Popular Photos Page - Something Gone Wrong???

[bishopsmead]

I really like viewing the Popular Photos Page:

http://www.pbase.com/galleries?view=popular_photos

This page gives an instant look at which photos are attracting the most votes. I have noticed today that for the 7 day category, the top 71 photos are by the same photographer, I am of course not accusing anyone, but how could this have happened? Follow this link to see the top 100 7-day popular photos page:

http://www.pbase.com/galleries?view=popular_photos&row_count=100&period=7

Of course, these votes however they happened will also have an effect in the longer term popular photos, this same photographer has 44 entries in the top 100 90-day popular photos.

Anyone shed any light on this, cos this is a really nice feature of pbase, and I suspect something has gone wrong and will skew the results...

Adam

[castledude]

1) Out of 31548 members he is number 1 by getting 9 votes

2) POTD sites are really popular right now and a link to a link to this gallery is on the first page of the site and in almost every gallery.

3) I think you got a little spoiled when pstewart had a multiple active threads on show and tell to find great pictures. While active those theads generated a lot of picture votes. Those threads are near dead now (but you might want to thumb through them for some great pics).



I was much more wary when the auto part picture sites were at the top. At least these are pleasent enough pictures.

[slug]

seems to be a coordinated effort from several people to vote on the photos of one person.

so while it seems ungood, it's not really a bug.

the real problem is that there's just not enough voting going on.
this allows small coordinated voting to really affect things.

one thing that might help this is to count a comment on a photo as a vote.
or a checkbox when leaving a comment to also vote on it.
would probably increase the number of votes to work with.

-slg

[darter02]

I certainly hope it was not fellow PAD people who did that. I think it would suck.

[slug]

made a change which hopefully is a good way of keeping that page from being taken over by one person.

now the popular photos page will show at most three photos from any particular user in the 7 day results
and up to 10 in the 90 days results.

btw, it's possible that the person with many photos up there had nothing to do with it or didn't even know about it.

-slug

[bishopsmead]

My own hunch was that something co-ordinated was certainly happening... but I agree that this is easily something that could be going on without the artist's knowledge.

The giveaway for me, apart for the sheer numbers, was that while there are some superb photos (deserving of votes), there are others showing up in the top 100, that are (technically aside) ordinary... IMHO.

I also agree that the number of people voting is too small, you can be top of the 7-day list with only a handful of votes (5-7 perhaps). I think with the size of the community (plus guests - can guests vote?), that more votes would be posted. Any ideas of how to promote voting, would be great I think.

[clickaway]

I concur with what slug stated regarding co-ordination and the need to dilute the number of photos/galleries by one person appearing.

I think that the No.1 gallery at the top of the 7-day list has been a worthy one. I do not see how photos featuring car parts or manuals could be anywhere in the Most Popular. I actually tested out the voting effect recently by voting for a couple of worthy ones myself. It was obvious that they just had my one vote (they were shown together) yet appeared way up the list.

Perhaps the recent co-ordinated voting will prompt more activity by other PBase members. Some members of the PAD group are encouraging this, but I fear that may skew the results in their favour.

Thanks for highlighting the 'Popular Photo' page here. I was not aware it was available - am I blind or where is the link shown??

[keiththomson]

I had some extra thoughts on this from the time when it happened to me....

I was thinking that as you follow a link to vote for an image, it would be possible for some applications to follow the link without you knowing....e.g. some of the tools to grab a copy of a website, or I have some recollection of a tool for dialup users which would start to follow links on a webpage while you are viewing it so the bandwidth isnt wasted.

I dont think its a huge problem as firstly you have to be logged into pbase to be allowed to vote and also I dont think these kinda tools are in very widespead use.

I think the biggest problem now is the lack of numbers voting, ive voted for random galleries (i.e. not ones that have been updated recently) and they have appeared in the 7-day list. Maybe it would be nice to see the number of votes for a gallery as you can for images.

[bishopsmead]

Yes, It is easy to overlook.

Go to Galleries (link at top of page), click on popular galleries, and you will be taken to the popular galleries page. The title of this page is "Popular Galleries" with the word "Photos" directly next to Galleries, which is clickable. Click on this and there you are.

Tip, what I do, is to then click on first 8, which shows nothing new but changes the URL from
http://www.pbase.com/galleries?view=popular_photos
to
http://www.pbase.com/galleries?view=pop ... 8&period=7

I replace row_count=8 with a different number depending on how many photos I want to see on the page, usually 100. This would be more valuable if the voting system was sorted out such that more people cast votes.

Try it in the all-time gallery to see the 100 most voted-for photographs in pbase - some crackers.

Adam