Messages in It looks like a crisis

Message from Perkin-warbeck

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 17:51:05 GMT

Steffen wrote: "Any inspiration for who's doing flow photo blogging well -- both in terms of curating and design?"

I recently began participating in Google+ "Daily Photographic Themes." Several themes available for each day of the week, and each has one or more curators. You upload a photo, tag it with the name of the theme, and hope it gets curated onto the theme page.

Message from Daniel Isenmann

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:42:21 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I have another idea about the photos which should be shown on the frontpage. Since ages there is the points in photo ranking, you can see that in the photo details. Maybe this can be an indicator for a selection. I don't know how exactly this is calculated, but it would help the team to look for popular/interesting photos.

But it is essential not to loose the newly added good photos, so other team members can have a look through the "Just In" page regularly and add photos they like to the selection or to new selection, let's call it "New interesting photos" or "Team selection" which are really a selection made by humans and their flavour. If there are enough members you should get a good variety of different kind of photos. But this is only be possible if the team has a certain amount of members.

Having lot of ideas in my mind, but that's all for the moment. Otherwise my post would be too long and the thing which is important/interesting at the moment would be only one of many ideas.

Message from Paulo Brabo

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:50:54 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Daniel, I'm with you here. As showcasing photos is concerned, keeping everything else clean is essential. Let the photos shine by themselves.

Message from Daniel Isenmann

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:48:06 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Now that will look awesome. Would really like to see such a new front page. I like the idea from Paulo, but personally I would move the "popular" photos at the bottom to an seperate page.

See only the big photo on top and the three smaller one. That's all. Maybe a small link somewhere "See popular photos".

Message from nachbarnebenan

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:01:23 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I like this design, it's well organized and not too cluttered. However, I pity the poor souls having to choose the images…
A small idea: the three small images could rotate, after some time like 2 or 4h, the oldest of the images gets replaced with a new one from the selected list. The big photo should only change every 24 or maybe 48h.

Message from Perkin-warbeck

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:37:41 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Or maybe a slideshow.

Message from Paulo Brabo

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:33:06 GMT

It looks like a crisis
As in

Message from Paulo Brabo

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:29:29 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I have to apologize for my absence as well. Work is hitting harder than usual.

Steffen: I don't have the time to analyze it in details right now, but I'm loving the new front page design (and the ideas behind it). It looks classy and clean. My only thought is that maybe we're seeing a tad too many photos for a front page. Maybe we should use more rotation and less photos on each random display?

Message from Steffen Fagerström Christensen

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:02:31 GMT

It looks like a crisis
So, it's been a really long time coming -- but we've been moving on implementing some of these ideas in this post:
- I have posted a draft for a new front page design at http://www.23hq.com/steffen/photo/7175319. As you can see, we want to feature more and bigger photos on our new front page -- and we want you guys to help us in choosing stuff.
- We are recruiting a small crowd of Team 23 people. These beautiful people will be able to promote any favorite (of other people's photos) to the front page -- along with a short note.
- Promoted photos will also be included on the Just In page and in the footer.
- As you can see, we are also considering a few design tweaks to the header and navigation.

Message from pregnantboy

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:56:35 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Sorry if I've been a bit less present recently... Summer here is sunny and I've been busy with other stuff. But I promise that you'll have my mockup.

Message from IkoTikashi

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:22:18 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Don't know the name for that kind of gallery/collage, but I find http://cubbi.es/ quite nice

Message from nachbarnebenan

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 03:18:10 GMT

It looks like a crisis
My feeble attempt at a mockup you can find in the photos of this group (the most recent one). It should be visible to the group members.

I think one important fact should be stressed: These are _friendly_ competitions to encourage creativity, share ideas and stimulate imagination, not starting points of rivalry and feuding. Except the privilege of having your image(s) shown in a prominent place along your name there's no prize to win.

Message from Paulo Brabo

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:37:22 GMT

It looks like a crisis
It seems most of us agree that [1] an attractive, ever-changing front page and [2] a gentle, yet stimulating challenge feature are the way to go -- at least as a first step, just to stir things up. I'd love to take a look at those mock-ups you guys have been working on. nachbarnebenan? pregnantboy?

And I most definitely vote to keep 23 to be as separate from Facebook and Flickr as possible. We are so much cooler than them, obviously!

Message from Perkin-warbeck

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:40:28 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Very well expressed, clvmnky! These are exactly my sentiments.

Message from Th Clvr Mnky

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:32:06 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I don't mind having something akin to a themed challenge, though I also have reservations about turning anything at 23 into a contest. Part of the problem is that no matter how good or bad the photo, it can tend toward being simply a popularity contest.

It doesn't have to be, of course.

If we do do this sort of thing, perhaps make sure we stress the "challenge" aspect. Like the 10x10 or 100 Snapshots challenges people try out, perhaps make it more about seeing the world in a different way, and sharing that vision. That is, we stress that the challenges are about unique, interesting or surprising interpretations of a general subject or situation.

This way, we won't get the same "beautiful sunset" or "over processed portrait" looks that such contests tend to reward. (And, let me just say I'm not calling anyone out here; in fact, I'm guilty as charged for my own derivative photography.)

But, if we can find a way for folks to "curate" photos to enhance and build on the sharing aspect, this would be great. It doesn't have to be about the front page, either. I think we should consider how to allow curators to elevate any sort of interesting collection so that I am more likely to see it.

I have no concrete ideas on how to do that specifically, but the challenge here is slicing through all the data using some finite criteria and finding the gems. We ought to be able to crowd-source /something/ along those lines...?

Message from nath

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:21:18 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Nice to read something by Steffen again.
Good to see there is still hope for improvement.

Message from nachbarnebenan

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:16:33 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I've posted a quick mockup design of how the page could look. It's marked as private to not attract too much coverage…

Message from nachbarnebenan

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:33:26 GMT

It looks like a crisis
You could create a locked user account named challenge or competition and put a specific style on it to (ab)use the latest screen to show a mirror of the currently running challenge from the internal challenge group. The album tab would then present the old challenges as entries (links to their now normal groups) and the calendar shows the dates of the deadlines. Favorites is just the current rating, the about the description of the challenge from the group and tags is simply mirrored from the group.
This might even work without much new code, just some design changes for this account (aka: less work for you - more work for your designers…).

Message from Steffen Fagerström Christensen

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:07:05 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Could actually be pretty cool as a feature: 23hq.com/challenge -- to set up a photo competition or challenge with given parameter and an easy way for people to participate. Nice.

Message from nachbarnebenan

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:59:16 GMT

It looks like a crisis
> could this be something to work as a part of photogroups?

I think the current photogroup code should already be able to handle much of it. Instead of 23hq.com/photogroup/groupname you'd simply type 23hq.com/competition/challengename, a simple alias rewrite could probably suffice. Specific members or the Team 23 gets the capability to create these aliases along with the groups they point to.
Then, as Perkin-warbeck suggested, the current favorite system can be used within these groups to determine ranking, so no need for a new voting/rating system.
After a set time, maybe 72 hours or three months, these groups are reverted to "normal" groups and the next challenge commences.
23hq.com/competition would always show the currently active competition in the upper half, a random selection of previous competitions in the lower left half and the three or five recent ones in the lower right half.

Message from Steffen Fagerström Christensen

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:02:28 GMT

It looks like a crisis
You're slowly having me come around to competitions -- but each would seem to be better left self-organized; could this be something to work as a part of photogroups?

Message from Perkin-warbeck

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:41:24 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I don't think challenges are ever "just for fun," at least not for me. I tried dpchallenge.com for a while. Competing made me feel different about my work than when I simply shared it, and I took it personally if I didn't score well.

On the other hand, it would be nice if we could nominate photos for a gallery of particularly noteworthy photos (excluding photos of our own). Better still, automate the selection by combining everyone's "Favorites uploaded by others," ranking them by the total number of faves, or the most faves from people who themselves have the most faves (something like Google's page count). Then rather than competing only with people who enjoy competition(which does not include everyone), we effectively compete with ourselves to make better and better pictures.

Message from nachbarnebenan

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:33:53 GMT

It looks like a crisis
> And make sure people can downvote photos.

Definitely a + from me for this one.
It would also make sense to distinguish between rating and voting:
Rating is something you globally allow for your (public) photos, for which everyone else can give positive or negative feedback (the scale still needs to be agreed on) anonymously.
Voting is for photos in groups (I suppose challenges/competitions will be handled as special groups internally) which have this feature activated and works exactly the same way, but is independent of rating and not anonymous.
Explanation: Let's say a competition has the topic of "flowers in summer". You post a photo of a watering can. Everyone likes it, because it is perfectly composed, has nice contrast and colors etc. and you get a a lot of good ratings and comments, but only negative votes because it is off-topic and doesn't fit. The same would be true the other way around: If the topic is "derelict", a photo of an abandoned, old partially demolitioned house may get low ratings for it being off-center and badly exposed, but it might receive good votes for fitting with the contest.
This would also mean that votes are temporary and get deleted after the challenge is complete, but can't be changed and ratings are permanent but can be changed or withdrawn at any time. Challenges run for a specific time only and the vote you cast is set in stone (which will force you to think before voting — something you should do in reality as well…), but your opinion of a photo expressed as the rating may change over time.
Both features will probably share most of their code, so it shouldn't be too much additional work.
Oh, and it would probably be best if one can only vote in a challenge if you have at least entered one photo yourself.

Message from IkoTikashi

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:42:25 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Keep Facebook and flickr out of 23 please! :) There should be "3rd party applications" that handle display of comments and stuff from 23 and those services.

As for "competition mode": I'm with TheRatRace, let users decide which (of their own) photos they want to be voted for/rated. And make sure people can downvote photos.

my 2 cents

Message from TheRatRace

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:16:13 GMT

It looks like a crisis
2. entirely RSS customizable badges and web presentations

Oops, that was a typo. I meant "entirely CSS customizable badges and web presentations" -- sorry.

Message from Steffen Fagerström Christensen

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 07:45:36 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Old-timer indeed!

As for the photoblog part, I think it's a matter of just moving ahead. We're hit by vacations for the next few weeks meaning that there's no-one home to design stuff for me (and you don't want to see me designing anything!). My approach would probably interlock with favorites as suggested before, and from there we could move over into competition mode if we find the right approach.

Interconnection would be amazing, but it's hard -- and frankly I'm not really sure how to handle rights to comments etc. For example, we could probably suck out all comments from Flickr+Facebook and have them displayed on 23, but it would be hard for the commenters to remove or edit them afterwards. And I'm actually not sure if we're allowed to at all.

Open sourcing would be great, and we actually are open sourcing a lot of bits and pieces from 23 Video over on github.com/23 -- but 23 Photo Sharing is a single intermeshed code-base where it's almost impossible to open up. I would love to share, would love to have help, but unfortunately there just isn't a workable approach to the challenge.

If it's RSS-based, wouldn't it be easy to use the badges available elsewhere on the web? In any case, give me some good example of badges, and I'll look into it.

Message from TheRatRace

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 10:47:26 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I'm here since 2005, so that qualifies me as an old timer, I suppose.

I like the idea of a collective photoblog as a front page.

I like the idea of re-knitting together a community around the 23 site. Probably some sort of "competition" would be welcome -- but I'm thinking more of something like setting a theme for people to create and submit their images -- than an "OK you win" thing. An example I like is "Words to shhot by": http://wordstoshootby.blogspot.com/

A feature I'd love, but I don't know if it's even remotely feasible: interconnection with other communities. I showcase some of my images on Flickr too, and I'd like to have comments, links, likes and so on shared between the two worlds.
This is connected to another theme, which I believe could be of some importance: I feel there is a community aesthetic here on 23 -- and that it IS different from that of Flickr and of other photo sharing sites. On one side it would be good to promote this identity (and the photoblog on the front page is a good tool), on the other it would be interesting to compare it with others.

On another ground: I understand that it makes no economical sense to develop new features on the photo sharing site, when the real business is elsewhere and the forces are limited. But I wonder if it would be feasible to "open source" at least a part of the code, and to promote some community development.

(Last and least, a wishlist: 1. large, full screen slideshows; 2. entirely RSS customizable badges and web presentations)

P. S.: what about having stats on the photos?

Message from Steffen Fagerström Christensen

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:18:35 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I think the font int the logo is Paralucent, but we usually use Antenna for longer branded texts. Otherwise there's always Helvetica ;-)

Message from pregnantboy

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:06:07 GMT

It looks like a crisis
Hey Steffen, I'm trying to design a new homepage model for 23 with Inkscape. I'm just curious about 23 logo font, is it something free that I can reproduce?

Message from Th Clvr Mnky

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 21:14:52 GMT

It looks like a crisis
I haven't looked recently, but check out JPG Magazine http://jpgmag.com/