[klopus]

what i don't understand: when i open the pbase statistics, in the most viewed image column it shows many "deleted image", and in the most viewed gallery column it shows many "empty gallery". A view weeks ago i deleted a lot of galleries and images. But how can the show up now as "most viewed", they don't exist here anymore..

I have the same thing - empty galleries show up in most viewed galleries stat display column. On top of that same gallery (not empty) is shown twice with different counts for the same day. Go figure

As a developer I think they had no clue what they were getting themselves into when they started this disastrous stats redesign. They just thought it'll be walk in a park or something. Hence early announcements. And they started all this barely out of the major site crash and are implementing it on a live system, just an invitation for another outage. Unbelievably amateurish ! But then again this all is fitting - amateur site for amateurs like myself. You get what you pay for

[1designguy]

C'mon Alan, it's never as bad as all that. This complaining is just a minor subset of the whole. A class of individual who finds fault no matter what gets done or doesn't get done and finds the need to punish anyone for their feelings of helplessness...as we are with what's happening with Pbase.

I agree that there are some who will bitch and moan no matter what. In relation to the stats I'm mystified by people who complain "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind" only to be told about third party stats, then to see them reappear the very next day crying "I'm flying blind, I'm flying blind!" as if a solution was not in their very own hands. (Especially given that the New And Improved stats don't seem to have any way of filtering out 'bot visits or even our own page loads. I don't really see the point of knowing that an image got 7 hits if you don't also know that 6 of them were indexing 'bots and one of them was you.)

But as I said, the stats in and of themselves aren't necessarily the point. They are for some, but not for all.

I believe that the overall functionality of PBase for most members on most days is fine, otherwise the membership levels would have really fallen off a cliff. Most of the time it's possible to upload images, edit galleries, view other people's images, comment on them and so forth. At least, that's so for those (both members and visitors) who don't get hit with the speed issue which is doubtless real for some, though I couldn't hazard a guess as to exactly how extensive it is.

However in determining whether it's as bad as all that, there's another "it" which is confidence in the future of this site. And more importantly, the question of whether it's really worth putting in the time and effort here if the site is going to turn out to be an evolutionary dead end with a diminishing number of both viewers and users. I'm not saying that that is unquestionably the case, but there are signs of it, with the departures that both Ron and I referred being just another one. It's not a question of following people around, it's a question of there seeming to be more and more people, once dyed in the wool PBasers, moving on. (I thought Tom had been rather quiet since I got back...) As I said it's not an iron-clad sampling method, but I'm seeing a noticeable difference compared to what has happened in the past. While there are still a lot of great PBase photographers that I haven't encountered yet, that's also not the point. The point is that as people leave, will they be replaced?

PBase's reputation probably isn't what it once was. If you see a magazine article on photo sharing sites you'll always see Flickr mentioned, frequently see Zen or Smug, often see a few others, never once have I seen PBase mentioned. That doesn't mean that it's never happened, but I haven't seen it. I suspect that comes from two things; (a) a management that won't even communicate properly with its own membership, much less put any effort into promoting the site externally (I came across PBase by looking through old Usenet postings, but that's 3 years ago now and things were different then) and (b) the writers knowing about reliability issues which do seem to be a little more prevalent here than at many sites (of any type). So there's strike 1 against long term renewal of the membership base.

But suppose that someone does stumble upon the PBase home page; let's look at some of the links that they might follow. "About PBase", where they can learn all about the development of PBase... up until half a decade ago. Or the link to the latest Show & Tell competition which shows that hey, this place isn't a ghost town after all! Except that they then take a look at the thread list and, since they lack the Foes option, there's Scottley, spamming his little heart out with his street trash. Then they head off to SmugMug and see blogs which have been updated by site management giving up to date information about what's happening at the site (and noting the fact that there ARE things happening on the site), and help files which are up to date and don't contain conflicting information on the terms of service and... oops, just lost another potential recruit.

Then of course there's word of mouth recommendations. Will the people who have left recommend that friends and colleagues join PBase? Unlikely. Will the people who are still here? Some will. Some won't. I used to, but I can't do that any more simply because although it works for me, most of the time, I don't have any confidence in the way that the site is run any more. Frankly my loyalty to my friends and colleagues is greater than that of my loyalty to PBase, and I'm not prepared to be the cause of them risking time and effort in constructing galleries that will work until whatever-goes-wrong-next happens, as Ron alluded to. That doesn't mean that I'll trash the place; if asked, I'll give my honest opinion about PBase and its competitors, both the pluses and minuses of both. But if asked straight out whether they should join PBase, I won't say "No"... but I won't say "Yes" any more either. (The only one that I'll explicitly say "No" to is Flickr, along with my reasons.) I'd be extremely surprised if I'm the only one in that boat.

I don't use PBase as a storage site for images either; they're just copies of files on my hard drive, which are arranged in folders comparable to my galleries here. But even with my meagre few hundred images setting up on a new site would still take a fair amount of time. Galleries would need to be recreated. Captions which link to external sites and other images would need to be re-done. Comments? Kiss them goodbye in a move. And it would be an order of magnitude worse for those with thousands of images. The longer the move is left, the worse that will get, which I'm sure that those who have moved on are aware of.

If I felt that this was a well run site it would be possible to have confidence in it coming back. But that's the "it" that really matters, at least to me; as I said, I don't have any faith in that any longer. Stats should be a relatively trivial thing yet here it is, taking weeks... and still not working properly. It doesn't fuss me that they're still broken. The possible reasons why they're still broken do. As for the "couple of days" thing? As I've said previously any project can slide due to unforeseen complications, but to give an indication of a date let it slide for literally weeks without a word in between is both rude and doesn't reflect well - at all well - on how much things are under control. Things get broken, things get fixed, yet the approach to it almost seems to be random. And as for new developments... [Sound of crickets chirping].

If you look behind a lot of the snarkier posts, it's not hard to see that annoyance at the stats not being fixed is a reason. But a bigger reason may be discomfort at how well (or not) the site is being run. But the biggest reason is that people feel like they're being ignored, and that, above all else, is what will tick people off transcendently. Granted, there's finally another update message, but it really doesn't say much and the next one will probably be... whenever. Yes, that's the pattern, yes, it's a "take it or leave it", but if enough people leave it there's not going to be a lot of point in the rest remaining.

Frankly I for one don't want to leave for one reason only; I think that this still has the best display layout of any site. Simple, straightforward, puts the photos first. But I'm not at all sure that staying around is a great long term investment of my time, and I can't blame those who feel likewise.

UPDATE: I noticed I'm getting zoned in again for treating the "dire problems of the afflicted" with jest. Why can't I make a little joke now and then? We get friggin post after post of snarky shitty comments about the place and I'M THE ONE being taken to task for one of my own?

I'm assuming that you mean in comments or PM's. Meh, just black-list 'em.

AMEN. Thank you for taking the time to share this. I completely agree with these sentiments. I am more than a little saddened.

[madlights]

I think akmc makes some really good points. When PBase was young, it didn't have to innovate, didn't have to communicate so much...there weren't many other choices. To me It is sad and worrisome. We've all put a lot of time, a lot of effort in this all. Once the site bleeds off enough, I think the "will you leave PBase?" could easily become a moot point, for a couple of reasons. 1. If the views go down (after all it is a photo sharing site), if the quality level drops because of this and a lot of quality photographers migrate then...will it become another flickr? don't think it can and that would be the end, at least in the way most see it now. 2. PBase is a large site, a lot of bandwidth, a lot of expenses, servers, maintainence , How could it support itself on fewer members only paying 23USD a year? No picture sales, No "pro" mode yet. I like PBase a lot, part of it is the less obviously commercial way that it's run than some. Part of it as akmc and others have said, the photos come first. I kind of feel sorry for Slug and Emily in many ways, the world has changed, and I'm certain this hasn't been an easy time at all. Now there are niche sites even, and hundreds (I don't know how many really)of other photo sharing sites. I myself would probably have waited a bit before the beta stats we seem to have...maybe made sure the database was absolutely operational. Test the new changes in a sort of "virtual machine" for a while...to avoid this sort of stuff, or even maybe ask for volunteers for beta testing of features. Myself, and I know many others would certainly volunteer to beta test. Yeah there are things wrong with PBase, and things right with it too. But I sure know where akmc is coming from. I've been here for 5 years, and am a little worried, not too much - but a little. It just sort of bothers me most that I don't see which direction the ship is going and maybe haven't for a while.

PBase fulfilled a tremendous need, and because of Slug's insight and skill combined with that need, PBase became preeminent. It's just my view that some kind of clarity of vision is needed in regards to the needs of today, and how they may have changed for many, and at least for some. or have they? But think this could be questioned. Do I care if the stats have a nice graphic..not really. If it speeds it up some by changing them...yep then I care. Do I care if I can find my photo location on google maps that take forever to look at, much less set up? Not really (fun once or twice). I don't care about all the bells and whistles (to a point) I want an attractive site, with a few more options maybe to display easily (although I've gotten OK at modding some CSS) but a lot of people would rather have a few more choices??? That is simple...won't wreck the database. Think the blog styles were a great thing, even if I don't use them. They were simple and worked for a purpose. Think I'd really read the feature requests area of the forum if I were running stuff...but I'm not running stuff. The simple requests, that the people keep asking for, over and over. Like stuff that works...as I've said so many times...in my view simple is good. Were the old stats really slowing it all down, or was it the old equipment? Does it take so long to upload now because of checking for re-uploads to maintain position in the "recently updated? Is this why a replacement of a photo is almost instantaneous and uploading a 'new' one takes so long? If indeed that is the case, who cares if somebody wears their fingers out by reloading a photo over and over? OK it's cheating (and a pitiful excuse of it), OK, but if it slows down the whole thing? (I don't know if it's the case that the checking slows things down- but asking if?) What was so wrong with the old stats? A simple base that a person can add complexity to, as they desire...is that so bad? Isn't that what PBase was? I don't think you can please everybody.

[gunnarhorpestad]

No counting sinze the 26th November.
This, the Statistics Pages, is good, yes its real good man.
Or should we say it is a totaly disaster?????

[gunnarhorpestad]

Hmmmmmmm...........

More than 2 weeks has gone, and the status is the same.

Not much going on and not very mush infor from "you know"............

Time will show.......... Again...............