Soon - New website design

[pieter melissen]

When you look at your photos you can only search newest or most popular you cant start with oldest , I find this very inconvenient.

Word has come that this option will be included.

[pieter melissen]

Like that "date of image" is auto filled
also like the "Category" is auto filled from the IMO number but would suggest that the IMO box comes before the Category box on the upload page to make this function work better.

Hi Robert, the Category is not really auto filled, in the sense that when the IMO number is filled in the category becomes visible. What happens is that you get to see the categories in which there are already photographs of the ship with this IMO number. (f.i. the main ship type category, ships under repair. etc)  I agree that the sequence of number and category could better be changed.

Cheers

Pieter

[pieter melissen]

Further to this, the upload form will be amended, whereby the IMO number will trade place with the ENI Number. It just will require you read the upload form horizontally.

[Robert J Smith]

Like that "date of image" is auto filled
also like the "Category" is auto filled from the IMO number but would suggest that the IMO box comes before the Category box on the upload page to make this function work better.

Hi Robert, the Category is not really auto filled, in the sense that when the IMO number is filled in the category becomes visible. What happens is that you get to see the categories in which there are already photographs of the ship with this IMO number. (f.i. the main ship type category, ships under repair. etc)  I agree that the sequence of number and category could better be changed.


Cheers

Pieter

I agree Pieter, not auto filled but still a nice function

[Simon Harrack]

Hello dear ship lovers, it is extremely noticeable that it is not counted when the images are clicked. I have opened some pictures with several work colleagues and still a few days later there are still zero views under the picture. One could think that the category inland waterways is no longer of interest to anyone. Most of the pictures have zero views. In my opinion, this must be changed urgently, especially since it also frustrates the photographer himself. 

Greets Simon

Hello everybody,
I would like to add a remark about the bug reported by Vlad (lappino) about counting of "Comments"  "Likes" and also of "Views". The indications of the former two are often coupled. For example, when I commented on the latest pic of inland tanker HUYGENS the indication of Comments changed from 2 to 9 (!) and likewise the indication of Likes changed also from 2 to 9. This has increased to 20 (!) being indicated for each on the thumbnail pic. When the picture is selected it then shows 5 comments (which is the true number) and five likes. This is really not acceptable and the issue should be addressed by the IT-team soon.

Correct counting of the clicks is essentiel to indicate the true interest in a shown picture. When selecting a photo the additional click is mostly counted after a short time, but in some cases the indication is delayed and in some cases it is not counted at all. I have checked this with many older pictures (not mine) and I have seen that around 30 % of the selected pictures had NOT counted the additional view after some days or later.

This is strange considering that the new version is running for five months now. IT-team, please fix this distorting issue as soon as possible to see the true number of views, comments and likes to show the interest in a certain photography correctly. It does matter a lot for the community of this site in my opinion because these entries are the tools for interactions for members and guests.

Many thanks in advance to Hugo Vieira and his team for their efforts to make this website better.

Regards, Hans

[seaweasel]

Hello Simon, hello everybody,

let's hope that you are right and the dwindling click numbers have - mainly - a technical reason. That could be possible, but why wouldn't the IT-people finally fix this problem ? It shouldn't be too difficult because the old version had no problems of this kind. I'm afraid, however, that the low click numbers rather reflect a loss of patience of many members/guests because this new version is running for half a year now and it seems not possible to fix some basic problems.

Best wishes, Hans

[Hugo Vieira]

Hello dear members,

Addressing the issues on the photo view counter. I'll need to explain a few things so please bare with me.

On 2022-07-29 a refactor of the counter was deployed, which changed how the views are counted.
Previous to this date the views were being counted on the server side as was on the old site. This means that all photo page requests resulted in a new view added to the counter. No matter if the page was eventually served to the user, if the user closed the page, clicked on a link or even clicked on the back button immediately (lets say less than 1s) after requesting the page. Also all requests from bots (search engine indexing bots, ...) and generated link previews in various applications (Whatsapp, Messenger, ... just to name a few) resulted in a new view being counted.

As you probably can imagine this is not representative of the "User" views.
Just so there is a clearer picture here are the total daily numbers around the day of the deployment:

Day	ShipSpotting Photo Views	Google Analytics Photo Views
2022-08-02	10,728	19,785
2022-08-01	10,118	19,273
2022-07-31	9,301	17,276
2022-07-30	9,133	15,911
2022-07-29	87,098	16,616
2022-07-28	118,043	19,362
2022-07-27	121,972	17,492
2022-07-26	106,090	16,281

From 2022-07-30 forward photo all views are counted on the client side, this means that the user requests the photo page to the server and only when the page finishes loading on the user's browser there is a request back to the serve to count a new view for that photo.

This represents a more accurate view count, but it is not without it's disadvantages.
There are circumstances where this request to count a new view can fail even if the user is in fact viewing it.
Some of them could be:
- server being too busy to process the request
- user having adblock enabled (this view count request is flagged as an advertisement pixeltag by some adblockers)
- an instable/very slow internet connection (the request can timeout)

Further to this, and is common to both methods of counting views as it comes from the old site, the counted views are buffered for some time on the database for each combination of photo id and user IP address. Only then they are processed and counted for the corresponding photo.
I believe this was implemented to prevent artificially increasing the view count by repeatedly refreshing the photo page.

Here, in the buffer, is where I believe the issues are occurring, as nowadays the IP address is not a true indication of a unique visitor.
Long gone are the days when each user had it's own unique IP.
This buffer is up for refactoring soon, with the expectation that it will result in a more accurate view count.

Hope this post creates a clearer picture of the process and answers at least some of your questions.

Cheers

[Paul Finnigan]

Hello dear members,

Addressing the issues on the photo view counter. I'll need to explain a few things so please bare with me.

On 2022-07-29 a refactor of the counter was deployed, which changed how the views are counted.
Previous to this date the views were being counted on the server side as was on the old site. This means that all photo page requests resulted in a new view added to the counter. No matter if the page was eventually served to the user, if the user closed the page, clicked on a link or even clicked on the back button immediately (lets say less than 1s) after requesting the page. Also all requests from bots (search engine indexing bots, ...) and generated link previews in various applications (Whatsapp, Messenger, ... just to name a few) resulted in a new view being counted.

As you probably can imagine this is not representative of the "User" views.
Just so there is a clearer picture here are the total daily numbers around the day of the deployment:

Day	ShipSpotting Photo Views	Google Analytics Photo Views
2022-08-02	10,728	19,785
2022-08-01	10,118	19,273
2022-07-31	9,301	17,276
2022-07-30	9,133	15,911
2022-07-29	87,098	16,616
2022-07-28	118,043	19,362
2022-07-27	121,972	17,492
2022-07-26	106,090	16,281

From 2022-07-30 forward photo all views are counted on the client side, this means that the user requests the photo page to the server and only when the page finishes loading on the user's browser there is a request back to the serve to count a new view for that photo.

This represents a more accurate view count, but it is not without it's disadvantages.
There are circumstances where this request to count a new view can fail even if the user is in fact viewing it.
Some of them could be:
- server being too busy to process the request
- user having adblock enabled (this view count request is flagged as an advertisement pixeltag by some adblockers)
- an instable/very slow internet connection (the request can timeout)

Further to this, and is common to both methods of counting views as it comes from the old site, the counted views are buffered for some time on the database for each combination of photo id and user IP address. Only then they are processed and counted for the corresponding photo.
I believe this was implemented to prevent artificially increasing the view count by repeatedly refreshing the photo page.

Here, in the buffer, is where I believe the issues are occurring, as nowadays the IP address is not a true indication of a unique visitor.
Long gone are the days when each user had it's own unique IP.
This buffer is up for refactoring soon, with the expectation that it will result in a more accurate view count.

Hope this post creates a clearer picture of the process and answers at least some of your questions.

Cheers

Thanks Hugo I really appreciate your detailed explanation but could you or someone else put it in layman terms for someone computer illiterate like me I really still cant understand how it works sorry.

[lappino]

Please add a multiplier, say 10x, so that we can have some semblance of "normalcy".

Point in question: Sunday afternoon, in about 4 hours time, 40 photos uploaded (different users), with the grand total of 26 (twenty six) views among them. Seems like "throwing into the void", indeed.

Cheers

Vlad

[simonwp]

I looked at every photograph loaded yesterday, but wouldn't have registered any hit, as the thumbnails are now good enough for a quick look. I only open up any that are of particular interest, so only register a hit on those. Yesterday none took my eye enough to open up, but it didn't mean I didn't appreciate them.

[seaweasel]

Hello Hugo, hello everybody,

many thanks for your detailed explanations, Hugo, this is much appreciated. Although not easy to understand for laymen your post gives a number of hints how things are related and how complicated this issue apparently is. As the click counting was working well with the old version it's one of the problems created by the current version.

Please inform the users of this site when the buffer has been refactored so we can take this change into account.

Further to that I agree with simonwp and others who suggested that the thumbnails are too large and it's thus not necessary to further enlarge a picture by opening it up. This could affect the click numbers considerably so I would propose to reduce the size of the thumbnails as they were with the previous version. A random multiplier of clicks would be too inaccurate and therefore not very helpful to solve the real problem in my opinion.

Regards, Hans

[pieter melissen]

There is a slight difference between the words of Simonwp and the way Seaweasel (Hans) has interpreted these. Simon mentions that the thumbnails are good enough which is then translated by Hans as that they are too large. I think that is a substantial difference and I tend to agree with Simon and I see no reason why these should be reduced in size, just to generate clicks. The preoccupation with the number of clicks is something that belonged to the old site, where for instance the rule was introduced that it was not allowed to comment on your pictures as that was considered a way to increase the clicks. Personally I don't care about the numbers, the only thing I check on a regular basis is whether somebody made a comment that deemed an answer. I think we should get rid of the competition element here and the new site apparently just does that, which perhaps has resulted in disappointing number of clicks for some, but the popularity race seems to be over.

[Simon Harrack]

My work colleagues and I did the ultimate test again yesterday and opened my pictures from different IP addresses. Today, there would normally have to be at least 5 views per image. In reality, however, there are still zero views. That's really frustrating.

[Pieter_Inpijn]

Under each photo is the button MORE.
Clicking gives SHOW REFERRER LOG
Next screen is REFERRER LOG but the wheel keeps turning, no result.
I suppose this function was intended to show which members had used the full view option?

[seaweasel]

Hello Pieter, hello everybody,

I am convinced that it never was about competition or a popularity race on this site, at least not for the vast majority of users. The number of clicks should ONLY be seen as a measure for the interest in a certain photo and serve as an additional motivation for the photographer. We are all human beings after all, aren't we ? I can speak only for myself - I have no interest in having more clicks than another person who is posting pics of inland vessels. Instead I really appreciate it when such pics of other members are of great interest to many persons. Popularity race ? Competition ? Are you serious, Pieter ? It's not about competition here but about the pleasure of presenting your own pictures to likeminded people and of course most of us appreciate a positive feedback by others rather than throwing the photographs into the "void"....

I never intended to "compete" or tried to be "popular" in the sector of inland vessels. I was, however, satisfied with the feedback for my pics on the previous site, which was much better than the new version is up to now (imho). The shown interest (clicks) gave me additional motivation to take the time for the uploads and I will therefore only upload a few photographs as long as I have the impression that - nearly -  nobody is interested in them. I have only limited time, it's as simple as that and I think it's the same with many other persons here.

From a pure photo blogger's view (upload and forget) this may be an apt website but there are many other people here who expect more from the "World's Central for Ship Photography and Information". We better leave it to the members themselves to determine how they want to shape this website. There should be room for different views and philosophies about this site.

We should all struggle to further improve this version and to revive the community spirit which is not doing well at the moment to put it mildly. This community spirit was one of the main ingredients of the previous site and really made a difference to similar websites.

Best wishes, Hans