Improvements to the website design

[Henk de Winde]

A true word Manfred.

[Dеnis]

And while you are busy implementing this great idea about the thumbnails please delete the Copyright part from the site regulations or please finally act accordingly, thank you. Photos from so called collections by unknown photographers are getting on my nerves.

This gives me an idea...  In the Upload page there should be an option to check - my own photo or photo by someone else (fill in the field who's the photographer). Then once the photo is uploaded, at the bottom in the blue bar it should be something like Photo by etc Shipspotting member, or Photo by (other photographer if known). It should be also mentioned in photo details below in the info field - uploaded by etc member, photo taken by (that member or someone else).
Then once info about whose photo is in the system, every member should have a variety of viewing options in their Account Settings - like, which categories include or exclude from viewing in Recent uploads & in Random photos, also option to view or not view photos not taken by members.
I think in this way some would be happy to see only Cruise ships of 50-70s & nothing else, some would be happy to NOT see B&W photos from the 50s, some would be happy to NOT see photos members never took themselves.

Regarding photos which were uploaded before such option was implemented, either members themselves should change who's the real photographer of each photo not taken by themselves. Or any viewer should report such questionable photo & the reviewing staff would check the field like [v] "not taken by etc member, taken by __________" & changes would be auto-made to that photo.

[simonwp]

All this thread show is you can't please everyone......make some changes to suit some members, and other members will be annoyed. It will never be prefect for every member. No site ever is.

[Richard Paton]

All this thread show is you can't please everyone......make some changes to suit some members, and other members will be annoyed. It will never be prefect for every member. No site ever is.

I agree nothing is ever perfect, but the whole point of posting photos to share with others is to see how popular a photo can be/viewed. We all know that's one of the main reasons to do so. Nobody can deny this.

The point is if "hits" on photos are going to be so low as they tend to be now, folk's interest in the site will simply wane and postings will dry up. The site's lifeblood is it's photo contributions, without that it dies.

 I know of members that no longer post photos for this very reason. Hence my suggestion to go back to the old site's way of setting up photos so they CAN be viewed as opposed to the current way in which you just  look at them without clicking to go bigger.

[Henk de Winde]

Well said Richard !!

[simonwp]

As I said before I'm not bothered how many hits I get on any of my photographs. if only one person enjoys a photograph it's fine by me. If a hundred do then that's also fine. It's very rare I go back and look to see how many hits a particular photographs gets.

I photograph ships for my own enjoyment, and post on line so others may also enjoy them if they wish.

Personally I find the front page layout for this site just fine. But if enough people want to change it back, that's fair enough.

[Henk de Winde]

Sorry Simon, I don't think it has anything to do with a frontpage, but everything with the terrible speed last two weeks.
Nothing else!

[pieter melissen]

I'm sick of this website design.
Whenever you log on, the only images you see are just the top four"most popular" and everything else is buried and only visible if you want to dig for it.

Hi Owen,

I have just returned from five day working on my other job, and had not time to visit the site. I will go  through the other comments as well, but I would like to start with yours, which is factually incorrect, but probably because of the title you choose for the subject, it will attract many a reaction.
Your quoted remark is incorrect because one does NOT have to dig deep to see what is on the site, just use your scrolling tool and the latest photos immediately appear.  And if you wanted and had the time you can keep scrolling until you reach photo 3,000,000 plus he rest.

Therefore if have changed the title of the topic, because it feels like an unjustified insult to all those who work hard to please all who use this site, and as you can see from the reactions have different opinions about what they think that all users would want the site to be.

Thank you

Pieter Melissen
Webmaster 

[Dеnis]

I agree nothing is ever perfect, but the whole point of posting photos to share with others is to see how popular a photo can be/viewed. We all know that's one of the main reasons to do so. Nobody can deny this.

The point is if "hits" on photos are going to be so low as they tend to be now, folk's interest in the site will simply wane and postings will dry up. The site's lifeblood is it's photo contributions, without that it dies.

 I know of members that no longer post photos for this very reason. Hence my suggestion to go back to the old site's way of setting up photos so they CAN be viewed as opposed to the current way in which you just  look at them without clicking to go bigger.

What if size of thumbnails could be reduced so that on home page you see not 3 thumbnails in width but 5-7?

[pieter melissen]

And almost every day, the top four "most popular" are old B&W images of old ships with no particular photographic merit.

That would suggest that they are the most viewed images for that particular day which must say something.

I have kept a screenshot where four of my B&W images (taken during the eighties) were shown on the home page as being the (then) most popular shots. I hope nobody is suggesting that I should stop posting them.... I am only halfway done with names starting with G, and you all know what comes after G until we reach the Z. 

Anyway, there exists a list of people who have been allowed by Admin to post older shots, not taken by them, but with proper source references. Perhaps this list should be screened to see where we are now. And on top of that several analog colour shots have also been posted, not taken by the poster. Based on the reactions here, they seem to be less offensive than the B&W ones. 

[pieter melissen]

All this thread show is you can't please everyone......make some changes to suit some members, and other members will be annoyed. It will never be prefect for every member. No site ever is.

I agree nothing is ever perfect, but the whole point of posting photos to share with others is to see how popular a photo can be/viewed. We all know that's one of the main reasons to do so. Nobody can deny this.

The point is if "hits" on photos are going to be so low as they tend to be now, folk's interest in the site will simply wane and postings will dry up. The site's lifeblood is it's photo contributions, without that it dies.

 I know of members that no longer post photos for this very reason. Hence my suggestion to go back to the old site's way of setting up photos so they CAN be viewed as opposed to the current way in which you just  look at them without clicking to go bigger.

Hi Richard,

It is probably human nature that people want to know how many times a shot of which the poster thinks that it deserves to be viewed actually gets a "hit", meaning that the thumbnail has been opened. Now I think it is a bit perverse that we should reduce the quality of the thumbnails, just to create more hits, while at the same time they may have been looked at, but those views have not been recorded. It may well be the case that the number of views (including the thumbnail views) currently exceeds what was recorded in the previous system, but the number of people who want to open the thumbnail, let alone those who want to see the shot at full size, is less. Does that mean that the shot has been receiving less appreciation? I don't think so, as even those infamously popular B&W shots get far less actual hits than they received in the past.

So what is actually needed is a change in expectations of how many hits you may generate, and if that number is lower, people may get disappointed, but they should get over it, and keep on posting.

There may be another aspect too, and that is that the number of daily uploaded shots is quite large, so attractive shots (shots that attract hits that is) may disappear from immediate view much quicker, inevitably resulting in less hits. If the number of posted shots would be around 50 per day or so, the number of individual hits would probably significantly higher, but I hope nobody will be suggesting to set a maximum to the number of new shots, just to increase hits....


 

[Owen Foley]

Therefore if have changed the title of the topic, because it feels like an unjustified insult to all those who work hard to please all who use this site, and as you can see from the reactions have different opinions about what they think that all users would want the site to be.

So the short version is that my comments are ignored and you just don't care..
Just get used to it
No surprise there.

[pieter melissen]

So the short version is that my comments are ignored and you just don't care..
Just get used to it
No surprise there.
[/quote]

you were also told by other that surfing the site is relatively easy.

[Richard Paton]

Hi Pieter thanks for the reply, appreciate your time in doing that for us all.

I respect what you are saying but there's no getting away from the fact this site has lost many long standing members that used to post on here that preferred the old site's manner for displaying photographs. I took a random photo of a bulker from May, it's a good photo, shows an interesting working ship at a good angle and it has only 20 views...now either no one is clicking on the photo, or the photo is being looked at without the click being required, either way if a photographer sees such a low amount of interest in their subject matter they'll get disheartened and may just resort to posting on a social media shipping page on Facebook for example instead.

We all don't want that, we want a thriving shipspotting community.

The smaller thumbnail suggestion is only what was on the previous edition of the site before the makeover, it worked perfectly well then and i did not hear a grumble about the size of said thumbnails at the time because if you were logged in as a member you'd click the photo anyway to look at it if it interested you. The click was then counted and the poster could see his/her work was appreciated and most importantly would be motivated to post more and so on and so on.... you have to keep people engaged/interested otherwise the cycle will stop eventually.

This is just my humble opinion, some might agree, some might disagree with me and that's absolutely fine with me but it's important to get it out there for discussion.

Regards
Richard

[Patrick Hill]

Maybe part of the answer will be when we can filter the groups we want to view - I know I lose interest scrolling through when I get a whole string of vessels I'm not interested in posted en masse. I'd say a limit on posting would help but could be difficult to control.

I will also say that I'm guilty of looking at thumbnails and not opening all the photos - I do however hit the like button to show interest - if we do get the facility to view likes that would also show how interested the viewers are.

Patrick