Opening a can of worms.

[SilverStag]

I, as well as many other people here, have close to or over 500 previous entries here in Farktography.

There are some frustrations with that, one is scrolling through 100 or more screens on the FSM to determine if I’ve used a shot before.

For the “Weather” contest tonight, I picked three entries. All three I had used and forgotten about. I picked three more, and one of those was disqualified on the basis of reuse, even though it was 90 screens down.

Another frustration I have is with a theme popping up that you have the perfect shot for, and then finding out it tanked in a theme 3 years ago.

I think we need to loosen the reuse rules a bit, and I therefore made the poll attached to this post to get a sense of your feelings. Discussion and gripes below!

[orionid]

Let me mull my worms a bit before I respond. But it’s funny you should mention, I did nearly the same tonight while archive diving.

[lokisbong]

According to your choices I would only have 9 photos culled from my choices even by the most lax of the choices. I try my damnedest to put all used pictures in a separate folder marked Farktography and so far it has prevented me from trying to double dip so to speak. The perfect picture for a theme having already been used I have found a few times though.So far I think I am good to keep it as is but would not complain at all if the rules are relaxed.

[clouddancer]

I can see the point of not using a picture again, because one could continually use the picture over and over and they don’t really do anything new. However, I see your point. I’d like to add something else though. Say it’s permanently retired if it finished high enough. That I get. But I also wouldn’t want to use one right over. How about if it finished lower than top 10 and hasn’t been used in say the last year or something? It sounds like these photos were used ages ago anyway. In such a situation, I don’t have a problem with using a photo again, but so long as it didn’t finish all that high, because in that case that’s just not playing fair. 🙂

[Zero_Exponent]

As a relative newbie with no top ten finishes, I haven’t had trouble with this yet.

As a farktography fan/viewer/voter however, I gotta say I am not a huge fan of the re-use of photos. Purely for selfish reasons, I admit – I’ve already seen it, so show me something new, kind of thing.

Having said that, I think a statute of limitations for previous entries would be a possible solution. Something like “no re-using any previous entries until three years have passed. Three is the number thou shalt count …” 🙂

[Uranus]

use a shot, tag it with “farktography – used” on your pc, and no problemo.
No scrolling through the FSM, either.
Anyway, SilverStag, you’re good enough to whip up a fresh shot if required, I’d wager. 😉

sinlge use as per the rules is ok for me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

[SilverStag]

I’m somewhat limited as to getting out these days- being good enough isn’t the issue for me, it’s the lack of freedom to go out and shoot. I have to use stuff out of my archives. Tagging doesn’t do me a damn bit of good either, because I’ve used several different hosting providers over the years, and stuff is spread everywhere.

I do like the Statute of Limitations idea Zero Exponent came up with, though.

[SilverStag]

I’m somewhat limited as to getting out these days- being good enough isn’t the issue for me, it’s the lack of freedom to go out and shoot. I have to use stuff out of my archives. Tagging doesn’t do me a damn bit of good either, because I’ve used several different hosting providers over the years, and stuff is spread everywhere.

I do like the Statute of Limitations idea Zero Exponent came up with, though.

[Uranus]

actually, if you save originals on your PC or an external drive you can tag images using windows without using an image host.
I do understand the challenge of the lack of mobility, though, and very much the frustration of the “that would have been perfect” moment.

The good thing about a can of worms is that you’re never short of bait…you’re bound to get something.

[ravnostic]

SilverStag, I’ve found twice now that I can lump a single photo excurtion to suit several themes. For my outing this weekend, I wrote a list of all the scheduled, hoppered, and had-the-votes-just-not-documented themes, and made notes as to which ones might go with which contests. At home, I made a ‘future fark’ file and threw copies into it, with original Canon numbering (so I could find the raw stuff later). There must be at least 50 shots that potentially will wind up in contests eventually–unless of course I take bettar. 12 hours well spent, and of course I had fun on the outing, when I had the time to do so.

[Kestrana]

TBH I’m fine with the no re-use policy. But I understand your desire to keep participating during times it’s more difficult to go out to find subjects so if the consensus was to loosen the rules I still think well performing photos should be eliminated + items used within the last 2-3 years.

[LeicaLens]

Someone (not a terribly frequent poster) has already duplicated a previous picture in this week competition. It was originally in “Rain”, which is where I remember it from, and it did quite well.
So it appears that not everyone takes the No Repeats rule that seriously.
Hmmm. It’s very much a self-policed rule anyway.

[Elsinore]

Someone (not a terribly frequent poster) has already duplicated a previous picture in this week competition. It was originally in “Rain”, which is where I remember it from, and it did quite well.
So it appears that not everyone takes the No Repeats rule that seriously.
Hmmm. It’s very much a self-policed rule anyway.

Which photo? Because only one showed up in the Scarlet R report on the FSM, and it wasn’t that one (I’ve since pulled that one btw). It’s also often not the case of not taking the rule seriously as having honestly forgotten one used the photo already.

To that end, I’m sympathetic with the annoyance factor of having to scroll through all those photos to figure out of you’ve used something, but as someone else mentioned, you can tag your photos personally to prevent that. I used to be really good about tagging my Flickr shots with “farktography” and it saved a lot of time (I’ve since become more lax/lazy, so the time I’ve spent scrolling my FSM profile is my own damn fault 😆 )

However, I think opening up to re-use would result in our seeing a lot of repeats that will get old fast. The reason for the no re-use rule in the first place (long long ago) was that people were recycling entries at a high rate. And if the no re-use rule is confined to photos that didn’t place “too” high in the original thread, then moderating the thread will become ridiculously time consuming since I’ll have to then track down the finishing places of all repeats. As it stands now, the FSM’s Scarlet R report flags probably 95% of all repeats, which makes that part of moderation much easier.

[Pope_Larry_II]

As a relative newbie here, I’m all in favour of keeping the one use rule for a bunch of reasons. Mostly it keep sthe contest fresh and exciting, if we kept seeing the same photos pop up again and again, the contests would get dull, fast.

It also gives me an excuse to get out of the house, which my wife apreciates 😉

[linguine]

I personally enjoy the one use rule making it so theres new photos every week and then having the anniversary contests so that you get to see peoples favorite shots from the past year one more time. If we were to change the rule I’d say go for the wait a year option but that seems like it would be a lot more work to police as well as for entering repeat photos since you’d had to be digging back through past contests to see if you’ve waited long enough to use it again.

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