Hi! I'm creating the POTY2007 offline archive. There will be some text on the front page. See User:Bryan/POTY2007/archive. Help in spelling, grammar, things that need to be mentioned, things that I wrote that are absolutely nonsense, etc are welcome. But tomorrow evening is the dead line :) -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When does the final round of voting end? When it turns January 25 GMT, or some other time zone? I can't wait to find out the winner, practically slavering at the mouth here :) Moxfyre01:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Voting has ended, but we need some hours to allow time for people to report sockpuppets and so on. So ASAP... we will put something on the main page too, as well as here, and the mailing lists. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How did you like the voting system? How did you find it that you could vote for as many images as you want? What should be improved for next year? What should stay next year? -- Bryan (talk to me) 08:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, let me be the first to kick in:
The voting software worked quite good. I think the use of custom software is highly preferred over wiki-based voting. If everybody could vote for anything we would have to count 30,000 votes. Been there, done that, only with 1,500 votes, and it is a pain.
The system of emails worked reasonably well. There were some problems on some wikis which got resolved quickly. Some users had problems enabling email, but I think it was way better then the horrible system of 2006.
Keeping the votes anonymous was one of my stupidest ideas of this year. It's not like were organizing a presidential election.
PR went quite good. Thanks to a large organization we were able to reach about 1200 distinct Wikimedians. We initially forgot to notify the actual authors of the FPs, but also that got solved.
Translations were awesome :)
We forgot to discuss some stuff on beforehand and we had some contradicting statements on different pages, unfortunately, but we were able to settle everything on time. POTY 2008 preparation should also probably start in October.
Thank you Bryan and Pfctdayelise for your enormous effort on making everything go so smoothly and for mobilizing the community into this, thus making it a real cross-wiki event. As far as I am concerned, I'll look forward to repeat it all in October :). Patríciamsg13:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The voting software was a real joy to use, and was a great success. Thanks to Bryan and Pfctdayelise for all the effort they've put in.
Just a few thoughts for next time:
Start preparation early, and allow FPs up to November only. The publicity value of the results is higher if they can be announced in early January. Then, for subsequent years, the period runs from Nov to Nov.
Consider category prizes next time.
Does anyone know how to get effective sponsorship, so we can offer real prizes?
One of the votors commented "BTW: a single vote for 1/28 photos can not accurately determine a second place.". I think that's right, and that next year we might allow users to vote for 3 images in the final (1st=5 points; 2nd= 3 points; 3rd = 1 point). --MichaelMaggs17:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I thought the voting software was very well done, and the whole process well managed. I like Michael's idea of choosing between a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for the final round, and of somehow awarding prizes. At any rate, thanks to you guys for spending so much time with this. Who won? :) --Tom (talk - email) 17:57, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Re MichaelMaggs: I think the reason that we did not start on January 1 was that I was away then ;) We discussed sponsorship before, but I think nobody did something with it. Would be really cool if Canon could offer something like a camera :) I agree on the last point about the multiple votes. Remember me on time in advance so that I can write the software to do so.
Re Tom: Will be announced when pfctdayelise is awake again. I'm currently in converstation with Brion Vibber to get the archive of all the images on download.wikimedia.org, and I would prefer to have that announced simultaneously. Very likely shortly after midnight UTC.
First congrats all round, things worked well :-). A few points:
) Not sure why email/token was necessary, being logged in should be sufficient id (problematic for me as email goes to a different machine than I use for wiki stuff).
) Do not know why voting needs to be kept secret, surely less contentious than many other activities on wikimedia (especially the initial FP promotion)
) I would not object if running totals were kept secret though, releasing daily updates must have at least a small effect on voting patterns. But release all info, including daily totals, when process finished.
) I was not clear about first round voting. I would have liked to vote on images over a number of sessions, so that I had time to go through each individually at full size etc. I was not sure what would happen if I voted in one section, then came back the next day and voted on some more (perhaps needing a new token). Would the new votes invalidate the earlier ones? If I voted for the same thing twice would it be discounted or only one vote be counted? Perhaps it was documented, but I didn't see it (yes I could have asked ;-)
) On the final vote I was not sure whether I got three votes or one, had to go back from the voting page to find out.
) I was thinking that as a computer is doing the counting anyway, why not use a "Single tranferable voting" system (STV) where we rank our votes (1st,2nd,3rd, 4th etc). To work out the final ranking, the software then does something like counts up the votes for each image, then for the voters who voted for the image with least votes: looks at who their second choice was and uses that instead. This is iteratively carried out until there are the number of winners left that you require (eg 3 in our case). Slightly more sophisticated than weighted voting. --Tony Wills22:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that was surprising to me :) I never expected this image to win. But then it is just a great image. Note that until the last day the squirrel was 2nd and that only the last 24 hours it was beaten by New York -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:43, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just FYI, the author of the first place image has been missing from the English Wikipedia since last June, and didn't specify an email address. --Tom (talk - email) 22:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am dissatisfied with the results as they are inconsistent with the FPC votes. It looks like those who reviewed it did not know what digital noise and the like were. New York, for example, was badly done and unsharp from a technical point of view and imho should never have made it into the final. If there was one more oppose vote, it would never even have qualified for FP (!), let alone POTY. Some nominators of the squirrel shot have also denounced it, describing it as 'cute' with little substance or low quality. I cannot imagine how anyone who tried to view the Peugeot at full res supported it, with the surprisingly low resolution delisting should be considered. (I would oppose the delisting btw - mitigating enough for FP, not mitigating enough for POTY final). The only image I found without any technical flaws was the cow in Switzerland, which I supported. FP Nomination: 25 support. Unfortunately, it seems that POTY is not a choice of choosing the best and most valuable among the FPs but rather judging on the thumbnail, mostly by inexperienced users who have little idea of photography or animation. I recommend making this more like FPC, with all of the comments visible and only inviting Commons to prevent the rising to the top of images that are simply 'cute' or cool as a thumbnail. POTY should be about honouring the best of the best, not what an inexperienced user who has edits on another Wikimedia Projectbut knows little about photography thinks is nice. I recommend a complete revamp, with only a handful of the most prolific FPC reviewers participating, collaborating and choosing the images as it can be clearly seen imho that those of best technical and compositional (photographical) quality were not chosen. (As I am quite often on FPC, if my system were implemented, I would happily give up my right to vote as I did not suggest it to possibly get more power on Commons). Thanks for your attention, Freedom to share22:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The image doenst sucks. But it's one of the pictures in the final who were less encyclopedic. So I can't understand the result. Nothing against the picture itself. But it's Art, not Science. Marcus Cyron22:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK. Then I can't understand, why we delete personal pictures with comments like "this isn't MySpace"? If the enceclopedic usability isn't important, we must accept all pictures, if they are uploaded under a free licence. Marcus Cyron13:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Quite tough words. I am actually quite happy that the technical quality was not so important in that contest. Can you tell me what exactly is wrong about the composition of the winner photos? Btw many famous photos in the photography history till today are technically not perfect... many are not 100% sharp or even unsharp....or have overexposed parts. (I dont say that I agree with every winner photo)--AngMoKio22:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What I am saying is that imo POTY should simply be an extension of FPC. New York, for example, would have lost the nomination for FP if it only had one more oppose vote. I feel that it is strange and significantly out of place if the nomination history is inconsistent with the POTY performance. First photo's nomination performance: 13 support, 4 oppose, 0 neutral. Last photo's nomination performance: 15 support, 1 oppose, 0 neutral. The photo of the cow in the middle had the most support votes I saw during an FP nomination with 25 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral, the nomination you can see here [1]. It seems (unfortunately) that the criteria for POTY are different from the criteria we seem to have assumed when choosing FPs, which I feel is heavily disappointing. Freedom to share23:00, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I second AngMoKio. This is about which picture "looks" the best overall. These pictures have already passed the FP critera, and just because one is not perfect from a technical perspective does not mean it is a bad. --Tom (talk - email) 23:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not standing up on a table and shouting 'It's all about technical quality', [insert favourite swear word] the rest. :-) All I am saying is that I believe that POTY should be much more in line with FPC than it currently is. Freedom to share23:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The fact is that not many people understand the technical aspects of photography or graphic design. However, let me say again that these images are already of reasonably high technical quality since they have gone through the FP process. It's not as if this competition is open to every piece of media on the Commons. --Tom (talk - email) 23:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but it's aiming to choose and reward the best of the best, it's not like everything that goes for FP is POTY level. Unfortunately I agree with you that not everybody understands the technical aspects and that is why I feel that only those at Commons should vote for POTY. Should we vote if there was a Wikipedia Article of the Year (WOTY) even though we know little about making and maintaining articles there (assuming we do not have an account there)? Freedom to share23:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If the New York picture became second in this contest but barely became an FP, maybe it is the people who choose FP's that err. Maybe they have some sort of strange, irrelevant criteria? Samulili08:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and I find it quite interesting that more than 1/6 FP's are images of bugs, but there was only 1 bug image among the 28 finalists... Samulili09:08, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reason why there are so few bug photos among the finalists is that we have so many really very good macro shots by Richard, Alvesgaspar & Co. So the votes for bugs are spread over nearly the whole "bugs-category" and not just on one or two good ones. --AngMoKio17:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(reset) Hey people, mellow down will ya? :) POTY is the collection of FP. If some pictures went to the final without "deserving", then maybe it's the FP process that needs to be reviewed. To make a further selection after FP is just cumbersome, I'm sorry. The problem (?) is deeper in the root. Patríciamsg23:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO if POTY is not in line with FPC, then perhaps it is the FPC values that should be reviewed; is the process too insular?, working on values made up internally instead of what matters to the real world? :-) --Tony Wills23:38, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Needless to say, articles are considerably different from images. Pictures transcend the traditional boundaries that separate us from one another, such as language, culture, etc. As the old saying goes (and forgive my cliche), a picture is worth a thousand words. You don't have to be an "artiste" to enjoy an image or to find something beautiful. Let's not be elitist. --Tom (talk - email) 00:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. I feel that we need to be much more elitist when selecting the best of the best photos. This should be Commons-only at least, not the whole of the Wikimedia. If you contributed towards Commons, you should be able to vote here. Not doing that would be like inviting everyone of every political orientation to vote for the Republican presidential nominee. Freedom to share11:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
POTY is NOT FPC. Of course not. It targets a completely different public. But does it have to be a reflection of FPC, I think not. I would have chosen a radical different set of pics for the final, in this agreeing with Freedom to share on technical quality. But POTY is a different process. You shouldn't compare both. People obviously took their pick based primarily on looking at the thumbnails. So be it. I doesn't mean FPC is flawed, it only says something about the voters. Lycaon01:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that we should have a discussion on what is wrong with POTY and what goals we have for next time before holding the next vote. We should have a set of drafted rules like we have in FPC, and it should not be just an issue of whether someone likes a photo or not. Freedom to share11:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I only read Freedom to share's comment in detail, so forgive me if I ignore remarks made by others. I agree with FTS that POTY was more a popularity contest than a quality contest. It is something that reminds me of something that happens in real competition as well. In some other competitions (not specifically photography, but also other sorts of culture/art) there is usually a winner selected by the public and one selected by a professional jury. Not seldom do differ the winners from both, resulting in entirely different winners. This is not a bad thing, one will always see that there is a difference between the professionals and the public. Often one hears criticism (often justified) like FTS that the public only choses the "pretty" things, instead of the best.
I think FST has a valid point in this, and for next year we might be able to have two prices, one selected by the general public and one by "professionals". That leaves us the question who those professionals are. It is in a wiki environment common that everybody can participate, whether one knows a lot or less. Do we only allow people who have X contributions to FPC? Or people who have created at least one FP, or people who leave a detailed comment on why they select an image.
So I think that it would be very hard to have a more professional POTY competition in a wiki environment. But that does not mean that we could not try it. If you have some good ideas, it would be great to experiment with this and see whether a "professional" picture of the year would be a success :) -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Bryan, thanks for reading my message and supporting me when many simply opposed me. I feel that your idea is interesting and that there should be a 'people's choice' and 'judges' choice'. For example, the people would choose the finalists, while the judges would be experienced featured picture reviewers and the members of 'meet our photographers/illustrators'. Under experienced we could do something like 200 reviews or over, only you would have to create a filter which calculates how many different images they have reviewed. (I hope that's not too much work :) I am thinking of holding maybe even two separate elections, one for everyone and one just for the 'pro reviewers'. The 'pro reviewers' one would be much more complex, with everybody discussing the image (not in real time of course) in the final and a group choice being made (or the majority of the group deciding) on a finalist. Freedom to share21:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea, if we had the financial resources. Donations, anyone? :) Also I wish we could arrange a sponsor but then people would start complaining that this is advertising, cannot be done on Wikimedia etc. It would be great if Canon or Nikon could offer us a lens or camera. The best would be if you could win a Sigma lens because they can be done for many mounts. Freedom to share22:46, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need financial resources to get votes from real professionals. All it takes is sending a couple of e-mails to well-known photographers around the globe, followed by voting tokens, that would put their votes in a special category. What do professionals think about the whole Commons idea of giving high quality work away for free is a different question, though :-) Anyway, having one award chosen by 'community photographers' would be nice as well. --che04:04, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I like Bryan's idea of having two prizes. As long as we can have a competition "for the public, by the public", I wouldn't oppose having an "elitist" side to it. Just remember that Commons is a lot built on contributions from users from other communities (Wikipedia, mainly, of course) and I don't think they'd be happy to be cut off from this event. Patríciamsg12:14, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"New York City at night" on my desktop now. Best city picture I've seen by now. Reminds me of Sin City. Thank you! ~~Subfader
Well there's no accounting for taste. The winning image of Broadway Tower is a competent photograph but it's nothing special. It would look great in a Cotswolds tourist brochure, but how it could come top of the pile in a line up like this is bewildering. Take the running bear shot, as just one example. The photographer had one fleeting instant to capture this amazing shot, and did so with compositional skill and sharp focus. On a clear day on Broadway Hill, our winner had all the time in the world to set up his shot. But I guess the majority rules and the majority resides firmly in the middle of the road.
POTY 2007 was almost flawless. Contrarily to what happened in last year’s competition, the voting system was effective and safe, and there were no significant complaints or difficulties reported by users. Also, the galleries and results were well organized and informative. For that we should congratulate the organizers and participants. Still … the competition was boring. Much attention was given to the details of the voting system, so that the problems of last year would not happen again, and little to the entertainment side of it. Even now, that the final results are known for some time, I see little publicity and almost no comments from the users.
The result was a smooth, aseptic but uninteresting event. Due to a policy of secrecy, feedback from the on-going voting process was not made available for everybody (publishing this kind of info in a mailing list whose existence wasn’t even known by many of the users, including myself, was not serious). This decision prevented authors and voters from following closely the performance of their preferred pictures, and also from adjusting their votes to make them more effective, according to the running results, thus killing most of the fun.
POTY should be like an annual Commons party, with fun and participation from many users. That was my wish when I first suggested this contest, and must confess some regret for this model being so different from the original idea. I still believe, though I suspect being part of a minority, that we should adopt the prevailing culture in Wikimedia, where polls are completely open and people can change their opinion during the voting process. To allow more experienced users to influence other people (I almost dare to say to “educate”) in the way a picture should be evaluated, for instance by drawing their attention to less obvious details only perceived in full size, is a good thing in my opinion. Remember that we are selecting pictures, not a president
I also believe, like some others, that the COM:FPC community should have a major role in defining the POTY’s model and organizing the event. If that is not happening now we can only blame ourselves. Maybe we should, like the actual committee did for POTY 2007, start the POTY 2008 preparation as soon as possible. Alvesgaspar18:26, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you that we were to secret with everything. THat was, imho unecessary, but something I only recognized at the end of the competition. I would like for next year a system where more discussion is involved. I am however not sure about how we can combine a high amount of voters with discussion. If we employ wiki based voting again we are in deep trouble like in 2006 ;) If we use external software, the chances of discussion are much lower. If somebody has a suggestion about how to do this, please suggest in an early stage so that we can implement it. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be much more fun if the results were announced at point midnight. I actually stayed up, hoping for them to be announced then and it would be much more fun if we could have a countdown system and the revealing of the results at midnight. Freedom to share21:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How about a very simple sort of commenting system, i.e. those which are on blogs, or even a simple BBS type of "reply" system for each image? Implemented into this current system, yet with a link underneath it which says "xx replies". Just a thought. --Tom (talk - email) 00:32, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not pick up Alvesgaspar's idea, above, of a 'jury prize' in addition to the popular vote prize? I'm less than keen, though, on getting outside professional photographers to make up the jury, as many will not be naturally in favour of our overall 'free content' aims. However, we do have a ready-made source of jury members who have proved themselves both excellent photographers/illustrators and who have also made significant contributions to Commons themselves - namely those featured on Commons:Meet our photographers and Commons:Meet our illustrators. These require a minimum of 10 and 5 FPs respectively. Let's invite everyone who has an entry on one of those two pages to form the jury (of course, jury members would not be allowed to vote for their own pictures). This would have a nice side effect of encouraging more users to post their own work as FP candidates in order to become eligible to serve on the jury. --MichaelMaggs18:17, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that certain well-known and prolific FPC reviewers should join in as well such as Beyond Silence, B.Navez, Durova etc. There should be an edit counter made for reviewing FPCs and those who reviewed 100 or more or something of that type would be eligible, too. For the prize, maybe we could attract the sponsorship of a camera/lens manufacturer such as Sigma (because they produce lenses for many different mounts). Freedom to share18:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hélàs, there is a little detail which prevents most members of MOP to be part of the juri: they normally participate in the contest :(( -- Alvesgaspar19:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I said "of course, jury members would not be allowed to vote for their own pictures"! And it would be a very good way to get the FPC regulars involved with the competition. --MichaelMaggs19:44, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I think FPC regulars (of which I consider myself a member of) I feel form an integral part of Commons: they help the MOPs to become what they are and they classify the good from the exceptional. Just a bit of advertising for us, Freedom to share22:29, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Of course they won't be allowed to vote for their own pictures. Even so, it is not formally correct for them to participate IMO. Another prblem is how a small group of voters (20, 30?) is going to select one picture (or a group of finalist pictures) from a set of more tham 500. The only way I see now is using some kind of iterative process, with various voting and discussion sessions, like the election of the Pope. -- Alvesgaspar08:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Or maybe select the finalist by all Wikimedians, just like now. And then in the final there can be a separate voting by everybody and a selection by the jury? -- Bryan (talk to me) 10:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Alves, I think that this should be a similar process to a papal enclave (even though we do not have the divine rights, but that's pictures and not Popes, so that's ok :) but that the jury prize should only apply to the finalists maybe. Freedom to share16:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, that's what I had in mind. Finalists chosen by popular vote, but with a special jury prize selected from among the finalists by a panel made up of Featured Photographers & Illustrators. There should be no question of conflict if jury members can't vote for their own images. --MichaelMaggs17:55, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well there's no accounting for taste. The winning image of Broadway Tower is a competent photograph but it's nothing special. It would look great in a Cotswolds tourist brochure, but how it could come top of the pile in a line up like this is bewildering. Take the running bear shot, as just one example. The photographer had one fleeting instant to capture this amazing shot, and did so with compositional skill and sharp focus. On a clear day on Broadway Hill, our winner had all the time in the world to set up his shot. But I guess the majority rules and the majority resides firmly in the middle of the road.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 78.105.167.173 (talk • contribs) at 19:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Download![[1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/Image:CH_cow_2.jpg){kind=link}