Thanks Captain Ted for raising this topic.
"Shipspotting" it should remain, but Cornelia, Pieter and you made some valuable
arguments up for consideration.
But I especially like Adrian Ford's suggestion of doing away with the "number of views"
and replace it with a "Like" button instead.
There is a huge difference between "viewing" and actually "liking" a photograph,
regardless whether it was taken by the "photographer" who posts his own or an older
photograph taken by somebody else. [Don't get me going on copyright though!]
The main purpose of Shipspotting.com is or at least should be the sharing of photographs and information about shipping worldwide.
Many of my local shots don't get many hits the first time around/the day when posted, but
this doesn't bother me at all. Nobody has to "view" my pictures if they don't want to.
I have posted some 4,000 pics over the past number of years and built up some good contacts with other shipspotting enthusiasts who aided me in identifying some of my "mystery ships." To me this is way more important than collecting "views."
At least two vessels have sunk/written off after I posted their photos that I took earlier;
My pictures from Shipspotting have been used by two TV channels, appeared in a recently published book; have appeared on at least three web sites of shipping companies, etc. The crewmember of a tug he saw himself on, asked permission to use my picture on his Facebook page and the (UK) Royal Navy asked permission to use some of my photographs as reference information of Royal Navy and NATO vessels.
That's enough reward for me; I really don't collect number of "views."
So "Likes" rather than "views."