07-28-10 – Dirty Pictures

Also, I can’t help but notice the last couple of contests haven’t brought in a lot of votes in general, not just for my lame efforts.

Last couple months. Like 12. Don’t know why.

No cat or baby themes.

Whoops, sorry about that. It’s fixed now.

ETA: Schnee has stats that track average number of Farktographers and entries:
http://www.schneeworld.com/fsm/static-reports/distinctbytheme.html

As well as total votes per theme:
http://www.schneeworld.com/fsm/static-reports/totalvotespertheme.html

Makes for interesting reading.

So I am FOS. Nothing new. 😉

Thoughts on these latest comments:

It’s hard to gauge the graphs when x/5 theme titles get ‘squished’ out of the image due to the # of contests and the width of the graph.

Earlier contests were easier: ‘Blue’ is easier than ‘These Foolish Games’; ‘Self Portraits’ more clearly defined than ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’

I can’t help but think the late change in the theme title this week hurt; “That’s Just Filthy” is more encompassing than “Dirty Pictures”. I know in my voting, I am looking for really ‘dirty’ shots; a messy kitchen or cluttered garage or workbench isn’t ‘dirty’–it’s just a disorganized mess. Did people decide not to post images because of that? Or decide not to include one or another shot (I know I changed my entries accordingly–who out there who doesn’t read the forum religiously decided not to post, or thought they misread something earlier?) Those who did post such images–aren’t doing well, overall, and may be discouraged by that.

It probably didn’t help with the contest posting snafoo–these things happen, of course, but perhaps a few didn’t find the link…the casual contributors.

Chaos theory say’s not every contest will be as popular as another.

Puddytats, and other ‘awe, gee’ themes, are more likely to be shared and linked to among family and friends than stuff like monuments and skylines.

There’s a ga-zillion reasons why the contests might not be as popular as they were, or just may not seem so. For me, I’m here to stretch my boundaries, as a compositional photographer and as a technically adept one (or so I hope to be one day). It probably comes down to ‘what does Farktography want to achieve’ which can be summed up in ‘what group is our target audience’ and ‘how among Fark’s audience can we capture them and keep them.’

Neither question is easy to answer.

No offense to the top-contributors, but to a casual “gee, I think this is a good shot with my p+s camera” contributor, it doesn’t help that we happen to have some really most-excellent (“Station!!”) photographers, who’s shots nearly always blow away the casual competition. There’s the occasional fluke, but most people probably give up the ghost as hopeless. If I weren’t so damned stubborn and certain that I really CAN take these kinds of pictures (and I’m faring well this week, thus far), I’da given up long ago. Lord knows I’ve had moments of frustration where I’ve felt like doing so.

Just thoughts, from a 6th-months-in farktography student, who keeps hoping to improve my GPA.

Chaos theory aside, there’s no doubt that Farktography as a whole is in a slump. The over time graph shows a steady trend of more weiners than boobies – indicative of a decline. Indeed, going through the numbers shows that we haven’t had a contest with more boobies than weiners since October. In the last year, there have been three, and only two more where the numbers are equal. That means that in all but five of the last fifty-two contests – or slightly more than 90% – there have been more people leaving farktography than joining. I think Kes is right that there will be a sharp spike in participants once the book goes out, and that the upcoming string of “simpler” themes could be a good litmus test to see if the nature of the themes affects the sway of participation.

I haven’t done the math on votes yet, but I have been saying for about a year that votes seem down from when I started participating. I’ve been trying to at least breathe a little life into it by drafting my friends, or at least convincing them to vote every week, but it’s been slow and most have only done one or two submissions.

Maybe Fark in general is losing some popularity?
It’s hard to keep folks coming back when there always seems to be some new, shiny thing on the net to check out.
I’ve tried to get others to join up, but so far they are content to lurk.

Maybe Fark in general is losing some popularity?
It’s hard to keep folks coming back when there always seems to be some new, shiny thing on the net to check out.
I’ve tried to get others to join up, but so far they are content to lurk.

There is a lot of truth in this. Slumping vote totals is a regular conversation over the PSAEF (Photoshop forum). Fark goes through up down cycles in participation. People breeze in for a few months and then breeze on out. In the four years I’ve been Farking the strongest Farkers are part of a “group” PShopper, Farktographers, TFDers, who keep the wheels turning until the next group shows up for a while. It will pick up, we just have to wait for the next wave of Nerds to mature.