Please allow me to use this topic to sidetrack here slightly, and to share my views on categories with only 1 photo online per topic/subject/target (militar ship crests may be one, but also the more popular funnel/superstuture logo category is part of this lot).
I would like to make a remark on the process through which these single photos/topic are managed overtime. Allow me to illustrate with 1 example (based on actual past experience at Shipspotting):
Assume I submit a photo for one of these categories, and the photo is accepted, and is left online;
Assume now that sometime later a better photo is submitted for that same topic. As a result, mine gets deleted, and is replaced with the new photo. No problem so far;
But now assume that sometime later the author of the photo online leaves ShipSpotting for whatever reason, and asks for his photos to be deleted. This request is accepted, and is carried out done by the Adms/Webmaster. What happens next? That specific topic remains empty until somebody else, a third party, one day submits his own photo of that specific topic/subject/target. In the meantime, the void that was created on the database by the deletion on demand persists until a new photo is upload. The time interval may be quite long. Who benefits from this situation? No one. And certainly not those who visit the site looking for that specific topic/subject/target, or photo category, in particular.
So first there was a photo, now there is no photo anymore, viewers may get confused and frustrated.
Did I manage to make my point clear?
In my opinion, such voids, whenever they may pop-up due to circumstances outside of our control, should be avoided.
So my suggestion is that:
Only one photo of each topic is online for those categories/subcategories that demand it - OK, no problem with that;
But all photos submitted for that topic/subject/target that meet the site standards but are not better than the one online at a given time, are kept by the Adms/Webmaster in an offline folder. And the ones that have already been online and got replaced are marked in such a way that they can be the first spare ones to be considered in case of need (i.e., a deletion on demand, for example).
In summary, in case of need there will be a spare set of photos to be brought online, and the topic/subject/target rests covered.
Another advantage of this continuum is that no photographer would be wasting his time on that same topic/subject/target unless he was sure that he could present a better photo than the spare one put back online. This would save both photographer's as well as Adms' time, and spare bandwidth as well as memory space. And would prevent having to start all over again on the quality curve for that specific target/subject/topic, when a third party finally uploads a new photo to fill the void that the deletion on demand has created.
As far as I could see, this process is not implemented and fully managed at the moment.
Would the process I envisage be feasible, and manageable, in practice?
My 2 cents' worth.
Jose
(jdap)