The health and well being of Farktography

[Barracuda]

Alright, well not sure what the change is, but we’re off to the races this week on votes!

[orionid]

clouddancer You have gotten better with time; we’ve all seen it. You have a full life and priorities (family is always a priority) that dictate how much time you have to spend reading, learning, and executing in the photography world. I’m sure you have better pictures of your kids and your life than you may have had, had you never participated at all. And those scrapbook memories last a lot longer than this contest will (realistically speaking, assuming your kids grow up, and have kids of their own, etc.)

//digress One thing I miss, CISS from the old stat forum is the little graph showing growth in votes over time. Though given today’s numbers the NVC average would better display that.

This is what I wanted to say but couldn’t find the words.

[CauseISaidSo]

//digress One thing I miss, CISS from the old stat forum is the little graph showing growth in votes over time. Though given today’s numbers the NVC average would better display that.

Yeah, I know, sorry. It’s something I really want as well and it’s next on my list if I can ever get a stretch of free time.

[lokisbong]

(Just think of me as Marlin Perkins* hovering in a helicopter over a swarm of sweaty, portly men traveling in search of Star Wars action figures and microbrewed beers. My assistant Jim is being thrashed to death by a pack of angry Politics Thread lions, hope he paid his Mutual of Omaha premiums!)

*God, I’m old

Than I must be pretty close behind ya. At first I was certain I had seen that episode. Man I loved watching that show in the years before…*

But I really do agree Fark isn’t going anywhere too soon but I think moving to less technical and or less restrictive themes would help Farktography by “maybe” bringing in some new blood. Or at least give people like me a bit of a kick start. I admit I mostly have been in kinda a dry spell. I just have not been really “feeling it” lately and I think most of that is lack of new stuff to shoot. I have been all over this tiny town over the last few years and just need to get out further from my cave to see new stuff. I tried some simple light painting type stuff a few days ago but wasn’t happy with my results. Well I will find my muse again soon enough I guess. I just need to keep at it until the right shit happens again.

* the years before the internets and video games.

[emiliogtz]

Very late to the party, as usual.

I’ve been at deviantArt for ages, more than 5 years with my current account (the previous one was hijacked for no apparent reason), I’m admin/founder of two currently active groups and I can tell you how bad/different that site has become. I’m not saying this in the my-good-old-times-better-than-yours way, I’m saying in it in terms if how diversity and creativity started to take second place to massive generic/mediocre/average content. Precisely about five or six years ago the creative people started to leave, as the masses started to crawl in.

What started as a site for artists and want-to-be-artists to show their work, it’s now a smorgasboard of porn, instagram, AW (specifically referring to all those pictures where there’s a person holding a sign telling something about their latest break-up, toy, gadget… ) and of course, all those cell phone mirror pictures. And the cosplay, let’s not forget the cosplay. There’s fewer people now actually wanting to learn something and a huge bunch who just are there for the attention, the page views. If you have the nerve to reject one of their images submitted to one of your groups, they feel offended. Some groups have a strict no cell-phone picture rule and yet they get their share of those submissions. Want to be hot and popular? Crotch-shots is the way to go.

There’s still talent and there’s still creativity, but you have to try harder to find it. And I’m sure the site owners are happy with the status quo. Shadowness.com it’s much better these days IMHO.

500px.com is another fine example of how once a site becomes popular the quality of its content suffers. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems you have to choose between quality and quantity when it comes to the internet.

My point is, what do you want farktography to be? If you open it up and becomes massive, that’s wat you’ll get, massive, mediocre content. There’s nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you want. It’ll be a little difficult, because you’ll be competing with the likes of FB and to a lesser extent, G+. But if you can get the instagrammers to come and post, and vote, they will take over the contests, they will grab all the votes, ennuipoet won’t be happy about it and will probably leave. That is, from my point of view, currently the situation at G+, a handful of “cool kids” and “attractive young females” are calling the shots, regardless of the quality of their work.

Farktography still has that unpredictability thing, you can take a guess at what to expect, but there’s always surprises. What does it lack? Exposure, so to speak. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of participants who don’t know about the week’s theme until late Wednesday. There aren’t much people voting on the themes suggestions either, afaik. In short, maybe what we want is people to become more involved. If you give people something back, they are more likely to become involved.

So maybe you don’t want to compete with Facebook, but why not use it? Instead of trying to be FB, make it a part of farktography. Make a presence there, advertise upcoming themes, let the participants brag about their entries. They win? Have their entries posted there, tag them, that way they friends will see it, and will comment on it, and maybe get involved. Fark membership as a requirement to vote is the biggest issue here, since fark is, I’m pretty sure, too obscure for most people on FB. So maybe that’s what needs to be addressed first.

I’m not the most avid participant, but I like it here, I like the challenges and I still think about how to beat U-Man every time I participate.

[orionid]

Very late to the party, as usual.

I’ve been at deviantArt for ages, more than 5 years with my current account (the previous one was hijacked for no apparent reason), I’m admin/founder of two currently active groups and I can tell you how bad/different that site has become. I’m not saying this in the my-good-old-times-better-than-yours way, I’m saying in it in terms if how diversity and creativity started to take second place to massive generic/mediocre/average content. Precisely about five or six years ago the creative people started to leave, as the masses started to crawl in.

What started as a site for artists and want-to-be-artists to show their work, it’s now a smorgasboard of porn, instagram, AW (specifically referring to all those pictures where there’s a person holding a sign telling something about their latest break-up, toy, gadget… ) and of course, all those cell phone mirror pictures. And the cosplay, let’s not forget the cosplay. There’s fewer people now actually wanting to learn something and a huge bunch who just are there for the attention, the page views. If you have the nerve to reject one of their images submitted to one of your groups, they feel offended. Some groups have a strict no cell-phone picture rule and yet they get their share of those submissions. Want to be hot and popular? Crotch-shots is the way to go.

There’s still talent and there’s still creativity, but you have to try harder to find it. And I’m sure the site owners are happy with the status quo. Shadowness.com it’s much better these days IMHO.

500px.com is another fine example of how once a site becomes popular the quality of its content suffers. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems you have to choose between quality and quantity when it comes to the internet.

My point is, what do you want farktography to be? If you open it up and becomes massive, that’s wat you’ll get, massive, mediocre content. There’s nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you want. It’ll be a little difficult, because you’ll be competing with the likes of FB and to a lesser extent, G+. But if you can get the instagrammers to come and post, and vote, they will take over the contests, they will grab all the votes, ennuipoet won’t be happy about it and will probably leave. That is, from my point of view, currently the situation at G+, a handful of “cool kids” and “attractive young females” are calling the shots, regardless of the quality of their work.

Farktography still has that unpredictability thing, you can take a guess at what to expect, but there’s always surprises. What does it lack? Exposure, so to speak. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of participants who don’t know about the week’s theme until late Wednesday. There aren’t much people voting on the themes suggestions either, afaik. In short, maybe what we want is people to become more involved. If you give people something back, they are more likely to become involved.

So maybe you don’t want to compete with Facebook, but why not use it? Instead of trying to be FB, make it a part of farktography. Make a presence there, advertise upcoming themes, let the participants brag about their entries. They win? Have their entries posted there, tag them, that way they friends will see it, and will comment on it, and maybe get involved. Fark membership as a requirement to vote is the biggest issue here, since fark is, I’m pretty sure, too obscure for most people on FB. So maybe that’s what needs to be addressed first.

I’m not the most avid participant, but I like it here, I like the challenges and I still think about how to beat U-Man every time I participate.

*slow clap* You, sir, have hit the nail on the head.

/I actually just started using my DA account again, not for photography, but as a host for my warhammer 40k model projects as they progress. Given that a WIP is not a finished product, I’m probably one of the masses, but at least I haven’t posted a Soul Grinder’s cock-and-balls yet.

[Pope_Larry_II]

I spoke to Drew this weekend about Farktography and one of the interesting things he borught up was that page views of the mobile site has steadily gone up and the page views of the regular site have plateaued. This may be one explanaition for the drop off in viewship (and voting) for Farktography (and photoshop contests). I’m not sure how many people want to view photos on a tiny little screen, personally I wouldn’t. That aspect of dissappearing voters my be beyond our control, which is good and bad.

[Yugoboy]

I spoke to Drew this weekend about Farktography and one of the interesting things he borught up was that page views of the mobile site has steadily gone up and the page views of the regular site have plateaued. This may be one explanaition for the drop off in viewship (and voting) for Farktography (and photoshop contests). I’m not sure how many people want to view photos on a tiny little screen, personally I wouldn’t. That aspect of dissappearing voters my be beyond our control, which is good and bad.

So… I guess the big question is whether there is any desire on the part of Mike and the other programmers to design a parallel system for Farktography and Photoshop contests that would have a laptop/desktop version with full-size images and a mobile version with reduced-size images, wherein the voting all goes to one place. I was originally going to ask if it was possible, but I am quite certain it is, these days.
I’m sure a part of the reduced traffic is a need to watch the amount of megabyte usage. I’ve got students who will text the shit out of their phones, but refuse to make any sort of phone call that isn’t due to emergency, because they don’t want to run out of minutes. Same principle.
Just wonderin’

[Pope_Larry_II]

So… I guess the big question is whether there is any desire on the part of Mike and the other programmers to design a parallel system for Farktography and Photoshop contests that would have a laptop/desktop version with full-size images and a mobile version with reduced-size images, wherein the voting all goes to one place. I was originally going to ask if it was possible, but I am quite certain it is, these days.
I’m sure a part of the reduced traffic is a need to watch the amount of megabyte usage. I’ve got students who will text the shit out of their phones, but refuse to make any sort of phone call that isn’t due to emergency, because they don’t want to run out of minutes. Same principle.
Just wonderin’

The short answer for the first question is Yes. It’s no surprize that Drew keeps tweeking Fark, he’s going to keep tweeking it to suit his audience.

I assume the same thing for mobile device usage. Don’t forget there are a lot of Canadian Farkers, we don’t have nearly the freedom with cellphones that you (Americans) do. We have low bandwidth limits on cellphones and we pay through the nose for extra MBs (yes, MBs, not GBs). My other assumption was that it’s really hard to see the detail in a pic on a tiny screen, so why bother.

[Yugoboy]

I assume the same thing for mobile device usage. Don’t forget there are a lot of Canadian Farkers, we don’t have nearly the freedom with cellphones that you (Americans) do. We have low bandwidth limits on cellphones and we pay through the nose for extra MBs (yes, MBs, not GBs). My other assumption was that it’s really hard to see the detail in a pic on a tiny screen, so why bother.

I’m aware of the zooming capacity for iPhones, and am really hoping Androids can do the same thing (getting one this summer… refuse to join the iHive). If you want detail, you can get it. If you just wanna see pretty pix, you can do that, too. Voting with those tiny buttons on a mobile device is probably frustratingly hard. That’s got to be at least a certain percentage of it.

[fluffybunny]

I assume the same thing for mobile device usage. Don’t forget there are a lot of Canadian Farkers, we don’t have nearly the freedom with cellphones that you (Americans) do. We have low bandwidth limits on cellphones and we pay through the nose for extra MBs (yes, MBs, not GBs). My other assumption was that it’s really hard to see the detail in a pic on a tiny screen, so why bother.

I’m aware of the zooming capacity for iPhones, and am really hoping Androids can do the same thing (getting one this summer… refuse to join the iHive). If you want detail, you can get it. If you just wanna see pretty pix, you can do that, too. Voting with those tiny buttons on a mobile device is probably frustratingly hard. That’s got to be at least a certain percentage of it.

I running a Verizon Galaxy Nexus (original Google phone) with Android 4.2.2 and yes, you can zoom images just fine. Two ways (there may be more) they could do it is either the mobile specific site or as an “app”. The “little button” problem is just a paradigm/UI limitation, ie you might handle it with a “long press” and then a context menu for voting among other things.

[ennuipoet]

The short answer for the first question is Yes. It’s no surprize that Drew keeps tweeking Fark, he’s going to keep tweeking it to suit his audience.

I assume the same thing for mobile device usage. Don’t forget there are a lot of Canadian Farkers, we don’t have nearly the freedom with cellphones that you (Americans) do. We have low bandwidth limits on cellphones and we pay through the nose for extra MBs (yes, MBs, not GBs). My other assumption was that it’s really hard to see the detail in a pic on a tiny screen, so why bother.

I just want to go on the record here, Mister Speaker, Fark’s mobile App sucks. I’ve used it on Android and IOS and found both to be clunky, limiting and slow. You cannot easily access any of the forums unless you load the main site in your phone browser. If you click a link and read an article you will get bounced back to the Apps mainpage rather than the article. Plus, ads, soooo many ads.

Also wik

Yugoboy I too would not drink the Kool Aid from Apple, until a series of unfortunate phones drove me to choose an Iphone. (I had three Droids, all cheap construction, glitchy software and slow as glaciers.) I actually paid full price for an Iphone 4 and have found it to be worth the money, smooth, intuitive and robust, plus the thing is made with metal not plastic, so you don’t feel like you are carrying a Texas Instruments Calculator circa 1982.

Other than an Ipod classic, I own no other Apple gear, barely know how to use a Mac and how no interest in switching platforms. (Though if Windows8 is any harbinger of the future, this may change.) I do not think Steve Jobs was an alien or angel, but I feel I must recommend the iPhone to anyone in the market for a new phone.

Now, I have to go ritually purify myself by running a DOS application.

[Elsinore]

I do know that Drew is open to suggestions either way. Someone recently asked (on FB :lol:) if maybe the Farktography thread could be bumped in the middle of the voting cycle to put it at the top of the main page again and get more attention. Not sure that could be done without a manual bump or coding of some sort, but it’s not a bad idea. Tweeting and FB’ing the Farktography contest links are also good ideas as is keeping our themes more general. I’m trying to schedule less esoteric stuff, and I know you guys have been suggesting more open themes. And of course, we’re now posting the theme a week ahead of time. Don’t know if it’s helping yet, but I’m keeping an eye on that.

[orionid]

I do know that Drew is open to suggestions either way. Someone recently asked (on FB :lol:) if maybe the Farktography thread could be bumped in the middle of the voting cycle to put it at the top of the main page again and get more attention. Not sure that could be done without a manual bump or coding of some sort, but it’s not a bad idea. Tweeting and FB’ing the Farktography contest links are also good ideas as is keeping our themes more general. I’m trying to schedule less esoteric stuff, and I know you guys have been suggesting more open themes. And of course, we’re now posting the theme a week ahead of time. Don’t know if it’s helping yet, but I’m keeping an eye on that.

And it’s certainly appreciated whether we vocalize or not.

[Elsinore]

I know 🙂 Drew and I talked some about Farktography back in Feburary, though we were both pretty drunk at the time 😆 That’s when he told me he was open to suggestions no matter how stupid they sounded. Need to shoot him an email, especially as I see more stats on how participating and voting is going with the week-ahead posting.

Speaking of which, are you guys liking/hating/completely apathetic about that? Would 2 weeks ahead work better/worse/who cares? IIRC, we have a Farktography group and/or page on FB, but I think soosh is the admin of it. Need to look into that.

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