Are we outgrowing Fark?

[SilverStag]

Serious moment here, guys. I wonder if our threads aren’t getting a little heavy in relation to the rest of the site. I don’t know how Drew feels about us, but we are regularly drawing over 200 images in a single thread, and pretty large ones at that.

I’m not sure what the solution is. I know that it’s not that heavy a load per se for Fark due to individual image hosting, but the load times on the thread are getting pretty horrendous even for some broadband links.

The only things I can think of are:

1. reduce the number of images allowed per contest.

2. Reduce the size/have everyone make a thumbnail to a popable link.

Anyone else have any ideas? I’m hoping to jumpstart a discussion about what we can do to keep this enjoyable for the long term.

[FutherMucker]

Since I’m fairly new here, I feel a bit awkward putting in my $0.02…..

If our growth ever does become a problem, I think reducing the number of images and size would be the two best things that could be done…I would certainly vote yes on that.

I seriously think making it mandatory for images to be popable would be a painful kick to the crotch for these contests. I just know that I wouldn’t want to click through all the images to see the bigger version…Especially if there’s going to be 200+ per contest.

Mods?….How does the Founder Guy find the contests these days?..Any word lately?

[Analogy]

I’d say unless the powers that be have a problem with it, keep it as is. If Big D says something about it, we can consider changing things.

[staplermofo]

Farktography threads are finally bigger than photoshop threads (at least by post count).
I have no solution (or problem, for that matter, I’ll wait overnight for a thread to load if need be), but I’m thrilled we have a problem like this.

[Elsinore]

There’s no problem on the Fark side as far as I know. The Caturday threads tend to be bigger as far as number of images/posts, and those do tend to bog down after awhile. For people with slow connections, I’d imagine Farktography threads might bog down as well, but I haven’t heard any complaints.

[Morningbreath]

I’v never had a problem loading the contest, my guess is that if it ever comes down to it we could just drop down to 2 photos per person, max

[Teffy]

I’m also new here, but I’ve also noted a lot of un-votable pictures in the treads.. which is a shame because a lot of them are good shots that I want to vote for! But maybe just deleting those posts may also reduce the stain if need be?

However, I’ve been a long time Farktography watcher and have never had a problem loading the thread, unless it was a hardware fault on my end. (must remember to stop squishing the interweb tubes!)

[zeke]

http://www.schneeworld.com/fsm/static-reports/distinctbytheme.html

#5 Look to the Skies had 389.
#15 Night Time Photography had 327.
#20 Landscapes had 295.
#36 Black and White Photography had 315.

Honestly, we’ve always had ups and downs, but pushing 200 some images in a thread really isn’t a new thing. We’ve always had a lot of pics in our threads, one look at the blue line on the distinct by theme graph tells the tale.

[andyofne]

It does take a long time for the thread to load (when I’m at work) but until someone in authority at fark complains I’d keep on rolling as is.

It’s amazing to see all of the incredible talent each week.

I feel so small.

[show_the_o_face]

I’m also new here, but I’ve also noted a lot of un-votable pictures in the treads.. which is a shame because a lot of them are good shots that I want to vote for! But maybe just deleting those posts may also reduce the stain if need be?

I think there is a way to view only votable images if it is a problem for individual users.

[schnee]

Without talking to Drew (or delegate), we can only infer the number of people who view the contests – Fark shows how many people click on the link that goes to farktography.net, but doesn’t show how many people click on the comments section. Back in Nov 06, I asked Drew these sort of questions and he told me that a good PS contest draws over 40,000 views. In contrast, the Flower Power II contest drew 6271 views and was one of the more popular ones. Pretty small. That thread was contest #78 – we’ve doubled that now. Maybe things have changed. I’ll shoot a request to Drew for recent numbers and report back.

[Mr.BobDobalita]

Might want to let a sleeping dog lie, Schnee… 😉

[corsec67]

Why would this be a problem at all?

Fark.com doesn’t serve any of the images that are featured in the threads, so the number/size of the images has nothing to do with Drew or the fark servers at all.

The number and size of images does make it a bigger thread to download, but that is only on the client side. That can easily be an issue, but that is more internal to Farktography and not a burden on Fark at all.

Looking at my statistics for my images in the “Distance theme”, I got about 15,000 requests from the contest for all 3 of my images, so that would be about 5,000 people that download all of the pictures. I got about 6,300 people for “Trucks”.

[sleeping]

Interestingly, it looks like a pagination feature is in the works on Fark so people can split up longer threads (there’s a beta option in my profile)

[corsec67]

Interestingly, it looks like a pagination feature is in the works on Fark so people can split up longer threads (there’s a beta option in my profile)

Yeah, I have that too. I think that would solve any “performance”/ “thread too big” issues, and allow people to say how big a chunk they can get at once.

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