Closed Missing Photos

I like the idea of the Wiki. Would space allocated for a user gallery be like, 10gb altogether, or a limit on uploadable photos per month (maybe 15-20pcm). I prefer the latter, because it'd save the inevitable 'using it all at once' and not knowing what to get rid of after. It would make you think before posting, rather than after if you get what I mean .

 

Ahh, no worries. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to delete them, so in a way we are getting full responsibility to manage our own photos with a space limit. Sounds good .

 

Like the idea's from both SIM and Javan Rhino but the idea of using flickr for the posting of photographs would still work as the photographs not allocated to go into the galleries could be put in the individuals Flickr page and as long as other members marked them as Favourites or Contacts other members could see when they had updated there page and go straight to the page or we could start off by using the tag (zoo chat)

 

Sim What I was trying to say was the photographs that members feel where not needed for the galleries could then be posted on Flickr after they had been voted for.
This way the member sending in the photograph would not feel like it had been a waste of time.
This way some members could feel better knowing that the photograph would be used so other members would still be able to view it at their descretion.

 

While we all feel that our own photos are special, I think that we have always known that we were heading for the day of reckoning when the Gallery would become too big.
While it was unfortunate that it happened so suddenly that we couldn't be warned in advance, I support the system Sim has initiated because it seems fair and reasonable to me. But I hope it can be refined a little to take account of special cases that Chlidonias has pointed out.

Alan

 

There is something we can do to help:
I think 18 people have participated in this thread, 13 of whom don't appear to have donated to support Zoochat. Some have uploaded massive numbers of photos.
I do realize that we all have different economic situations, but any donation... no matter how small... would give Sim more options.

 

If there was a way for us to delete our own photos, I would be more than happy to clean up some of my postings. Especially the ones who are less popular. In the meantime, I'll be sure to be more selective with my image postings.

 

I am very sorry to read these news. I had spent many hours uploading photos with detailed descriptions providing almost complete virtual guides to various Danish and other european zoos. Now I see that many of these photos have vanished. I always took great pride in filling in descriptions with my photos and never uploading an unnescesary shot or keep on uploading pictures of the same exhibits.

This is a very sad day for ZooChat. I understand your reasons for doing so Sim and can only regret that several forumers have misused the galleries to uploading thousands of blury or repatative shots and that even more have hesitated with becomming ZooChat supporters.

I will still participate this site as I always have but my uploading days are hereby over.

Just my 2 cents worth...

 

Sim

IF you can pull it off, we all would be very grateful!
Well, we appreciate the effort whether it succeeds or not

 

Toddy, please continue contributing photos. Yours are among the best and you are the forum's gateway into the Danish zoo world. I have been following your posts since I joined and your maturity and logical thinking far exceds mine when I was your age some ten years ago. Unless you lost many photos and are displeased about it (did you? are you?) then I see no reason why you should stop, unless you simply want to show empathy with those who did.

To my best of knowledge, none of the 3204 photos that I had prior to the change have been removed so it is easy for me to say this, knowing that none of my effort has vanished into thin air. But we all knew that this day had to come, didn't we.

I live away from the zoo world so I am rarely capable of contributing. The 3204 photos that I uploaded some months ago were the result of seven years of digital photography and I still have left to scan and upload those that I took prior to that. I'll be uploading the best ones from my recent USA tour in the next weeks (26 zoos in 10 states in 30 days) and continue to support the Zoochat gallery like I have done.

I'd like to encourage everyone NOT to stop uploading. Just to be more selective. That is all. And if you take some time to look into the photos to select the best ones, you'll no doubt fondly recall how pleasant it was to get that great photo of that rare animal, for instance, and other fond memories of that day out.

 

First of all, I would like to thank Sim and the other moderators for the fantastic work they do on this site.

One thing that I think everyone agrees on is that there are too many photos, and a high percentage that should never have been uploaded to begin with. Since ZooChat is a relatively new site, and some of us are even newer to it, it is a learning process for everyone. (Those of us who are middle-aged or older have enough perspective to realize that the entire internet is still a relatively new phenomenon).

I know that when I first joined, I used to contribute primarily artistic animal closeups. I have since learned that visitors to this site are more appreciative of general exhibit shots and I have increased my percentage of those, often taking shots just for ZooChat that I would never have bothered to take before.

It seems one year is plenty of time for even casual visitors to see uploaded photos. The only criticism posted that I would support is a way to not delete photos from galleries that are already small. If a zoo only has ten photos total in its gallery, it would be nice if those could remain instead of being bumped and then sending that zoo back to zero photos.

 

When uploading to ZooChat I have mainly tried to upload photos from those less known and least representated zoos focusing mainly on the zoos of my homeland Denmark. Now I see that the Danish galleries have been absolutely DECIMATED. Galleries like Ree Park, Givskud Zoo, Scandinavian Wild Animal Park and AQUA are all but empty and I dare not even look for the photos I have uploaded from other countries although I image the scenario is the same there (took a quick look in the GaiaPark gallery to see around 70% of my photos missing). The only reason that the other Danish zoos have fared better is because I had uploaded so few photos to their galleries that they have escaped the purge.

The reason that I am so unhappy about this is because of the many, many hours I had spend on writing detailed descriptions for my photos. I am simply not inclined to spend that time again uploading photos with descriptions just to see them disappear again.

That is exactly what I have been pleading as well. How can it be that around 50 out of the 70 photos (all hand-picked and resized) in the Ree Park and Givskud Zoo galleries respectively have been deleted when there are still THOUSANDS of blurry and repetative shots from Kansas City Zoo, Chester Zoo, Los Angeles Zoo, Marwell Wildlife and Woodland Park Zoo, just to name those few topping the statistics (there are many more as well you know).

Once again this is not a critizism of Sim. He has done a great work managing this site and I am sure that he chose the best sollution possible at this time. It is a critizism of some of my fellow ZooChat members. I have long called for people being more selective when they choose which photos to upload and know the galleries of the lesser know zoos are paying the price.

 

Sim,

I am concerned that while you are figuring this out some useless photos and many duplicate photos are still being uploaded. I would hate for more pictures to be culled in order to accommodate this nonsense.
Perhaps the Galleries need to be shut down from further updates until you have worked out the plan.

 

I think using a 3rd party site to store photos is a good idea. In other picture heavy forums I frequent you can't post a picture directly to the forum, you upload to photobucket (or some other repository) and use a link to post the picture onto the forum.

Things like voting and collating photos can be done just as easily with a link to a 3rd party site as with a 'physical' file.

The saving on storage and bandwidth must surely be very strong drivers to keep photos elsewhere, espeically when most photo sites give you gb of storage for free.

 

The last year has by far been the most hectic of my life and as such I have been off this site for almost exactly a year...

I have lost about 30 of the 90 photos I've posted, I'm largely happy because the photos I was really worried about (the one's from Marineland which has since closed and the off exhibit photos from various places that were very hard to come by have remained mostly intact)... I had an advantage as lots have been posted much more than a year ago...

I've been careful to post three kinds of photos:

1). Photos of animals, these photos I have only uploaded if they fit certain criteria;
- They are in focus
- The have no bars in shot
- The show a unique animal or intersting behaviour

An example: http://www.zoochat.com/14/molek-female-sumtran-tiger-auckland-zoo-30348/

2). Photos of the exhibits, parks and architecture within a zoo, with the following criteria;
- They are in focus
- They show innovations in zoo design
- Unique foliage or landscapes
- They show life support systems or how zoo infrastructure necessary for containment is kept out of view

An example: http://www.zoochat.com/98/napier-aquarium-30513/

3). Historical photos, usually from:
- Books where the copyright has expired (80 years in NZ)
- Personal photos taken at least a decade ago

An example: http://www.zoochat.com/14/polar-bear-exhibit-30386/

Can I humbly suggest the following method of dealing with the galleries:

- That photos fall into one of three categories, animals, exhibits (etc), historical and follow the above guidelines
- That they are in focus, unless it seems likely the photo was taken out of focus to increase it's effect, such as I did with this one: http://www.zoochat.com/96/kelly-tarltons-underwater-world-30486/
- That the photo has a description
- That galleries of individual zoos of under 50 photos are protected
- That photo guidelines are listed and a reminder of them pops up before uploading
- Sim appoints 3 - 5 gallery Mods (can I suggest contacting Snowleopard to be the lead), who will go through all the restored photos to cull those not fitting the criteria

I currently have a lot of good photos from pretty obscure Christchurch Zoos which I'm not going to bother uploading if they stand a good chance of being culled in a year...

 

Welcome back, you missed quite some action when this thread was in heat some two months ago!

I agree with your suggestions and was actually going to add to this thread or create a new one to ask if ideas about the future of the Gallery had moved further. Sim?

Snowleopard, even if he would return, would probably not be suitable as Gallery Mod. I say this with all due respect for him, we have kept contact since he left Zoochat, but he is just so controversial around here, people either hate him or love him. We would need someone less controversial and perhaps someone who has few or even no photos here, in order to maintain neutralism.

I would love to be one of the Gallery Mods, but with thousands of photos here and more to come, I have excluded myself if SIM agrees with me on the neutralism thing. Kiang and Pertinax seem fairly well liked (otherwise SIM wouldn't have appointed them as moderators a while ago) and as far as I have seen, have managed to stay neutral and balanced when the truly hectic debates take place here every now and then. But they have such a major job to do, being general forum moderators, that I'm not sure if they could handle the new job too. But probably it would be best to ask them if they can and want. Kiang? Pertinax?

Please respond if you have suggestions for Gallery Moderators.

 

I'd suggest a few things:

1). Gallery Mods are seperate from regular Mods
2). Gallery Mods cannot moderate their own uploads
3). A text list of the deleted photos in each gallery at the bottom, who uploaded them, when they were uploaded and why they were deleted and by whom
4). An appeal process to another Mod if you are not happy with a deletion

Basically the first photos to go should be those out of focus ones, with 7 other out of focus shots of exactly the same unremarkable big cat, in an unremarkable enclousre, uploaded by same new, excited (usually young) member...

I recommended Snowleopard because he cares the most and in my experience you make the mod the person willing to invest the most time, but whatever...