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Praise for new Feb 2006 Interestingness formula / top 500
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As you may or may not know changes to the interestingness formulation took place in Feb/2006 which propagated changes into the historic and current calendar view (aka the top 500 "intereresting[ness]" images for a particular day).
The question I would like to explore in this thread is;
1> have you noticed changes in the top 500 selection starting in Feb/2006?
2> and, if so, do you "like" them and why.
Note - please only post/discuss changes you like. There are other threads to express what you don't like. For example: explore selection changes?
Posted at 8:02PM, 3 March 2006 PDT
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(1 to 100 of 173 replies in Praise for new Feb 2006 Interestingness formula / top 500)
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I have noticed that after the large shifts caused by running the changes into the calendar were completed (my guess is last week in Feb.) the position of my top 500 images is more stable changing a few places in a few days time... This I like because it is what I would expect to happen. i.e. lots of volatility close to the current date with a gradual roll off.
Posted 76 months ago.
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I have a vested interest in Jan 10th 2006 because one of my images made it to the top 10 on this date. I watched this day taking note of the surrounding images, looking at views, favs, etc, and trying to understand "why mine". Since the change, my image has shifted significantly (page 35+), but to my amazement the general quality of the top 20 on Jan 10th is higher. I like this because one of the things I get from flickr is the inspiration to become a better photographer - so, at least for Jan 10th 2006, the changes have surfaced some new and inspiring work.
Note - I have _only_ studied Jan 10th in any detail and cannot comment on other days. My experience is not by itself statistically significant. And I don't think all the work in the top 20 is "good" - but much of it is and is better than what it was 2-3weeks back (in the midst of the change over)
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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pbutler1 edited this topic 76 months ago.
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Paul, I can understand that you would be pleased with the new algorithm if your rankings have become more stable, but I have actually found just the opposite, and people have been complaining to me recently that photos that appeared, say on page 2 or 10 or 20 or whatever, the next day have fallen out of the top 500 altogether. Historically, however, it appears to be the case that older photos have always been less volatile, so I'm surprised that you think the shift in your situation was due to the February tweaking. Maybe it was. I'm no expert.
Now let's hear if there are others who like the new algorithm. I don't, so now I'll shut up (in this thread, anyway).
Edit: I wrote the above before I saw Paul's second comment. Before I shut up completely, I must respectfully disagree that the photos in the top 20 are better than they were previous to the tweaking.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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mimbrava edited this topic 76 months ago.
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Thanks Mim - let me clarify.
On the volatility... It is perhaps an artifact of joining in January/2006 and living through the huge volitility of Feb. If this settling down is normal and has been normal - then there is no real improvement. And I am also not talking about recent days (my last top 500 was about a month ago) and I too already suffered the large drops mentioned elsewhere. So take this as one persons experience after the trama of many dropping off or dropping significantly. I should also say that the slight drifts mentioned have been universally down as of my last review.
And on the top 20... only for one day, Jan 10th, and only using my own judgement. And I have only been watching Jan 10th for about a month. Over the last 4 weeks are all 20 better, nope. Is there a general improvement on this day only, IMHO yes. Are there some that have been dropped that were better than the 20 currently there (not including mine ;^>) absolutely. So again a very small (insignificant) sample and a huge attempt to provide a benefit of the doubt setting to draw out positive experiences.
OK - stage set. Both of us really want to find some positive aspects to the changes. So please share them with us and the rest of the group.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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pbutler1 edited this topic 76 months ago.
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Here's my praise! (Note: I not only work at Flickr, but I'm the one who instigated these changes**)
As of a few days ago, we changed the daily rankings so that photos that had been added to a large number of groups were ranked lower. The more groups, the bigger the "penalty". Here's why:
Many people figured out that adding their photos to a lot of groups would boost their rankings: more others would see it and some would comment, fav, send to friends, etc. and thus, all other things being equal, it's interestingness rating would increase.
As yet more people figured this out, it became an arms race: "if everyone else was adding their photo to 20 groups." an otherwise reasonable person would then think, "I should add this new photo I'm so proud of to 30 groups to ensure it has the exposure it needs to have a legitimate shot at interestingness, which I think it deserves."
So, 20 lead to 30 and 30 lead to 40, then 50, and now we're seeing 60 or 70. That's bad for many reasons (explained below) but it also meant that new users or users who were less "plugged in" to the system had less of a chance. And it skewed the results since many people don't even use groups at all. Adding your photos to groups shouldn't give an advantage: we want the photos that are genuinely most interesting (according to the magic donkey) to come out on top.
And, the thing is, once all the good photographers who have gotten into the habit of adding their photos to 50 or 60 groups stop and instead choose the 5 or maybe 10 most relevant groups, they will be back in the top 500 with roughly the same regularity (it will be slightly more "new faces" because of these changes, but not dramatically).
Finally, this change is good for many reasons:
* It's good for the photo owners because they don't have to waste a lot of time adding their photo to every group that could conceivably gain the photo more exposure.
* It is good for group admins since they don't have to deal with flooded pools.
* It is good for individual groups since they can be more focussed on their chosen topic and have more relevant photos.
* It is good for the "groups ecosystem" which suffers from a lot of essentially duplicate groups with more or less the same photos.***
* It's good for Flickr since we have less crud in the DBs and less "noise" to calculate, encode and send over the wires.
* It's good for viewers since the 70 groups context can slow down pageloads dramatically.
* It's good for the quality of interestingness since the playing field is levelled. (This will be apparent as the news spreads and people figure it out independently.)
I know there are several people concerned or upset about this. I hope that addressed some of your concern or upset. As word of this change spreads and the groups arms race disolves, I think most everyone will agree that it was a good change indeed.
Good!
** If we're lucky, SilentObserver the madman behind the actually controls the magic donkey will continue to peep up from time to time.
*** If you're going to add it to Doll Macros and Macro Dolls, you might as well go for Doll close ups, Dolls up close, Lens near Doll, All time best doll macros and close ups (one per day; must have comment of "great doll!", Most Fav'd Doll macros, Most interesting macro photos of dolls ...
Posted 76 months ago.
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Thanks Stewart - not only for the praise but the explaination. Extremely helpful. And heck now we even know who to blame ;^>
One clarification from you or SilentObserver that would be really helpful...
"no" penalty if <= X groups.
Speculation from elsewhere has X = 5 and 25. You may be suggesting 10.
Anyway a solid rule for the road here would be greatly appreciated.
And one follow up question...
It has been speculated that some groups, like this one, have special demerits. I suspect as you say it's just the number. But clearly stating this would reduce the speculation noise here and elsewhere.
As for the outcome in the group ecosystem...
There will be fewer groups each with larger pools and "getting noticed" will again become a dilemma. Several groups could indeed be made automagic... e.g. viewsXXX could simply be a system assigned tag as could quite a few others. This would create useful and reliable search terms for finding interesting stuff or getting noticed and groups could become as suggested more subject / contest oriented.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Because X can be changed at any moment I would say that at the moment 5<X<15
*Some* groups have special penalties.
That happens when group pool contains too many photos that are potentially not SFW.
And, pbutler1, about your ideas of "RANK"ing. First release if interestingness implemented this approach. In result we found that top positions of all days were full of photos of several most popular photographers. And everybody agreed that it was boring.
So, once again, for us interestingness is not a popularity contest but tool to show interesting works of as many Flickr uses as possible. That’s why we constantly working on improvements of the algorithm.
It’s impossible to find the best photo on Flickr, but you can try to find most popular one.
I’m not sure that popularity equals quality.
Posted 76 months ago.
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That's a nice little package, but no I am not buying it.
Now I have read all that, it could be said that the systems in place can't cope.
That this group highlighted the top posters and was used to redesign the so called improvements.
You made these changes and no matter what anyone else says they will just be ignored,it's not good business.
Posted 76 months ago.
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That this group highlighted the top posters and was used to redesign the so called improvements.
Not true, we don't need this group to have list of top posters. We always had it, it's a part of our algorithm :)
You made these changes and no matter what anyone else says they will just be ignored
We created interestingness not for authors but for people who are looking for interesting photos.
So we accept bug reports if some dull or inappropriate photos are shown on Explore pages. In fact, about 70% of the algorithm code is targeted to avoid "bad" photos. If that happened you can send a message to Flickr help and we will try to fix it.
OTOH, if your photo doesn't appear on Explore pages it doesn't mean it's bad or not interesting.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Thanks SilentObserver.
I understand the problem... did not realize (but I should have guessed) you ran into the popularity contest wall.
And I agree that finding interesting stuff is a very useful, and difficult, task. Hopefully you have a few social scientists in the lab with you.
I assume the SFW penalty is limited to groups that explicity allow this content rather than ones that get spammed? This does also imply that the viewXXX groups are potentially bad places since only a few are regulated with "enough" admin effort.
I think there is a correlation between popularity and quality but agree it's far from 1:1 and there will never be an uncontestable "best". And by analogy it's also probably not possible to have one universal interestingness metric that is not heavily dependent on popular vote or game free. So it sounds like change faster than the "game" time constant combined w/donkeys works.
The other approach is combinational... For example Interestingness + system assigned and maintained tags for ranges of #views/#favs/etc. would allow users to personalize the process of finding great stuff using a now richer search. And the tag (preprocessed query) mechanism is already there.
Cheers, Paul
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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pbutler1 edited this topic 76 months ago.
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chrissie2003: That's a nice little package, but no I am not buying it.
I'm not sure what there is to "buy" or not. What I'm saying is literally true and objectively verifiable :)
Take this photo you were just complaining about:
Remove it from 50 or so groups (I haven't counted, so it's hard to say how many it is in) and see if its in the top 10 for that day.
Basically, you get a choice about whether you want your photos in lots of groups or in the calendar for a given day.
Posted 76 months ago.
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@ Stewart:
Maybe a nice thing the interestingness genie could do (as it seems to almost do with clusters) would be to suggest the 5 or 6 most relevant groups to add a photo to after you tag it.
I have struggled with finding a good home for many of my shots because the group search function doesn't lend itself to helping you place a shot well.
Kiteboarding? Is that a sports shot, beach shot, action shot, water shot, silhouette shot, etc.?
Maybe my suggestion genie could suggest quality tags as well? For instance: it might suggest tagging all my kiteboarding shots with "extreme sports"
There are some specific/specialty groups that I know like Tonkinese Cats which are great for adding my Tungsten shots to, but only have 23 members.
There are a lot of cat groups, some of them specialize, and many overlap.
Are you saying that I'm being "penalized" for posting to several groups even if they don't overlap?
There's also the issue of people leaving comments on a photo requesting you to add it to their shiny new group. Does this new system create a disincentive to do that?
Also, would it benefit heavily crossposted shots to pull them out of overlapping groups, or is the damage done?
Posted 76 months ago.
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A question - is it possible, any more to look at the most interesting photographs on a given day? And as they are ranked?
Just wondered because it seemed to me that people referred to this but I wasn't able to access it. Maybe I am wrong.
Posted 76 months ago.
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sure lynn, just click on explore in the upper right hand set of links (yours * upload * organize * your contacts' * explore)
or here explore
then look for select a month on the middle/lower right hand side and/or the link for calendar view of this month.
or here calendar view of this month
when you see the calendar, click on a day and a pop-up window with the top six shots will open. there are links at the top and bottom of that new window. they'll take you to the daily interestingness list for that day.
here is march 3rd's page
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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bikeracer edited this topic 76 months ago.
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is flickr needing a massage? you answered someone who isn't there, and you ignored me. =[ did i offend?
Posted 76 months ago.
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bikeracer: we're not trying to create a disincentive for anything other than having your photo in a huge number of groups. Looking at a couple of your photos (which are excellent btw!) I don't think you need to make any trade-offs.
In the future, if you do catch yourself adding the same photo to the 15th or 20th or 25th group, it is probably time to ask if they are all relevant :)
Posted 76 months ago.
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Nope - just posted in the wrong thread :)
Posted 76 months ago.
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Bikeracer's suggestion is a good one, I was think of a similar suggestion myself. Cafe Press has started using tags and now makes recommendations of other tags when you enter one. It's quite a clever system and could work really well for groups.
Of course, better group search results and sorting would also help as you could more easily decide which of the 30 or 40 doll macro groups to join.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Ok, that sounds fair (and thanks, btw! =]) Sorry about the I whining. =]
What do you think about the suggestions? It's ok if you think they're dumb.
Also, what about potentially overtagging a photo? Does that also have a negative effect on interestingness? I try to be thoughtful and try to "cover all the bases" on certain shots, but is there a point where more is simply too much?
I'm not talking about adding "boobs" or "butt" to shots to drive views.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Bikeracer - thank you - it is so obvious and I didn't think to click on a given day in the calendar - thank you again!
Posted 76 months ago.
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You're welcome, Lynn. Use your new powers wisely... those pages are like narcotics, or is it barbituates?
Posted 76 months ago.
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@Stewart - you suggest to Chrissie to remove the photo from lots of groups and the interestingness will recover. This has not been my experience. This photo (below) was a member of around 20-30 groups. This is the one that dropped dramatically at one stage that appeared to coincide with adding it to this group. I removed it from all the "views xxx" groups etc yesterday but it is still languishing at #54 in my personal interestingness list.
Now, believe it or not I don't disagree with some of the changes you made - the proliferation of viewsXXX groups were fun for a little while but annoying after a bit, especially when there were so many of them and the turnover was so high. So, this isn't a complaint, but when it's my own personal interestingness list (nothing to do with explore) I expect to see the photo with 800+ views and 35+ faves at the top, when that is clearly far and away the photo that has had the most "interest" on Flickr.. (as I said, the rest of my stream is really not that exciting..) Is this a bug with this particular photo?
Thanks for the clarifications - it makes things clearer, at least.
Posted 76 months ago.
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@Keith - I'm not sure about this, but I don't think personal interestingness and daily interestingness are exactly the same.
Also, all photos' interestingness seems to decay. Therefore, you might have a photo with tons of favs and views sit lower on your personal list than one with fewer, but more recent, views and favs.
My photo with the highest daily explore interestingness is #3 for the day it was uploaded but only #38 on my personal interestingness list. My #1 on my personal list only charts at #15 for the day it was uploaded.
Hope that helps (or is even vaguely accurate)
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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bikeracer edited this topic 76 months ago.
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@bikeracer: that's definitely true, what you say, but in this case I posted four photos on wednesday this week of roughly the same subject matter with the same tags.
Now, all of these have been popular, for whatever reason (they use HDR which is a "hip" technique at the moment). Three of them are #1, #2 and #4 in my own interestingness. The #1 is in loads of "junk" groups and has roughly 400 views and 15 faves.
The one above is in far fewer and more targetted groups, has 800+ views and 35 faves yet is #54 in my interestingness, and only went down from #1 when I added it to this group (or coincidentally at the same time, whatever..)
Seems like something wrong to me - especially since most of the 53 photos above it are also spread across a few "junk" groups as well.
Posted 76 months ago.
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@Steward - You say: "Remove it from 50 or so groups (I haven't counted, so it's hard to say how many it is in) and see if its in the top 10 for that day."
I don't think that it works. I have seen many times when my photos go down when I put it new groups, but never seen it going up when I removed it from some groups. But I can test it. My photo was about #300 when I added it to few new group(it was then about 25fav and 230 views (about 25 group), photo before it has 2 fav and 70 views). And after that it went out of #500.
Now I have removed it little more than 10 groups (there is still about 25 group). I don't think that it is going up again. But we will see...
Photo:
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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Marko_K edited this topic 76 months ago.
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As I have already said the groups tool doesn't work as it should and this is one reason you are pushing to have people post to less groups.
I post to a lot of groups most of which I was invited to join.
The photo of the bees is interesting, not a very good photo but interesting.
I find it totally amazing how so many people have whined about the so called tweak and when they can finally have a say where are they ?
Posted 76 months ago.
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Stewart, what is the point of belonging to many groups if one cannot share with all the pertinent ones without being penalized? I have never created a gallion tags nor posted to multiple groups in order to get into Interestingness, as others had purportedly been doing to "game the system." I have been invited join many groups, and I have (and I have also declined to join many). I post to groups to share. I never flood groups. My photos are related and pertinent to many groups, especially macro and nature and flowers. Why on earth must I or others who post to relevant groups be punished for this? I am baffled by the illogic.
I will continue to post to the groups I think my photos belong in and are welcomed into, and if that means I'll never get in the top 500 again, then so be it.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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mimbrava edited this topic 76 months ago.
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@Stewart,
I like the changes and fully agree with the ideas behind it.
@mimbrava,
* Just in how many groups can you actively participate. Just adding photos to a group is not what I would call active participation. At least it would involve looking at what others have added, but of course it can mean much more: commenting, discussing.
* What is the point of having so many different macro flower groups that everybody just posts their photos to? These are redundant groups, having mostly the same photos.
* Nobody is punished, unless you feel that your photos are in explore for your glory. As Stewart has pointed out, explore is there for those looking to photos, not for those posting photos.
* You will have your exposure by posting to many groups, having many contacts etc. People can find your photos that way.
Your photos get plenty of attention. Of course it can always be more. And maybe you want that. But photos themselves aren't getting more interesting because of the attention they get. Your photos "deserve" attention, but so do photos of many people who don't go through the trouble of posting them to so many groups.
Posted 76 months ago.
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I'm not seeking attention, I'm seeking to share. That my photos have appeared in Interestingness has been a most pleasant surprise. If continuing to share by posting to many pertinent groups, and participating in many of them through discussions or by administration, means I won't get in the top 500 anymore, then, as I say, so be it. I'm not in this for the glory, not by a longshot. I'm in Flickr to share and to be inspired.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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mimbrava edited this topic 76 months ago.
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After that change Interestingness is not very interesting any more - not for me. Pity, but it is not very big thing. After all Interestingness is only one way to get audience - groups are another way. Now policy is that you can use only one way - not both. We must chose and my one is the groups.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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Marko_K edited this topic 76 months ago.
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I am glad that they keep trying to improve the way interestingness is assigned to a photo. I have no complaints about the change.
I hope they keep changing it and trying to improve it. I could stand to see fewer kitties, titties etc there. But I do think it is a bit improved since they changed it.
It helps me to find new photo streams that I hadn't seen before, and I think that is really the purpose. So keep up the good work!
Posted 76 months ago.
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The group ecosystem was built under the assumption that "groups are free" and as Mim, BikeRacer, and others have stated it's possible to be diligent with tags and groups and still end up with a large number in the existing ecosystem.
As stated the changes will over time change the group ecosystem and perhaps a smaller number of more vibrant groups will emerge. And while I can agree that the doll macros diversity mentioned is too much, the system limitation requiring this to be 5-ish seems equally extreme. Can I assume this is a stop gap while the system architecture is revamped?
Since, IMHO, it's the community that makes Flickr different and itself more interesting than snapshot sharing and printing sites... system limitations that prevent or constrain the evolution of the community are an Achilles tendon of sorts.
You mentioned the arms race - this is a great example of a self evolving system or in this case a human community. It's the evolution that generates interestingness and collects additional people to the community. Find ways to make richer (and scalable) mechanisms for evolution and get continually surprised by the direction the community takes. If the limitations become permanent and the community cannot grow everyone loses.
Not to beat a dead horse or donkey for that matter, but the proliferation of groups and the arms race occurred because the community needed methods beyond contacts to get seen and share work.
The distinction between authors and lookers is lost on me since I, and I believe others, are both. I look to find great and interesting stuff and as a form of inspiration. Only the latter bit distinguishes authors from everyone else and this is a minor point. The need to be seen and heard is simply human instinct and any community of people will exhibit this and the the extent that the system provides outlets for it, the community will grow.
By now I have given away the fact that I find Flickr interesting since it is an evolving community and I would like to see this continue. And I believe Flickr is serious about wanting this as well. Heck I've even started reading social science dissertations on on line communities as a result of my experience here. And this too is interesting ;^>
At the end of the day the key test is will the new formulation and it's continuing evolution indeed continue to surface interesting stuff more successfully than the former iterations? It may take some time to tell. I believe Flickr are committed to keep improving the system. And if the results are bad or the community suffers, I am convinced they will change it.
My personal opinion is that a single formula is doomed and some lightweight augmentation to allow other ways of finding cool stuff would be helpful.
However; it's the lack of information that breeds speculation, frustration, perhaps even anger. I really applaud Stewart and SilentObserver for providing some information on the changes. And I would be extremely happy if the dialog continues so the information, even if we don't like it, is on the table in advance of the meal.
Posted 76 months ago.
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At the end of the day the key test is will the new formulation and it's continuing evolution indeed continue to surface interesting stuff more successfully than the former iterations? It may take some time to tell.
Exactly.
BTW, we have 2 double CPU servers with 16GB of RAM each crunching numbers every hour to recalculate interestingness. And we want to use this power to make Flickr better not worse :)
At moment we realize that we can do it better way, we will change the algorithm again.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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SilentObserver edited this topic 76 months ago.
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the proliferation of groups and the arms race occurred because the community needed methods beyond contacts to get seen and share work.
Actually, I think that the proliferation of groups occurred because the group search was (and is - sorry) so poor. If one could easily find a good group relevant to one's needs, one would have no need to create a duplicate of what already exists.
Posted 76 months ago.
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yolise
We are seriously working on search improvements in general and group search in particular. This is one of our highest priority tasks at the moment.
Posted 76 months ago.
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@SilentObserver - thanks.
And I suggest that yourself or Stewart or... open a dialog to discuss how well or not well this is going, share experiental results, and most importantly give the community the information they need to get the most out of the experience and perhaps even help you use the CPUs ;^>
@all: On the more selfish side of this...
I reduced all my images to 20 or less groups yesterday. Today the image mentioned on Jan 10th "jumped" about 12 pages higher (21 vs. 33 or so). I have not seen similar results with more recent work... but I can at least confirm one instance of improvement.
It was also hard to decide which groups to drop out of. In the end I chose a balance of more exclusive groups (Mireas, top 20xxx, top 500, etc.) and dropped out of free for alls like JPG, view xxx groups that encorage non SFW content, and WOW etc. groups where the pools were not very interesting. The hard ones are the viewxxx and favoritexxx groups since these are IMHO one of the few ways for getting new eyeballs (beyond contacts and the top 500 itself).
Posted 76 months ago.
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@pbutler
"And I suggest that yourself or Stewart or... open a dialog to discuss how well or not well this is going, share experiental results, and most importantly give the community the information they need to get the most out of the experience and perhaps even help you use the CPUs ;^>"
Paul, I would very much like to endorse this comment. It's very frustrating not to know what's going on and to be told: We've changed it but we won't tell you how we've changed it. And too bad if you don't like it; that's the way it's going to be.
If there was more open dialog and if we could be confident that our opinions are being listened to and factored in, I think there would be less frustration, even among those who might not be entirely thrilled by the results.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Whose opinions though? And would more than 1 in 100 of us really understand if they explained it to us? I didn't get beyond elementary algebra in school, so I suggest that my opinions at least, are fairly worthless when it comes to designing an algorithm.
I have, nevertheless, made my opinions clear in the Flickr forums and am confident they are listened to. For example, I don't believe there should be any rankings whatsoever, if the intention is to discourage competitiveness. (Whether they agree with me or not is quite immaterial.) I have come around to the opinion that competitiveness is what makes all these conversations so unpleasant. Discussing it with the wider community would take up an awful lot of time that I would prefer was spent on making Flickr work better (as opposed to making Interestingness work better - perhaps they should dump it all together, in fact).
In my experience, asking a community's opinion generally leads to more anger and hurt feelings because you can not please everyone and the people who aren't pleased are amongst the squeakiest wheels. And being all things to all people generally creates mediocre products.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Dumping the ranking is a very good idea. I played a bit further with the idea here, although I am not sure myself if my ideas are good.
I get the feeling here that the interestingness is being monopolized by a few people competing on who has the most photos there. The existence of this group alone shows that.
There is the interesting fact that the pool of this group has not even 6.000 photos. With 500 photos in explore every day and a number of posters here having over 100 photos in the pool, this group represents not more then a small minority of flickr users.
It is not even a very inviting group which wants to collect the photos that are high ranked in explore. One of my photos was at #1 for a couple of days, but nobody invited me to post it here (I was not aware of this group).
I do not think that flickr is there to confirm that one is a great photographer, especially not when this demands specific knowledge of the interestingness algoritm (rather then making "interesting" photos).
If someone wants to find out about ones qualities as a photographer, then try it out somewhere else: get a publisher interested in your work, go to a photography art school.
Finally: what are we talking about: a penalty on sending a photo to more then 15-20 groups. I'd rather have a hard limit to the number of groups a photo can be send to. Not only because it is annoying to view a photo and see the flickr servers having to work hard to push a long list of groups to my computer.
More importantly: groups would be more interesting when people would not use them as a dumping place for their photos. Groups will be more interesting when groups have to compete to be interesting, to attract photos of their choice and the participation of photographers.
Posted 76 months ago.
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taka_itaha - I don't consider this to be the group to go out and invite the photos that appear in the #1 to #10 spots as there are already 2 groups for those positions. I set this up to accommodate the other photos of note that weren't previously getting special attention (of which I currently have 3 out of a total of 7 photos that have appeared in Explore). I must admit that I smile and enjoy the speed in checking a photo in a handful of groups when doing a pool sweep.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Oops, I must have missed those two groups then. I thought this was "the" group for photos in explore. Sorry. I am only here because there was a pointer to this discussion in a flickr support forum.
Posted 76 months ago.
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The problem with the new program is all you need to do is drop out of the groups to become more interesting. I tried this with four pictures and they all shot up.
It's not a true test of interestingness if the amount of groups is such a strong factor in the equation.
The basic fact is that the number of groups is determining interestingness. And that is the reason that this doesn't work for me.
I want interestingness to be on quality, comments faves and views, NOT how many groups you are in.
People who are not in groups are getting comments from their contacts, this is a biased sample.
I can get 25 of my friends to comment and fave the ugliest picture, as long its in few groups it will show up as interesting.
I want people I don't know to comment on my pictures, it's more of a reality check for my ability.
Please reconsider this algorithm.
Posted 76 months ago.
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If this is still a post to 'praise' the new formula (???), then I like it - it forces you to only add to the groups who may benefit from your image or who is most relevant group to receive your image, and also means you are more likely to check out/truly participate in those small number of groups yourself, rather than those groups merely being a dumping receptacle so your image gets to explore...
to those people who post to up 70 groups - can you honestly say you post to those groups becasue the group is realy relevant (all 20 plus of them) to your picture? Or becasue it may incerase your views so you can get on explore?? can you even contribute meaningfully (view other images / make commenst / add to faves) to more than 5 of those groups in any given "mass-post"?? People used to be 'working' the system to get to explore, and now they are pissed they have to find a new way to work it.
Just be happy if you get to explore, learn from other images you find there and through the groups you belong to. I'm not sure when I signed up to flickr I saw it ever say it was a competition, or that you win a prize if you get onto the explore page??
And I'm not sure how anyone thinks an algorithm can calculate quality...what's a definition of quality when it comes to art? It'll be different for every person you talk to. Trust me, I did an art history degree and there isn't a formula known to man to measure "good art" or even "great art"...don't get me started on that old chestnut!
Explore is an interesting proxy to capture some of the 'interesting' pictures that come up on Flixr. It never claims to capture quality (whatever that is) - they may not be technically proficient, but 9 out of ten times they are pretty bloody interesting. Some are not to my taste - but you know what...that's life! We can't expect an algorithm to back up our idea of taste or our definition of quality...(unless we created our own personal algorithm...)
so, to sum up, the new algorithm is good cause it's shaken you all up!!!!!!!!!!
Posted 76 months ago.
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jodi_tripp: "I want interestingness to be on quality, comments faves and views, NOT how many groups you are in."
You're in luck - that's exactly why we made this change :)
Gradually, over the last few months, the calendar view started to become dominated by photos which were in dozens of groups. Now all kinds of photos have a chance (including those that in lots of groups, by the way).
As a reality check, I just went to the most recent daily page: flickr.com/explore/interesting/2006/03/05/
Below are the top 10, in the order I saw when visiting the page (the listings are dynamic so it may not appear the same when you read this):
         
Those are 10 photos chosen by a computer out of ~445,000 photos uploaded (Saturday is our slow day). And they are all awesome.
And, AND!, I spend about 50 hours a week on Flickr (it's my job, and a hobby :) and I have never seen any of those users beore (except maybe knautia - the screenname seems vaguely familiar).
Posted 76 months ago.
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Stewart: Good point there. I don't recognise any of the users myself.
Here's hoping you continue to get the algorithm right...
Posted 76 months ago.
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It's completely random. It just so happens that some different people uploaded on Saturday. If I want to see variety, I will cruise various groups. Random is not always interesting. All I see on the explore pages is those mini things. Talk about boring! I don't think the group of pictures above represents the most interesting photos on flickr. They certainly are not the top 10 in my opinion.
It's fine if you want to Random Sample photos, but don't call them interesting. Call it what it is a Random Sample of Photography.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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jodi_tripp edited this topic 76 months ago.
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But surely if you want to see the popular photographers you could just make them a contact?
And, of course, you can find them via your groups? Considering that the photographers that used to dominate interestingness are in a lot of groups (hence them not appearing in Explore at the moment), that should work out fine for you, yes?
Posted 76 months ago.
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I don't want to see popular photographers, I want to see good photography. There is a difference.
Has it been considered that some photographers just produce more work and that's why they get seen more?
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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jodi_tripp edited this topic 76 months ago.
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Well I'm not a top explore person and I'm a totally newbie to caring how my snapshots come out (though I'm becoming increasingly interested in learning thanks to all the great stuff and people here), but I can't help but be kinda excited when my stuff hits explore. Still I haven't been interested in posting to a zillion groups that I don't participate on and think the new system sounds much more appropriate. Community matters a lot here I think and if we're posting to groups where our photos "belong" and we participate in as opposed to flooding groups it just makes everything better. Interesting is as interesting does.
On a side note your explanation of the changes Stewart was really well done and clear and that was very interesting, thanks.
Posted 76 months ago.
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this whole "too many groups" things still bugs me...
say i take a picture of my dog...cool...now it's time to send to groups...
1)it gets to go into a few dog groups
2)my dog is a bichon so it goes in that group
3)i used a Nikon cameras..so it goes into a few nikon groups
4)i'm all about DoF and bokeh so it goes in those ones as well
5) what if it makes me happy? it goes into a group about pics that make you happy
so, i just racked up maybe 10 groups...now my picture is not interesting?
people are making new groups everyday...and i know there are a lot of repetition in groups too..maybe someone is tired of the flower group with 3,000 members...so they make their own...are we not supposed to join it because we want to be interesting?
that's just my opinion and honestly i'm more interested in comments and favs and making new contacts from there...i usually find interesting pics by surfing favorites, roaming groups, and what not...but there was my rant for the day haha
Posted 76 months ago.
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The popular photographers are good photographers, which is why they became so popular in the first place. Unfortunately, what happened is that they began to dominate Explore and Flickr wanted to spread the love.
Like I've said though, people will learn to 'play' interestingness in its new form and I'm pretty sure you'll see those photographers back in Explore again. Just in time for Flickr to change it again.
Which I believe is a Good Thing. :-)
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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Yolise edited this topic 76 months ago.
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iamblueone: you are confusing "interesting" with "captured by Interestingness."
Small-i interesting is a highly subjective term, whereas Interestingness is a Flickr algorithm designed to capture a cross-section of images based on what's attracting traffic on the site (since it's automated and can only evaluate based on the quantitative data available).
Maybe Interestingness is a poor choice of name, but I suspect Flickr would be hard pressed to choose a term that would prevent this kind of semantic hair-splitting.
If your last paragraph is sincere, then the changes to the Interestingness algorithm make no difference to you.
Posted 76 months ago.
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caitlyn...sorry i meant "doesn't make interestingness"
everyones pictures are interesting to someone in one way or another
don't get me wrong..i love it when my pics make interestingness but i just wouldn't want the # of groups a photo is in count against it making the list
Posted 76 months ago.
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I loaded a pic this morning at 8:18 MST it is 3:24 MST now it is in 2 groups and has been Viewed 183 times,19 people call this photo a favorite and 38 comments. It wont get to #1 but will it make it at all?
Now I know that it hasnt been faved much but. The pic that is #1 right now has had most of its favs today.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Picture This1, what is your actual question? Because Interestingness pretty clearly already has some weighting factors in it as well; it's not a simple matter of faves, views, comments, and groups.
Also, I'm struck by this notion that "19 faves" == "hasn't been faved much." You're clearly describing a picture that's widely seen, so maybe Interestingness *should* be trying to capture work from others.
Posted 76 months ago.
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iamblueone: "so, i just racked up maybe 10 groups...now my picture is not interesting?"
10 groups won't make a difference - 60 will :)
mayize - thanks! We're trying!
Posted 76 months ago.
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haha 60 groups is definately not me then!
Posted 76 months ago.
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Hi,
I have scanned the above and have a couple of questions (sorry if they have been previously mentioned but I didn't see it).
First question is I have noticed that the more comments a photo gets it seems to improve in interestingness all else being equal. There are many groups on Flickr which can effectively generate automatic comments for your photo e.g. Score Me, Mirea's Realm, lets play tag, I Want 5, 100 points etc. etc. So people who post their photos to many such groups will have there interestingness improved. Is this correct? Or do automatic comments from such groups get excluded in calculating interestingness?
Secondly, does the number of tags your photo has have a negative influence on your photos interestingness? I use tags in both English and Chinese so may end up with more tags than normal.
Also how do I know which is the mest groups to post to. There are several on China but it is hard to tell which on is viewed the most. Just because a group has a lot of photos or members doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people visit it to look at the photos. A smaller group with good quality photos may be visited more regularly. But how does tell.
Appreciate your comments. Thanks - Chinapix
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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Life in AsiaNZ edited this topic 76 months ago.
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HI Chinapix, with regard to the best groups to submit to, I don't think there's any way of knowing. I think your assumption that a smaller group might be visited more often is quite possibly corrrect, but I think only experience with the group will tell you for sure.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Hi all:
I'm (I think) another one affected by the changes in Flickr algorithm. Note that I'm not criticising, just telling my experience and feelings.
Since a particular date in February, my photos didn't reach Explore. It's not that I need it, but I found it exciting my photos being seen when people hit the explore page. Since then, I have had photos that reached even #8 in my own overal "interestingness" list. I was puzzled not to see it in the interestingness, but still I thought they were not interesting enough. The question is that I had to look at these groups checking if anything went wrong with my images (for example, got lost in the database or something), and I found now that adding to many groups penalizes the image. OK, nice to know. I would have liked to be informed, for instance.
Note that seeing my photos reaching my own most interesting and not seeing them in the pool (even when others less interesting in my own pool where there) caused me less interest. I put my photos there so that people (all people in Flickr) can see them, not just my contacts. It is, may be, part of proudness or ego, but also a part of having the possibility to have feedback from other people that see and like or not your pictures. I have to say that this gap between my own "interesting" and explore made me unconfortable.
Now for my perceptions of the system. As a computer guy, I work with algorithms all the day. I agree completely with Dean Forbes. Interestingness nis NOT a matter of groups or of how many groups you put your photo in. (Come on, think it twice, a photo is more or less interesting *depending* on the number of groups it is in?).
I think interestingness is a matter of photo quality. Say, number of comments, favorites, views... but... number of groups where the photo is included?? Not getting it.
OK, let me explain myself a little bit. Interestingness is not a concept a computer can know. It's about perception of people. In Flickr, people have the following alternatives:
1. When seeing the photo in the thumbnail of a contact or group, if you don't like it, you don't click it.
2. If you like it and click it, you still may not find it very interesting or exciting, so you don't comment or add favorite.
3. If you really like it and is pleasant, etc. you can fave it, comment it or both.
These actions are informations to Flickr, and you can get a lot of statistics here (for example, correlations between the time you put a photo and the time people notice it, in relation to your number of contacts, etc. etc.) but what does it have to do with the *number of groups you have added the photo to*? Even more, why *should I* restrict the number of groups where I post my photos?? There are *a lot* of groups. I find some of them worth being in *some* of the groups...
OK, you say this way it will be not so many groups with many photos... why? Or why this is wrong? Note also, that "high traffic" groups are also "forgetting" photos easily and faster, as many people post on them. (Still no see a problem in the number of photos in a pool).
So, seen this way, posting in a high traffic group is more or less the same than posting in a little traffic group. The first one will forget fast your photos. The latter one will keep your photo longer in the frontline, but less people will see them.
OK, just my thoughts. Hope anybody find them interesting.
One last thought (sorry) I also have to agree with Dean that the quality (remember, just my perception) of the Explore page is going down. I remember me in the past clicking the "explore" button once and again, and finding really interesting photos. Now I end it soon, not liking very much what I see. OK, perhaps a matter of taste...
Thanks for your time.
diego.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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dsevilla edited this topic 76 months ago.
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FYI, as I suspected, one of the photographers who was always on Explore is now back in today, sans the rather large number of groups that he/she normally submits to (80+). I won't say who, of course.
So, business as usual. :-)
Posted 76 months ago.
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Is that person getting comparable traffic on the new, fewer-groups pictures? I'd go look myself, but you won't say who, of course. :)
Posted 76 months ago.
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O.K. so I read really all of the above, and this is what I think about it.
You just shifted the point from groups to contacts. It is the other possibility to get viewed, commented and faved. Here is what you can do, if I were trying to fool the system.
1. Start making contacts. Just add everybody you find to your contact list, especially those that make pictures that are O.K. but not great. Some of them will add you as a contact, thus bringing your pictures up on their first page.
2. Comment on other picture, without looking much on them to get more comments done. Some of them will do in return, and some might even add you as a contact (see 1).
3. Make every picture that is not exactly bad a favorite. This makes them happy and they will reward you, with looking at some of your pictures. Maybe even add you as a contact (see 1), comment on your pics or add some as a fave as well.
Do you really think this is better? I don't. The truth is that if you are new to flickr, you have no chance to show your great pictures to anyone anymore. So far there was the way to put it to many pools (to be honest the search function for groups is crap). If you do this now, your most beloved pictures are not even shown top in your personal top list, even if they outnumber the others in this list by the factor 10.
So being a newbie to flickr means you have no chance to get your pictures to interestingness. You will not even make contacts (except for the way discribed above) because you must not post in groups. It doesn't matter to me anyway if they are in Explore or not (or at least so I say) but it's nothing to be called MOST interesting. I can't give you a solution to the problem, because there are lots of pictures on flickr that are simply not viewed because people don't make contacts and don't post to groups, but what I am sure about is that this solution isn't better than the old one was. Those trying to fool the system will find a way, but those who are showing only few of their pictures to a lot of groups because they are proud of them are punished.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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Reini68 edited this topic 76 months ago.
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Just posting your photos to lots of groups does not guarantee they will be viewed by lots of people. I think the change is good because posting to lots of groups takes time. People then don't go and look at those pools to see what else is there unless they have a real interest is a particular one. And if there's lots of irrelevant photos in the pool, then who's going to waste time wading through them to see what interests them. Its easier to just post to the 5 - 10 of the most relevant pools and tag your photo clearly and accurately. Regarding having lots of contacts - if you have hundreds of contacts are you going to wade through all the photos posted each day? Probably not.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Posting your pictures to more groups does increase the likelyhood that people will see it. When I was new to flickr it took about 3 months to get 22 views. Now if I submit it to groups like tag or look at me it can get viewed 22 times in an hour. I had no contacts for the first 3 months. It wasn't until I joined groups that I started seeing and recognizing the works of others. The more groups I became active in the more contacts I added the more fun flickr became. As an added bonus, When some of my better pictures hit explore. It is a reward for being social in this community. I think there is nothing wrong with that.
getting rewarderd for participating in the community is icing on the cake.
My everyday rewards are the friends and the things I learned from this community.
My photogrphy gets better and better everyday, because I participate fully in the experience.
I think that the new Explore discourages the behaivors that make flickr fun.
It tells us that groups are a stuffing ground for photos. For some groups that might be true, but there are a lot of groups out there that get a lot of action.
Stop by some of these: 1on1, iwant5, How great is my photo, let's play tag, 1-2-3 and Art for your living room. These are high quality groups where you can have fun and learn a lot too.
My bottom line is this: I think that a system that rewards community action, is a better system then rewards a few random people that could care less about being seen orabout participating in this wonderful flickr community!!!!!!!!!!
Posted 76 months ago.
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The new algorithm doesn't penalise people for posting in groups, jodi - just overposting. Looking at a few images in your stream, even going back a ways or looking at your favourite set, tells me that you are not guilty of this in any way. I can't see that this change would affect you at all - in fact, it should be to your benefit.
I think what Flickr is trying to prevent is people posting one photo to 40, 50, 100+ groups (and lots of people who used to dominate Explore did this). Doing so puts a strain on the servers and squeezes out people who choose not to spam the groups.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Since a particular date in February, my photos didn't reach Explore. ... Note that seeing my photos reaching my own most interesting and not seeing them in the pool (even when others less interesting in my own pool where there) caused me less interest. ... I have to say that this gap between my own "interesting" and explore made me unconfortable.
But there will always be the same number of photos in Explore. If you have fewer photos in Explore, that means someone else will have more, and that person will gain interest. If you now have less of a connection between your own interestingness and whether your photos make it to Explore, then that just means that there is a greater such connection for someone else. In other words, the algorithm may be worse for you, but it can't be worse for Flickr users overall.
Posted 76 months ago.
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If you have fewer photos in Explore, that means someone else will have more
Or, if you have fewer photos in Explore, more people will have the opportunity to have photos there. If you see what I mean... And I think this is the point. More Explore places to go around if a few people don't dominate the proceedings.
Posted 76 months ago.
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John Cohen, yolise: thanks for your thoughtful reply. Yes, I see your point, and share it, really. I don't want to be too picky in this subject, and I understand and I'm happy with a lot of good photos being in explore, as everybody have nice time looking at other's great photos. I'm not wanting to be all the time in Explore, of course, and of course I don't want to keep others from entering just because mine entered... My only complain here was *how* you did it. First, penalize by the number of groups. I don't see it. I understand that this may be a problem if you look at Flickr as a whole, but what I think is that a better way of dealing with interestingness should be devised that doesn't take that into account, because I think this has nothing to do with interestingness.
Also, the second thing I don't like is that you did so without any call of warning or indication, such as "please, don't overuse groups". Frankly, I didn't know (or thinked of) adding to a bunch of groups was kind of "overuse". You know, you're invited, and you can submit photos to the groups you consider adequate. Now, even you can do that, but you have in mind that will be penalized for adding a photo into a pool that talks about what your photo shows... It's strange to me to understand.
Thanks,
diego.
(PS. I'm sorry if this is getting boring. I know that you (whoever it is) administer this and have to take decissions. It's simply that some times when I don't see things I cannot stop showing my point).
Posted 76 months ago.
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spidrwegian_no_more [deleted] says:
I understand some of the arguments for the new explore algorithm but I seriously believe that the choice to discourage posting to lots of groups was made because that practice was having an adverse effect on indexing and was causing server lag. Nothing to do with hitting the top spots in explore at all.
The argument that explore now encourages more new talent is flawed. If less of the "good" photographers are in the list then fewer people will view it, not more, because it will be a lot less interesting.
Okay so some photographers were always in there, but that also made it fun because you began to recognise techniques, themes, obsessions even life stories.
Now you are penalised for reaching the top 500 too often. As a hobby photographer I'd recently been trying to produce one good image per day, in the hope that it would get into explore. If that's going to be unlikely I'll probably go back to playing about with the latest fad or group, instead of trying to be a better photographer.
But then maybe this is just a good site to store your snapshots after all.
Posted 76 months ago.
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flikerwegian - those "good" photographers are cottoning on and are appearing again in Explore. Just today, I saw 3 of Explore's previously most prominent photographers back in Explore. When I went to their streams, I saw the same number of views, comments and favs as they used to get, but they had only posted to 5 or 6 groups, as opposed to the 50-100 that they used to.
As an example (not that I'm one of the good photographers - this is just an example from experience), I've had about 20 photos in Explore since I joined about 6 months ago. Since the change, I still have the occasional photo in Explore - the rate has not changed for me at all. The reason it has not changed for me is that I never posted in more than 6 or 7 groups and still do not.
The difference now is that I am seeing different photos and different sorts of photos. Some are pretty, some are just 'interesting'. It's very cool, in my opinion.
Anyway, I think I'm bored with the conversation now (you'll be pleased to know). :-)
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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Yolise edited this topic 76 months ago.
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flickrwegian: like I said in my
my original post in this thread, we genuinely believe that this is better for the people posting the photos, the individual groups, the groups ecosystem, the group admins, flickr, and the people viewing the photos. Since you think we're lying about this, I don't know what I can say to convince you, but even if we were lying, think about this:
While it may be possible for you to really engage with and make an individual contribution to 40-80 groups for each photo you post, most people can't and don't.
This is easily demonstrable by empirical observation. I'm not going to point out examples because I don't want anyone to feel bad, but it is plainly true.
We have a long list of tools in the pipeline to make group curation better and improve admins lives, but in the meantime we have had a lot of complaints from group admins and members about the escalating arms race.
Since most people who were posting to extreme numbers of groups were doing it because they wanted to get into Explore then making the intended result less likely is exactly the right solution. (It has the added benefit of "levelling the playing field" as well, so more people have a chance to featured there and viewers get to see a wider variety of stuff, rather than mostly the photos belong to people had the free time to post to extreme numbers of groups.)
Finally, there are dozens of variables that are accounted for in our calculations. Some push scores up, some down. Some affect only the base score (used in sorting by interesting on tag/search pages etc.) while others affect only the determination of individual days in the calendar view. The number of groups is not the only factor and we attempt to normalize over a wide variety of influencing factors (like large numbers of contacts) as well.
Posted 76 months ago.
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If I made be so bold as to summarise;
Everyone here wants the top 500 / Interestingness to be "better". The positive commenters believe the changes will help, the negatives beleive they will not or perhaps will have unintended consequences. Regardless the two camps and Flickr want the same thing.
The test for "better" is "is it more or less interesting" - not a universal yardstick since there are many perspectives, points of view, experience levels, etc. represented in the large and growing Flickr community.
Flickr (SilentObserver specifically) has and will continue to change the algorithm and push the donkeys to continually "improve" the discovery methods and keep interestingness interesting.
The changes will take some time to propagate through the system..., so it may be a while before the true impact(s) of the changes can be known / evaluated.
I think the community has been responsible and adult in their commentary here and, IMHO, are valuable sources of information for SilentObserver in his quest. We all care about interestingness and the community and I would again ask that Stewart and SilentObserver indulge us a bit with information, results, and solicit suggestions along the way.
This continuing dialog will keep the thread interesting...
Posted 76 months ago.
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spidrwegian_no_more [deleted] says:
Stewart, I'm sorry if I was suggesting that the team at flickr were lying, that wasn't my intention but sometimes I can't help come across more waspish than necessary. Possibly my nature.
For the record I have only ever submitted a few photographs to 20 or so groups, my normal limit has always been about ten or even less, so in fact the changes have affected me much less than I thought they were going to from first reports.
I do miss a number of favourite photographers in explore, and haven't been as happy with viewing the current top results but will persevere to see if new favourites emerge. As yolise pointed out some of the old guard have adjusted their posting strategy and are now featuring more prominently again.
I wonder if explore should be reformatted to be more like the seven days choice, nine random photographs for the calendar day with higher ranked photographs appearing more often. That way if the ranking is never shown, the whole thing may become less competitive, and therefore less addictive. Perhaps.
Posted 76 months ago.
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@Flickrwegian: I have observed that there are indeed (at least) two sections of the pool... newness seems to be toward the front and behavior similar to the "old" methods toward the back half with many of at least my favorite artists well represented there. This is only one persons observation and is more a hunch than a true scientific observation, but it makes sense to use some form of multi-tiered approach.
Posted 76 months ago.
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All this jockeying for position makes me think Interestingness shouldn't do any ranking at all within the top 500. Not in the randomizer, not in frequency, not anywhere. Just show the top 500 per day in order of upload, and make the 7-day a plain old random.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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caitlinburke edited this topic 76 months ago.
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In defense of what SilienObserver and Flickr have been able to accomplish so far... the results IMHO are much better than random, filtered for SFW (to an imperfect but better than random extent), "mostly" interesting, sensitive to new memes (thanks Yolise), etc. and remains overall much better than a random find or the N of the day in order that you can indeed find in "most recent uploads".
I would rather have it and see it continually improved, than not have it at all.
Posted 76 months ago.
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I don't mean random selection of Flickr uploads; I mean random selection from the top 500 (or in the 7-day case, of the top 500s over the previous 7 days). Ie, make the top 500 a threshold, not a ranked list.
(I only suggest that the day listing be ordered by upload because it's probably less "patterned" than, say, alpha by username, and it's easier to generate the same list every time rather than shuffle the top 500 across 50 pages - for the completist that goes through the whole day's 500.)
(To amplify: I think a random selection from the day's uploads would not be remotely useful.)
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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caitlinburke edited this topic 76 months ago.
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@catlinburke : ah I understand now - sorry I did not get it before and, IMHO, the idea has merit. Cheers.
Posted 76 months ago.
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I have my moments. :)
Posted 76 months ago.
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I am quite amazed for all this discusion. I am a newie 2006 flickrer so when I got a message from sergio luwezky telling me that the shot
was fourth (now is 237) I had no idea what he was speaking about. From then on I have had suprisingly some more photos within the first page, reaching up to 2nd, but I never thought this was a goal nor how to improve mi range up there.
I post to quite a few (scored) groups and sometimes to other ones when one particuilar shot is "invited" as I think some one want it in the pool.
Obviously scored groups duplicate the groups you belong to as, if succesfull, you include your shot also in the high score sub-group, so this can also set up a penalty on your shots.
I dont know what to do...is so great to be in the front pages, but if people is interested in having your shot in the group they are administrating...
I think that you take the risk of people duplicating shots (something I would never do).
By the way, what do IMHO and SFW stand for?
Also, have we any interestingness penalty for posing into this group or any of the ones which count on number of faves?
About the algorhytm itself I think that If you post your shot to 50 groups you have many chances for your pic to be seen, faved or commented, so it is quite fair to give a premium to the shots not so often posted.
In fact I find that any algorhytm is fine and better if the final user dont know how it works.
I know this text is tooooo long but if anyone could be so kind to clarify my questions.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Whatever they (he, she, it, whoever...) are doing seems good and fair to me. It must be a real bummer trying to please everyone.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Scoring groups are the greatest threat to interestingness.
I have posted a few photos to such a group, and all of those as a result appeared as "interesting". Even a photo that was considered to be awful. It got views and comments, and that is what counts.
Posted 76 months ago.
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IMHO = in my humble opinion. I don't know what SFW means either.
I too like the idea that the top 500 should be considered equal and simply listed by order of upload -- it makes it less of a competition that way.
And I like the idea that the algorithm should be a secret -- and that photos are taken for their own sake.
I hope criteria for interestingness include the number of "large" views, the number of "original size" views, and the number of return views (up to some reasonable limit) by the same viewer.
Finally, from within Explore, it would be nice to be able to filter out photos that are posted in more than "x" number of groups.
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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he who shall edited this topic 76 months ago.
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SFW = "Safe For Work"
Considering Flickr may have doubled in size since Interestingness was introduced, why not increase the threshold to 750 or 1000 and adopt Caitlin Burke's idea?
Or Perhaps, make interestingness a percentage of the day's uploads.
That is, if there are 400,000 uploads in a day, then the number of pictures qualifying for interestingness is 0.25% of this (perhaps average this out over a month?)
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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kayodeok edited this topic 76 months ago.
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"I hope criteria for interestingness include the number of "large" views, the number of "original size" views, and the number of return views (up to some reasonable limit) by the same viewer."
This would penalize people who choose not to make those sizes available for download and people with free accounts. And those images that just happen to be 500 px across or less.
And thanks for the votes of confidence! I have all kinds of ideas I'd love to see adopted. :D
Originally posted 76 months ago.
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caitlinburke edited this topic 76 months ago.
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Well then, perhaps a filter in Explore that let's me choose to view only photos that can be viewed large (as a personal preference) since I'd rather not be shown images I can't see well.
I was suggesting "large" views as one of many criteria -- not the only criterium. Sort of like whether people "choose" to post to 5 or 60 groups, have a free or "pro" account (i.e., sizes), etc.
Posted 76 months ago.
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Stewart
I have a question about explorer. How can a picture be at 19 one min and the next min not even be 500 they drop clear out.It is still getting more people looking at it. I could see a decline and then be out but just going from 18 to nothing is a bit bizar to me.
Posted 76 months ago.
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I am new to flickr, and was amazed to find one of my pictures in the interestingness top 500. It has had few visitors and is not in many groups. This must be a remarkable algorithmn indeed. Is it fully explained anywhere, or is that too technical for us to understand?
At present I am a poet who does photography. Flickr could turn me into a photographer who writes poems at this rate of support. Thanks
Posted 76 months ago.
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The algorithm itself is a company secret, however, it is sort of explained in this thread if you've read it. It's also described briefly here: www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/
Posted 76 months ago.
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Thanks chaps, I am glad to know the meaning od SFW and IMHO, allready guess that DPF stand for depth of field.
Ill buy the algorythm the way it is and that is a part of the game. Otherwise is like going to a tennis court and trying to change the rules on the fly.
And I think keeping it secret is best policy.
And now, that I know what scout is...the pic I have shown before was #6 on january 27th (acording to some comments posted by Sergio too) and it is now out of 500, what should I do with it? nothing? post to i500 goup? post to the top 10 group?
Posted 76 months ago.
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I'd suggest nothing, personally. Unless you feel the need to prove to someone that your photo was in Explore, there's no real reason to post in those groups, in my opinion.
Posted 76 months ago.
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And even more confusing...
This one, rated for its date as #77 was seen by myself #2!
What shall I do with it?
Please let me know, as I think that interestingness and these two groups (I have never had on in #i AFAIN) are great to find nice pics. I dont bother cos mine arent there, but if my #2 isnt there maybe I am missing other people top pics I would like to see for sure.
Ah, and AFAIN,stands for as far as I know, I wanted to feel the sense of word creation :D
Posted 76 months ago.
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Not everyone posts to those groups, so there are loads that appear in Interestingness that you won't see unless you live in Explore. I've had 30 or so images in Explore, a few of which have appeared in the top 10, but I don't post to Top this or that groups, so you'd never see mine, for example. I doubt that either one of us is bothered by this fact.
Posted 76 months ago.
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I read the other thresd to and it doesnt answer anything either. It is like you want us to think that there is a super computer that can see the pictures and deside. I will say at the risk of never getting another picture in the top 500 that there is no such computer. You have to use somethinng like a key work or something. I dont see why it would be top secreat to tell us how a pic can got from #19 to clear off in one swoop and then show back up just as fast.
Posted 75 months ago.
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It is top-secret in order to avoid gaming the system.
Computers can be tricked you know...
I had a picture that was on Page 1 of Interestingness last week but has disappeared off interestingness today. I wouldn't worry about it and this isn't the first time it has happened to me either (they always come back when you aren't looking).
Posted 75 months ago.
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@stewart: Any plans to do something about duplicate groups? Forcibly merging them, say, after putting the matter to a vote to the non-administrators?
I refer specifically to
* the profusion of scuba diving, underwater photos, etc. groups
* the dozen or more sunrise/sunset groups
* the Tokyo and Flickr Tokyo groups created within a day or two of each other
Posted 75 months ago.
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Nemo's great uncle:
Don't forget to mention the Flower and Macro groups...
Originally posted 75 months ago.
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kayodeok edited this topic 75 months ago.
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Why on earth "forcibly" merge groups? It's possible for groups with the same subject to have vastly different vibes, for one thing. And besides that, why on earth would Flickr want to take on a needless task that would just step on toes?
Flickr just needs to make the groups system easier to search and navigate (and possibly strongly urge a search as the first step to creating a new group).
Posted 75 months ago.
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picturethis1, there certainly is such a computer and it runs an algorithm that looks at the tags, groups, views, comments and favs, among other things and determines if a photo is eligible for the Explore pages using mathematical jiggery pokery. With (hundreds of?) millions of photos on Flickr, it is, in fact, the only way it could possibly work.
Unless your comment was tongue-in-cheek, I would say that one reason Flickr don't explain the algorithm is self-explanatory. Very few people would understand what they are talking about. Reason number 2 is as kayodeok mentions and number 3 is that it's a trade secret and clearly quite a powerful bit of mathematics.
If you still don't believe that computers can do amazing things, have a look at Retrievr. There's no gremlin in there comparing photos - it's just a very clever computer program. :-)
I should point out that the Interestingness algorithm does not work like Retrievr as far as I'm aware. And if you were joking, my apologies and 'ha ha'.
Posted 75 months ago.
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