UKC

I have a feeling this may have been discussed before, but I did a quick search and nothing jumped out immediately about it. But apologies if I missed it.

I love looking at the Top 10 photos every couple of weeks, problem is they don't change very often. Presumably because they are very good photos and people tend to do what I do; pop in, vote on a few (usually already in the top 10, unless I have time to rifle through the 'latest' photos) and pop back out again.

I think it would be a cool idea if UKC could have a Top 10 for each category; sport, bouldering, landscape etc. This would not only make it easier for people to see more of the better photos on UKC but also give them more of a chance to be voted into the overall Top 10.

This would also be good for people with specific interests. I appreciate all the landscapes and mountains that frequent the current Top 10, but would love to see some more sport or bouldering in it. I think this would happen if these photos became more available for people who have less time to rifle through the respective photo folders.

I think this would also encourage photographers to submit more photos of these disciplines. At the moment so many photos get little recognition because they are outshone by photographers that have a bit more time to get 'good photos'. Think a shot of mountain vs a dynamic movement shot. Obviously (debatably?) a 'good' dynamic photo is going to be harder to take than one of a mountain.

Besides being more work for UKC, is there really a strong argument against this?

In reply to The Green Giant:

There are separate top tens for landscape and climbing shots. It is much easier to get good landscape photos that good climbing action shots (for obvious reasons), so if you look at "latest Photos" by date, there are usually plenty of good landscape shots and loads of awful climbing bum shots, and if you look at them by "votes" the greater number of good landscape shots tend to swamp the good climbing shots with the result that the good landscape shots get even more votes. Another problem is that climbing action shots do not appear on UKHW so votes are skewed away from climbng shots tending to push them out of sight off the front "votes" page on UKC so that they get even fewer votes.

The obvious solution would be to completely separate landscape and climbing shots in "latest" and "votes". I think two categories would probably be enough though.

In reply to The Green Giant:

Why not just view 'Latest Photos' and if you're that bothered about specific categories, just scroll through the thumbnails and vote on those you want to?

In reply to Fraser:
I didn't say that you couldn't do that; I put that some people don't have the time or want to do it. I'm grateful for the people who do because it means all the good shots get pushed to the Top 10, but it get skewed the larger volume of good landscape photos compared good action photos. Like Robert Durran said (and I hadn't even thought about when writing the op) it is also part of UKHs photos votes. Some people just want to see the best sport photos of the week, or best ice climbing photos of the week. How would you recommend doing that without trawling through the folders?

In reply to Fraser:

Yes of course but, for the reasons I pointed out, everything else tends to get swamped by good landscape shots and crap rock climbing shots, so you have to make the effort to go beyond the first page and most casual voters don't bother, so good photos of other types not on the first page tend to sink without trace even further down (Havn't you noticed this with your own photos? if they are uploaded with many others and aren't lucky enough to first appear on the front page, they have to be really exceptional to ever get on it at all. Some of my highest "average votes" photos have got relatively few votes; they never appeared on the front page so few people ever looked at them but those that did voted 5.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Think you're right that maybe all the disciplines having Top 10s would be too much.

I'm bias, like many others here, towards the fairer weather disciplines. So maybe; bouldering, lead and ice/mountain (but not walking)?

In reply to The Green Giant:

There is a one month limit on photos which means that they can theoretically feature in the Top 10 for four consecutive weeks, although in reality this is rarely more than three weeks. I agree that there is a self-fulfilling aspect to the voting once a photo has made the top 10 and it might be worth cropping the time that a photo is eligible.

The reason we choose one month is that it takes a while for a photo to get on the radar, and also we wanted to iron-out the benefits of choosing a day for upload. ie. if it was limited to a single week then a photo uploaded on a Friday or Saturday wouldn't stand a chance of making Sunday's Top 10. Even at 2 weeks there would still be an small advantage to uploading on a Sunday or Monday. At 3 or 4 weeks this advantage is relatively insignificant since the system only counts the votes received in the last 7 days - Sunday to Sunday.

It would be possible to filter the top 10, or expand it across the categories which we could look at doing.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

If you want to get a photo in the top ten, it is hugely advantageous to post it early in the week. In fact the best time to post them is in the small hours of Monday morning. UKC seem to generally upload a batch earlyish on Monday, so they then have a good chance of first appearing at the top of the front page (often UKC don't upload any photos on a Sunday, so posting early on Sunday often results in them being uploaded at the bottom of a huge batch on Monday and missing that crucial initial exposure on the front page.

Of course a better strategy still is to post truly outstanding photos - these will always float to the top. Even better would be to change your name to James Rushforth of Ben Tibbetts (these two post so many excellent photos that I'm convinced some people vote 5 for all their photos without even bothering to look at them - it would be an interesting experiment for them to see how bad a photo they could get into the top ten!)


As I explained, I think what is actually needed is categorising the "latest" photos.

In reply to The Green Giant:


I know you didn't.


'Best' is subjective, so if you want to find what *you* think are the best, then there is no alternative. But there are rarely so many photos that you can't see the thumbnails of them all within just a few clicks.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

That would be good, just feel like us climbers get swamped with all these amazing landscapes when really what we want to see is some action!

I appreciate the number of action photos is generally lower, but I think this could be countered by providing a platform to showcase them without having to compete with the beautiful sunset, mountain photos.

Thanks for replying Alan.