Does voting still has a meaning for you?

[adamstw]

hi Jola,
I just checked the vote total posting for you...
wow...you have a lot of votes!! 724 all time, 100 in 90 day...great work.

wonder which photo you put up last Thursday? Can you give us a link?

(It seems to be taking about a week these days before votes show up.)

[brandyplusbcs]

I have observed that you can't have more than 3 images at once on the 7 day list or more than 10 on the 90 day list. Sometimes it seems that images with more votes replace ones with fewer votes and at other times it seems that a new image doesn't show up until one of the current 3 go over the 7 day time limit.

[clickaway]

On the whole, I don't think people vote for each other because they "thank" each other although may be this does happen amongst a few. But many of us do have a "favourite list" and so we tend to view the same people's work all the time. So it follows that any votes cast are likely to be for people within that group.

I have 170-200 people in my favourite lists and so any votes I cast could be pretty well spread. In addition, I do look at and comment on other work too.

Interesting to see that from the current 7 day list, I only have 2 out of the top 8 artists on my extensive favourite lists so maybe that's healthy!

What makes a good picture and what kind of picture we find attractive depends on the viewer. For example, pictures of animals or birds don't usually turn me on; even a photo of a beautiful woman has to be pretty special, perhaps with a priceless expression or using fabulous light.

I do agree that 'ranking' may be a bit inapporiate for works of art, and I suppose one of the rare examples of ranking in the Art world are the music charts. Now how many people here love or even care about the No.1 one record! One of my favourite singers is Kate Rusby but she is certainly not known to the masses!

I believe the way forward is for people to look at a wider range of artists - there is a lot of work on here that is not being recognised enough.

[jolka]

To adamstw:

Here is the link, it is also in my first post

http://www.pbase.com/jolka/image/70642993

And thank you guys for explanations

[djwixx]

This is a subject I have dealt with lately. See this:
http://www.pbase.com/jolka/image/70642993
My photo posted last Thursday had a very good and many comments an I counted 30 people who gave it "vote". Till now it is not showed in a popular photos gallery and I have written 2 emails to the Administrator but haven't got an answer. I have also checked in a link showed by adamstv and the photo is not showed even there.
Also some other of my recent images that got 2-5 votes are not showed there either. So I suppose the system does not work well at all and voting does not have any sense, then.

I believe your picture was submitted as part of the "Thursday Transglobal Challenge". They tend to get more attention from others taking part, although mostly in a reciprocal way. I take part in the Thursday Challenge to give me a subject to post for my PAD. In this case I don't think the amount of feedback is a fair representation of the users pictures and/or what other Pbase users have to offer. It is a good way for some users to 'discover' each other however.

I neglected to add that as a result of the Thursday Challenge, several of my pictures have had votes. Relative to the other quality work on Pbase I would question whether my pictures deserved votes, but obviously it would not be fair for me to question what other Pbasers think.

[camera0bug]

Jill, (and others)
usually there is a delay of several days to a week after one votes before it shows up. I've been using this
http://homepages.tesco.net/jjh/PBase_popular_images/
It gives your votes for all time, 90days, 7d , etc.
Have a look, see if you're there.
(I picked this up from John http://www.pbase.com/earthling/profile )

Interesting looking through those stats.
Never knew this existed.

[adamstw]

Those stats actually originated from a Pbase user: earthling
See this thread:
http://forum.pbase.com/viewtopic.php?t=23962&highlight=

He has been updating daily, but noted that he will probably start updating weekly later on...

[djailledie]

My 2 cents to the topic.
1) You can't get votes if you don't get visits. And it is more likely that you will get visits if you leave your (hyper) name in various places (html is used heavily here, like it or not).
2) The PAD community is very active on PBase, there is more exchange/visits within this community than some other groups. Most of the popular photos are coming from PAD. Not that they are necessarilly excellent, but PAD is an extra challenge. Taking my own experience, I have 4 kids and a full time job. I don't have a lot of time for photography every day. I think that this adds value to my images. If I had the chance to go back to my PAD images, and redo them with time, they would be better, no doubt. Knowing that, I tend to add an extra "bonus" to a real PAD image when deciding to vote or not.
3) Vote is not only about image quality. Images have captions that can be thorough reflections on a topic, or can make me laugh, or cause anreaction, despite a bad technical quality.
4) A lot of people will say that they don't care the Vote system, or that they don't pay attention to the number of visits. Good for them. I must admit that I pay attention to both. I post my images because I want this community to see them and give their opinion, good or bad.

JD

[djwixx]

Those stats actually originated from a Pbase user: earthling
See this thread:
http://forum.pbase.com/viewtopic.php?t=23962&highlight=

He has been updating daily, but noted that he will probably start updating weekly later on...

This is a great feature so a THANK YOU to the organizer. I'm just curious that it isn't a direct feature within Pbase itself. Whether it means anything or not it is still very interesting to see.

[steveprice]

Does voting still has a meaning for you?

Yep, I love it! I wanna get right up there to the head of the list.

Steve

[barbara_heide]

As far as I'm concerned, I spend a lot of time on pbase to look at other peoples uploads. My favourites list is quite big and I try to follow up PADs.On the popular galleries or picture list, I find new photographers.
When I'm voting...it is for something outstanding in my "esthtic" sens. As I'm a newbie in photographie, I do care about the expression of a picture even if it is technically not absolute perfect...
In december 2005 I did my first digital shots, when I went to a trip to Paris...
I joined pbase in march this year and started to get involved in june...
Learning from others is my biggest concern. Since then, I have improved my work skills...I'm getting more popularity, but I have still my very personal "eye" which is certainly not everybodies cup of tea. My camera is quite "primitive" in comparison to others. But many people do cummunicate with me ...I get interesting comments from interesting people and this is helping me a lot to improve my work. Votes and good challenge results are for my better stuff. Very rarely somone will vote for a picture which is not worth it...The pictures , which did get the most votes are the pictures I do myself consider to be my best shots...
I'm grateful for the votes I do get and it is very stimulating for me. Now you can go and look at my pictures and tell me if, in your opinion, I have deserved the votes , or not...seriously, I would be interested in knowing...
cheers
Barbara

[olivierbruning]

interesting point!! I thought the MAIN reason for voting would be: to help the photo (and/or photographer) to be seen by others. the motivation for this can be very diverse, could be a beautiful shot, very funny, or meaningful in any other way, not necessarily technical brilliant.
but that raises the next question! I THOUGHT it worked like this: a photo/gallery that gets many votes will climb the "popular gallery" charts, and when it reaches say the top 20, it will indeed be spotted and seen more frequently. but now I doubt very much if it works that way. I have noticed that a gallery of mine that get lots of hits and votes is nowhere to be seen on that chart, and others that get almost no hit at all and therefore certainly no votes either are! and also I have come across brilliant other sites that get loads of votes and are still very low, much lower "ranked" than other, very popular galleries. I asked Pbase about it, but they gave me quite an evasive answer.

[titawheeler]

The same way of Olivier, I think voting is to help the photo/photographer to be seen by others. And like him, I don't get how exactly this voting thing works. Sometimes "the perfect photo" which is on the top of the populars can be so boring in my vision. Great photos for me are those which has soul, creativity, moment, expression, or whatever catch my attention. When that happens I vote. However, it's nice to see some of my work in the populars when it happens

[michaelsv]

I think we also can blame some "technical" problem here. May be not everyone noticed, but the way how we accessing the photos on Pbase has been changed with introducing the "favorite" categories. If before the common way one can see others photos was browsing through PAD supergallery, today most of us first go to the favorites. Since we do not have too much time, this is the first place we go to comment and vote. And this understood. So to find some images worth voting outside favorite circle today is more difficult then before. In the past while browsing through the PAD super gallery more photos from different artists came to our attention, than today. That also explains why some great images passing absolutely obscured. I do on the regular basis trying to browse through the PAD gallery, but the number of images coming through the day there today so large, that after eight - ten pages I usually gave up.

[adamstw]

Jola,
just to let you know, your picture showed up in the stats today.....looks like it is taking 6-7 days to show up nowadays.
http://homepages.tesco.net/jjh/PBase_popular_images/
(hope you're still following this thread!)
Randy A
taiwan
http://www.pbase.com/adamstw/pad