I was talking to TracyJTZ on PM and sort of came up with an idea that would help alleviate some of the concerns on the site.

It's basically to create a Hall of Fame gallery. The reasoning is that it would create a selective gallery much more reminscient of the galleries before the site was so huge; the images would all be the very best, and the gallery would only grow very slowly.

Just to give you an idea what we're looking at so far:

A Hall of Fame gallery, where images meeting certain requirements are nominated and then voted on for induction:

1. Requirements: an age limit (6months? 1 year?); a download requirement; c-index requirement (maybe not?)

1. Nominations should be seconded (maybe only Cadre members may make a nomination, and only one's who have been on the site for at least 6months or a year) that is a nice incentive to donate to the site!) but any image meeting the above requirements, regardless of artist, may be nominated

2. Voting panel may be just the imagemods, or imagemods plus a selection of members, possibly rotating membership.

Help us think about this further! Thank you.

sounds like a plan

I do like how you have really thought this one through Bob. As I've told you, I think this is a great idea. It sounds to me that you've got it all worked out! Hope it's an accepted idea!

As I said to you in my PM, I think the important thing, if this was to work, would be to make the gallery very selective, almost exclusive, to avoid it just becoming like a list of high rated images. Therefor I suggest; 1. Limiting the number of images allowed in the gallery by any single artist. In my PM I said 5, but maybe 1 or 2 is better. 2. Only images by current members are allowed, say, members who have logged into the site at least once in the past month. I know there are many great images by artists who are not currently members, but as I said I think it would need to be very select to have any point.

As far as the age limit for both voting and being eligible for nomination goes, personally I think a year is perhaps too long for voting(I myself have only been a member since September last year) but maybe we could start out with a year being the requirement for being eligible for nomination, and change it later if it was decided that was too long.

Another idea: To make it -truly- a hall of fame, how about limiting it to only one image added per month? Maybe each month ther could be a different category, and people could nominate image they felt fit into it?

Not sure only one image per month would work well (too long between submissions), but I do like the popular voting idea. Caedes Cadre only?

It's an interesting idea but would require a bit of programming on my part. Not that I'm against that or anything.

I do agree that one year age limit may be too long-- but it does need to be considerable. Maybe 9 months? So you can have a baby in the time it takes :-p haha.

I don't see why the work would need to be by a current member, although I don't think NASA or Van Gogh's, etc., should be included.

For limiting how many any artist can have, I thought at first about having it be a function of how many images they have, but I think that's actually a bad idea. Maybe a flat limit of 5 is good, but with a limit of one every 3 months.

I really like your idea of one image per month, Sam, because that will keep it regulated. That means each month there would be a round of nominations, and then a vote to see which one. And it would be understood that only a few images should even be considered, since only one can get in.

But if this does go through (thank you Caedes and everyone for support so far), it needs to start off with more than one image haha.

Let's just keep floating ideas around for a little longer, then I'll type up some synopsis.

Why would voting be limited to Caedes Cadre only? If non-Cadres members can be considered for inclusion should they not also be able to vote?

Very good idea and agree with you Bob.

Thumbs up for one a month.

The other benefit I see in having only one a month is it would really make it special for the person who's image is selected...

I agree Sam, it would. So maybe that is the best way to do it, once the gallery is started with a set of images, to have one a month. I like it!

Sally, yeah, I'm not sure of what should or shouldn't be limited to the Cadre. Certainly anyone's images should be eligible, we don't want to limit the pool of awesome images. How does this look:
Reg. Members --------------- Cadre Members
eligible: yes --------------- yes
vote: yes ---------------- yes
nominate: yes -------------- yes
second: no --------------- yes

I think that's fair. Basically it just means any image that is nominated must have the support of a Cadre member. That will help keep 500 images from being nominated each month. And everyone, regardless of who they are, could only nominated/second on image. Just like you only support on Presidential candidate.

I think that's a great idea Bob. I realize that you can't have 500 images per month, but I think this is something everybody should be able to participate in. Thanks for answering my questions.

Ok... cool, this is shaping up nicely. I'm kind of excited! There's a couple more aspects to work out more specifically.

Let's talk about how many images we would start with, as in prior to the one-a-month would take effect. 12? 20? 24? Should they just be any images, or should there be one from each current top 24 artist? Or maybe just one from each gallery that already exists? This part's important to get things off the ground.

How about the one that gets nominated most be put in the gallery? Or is that to ureliable?

How about either one from the top 6 or one from each general category ie: abstract, photograpy; computer etc?

first of all, i was thinking 2 a month be put in the gallery, don't you think that there should be more than 12 images per year in the gallery, 24 would be more suitable,

About starting images, I think that only 12 is enough, we do not want to start out this gallery too quickly, lets keep it so that after one year, it will still be one page long, (12+24=36, on a 36 images per page page)

Maybe it should be 15 a year to coincide with the lowest number of images possible with the current page views...there would be 3 months with a bonus image. This way each page would be a different year. Personally that is the way my interface is set up so I don't have to scroll the page...scrolling is such a pain. Like trying to read the old tractor feed printouts or adding machine paper hehe

CSheridan, I agree, I think 12 to start would be fine. I guess 2 a month might not be bad, 36 images after one year, and then 50 the second year... by that time the site will be quite old and even more huge than it is now, so a gallery of 50 at that point would be great. That sounds good to me.

I have an idea for how to start:
Every member who's interested could make a list of 12 images they'd like to see in the Hall of Fame. The first committee (hah we haven't gotten to that yet) can start by throwing out the images which don't mean the age and download requirements. Depending on how long the list is after that, they can vote on which 12 should begin the Hall (I'm trying to think of a name for the hall relevant to Caedes, Cadre, etc etc).

There are too many specific galleries to have one from each, but not enough general galleries to have one from each, so we may just have to ignore that. But the committee could consider that it'd be nice to have a good mix; also that to start, no artist have more than one.

How's that sound?

mayne--- just saw your post. I forgot that 15 is the minimum view and not 12. It would be REALLY cool to have a page for each year, of course I don't know if we want to wait until January to set it up, but still it's a nice idea.

Well maybe our good man could make the 12 image page a reality. Still a multiple of three! And maybe we could make up for lost time this year?

like the suggestions so far...
One image per person sounds good to me. like the fact that this gallery will mix all genre and style too, it will show the eclectisme of Caedes... and be a good publicity for the site^^ lol

We'll have to think of how we'll procede to vote and chose this comitee... maybe choose the same persons who where chosen to vote on the 'manip' contest?... just a though

ooh man, i would love to be on the committee, please, I feel so unimportant on this site, Please let me be

Also, about the page, we should get caedes to be in this post, he could start on the 12 per page idea

Finally, If we are gonna make this 12 at start, and 12 or 24 per year? After a while, we can make sub pages, (Original Selection, First Year, Second Year, etc.) also, about the problem of waiting until january, maybe we could put the 12 original, and then 6 more for up until june, just a thought

From July to December do 2 images a month for the 12 images for this year?

Ok... let's see what we got here.

If we went with the 24/year idea, we could start with 12 images, and then two more each for July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec would put it at 24 for the year. So that'd work out nicely. 24, 48, only 72 images two and a half years from now, that's just 2 pages at 36 view. How does that sound? And of course nothing is written in stone so if it were 2006 and there were a need to change it, that could always be done.

This is good, we are really improving, now lets get started on the committee, I think everyone that has posted here more than twice should be on the comittee. (Hint Hint-let me in) lol

Also, about two per month, is it going to be every two weeks or two at the end of the month, I personally think that it should be two at the end of the month, How about you guys?

Yeah, definitely all at the end of the month, otherwise it would seem like it's a constantly on-going process.

thats what I thought, so, are we gonna start making names

The only thing I would suggest with the committe is try to get people who are going to remain dedicated, and who are here reasonably often (say, once a week or so). It is a real pain when you are trying to get something done by a particular date and you are always waiting on a particular persons vote/opinion/whatever...

woohoo! Alright Bob! It's gonna go! I'm excited! :D

12 a yr, change limit to 12 per page, or 15 a yr keep the limit the same and simply start out with 15 instead of 12 this yr.
But
You want it to be yearly
so
Why dont you start it out by making one page for 2002, and one for 2003. or maybe just one for 2003, this would start your gallery nicely and keep with your theme
images made in 2004 would not be allowed
2 a month for the rest of this yr(to catch up) one a month afterwards
just some suggestions, been keeping up with this discussion :p

we would have to go back to get images

Are the 12-24 images selected each year going to have to have been posted during that year, or will all images meeting the criteria be eligible in the voting every year? This is an interesting topic, would be great to see something like this.

I have created a survey that covers everything we have touched on, it's 10 questions, and question 11 allows you to type in anything you want to add. Caedes if you'd like, a link to the survey on the main page would get more responses so that we're more sure of the response on this. One there are enough answers, I'll put the results in a document form. The only thing left to resolve at that point, other than Caedes' actual approval (I can tell it's not going to take any more coding than adding a new gallery), is to establish the committee and begin the process for the first time.

Torque-- any image would need to be eligible. I don't think having a set amount from each year they would posted would work, some years are going to have better images than others.

All I want is to be on the committee

Lol CSheridan, I have no idea how the committee will end up. I defer to imageMods and Caedes in all things.

HERE IS THE SURVEY:

http://www.createsurvey.com/c/18901-Ym78KQ/

Take the space out between creat esurvey! Why is voting limited to a committee? Should it not be open to everyone?

I don't think it should be open to everyone; that would mean someone who just found the site that day could vote without caring what they were doing. There would have to be some sort of control on it.

I have filled out the survey, I just wanted to mention some of the decisions I made and why; I didn't select either of the c-index options, as although I know most images inducted would have high c-indexes, there might be an occassional exception, ie something which is very creative/original but isn't popular as a wallpaper but deserves recognition. Also I said three months as the length of term for commitee members, only because I think there will be people who will lose interestquickly and stop voting/nominating/doing whatever they were supposed to... if the term was only three monthsit would be easier to replace the person without it becoming personal. Also it would allow more people to have a go on the committee. Maybe you could have a certain number of "permenant" comittee members and revolve the rest? I also think maybe automatic selection of all imagemods is not a good idea, as not everyone has the time; for example, bunyip is an imagemod, but I only see him around every couple of months (which is fine obviously, but it wouldn't work very well for a commitee member). I hope everyone gets what I mean...

Mayne-- I agree with Samatar, having the voting open to everyone would mean someone new could have a say, which may not be fair, they wouldn't be familiar with images at all. Also, we would then have to have a system for taking votes, where as with a committee we can tally by hand. And also, what if we only had 13 people vote some times, and 300 other times? It's more consistent this way, that's the reasoning.

Sam--
I agree with the c-indexes and voted the same way.

On membership terms, I originally thought 1 year, to make it easier because selecting members could be a bit of an ordeal. Maybe 6 months is best as a compromise. We'll see how the voting goes.

On having permanent members, maybe it could be that you can stay on as a member if you choose to?

And for imageMods, I didn't think about that. I don't even know how many mods there are, haha. So maybe automatic selection of them isn't ideal... hm!

Nice survey and nice distrobution of PC types: 1 windows, 1 mac, 1 Linux. :-)

I think the pics should all have introduced something that we haven't seen before - like a breakthrough in art. The first time a certain type of filter was used to great effect - like a timeline of pictures to show progression in the genre.

P.S. forgive any spelling mistakes.

bob, Great job on the survey, it really tackles all of the questions that we have answered,

Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but about the voting, only the people on the committee will be voting, so how hard will it be to count the votes?

Interesting, I think it's all a great idea!

I think it should be open to everyone, if a new person just votes which looks better, this is still input. Shouldnt a hall a fame quality picture be able to attract attention from users both old and new?

the age requirement on the survey is too high. There have been images within the last 6 months worth of hall of fame.

noobguy-- as far as it being open to everyone, a committee isn't likely to vote for something that people don't agree is very good.

as for the age requirement, images that are 6 months old right now will be 9 months old before long and then eligible for the Hall of Fame.

I certainly like this idea, but it could get a little boring I think, because nominated images will be almost the same every month right? What about banning images that were nominated in the last three months? Seems more fair to me.

No, the committee would be looking for diversity in the Hall to show all types of images that are here at Caedes... I'm not sure what you mean about banning an image. Once an image is in, it's in forever.

I think what he's saying is that the images that get nominated one month, but don't get in, are very likely to be nominated again the next month (or year, whatever). That's why I was asking before if images would be eligible every year, or just once in the year they were posted. By banning, I believe he means that an image that is nominated, but doesn't get in, wouldn't be eligible to be nominated the next month. But that all seems pretty complicated to me...

thats going to be a bit of programming, not like a new gallery, because right now images cant be in more than one gallery at a time. Would you just make the new gallery and move the images from their galleries into the hall of fame one?

Images can already be in more than one gallery I think. They are in the author's own gallery, one of the main galleries, and perhaps several other users' faorites galleries. There is still just one image, I think the gallery system is basically just a bunch of lists of images. They're not actually "in" any particular gallery. Then again I guess Caedes would be the authority on this, I'm just guessing.

yeah i get the idea, I would think that main galleries would be in their own database(separate from user gallery, favorites). but then again I didnt write the site.

>>Torque 06/27/04 9:05 PM<< That's what I meant. But is this necessary to program? Just keep it in mind every month would be enough, right?

I suppose there's no reason for an image not to be nominated again the next month if it doesn't make it the first month, but the people nomination/seconding would realize there would need to be a reason for the image to be inducted the second time around.

If you had a different category each month as I suggested before, that might help keep it from becoming boring and keep the same images from being nominated all the time. BTW, that point about it getting boring is why I think the committee would have to be carefully chosen, and the positions perhaps be rotated. It is certainly true that some people would lose interest once the novelty wore off and not bother to take the time to vote properly etc. This may also be a reason why the voting should not just be open to everyone; it might cause the whole idea to lose momentum after a few months. If the comittee was only made up of a few people, and everyone only had a breif "turn" (with maybe a few permenant organisers) it would make voting and nominating more exciting... what do you think?

If you rotate the committee I think it solves most of the problems. The same images are less likely to be considered again by different people, and even if they are it won't make things "boring" because it will still be the first time that committee has considered those images. I think that would eliminate the need for categories of consideration. Just bring in a different bunch of people each month to choose some favorites. It seems to simplify everything that way. I agree about keeping on a couple of organizers from round to round, maybe they don't even need to vote, or just vote in their first round on the committee.

Sam and Torque, I definitely agree. That's why I put the 3 month/6month/1 year term length question for committee members; so far 3 month is winning, too. I also agree voting needs to be a committee, not everyone. With a large enough committee (the 21 ppl option is winning), everyone who is interested will get a turn.

Personally, I don't think you should limit the number of people who can vote. It will not be very interesting for those who can't vote, as well as they feel excluded and I don't think that is a good road to go. You could also mix votes... So two different votes, the Special Voting Committee and the Regular Voter. In the end, a special calculation and... we have a winner. Won't that be more nice for everybody, to involve every member?

I think this is a great idea. I'm not in favour of banning images that have been nominated before. A truly deserving image could miss out because one that was just a little better got in, the truly deserving image should get a chance next time.

This is really shaping up, i agree with everything, so i don't have much to say

Glooh: It would be similar to the contest. Not everyone gets to decide on the winner, but people are still interested who it is I think.

Also, I think if everyone voted that would just result in the most popular images being selected. We already know which images are most popular by using the rankings list. The Hall of Fame should be composed of images that are unique, original, do something noone else has or did it before anyone else.I think in order to nominate images, a good reason would need to be given, and maybe the commitee members would have to justify why they chose the image for the hall of fame. It should be more than just a popularity contest, otherwise once again it loses meaning and purpose.

Sam--- YES! fully agreed, well put

Samatar: completely agree.

Agree with Samatar.

lets just all agree with samatar, Okay, I agree for everyone, if you dont agree say something, if you do, do not

Perhaps (to go with Sams comment) a description of the "commitee's" reason for choosing the image could go along with the images description. Sort of like contest winners.

Yea, I imagine each month there will be some info about the image; a comment from the artist if possible, a comment from maybe those who nominated the image, and a comment from the committee.

There should defnitely be a comprehensive and well written explanation as to why the image was chosen. This gallery should be a place for members to look to to see what we all look for in an image and why, something to aspire to.

Well I think this phase of things are wrapping up. This weekend I will sum up the poll results and type out a proposal for a Hall of Fame. I'll post that in a new topic, and it'll be a detailed but succinct plan for how to work the whole thing. At that point all that will be needed is approval from Caedes, figuring what, if any, programming would need to be done, and then establishing the committee. Then we'll take nominations for the initial images, plus July's entries. Wow!

This looks very interesting - why do you have to have these discussions when I am on holiday?

I have filled in the survey now. I agree that c-index should not be a factor in choosing an image. This 'Hall of Fame' is a neat idea and a good opportunity to show the really quality images.

A query: if the images were featured in the hall of fame, would that mean that they would be removed from whatever gallery they were previously in?

Hey Captain-- good question. I think one other person brought that up, although not in the same way... we didn't really talk about it. I think it would be best to leave them in their previous gallery, too, so the Hall of Fame would function almost like a Favorites gallery in that the image would be listed under both. Probably whichever is easier for Caedes is the best option.

I'll be compiling survey results and typing up a summary sometime tomorrow, so if you haven't taken the survey yet, please do!

Yes, I think that would be best - I much prefer the idea of the image staying in it's own gallery and then also being featured in the HOF, like, as you say, the favorites.

I'm looking forward to this summary.

I agree with Captain, they should be in both galleries

AT the moment images don't/can't appear in more than one gallery. In a way I think that's better for the most part as it keeps the gallery sizes smaller and makes it easier to navigate. You don't really want to go through one gallery, then move on to the next one and find that you've already seen a third of the images in it... but it could work if it was controlled properly. However I do beleive it would require additional programming...

reddawg, you should post the results, then we should all discuss the results and come up with the plan together, then place yet another discussion, or have someone send it in a pm to caedes.

Can't the Hall of Fame just mimic a user? If there was a username "Hall of Fame" then the gallery could just be that fake user's favorites gallery, and have a link to it from somewhere in the main galleries menu. That wouldn't require any additional programming, and wouldn't require moving any image out of its current gallery.

Josh-- that's good thinking. The only thing is it would show up as "Favorites List for Hall of Fame". But otherwise it's the same idea, so I imagine Caedes could use that as a template to pretty quickly program a new gallery that works like the Favorites does.


I will post the results tomorrow but in descriptive form, basically I'll type out a plan for the Hall of Fame based upon what the people chose. Then we'll make last arguments for or against the results. I also noticed there are a couple issues that the survey brought to light, as well as some logistics to work out. It's getting close though.

Has this idea died?

lol, i dun know

When it came to it actually being done, the response was that we could suggest it as a new feature on the Development site. So we did, and that's that. Unfortunately there's nothing more we can do, other than remind the powers that be from time to time.

Thanks Bob. I must have missed that part. Perhaps once the new design is put into place, this will trickle in there somewhere. You put alot of time and thought into it and I just wondered what ever became of it since many of us also voted.

I would imagine that caedes isn't going to bother adding much more until the new site is up? But there's certainly no harm in reminders (I had completely forgotten about this idea).

I'm sure it will be done at some stage. Caedes is holding down a post-graduate research and teaching position and I'm sure he has other interests in his life too (watching Wallace and Gromit DVD's perhaps?).

Even for a genius, coding can take a while and he's probably concentrating any efforts on the new site design at the moment.

I agree. Coding a website is extremely hard work. The number one priority now will definitely be getting the new site design done, so we'll just have to patient and wait for the Hall of Fame to make it's appearance.

As amazing as Wallace and Gromit is, this site is better. Programming sounds like a stressful job, so I would probably change my mind if this site was a job instead of play time. Thanks so much!