Re: Re: I’m havin’ a little rant/protest

[Elsinore]

I just need to vent a little about the posts
It’s suggested to post under 50KB yet many are over 100

I’ve noticed that myself, and it’s definitely frustrating when I keep my pictures smaller and compress more and end up with compression artifacts while someone else posts 700×1200 images at 150kb.

To be fair, there could be a little confusion on max file size, because the Farktography page itself says this under the “How To” section:

Most of the images you post will be between 40-60KB. Consider linking rather than displaying an image if it is larger than 70KB. Entries larger than 200KB will be automatically rejected.

I read the Farktography site “How To” section before I started posting, so for a long time I was aiming for 70k; it was quite awhile before I picked up that the rules listed in the first post each week said 50k, not 70k.

Now I do aim at 50k, and some of mine have been as small as 35-37k. I will admit that if I end up at 53k or 56k, I generally say screw it and leave it that size rather than compressing further, since I know so many others have pictures twice that size. Probably not the best attitude, but it’s admittedly out of the same frustration you’ve expressed. I also am more likely to leave one of my images a bit over the 50k limit if I know I’m also submitting a really small one of 37k–kinda like it’s ultimately evening out to a 50k average for each week.

Where am I going with this? I dunno…I guess just commiserating. I’m not sure what can be done about the huge file sizes, since apparently someone could submit anything up to 200k before it would be automatically rejected. Dunno if the Fark mods really police Farktography and Photoshop threads for contest rules; the sense I’ve gotten is that they just look for Fark rules violations. I know awhile back the issue of off-theme entries came up and the unfortunate consensus was that not much could be done about it since it was sometimes so subjective. But with file sizes it’s pretty clear–maybe in this case the Farktography mods could adjust the rules to disqualify images submitted in excess of 5-7% over the 50k rule? My only concern would be the extra work policing that, though maybe just double checking the top 20 vote getting entries would cut the work and be a middle ground sanity check.

Regardless, you aren’t alone. It’s hard being the honorable one in an honor system, eh?