Book Stuff That Needs Doing

[Choc-Ful-A]

I have no problem at all and won’t be personally hurt if the consensus is to scrap what has been done and go back to the drawing board in terms of asking people to suggest their favorite 3 or 5, and putting that together again.

IMO, no to that. Tweaking the photo selections to addresses real or perceived bias, no problem… But I think the current draft is too good, or yes I’ll out myself and second the “fabulous” tag. I think expectations and enthusiasm is already ramped up too much to start over. Scrapping it at this point will probably kill the project entirely.

And for what it’s worth, I didn’t get any sense that the choices showed any obvious “Elsinore and friends” bias. Maybe I’m being a bit clueless, which won’t be the first time, but I don’t see it. But the fact that a number of my photos were selected shows that at least some people were picked without being in some privileged inner circle.

[orionid]

There’s an inner circle? Like with crop rings? Can we build a fire and dance around nekkid?

/sorry, just trying to lighten the mood. As I’ve told Kes IRL, there will always be voices of dissent, and while they should be weighed and considered, they shouldn’t stop the party. That’s the same logic behind offering the cop a beer, which may not always work, but seems good at the time 😉

[Elsinore]

The thing is that I’m very open to discussing changes and ideas for the book and I feel I have been from the beginning. The method we used to select pictures was the only one that gathered critical mass. If “contact all and pick three” had been suggested and agreed to, I would have run with that as easily as anything else. However it got to a point where I felt I was the only person talking and no one was replying.

And that’s why I don’t feel right saying, “Hey, I wish you had done things differently” in the face of everything you (and the committee) accomplished. Cause it’s not like I didn’t have the opportunity to say that 6 or 9 months ago before you put all the work into things that brought us to where we are now. The thread was here, and I knew about it, I just didn’t get involved. And on the whole, I like that there was a group within the community who were ambitious enough to run with an idea and get things done with it

It was just that in the face of the email you and I received and me getting that Flickr message (from a completely different person, btw) I started thinking maybe there’s a silent contingent who don’t or wouldn’t see it as fair for me to be”overrepresented” in the book.

[lokisbong]

I only have two pictures in this and I would say I am very happy to get that much. The people who have more pictures have taken very good pictures that deserve their places I think. I think you are doing a good job and don’t think it needs any change at all.

[Choc-Ful-A]

And in all seriousness, I would like this to be the first book we publish, not THE book. So my suggestion is ride the buzz we’ve generated, get this fabulous book out, then once the dust settles talk about what we’d as a community learned from the first one and use that feedback to help shape the next one.

In the meantime, minor photo choice tweaks are still possible here without starting over if the people that spent time driving this feel it’s needed. And we could look into the feasibility of setting up a website (and include the URL in the book) talking about the book project where additional photos could be highlighted.

[orionid]

I only have two pictures in this and I would say I am very happy to get that much. The people who have more pictures have taken very good pictures that deserve their places I think. I think you are doing a good job and don’t think it needs any change at all.

*Like*

And in all seriousness, I would like this to be the first book we publish, not THE book. So my suggestion is ride the buzz we’ve generated, get this fabulous book out, then once the dust settles talk about what we’d as a community learned from the first one and use that feedback to help shape the next one.

*like*

In the meantime, minor photo choice tweaks are still possible here without starting over if the people that spent time driving this feel it’s needed. And we could look into the feasibility of setting up a website (and include the URL in the book) talking about the book project where additional photos could be highlighted.

*REALLY LIKE*

[Kestrana]

I too would like this to be the first of more books we put together. I may even survive to do the next ones 😛

One other thing that occurred to me in the last few days of thinking about this is that one of the things I like about what we did was choosing themes, which is a Farktography Thing ™ that lend structure and context to the book. If we just had 3 from each participant we could still use the chapter divisions but the contests would be meaningless without taking time to list every single contest we’ve ever had.

At this time I’m very leery of adding any more photos to this edition as we are way over the estimated page count already and we’ve very few people pull out. However if you’re one of the photographers with a lot of pictures and you want to pull some of your less favorite entries, that’s fine. Alternately, all those pictures were invited and I’m not embarrassed by anyone’s picture count – after all it wasn’t my decision to put them in the top 5, it was the fark voters saying they like your style.

[Curious]

I only have two pictures in this and I would say I am very happy to get that much. The people who have more pictures have taken very good pictures that deserve their places I think. I think you are doing a good job and don’t think it needs any change at all.

yeah a whole bunch of this. i haven’t been paying attention to the book project and was both surprised and pleased to get get an email asking me to send the form back.

about the friends thing — tough shit to those mentioning it. in my many years here and many contests entered i could 1) blame my poor showing on not being popular and the popular folks getting votes 2) suck it up and admit that all too often there were better photos than mine entered which, not surprisingly, got more votes. i choose the latter.

as far as what’s in the book from looking at the pdf i like it. would i have chosen each and every one? no but it’s a good representation of us. and i hadn’t looked at who had the most/least and won’t. it doesn’t matter. nor does it matter how they got there. i’m content that it was as fair as these things can be and even if it wasn’t so what. life’s not fair, deal with it.

and for tweaks maybe, but for god’s sake don’t start over.

[QueenBee]

Of course you’re going to see some people in there more than others

1) it depends on how often you “play” in the weekly themes. if you only participate once a month, of course your pics won’t have as good a chance as someone who is involved every week
2) the general Fark population voted on who got in those top 5 spots. If it’s favoritism on anyone’s part, it’s those damn voters! 😛

I think that just randomly picking someone’s 3 favorite pictures wouldn’t have represented the idea of Farktography as well. To set up the chapters by theme and then by contests in each theme, I think we’ve better shown what we’re all about.

There was no way to include everyone, but I think between using the top 5 and then picking several others from each contest, you brought in as many different artists as you could within the page constraints.

[veruca]

So imagine you’re just rolling along through life, and then one day you open your email one day to find a release form for one of your photos to be included in an upcoming “best of” Farktography book. You send off an email to a good friend (someone who was one of the pioneers and was involved in the project before you – someone who was a moderator with you, someone whose work you admire and whose welcoming attitude really inspired you to be part of the community) and find that they had 0 photos selected for the project.

So you start looking into exactly what what chosen as the “best of” Farktography and you notice that 2 people had a combined total of over 40 photos selected and your thoughts go back to your friend…

Then you poke around some more and find that another good friend, someone whose work and resources provided the foundation for us to have the forum we’re writing on today, wasn’t given any credit for what he did for the community, and that recognition was attributed incorrectly elsewhere.

After absorbing all of the above I decided to ask questions about the selection process and about where the information for the history section had come from so I wrote to Kestrana and Elsinore.

I have been gone from this community for a long time have moved on from this project, so I had no idea there was going to be a book until I got my release form. I hesitated to even say anything considering the length of my absence but yes, I would not have gone in the themes direction because I do believe it’s unfair for so few to be so broadly represented. It’s not a sentiment personally directed at anyone; if the theme selections had gone differently and it had been me who had received a seemingly disproportionate number of release forms I would have stopped at three and given up the rest so others could share the limelight simply because that appeals to my sense of fairness. I’ve said and thought the same thing over and over again: if the rules of Farktography have always been no more than three submissions per person per contest, why would the book be any different?

However, shortly after I wrote Kestrana she wrote back and answered my questions, and after I finish this post I’ll be writing back to her again. I understand now how things have come to pass. I still don’t agree with the chosen method but the majority has spoken and I can accept that. But I won’t apologize for asking the questions; just because I didn’t agree with the majority doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to voice my thoughts.

Given all that, it wasn’t my intent to upset her, and especially since I took enough lumps during my time modding Farktography to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore and it eventually led to my leaving the community entirely. It is tough being in a position where you’re the most visible one fielding the questions and problems.

So if you want to hurl insults in my (now not anonymous) direction at least do it understanding where the voice is dissension is coming from.

At this point, just slap them in the face and stare at them in a way that lets them know if do anything but apologize then hide for the next 12 hours you’ll beat them with looped up coaxial cable. That’s what my Mom would do!

Bring it, staplerboy 😛 I’ve been in IT for years and my coax wielding Kung Fu is strong. I’ll try not to leave the welts in openly visible places though, because that’s what MY mom would do.

[Elsinore]

I’m glad you spoke up, veruca 🙂 And for my part, I hadn’t really looked too closely at the comparative numbers of photos until your email and the Flickr message I got from someone else.

Also RE: Farktography’s history. Some of you saw the thread I wrote a few months back, but probably not everyone did, and I hadn’t stickied it, so it kind of got buried. It’s now stickied for future reference on the Pub and Grill board. It’s long recap of Farktography’s history (what can I say, ya’ll know I’m verbose), but I have a thing for history and remembering the legacy and contributions of others. So for those interested (and I imagine for the book, for background), you can find the thread in there.

[Author]

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