Commons talk:Picture of the Year/2012

  Picture of the Year 2012

   The Seventh Annual Wikimedia Commons POTY Contest

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Thanks for your participation! The 2012 winners have been announced!

Results Voting eligibility · I need help

Introduction & dates
Voting eligibility · FAQ

Round 1:

Galleries

Round 2

:

Finalists

 · Results

Organising committee

Rules · Translations · Discussion

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Discussions

Template:POTY2012/en

I have trouble translating the following line:

 | afterR2        = Voting is over. Thanks for your participation! We are determining the finalist.

I think it may be wrong. Since the finalist(s) are determined after round 1 and compete in round 2. I think what will be determined after round 2 is the "winner" or the "final results".

Also, where will

 | voteFormat       = Vote for using

be used? It is difficult to translate without knowing how it is used. /Ö 09:56, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ö,

1. fixed. You are of course right. A mistake of mine that persists since POTY 2011 :P
2. voteFormat was used before we were sure that POTY App properly works. See Special:Permalink/71596348 for how it was used.
3. Yes we need a translation FAQ and a lot of templates have to be revised so they can be simply reused next year.

-- Rillke^(q?) 21:20, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Unable to vote

I'm eligible, but unable to vote, because my eligible, unified username ("Eivind" on en and elsewhere) was already taken here, so I'm "Agrajag" here. Thus the system doesn't recognize me as eligible, and I can't vote.

Is there some way to fix this ? --Agrajag (talk) 15:00, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is not. You can attempt to usurp your username on Commons, but due to the large vote volume, we are unable to accept voters that do not meet this criteria as determined by the official POTY 2012 voter eligibility tool. Sorry. Mono 18:24, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Surely the number of users with this problem would be fairly small? And it would be a trivial thing to check that he really was Agrajag elsewhere. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Usurping a username is only possible when the username hasn't been used for good-faith contributions. Thus it seems users who happen to have colliding usernames are permanently banned from voting. That is sad. Isn't there some way to link different usernames, so that it's recognizes that Agrajag@Commons is identical to Eivind@SUL ? --Agrajag (talk) 14:50, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

No, and I had some problems with that when SUL first came in because "Philosopher" had already been taken by a few users on various projects. (Fortunately, I was able to usurp them - this doesn't happen for everyone.) The commonly-accepted "patch" is to make edits from the each username validating the other (say, "Eivind" on en.wiki says "Agrajag on Commons is me" and vice versa). From Mono's comment, that patch doesn't seem to be accepted for POTY, though I can't imagine why it isn't. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:35, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

You must be kidding me? That's completely unacceptable and completely against the spirit of both this competition and the movement as a whole. We've been doing this for steward elections and other WM wide votes all of the time on meta by allowing someone to specifically spell out on their main userpage and the local user page that the two names are connected. Personally I don't think we should have ANY requirements on voting, our audience is much wider then active editors. Jamesofur (talk) 23:12, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

+1. Anyone charged with being an election official has a moral obligation to think about voter accessibility. When there is a simple solution to a voter access challenge, it should be accepted readily. The obligation of a voting official is to help qualified people to vote, not to restrict them from it. I say this, by the way, from the perspective of one who has sat on four successive Board of Trustees election committees, and also the largest vote in WMF history, which had more than 24,000 votes, as I recall. So I know how hard it is. But I also know there's no excuse for not so doing. Philippe (talk) 23:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

• Hi, I've contacted other members of the committee to determine whether there is consensus to exempt editors who prove their SUL status from this requirement. However, we must all be on the same page about what we are doing or else votes may be stricken during our vote verification process. At this time, I am simply going with the established rules. I will update you when I get a response from other committee members. Thanks, Mono 00:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Here goes my official opinion: We shouldn't create exceptions to the rules because

1. Is highly unlikely that this will change the outcome of the elections (really, a vote? When we had a POTY decided by a single vote?)

2. Is a hell of a overjob to check all the voters by hand (and believe me, I KNOW!!)

3. The rules were agreed upon for more than 3 months now, which is more than enough time to get his commons account and make 75 edits if someone wants to vote that much.

4. Even the BoT election (which btw uses a external platform and not a wiki page) tells you to go to the wiki you are eligible to vote (and check that automatically) - There are NO, and I do repeat - NO MANUAL CHECKING of eligibility in the BoT elections.

5. We should not change the rules only because is a "important person" who is asking.

I do however could make a exception, IF:

• Jamesofur and Philippe promises to check all the voters (3583 in R1 and probably a similar number in R2) themselves. I believe is only fair since they are the one complaining is a outrageous that we don't do it by hand. Béria Lima ^msg 05:40, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Beria, nobody's asking you to check all 3,000. We're asking you to work with people who identify that they have a problem, as this one did. Philippe (talk) 09:52, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the response but I'm sorry, I don't see a single legitimate reason there not to do this.

1, Yes, it isn't likely to change the result but why does that matter? This is to allow the rare exceptions to still take part because as a movement we try to let everyone take part, because that's IMPORTANT. That's important whether it changes the vote or not, they are part of the community and deserve to have their voice heard.

2. As Philippe said, have a separate place they can vote or something, allow the automated process to work for the 99.99% and the remainder will require little effort to deal with.

3. You may have agreed upon the rules (which I still think are bad) long ago but that doesn't mean that everyone else knew about it. To tell someone "oh, if you had magically known this 3 months ago when we decided you would have had plenty of time" is meaningless and patronizing.

4. I think you misunderstand the role of the election committee in votes using SecurePoll, at least the ones I've been part of. We (Myself, Philippe and the election committee) MANUALLY checked roughly 24,000 votes for the image filter referendum looking for sockpuppets and eligibility questions. I have been told that the BoT election committee has to do the exact same thing (to EVERY vote).

5. I agree with you that it shouldn't matter who asks, but when someone points out that something doesn't make sense you should listen whomever says it. Most people are never going to see this talk page or know that it exists so by default the amount of people commenting are going to be very low. The amount of people running into this issue are going to be very low too but the common sense would be to make accommodations for people who should be totally eligible but are unable to do so because of technical issues that are NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN. Jamesofur (talk) 10:19, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Beria: there's no need to start shouting to get your point across. When Mono told me about this yesterday I didn't even need to think to say that yes, we should be prepared to make exemptions like this. It's not about changing the results of an election, it's about being fair to all eligible candidates, regardless of something technical like a SUL conflict. As both James and Philippe have said above, we don't necessarily need to actively search for these voters - if they come to us with a problem we can investigate it and sort it out on a case-by-case basis. A couple of diffs for confirmation isn't really something that will take up much of our time to confirm. Your point 3. is just completely BITEy to newbies, the banners that Mono has created are very noticeable and so I was someone who had never been to Commons before seeing the POTY banner, having an experience like that would probably be enough to convince me not to contribute to Commons any time soon. I presume you are referring to Philippe or James as the "important" people, but remember that this request originally came from Agrajag who was merely seeking help, from the "important" people in charge, the POTY Committee and we should be doing what we reasonably can to provide this help. Thehelpfulone 10:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

• I do agree with Beria that if this is so important to the WMF, they should provide financial support or technical staff support to the committee beyond simply hosting. The voting technology we use now was written in JavaScript by a dedicated editor for free and hacked on top of MediaWiki's locked down system. Otherwise, hire people to check the votes - it's rather silly that the WMF & staff think that our unpaid volunteer efforts are below there standards. Mono 19:10, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
• I am very disappointed by the reactions and comments from Beria and Mono here. This is a known issue that is particularly acute on the Commons and Meta projects, and it would be expected that any vote inviting users from all of the other WMF projects would draw users whose SUL is not complete. Alternate arrangements should have been made, just as they are for steward elections on Meta, which are occurring simultaneously; that's what Wikimedians should be able to expect from votes on our collective media repository. The downside of this amazing voting system is that unfortunately does not accommodate tens of thousands of eligible voters. Please let's find a way around this; if the votes can't go directly on the image pages, then have a special page for eligible voters who are unable to vote using the software. Disenfranchising users isn't the answer here, even if it's unlikely their individual votes would change the outcome; however, by properly franchising them, there may be enough of them participating that there *could* be a change in the overall rankings. The same should also apply to users who are unable or unwilling, for security or other reasons, to utilize javascripts - a criterion not mentioned in the voter eligibility description.

  The POTY selection process, being advertised cross-wiki, is an excellent way to attract new participants to Commons. But when someone following the links is then told they cannot partipate in the vote because the election administrators have deliberately chosen to disenfranchise them rather than accommodate them for a long-known issue with SUL, that sends a very different message about this project. Risker (talk) 03:03, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

  • It looks an easy task, but may really cause very difficult problems. Eligibility checking between projects has been quite a hard task for these poty years, that nearly caused the contest crash every year. I hope WMF will enable SUL between different usernames. Thanks.--miya (talk) 05:11, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
    • I didn't say anything but... it's in the works :) barring issues it will be here before the next POTY (far before) and unattached accounts won't really exist anymore. Jalexander (talk) 23:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Here is my personal idea to solve this problem (not the Committee's consensus)

1. If you are eligible (on enwiki, for example) but unable to vote on POTY Gallery because of username collision, click "Statistics" button and you'll find a small window open on the image.
2. Clcik the "Votelist" link on the small window, and you'll jump to the image's individual votepage.
3. If the "Vote" button is also inactive, cast a vote manually with a summary which explains the situation like "+1 POTY vote - a manual vote - eligible as "foo" on enwiki".

This is how you can vote manually. After or before the voting, connect your userpages on Commons and on a wiki where you are eligible to and fro in order to prove your eligibility. Then you can request for confirmation of your vote here, and the Committee members would check your eligibility and decide whether the vote should be counted. But I don't hope to advertise this solution out of this page which would surely cause a mess like a few years ago.--miya (talk) 16:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Aye, this is exactly how I'd see it work in a perfect world (well as perfect as it is in that we still don't have it automated) Jalexander (talk) 23:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with Jamesofur and Philippe. You need to make reasonable exemptions. How would this make checking accounts more difficult anyway? PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:25, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Social media share buttons

Some social media share buttons could be removed: "Digg", "Sina Weibo" and "identi.ca". Only a few people use these services. Jml3 (talk) 21:00, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Request addition of cy to table

According to the translators' FAQ we need to request the addition of our language to your table of translations, when translating. So please add cy(Welsh). Lloffiwr (talk) 17:09, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Pair of Merops apiaster feeding.jpg

Something really seems odd about Pair of Merops apiaster feeding.jpg having such a strong lead in votes -- it placed #24 the first time around and certainly doesn't strike me as being among the top five finalists.   — C M B J   13:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I did a quick spot check of some of the voters; the six ones I checked were eligible and we verify this later. One possible explanation would be that many voters in R1 did not go to the birds page, instead favoring landscapes, buildings, and people. Another possible explanation is that we have voters with different preferences in images. However, it seems like there isn't a problem with the voting there. The POTY committee carefully tallies and certifies the results of the contest at the end. Mono 18:57, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't doubt that the voters are eligible, but I'd assume it's possible that the picture is alone in having received substantial promotion somewhere externally.   — C M B J   06:30, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, with all the share-links this is possible and one can't say it would be undesired behaviour. -- Rillke^(q?) 10:44, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought about that, too, but the share links alone don't provide much advantage to a particular image. The shares will always look like this:

"Look what I found on Wikimedia Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012/Finalists"

"Look what I found on Wikimedia Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012/Finalists/M%C3%A5b%C3%B8dalen,_2011_August.jpg"

In the former example, it's unlikely that much advantage would be conferred because a thumbnail would not appear and users would still be able to see all pictures. In the latter example, such votes would not be recorded as "+1 POTY vote - eligible on enwiki with 76+ edits - Vote through Commons:Picture of the Year/2012/Finalists - POTY App".   — C M B J   01:45, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Another thing to consider is that what makes the image especially notable (the insect in midair) is a small, easy-to-miss detail. With relatively few images to choose from in the second round, people probably pay more attention to each image, and thus are more likely to pick up on it. —tktktk 19:20, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

poor classification - category

File:Light painting gnangarra-1.jpg isnt a photograph of a city, its about a type of drawing using light. note the image description and name as well as the article in which its used. To have classified it by what was in the background of the image means that its was assessed by false presumption. In the future I suggest that care be taken about how images get categorised Gnangarra 20:33, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

{{Section resolved}}|Mono 16:47, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

• Whats resolved, you havent explained how/why my image was categorised into something unrelated to the subject. nor how such issues be address in the future. Gnangarra 05:24, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
  • File:Light painting gnangarra-1.jpg is one of the photos which are hard to categorize. You wrote it "isnt a photograph of a city, its about a type of drawing using light". But it looks odd to categorize it as "paintings" for it is three-dimensional and not similar to the two-dimensional images in "Paintings category". If not "cities", we might have categorized it as "sculptures" or "miscellaneous". // In the future, please make a comment before the R1 will start, so that the Committee can re-consider the category of your photo in time. Thanks.--miya (talk) 15:15, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

An argument for rethinking POTY methodology and possibly revisiting the 2012 finals

As someone who actually combed through almost every one of the ~1,000 pictures presented in Round 1, I would like to offer a few observations:

• Only a small minority of users can be presumed to have been willing or able to review an indiscriminate list of ~1,000 pictures, a significant portion of which were comparatively mediocre;
• Many of the highest quality pictures produced awkward thumbnails and/or were greatly undermined by a lack of accessible descriptions;
• Fewer than 5% of the pictures presented were allowed to advance as POTY candidates in Round 2;
• The difference between #44 and #88 was only 64 votes;
• A total of 528 pictures had more than 100 votes each.

Additionally, and as a matter of opinion, I find it particularly disheartening that not even one of the following pictures (some of which I personally failed to appreciate or outright overlooked) made it to a selective round of voting:

These galleries make reading the discussion difficult and are collapsed for usability. Mono 02:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

A Yeoman Warder in Tudor State Dress, from a series of Photochrom prints, c. 1890-1900 A self-portrait by Curiosity on Mars Rimstone formation near Saint-Marcel-d'Ardèche, France Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle in Ukraine A satellite image of the Dasht-e Kavir desert in Iran Berlin Cathedral during the Festival of Lights Berlin Cathedral during the Festival of Lights The cold dusty clouds from which stars form in the Carina Nebula The cold dusty clouds from which stars form in the Carina Nebula Posthumous official portrait of U.S. President John F. Kennedy Gotthard railway near Gurtnellen, Switzerland A state of the art wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42) A potter and his works in Madhya Pradesh, India Surinam horned frog (Ceratophrys cornuta) The New York City Metropolitan Opera House, 1937 The head shaman of Olkhon, Siberia Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) burrowing in sand "A package for Hitler" An Afghan elder sits outside his shop at the Anaba bazaar in Panjshir Province, Afghanistan Noble gases glowing in low pressure glass vials The staff of a Buryat shaman naer Ulan-Ude, Russia Mudskipper (Periophthalmus sp.) A Sartuul woman from the village of Tsagatuy, Russia A common sink drain in the open position Grande cascade de Tendon in the Vosges Mountains of France Sellin Pier in Rügen, Germany The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357

I believe that we have seriously erred in electing to bypass at least one intermediate round of elimination.   — C M B J   10:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

@CMBJ: You actually suggest redoing the 2012 vote? I can’t say I am a big fan of the idea. But I would certainly welcome it if you come up with a proposal for the POTY 2013

If I dare say, I think this is the problem with POTY: when it is run, many people are disappointed by how it is organised / have suggestions to make it better ; when the time comes to organise the next one, not many people step up to do it (and I thank the ones who do).

Jean-Fred (talk) 10:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I am not someone who bemoans complicated administrative decisions and I do genuinely appreciate the amount of energy that goes into orchestrating an operation of this scale. However, when a robotic self-portrait on Mars gets edged out by a deer in the first round of voting, I consider that to be indicative of a problem that calls into question the wisdom of declaring a winner.   — C M B J   11:06, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I realise my comment can sound a bit harsh for you − that was not my intention (sorry if it sounded a bit aggressive). Jean-Fred (talk) 17:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be a rule (for future POTYs, ofc) that if there are fewer than x% of the total that make it to the final round, an intermediate round will be triggered. I think there have been intermediate rounds in the past, but I don't recall for sure. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• The POTY committee welcomes ideas and proposals for improving the contest. However, we will not redo previous or ongoing rounds. We stand by our results as being fair and accurate; they were chosen by the greater Wikimedia community. Many exceptional images have been presented as choices for the 2012 Picture of the Year and we look forward to making each contest the best it can be. Mono 23:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I find it disingenuous that you would simply reaffirm support for the fairness and accuracy of a process that produced this outcome:

Support

Support

Oppose

Oppose

The Committee's position must at least be consistent with a reasonable interpretation of reality, even if we're going to move forward with results like this.   — C M B J   23:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I have some doubts regarding a particular finalist picture, see Commons:VP#POTY: Disqualify a finalist picture?... Gestumblindi (talk) 02:47, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

You are both free to join the committee next year and spend your time organizing the contest. There are a lot of features that could be implemented (e.g. allowing voters to translate the file description [crowdsourcing]). I am getting tired and I will certainly oppose disqualifying one picture just because it was displayed on the main page as POTD without any indication that it is a POTY candidate. At least not as long you can't prove that this lead to significantly relatively more votes for the file in question at the time it was displayed at the main page. -- Rillke^(q?) 10:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I strongly oppose redoing this finals and also to disqualify any image. But it is unlucky that one image is made image of the day during the contest and that should be avoided in the future. About the photos shown above I do think some of them are better than some in the final but unfortunately the masses tend to vote for photos that are of landscapes, sunsets, mammals or cute stuff. Technical or descriptive stuff as well as images requiring background facts have a harder time in most every contest. However I do have some suggestions. One could be to somehow force the voters in the first rounds to look into different categories so the votes are more evenly spread out or to look into a completely different kind of contest. A different approach could be for example this one: http://averater.se/test/ or one where there is only one round amd the winner there is the winner... - Averater (talk) 10:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Changed my image rating web site adress to: http://averater.se/image_rating/ - Averater (talk) 12:14, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

•  Comment - There is a marked difference between the goals and philosophy of POTY and those of Featured picture candidates. I know what I'm talking about because I had the original idea of POTY (in 2006) and also am a regular reviewer in FPC. While the first is a popularity contest open to everyone and aimed at giving visibility to Commons' galleries of media (and a little fun to its users and creators), the second is a specialized forum where a relatively small number of regulars (many of them talented photographers) evaluate pictures according to more or less detailed criteria. I don't find particularly elegant or useful to show here the two lists of pictures (which are all FP): those "obviously not worth" of being in the final; and those which should be there but are not. That is nothing more than your personnal opinion! Of course, the process can probably be improved and you have already been welcomed to the discussion for next year! -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 12:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I recognize the difference between FP and POTY -- my above assessments are actually based on past POTY outcomes, and not FP candidates in general. I've been loosely following the contest since its original inception and have never previously been anything other than fascinated by its finalists. This year, however, I cannot say the same.   — C M B J   14:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Comment I am 100% in agreement with CMB. I thought maybe it was just me. When I saw the finalists for Round 2, I thought I was looking at images up for a Quality Picture tag. Absolutely none of these are striking or the "best of the best of the best". Last week, I noticed a few comments above where people had stated they had trouble voting for just one because of the power of the finalist images, and I was scratching my head. I had trouble voting for just one as well, but for the very opposite reason. The only reason I returned to the discussion board today was because I wanted to see if anyone else had posted similar topics, so I was greatly relieved to see that not only did someone else feel the same way about this year's POTY results, but that they (CMB) even included several examples of images that are mind-blowing and astounding in their color, their composition, everything that makes an image stand above the rest. This isn't necessarily the fault of any one group running this show, I think this is possibly the result of the POTY becoming more popular and, like CMB stated, but to use my own wording, the short attention span of voters who are not clicking into the images and enjoying them full size before deciding on voting on them. In short, this year's POTY finalists were absolutely disappointing, and I didn't have the moxie to speak up before now. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 19:29, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Obviously it would be an exercise in futility to redo this year's POTY. We had rules and they were followed. This is fair. I would suggest that commuter phrase their comments in a "here's how we can make it better for next time" mode. Additionally, I'm seeing a fair amount of "I think the wrong photos were chosen." Instead of giving us your subjective opinion that you disagree with others' subjective opinions, please provide concrete guidelines for how you think it should be done differently next time. Personally, I am unconvinced by the arguments that have been made so far, which seem to amount to "I don't like it" or "everyone else is wrong", but if there are concrete and objective proposals, perhaps I could be persuaded. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

My own statement above was merely a comment, and opinion only, and I apologize for taking up so much room with it. (I'd originally started with a phrase saying that I was not going to add anything intelligent to the conversation.) I merely wanted to show support for CMB. As for actual constructive criticism to the project, that's something that would require a little time on my part to think about. I mean, right off the bat, maybe a "picture of the year" is not a good idea in and of itself—what constitutes the best picture ever, that was awarded FP status of that year? How can a picture of a skull ever compete against an HDR image of mist and water and mountains? It can't, and it won't. Maybe the entire project needs to be redesigned to reflect this. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 20:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I cherish POTY and consider it to be one of our collective projects' greatest treasures; I'm sufficiently convinced that it is the most meaningful pictorial contest of this era. I also believe that a picture of any subject matter and from any corner of the world has a very real chance of winning. However, there were limitations of our methodology that became very apparent this year — and we must acknowledge them in order to right wrongs and progress.   — C M B J   07:46, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

---

• I am closing this discussion as  Not done. The POTY committee certifies the accuracy of our results. While some editors may not like the selection, it was made by the Wikimedia community. This is the purpose of the POTY contest: to determine the most popular image. With elections, the majority decides and sometimes they are wrong. However, we will not be redoing the results for 2012 and discounting the selection of thousands of editors. Philosopher's comment addresses my rationale for ending the "I don't like the results" discussion; I have copied it below. Please contribute constructive suggestions for the future in the section below. Mono 23:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Extended content

Obviously it would be an exercise in futility to redo this year's POTY. We had rules and they were followed. This is fair. I would suggest that commuter phrase their comments in a "here's how we can make it better for next time" mode. Additionally, I'm seeing a fair amount of "I think the wrong photos were chosen." Instead of giving us your subjective opinion that you disagree with others' subjective opinions, please provide concrete guidelines for how you think it should be done differently next time. Personally, I am unconvinced by the arguments that have been made so far, which seem to amount to "I don't like it" or "everyone else is wrong", but if there are concrete and objective proposals, perhaps I could be persuaded. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I object to closing "an argument for rethinking POTY methodology and possibly revisiting the 2012 finals" as "the I don't like the results discussion" because the Committee formally disagrees with dissenting views.   — C M B J   03:03, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it is not fair to say "when a robotic self-portrait on Mars gets edged out by a deer in the first round of voting" because the deer was #13 with 427 votes (#1 in Mammals category) while the robotic portrait was #62 with 291 votes (#4 in Astronomy, satellite and outer space category). It means that there are 3 photos in the same category that really "edged out" the robotic portrait. Please be FAIR to ALL the candidates.

It is a good thing to review the results and propose would-be better ways to evaluate the candidates. There can be many alternative ways and rules to run the contest; yet any rules have its merits and demerits. I believe the 2012 rules were relatively good. The fact is that there are too many good photos featured in a year!

The Committee will surely welcome constructive feedbacks or proposals for the future. But I personally think revisiting or redoing the votings inadequate on this stage of the contest; especially when there is no one who seconds it. Please make a new section for your proposals or use a new page (Commons talk:Picture of the Year/2012/Feedback). Thanks.--miya (talk) 07:19, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Curiosity's relative categorical ranking itself is actually supportive of the concerns outlined above:

• In comparison with most POTY contests of yesteryear, we saw a substantial increase in the number of total candidates for user to filter through in the first round this year. We had 321, 514, 501, 890, 783, and 599 candidates in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, respectively, but we had 988 in 2012. This is a positive metric for our project since it indicates a more than three-fold increase in annual FPs over 6 years, and very much a favorable trend for POTY overall because it strengthens the pool of candidates, but it is also a factor that inherently limits the accuracy and rigor of a two-round model.

• At a glance, and after being desensitized by so many pictures like this and this, the rover appears at low resolution to just be some piece of miscellaneous equipment installed in the middle of the Mojave — whereas the other top three pictures in that category are very easily identifiable as significant in a filtration stage.

The point I'm trying to get across by comparing the deer with Curiosity is that, had the latter not been undermined by our process, it would have been a much stronger finalist. This is apparent to me by the facts that (a) the deer lost nearly 90% of its supporters when push came to shove, and (b) Curiosity depicts a scene that is at the forefront of contemporary human exploration. The idea is not to demean any candidate that users supported. The idea is to say that, because of our methodology alone, we missed out on the opportunity to present a number of uniquely remarkable and awe-inspiring pictures to our community and to the world — including the one of Curiosity, which I can personally say made at least two people's world stop for a moment. It is such pictures—those which stir up exquisite emotion, inspire extraordinary thought, and provoke spirited discussion—that have defined POTY as we know it.

As for redoing the finals, I was and still am willing to support such a measure with sufficient community support, but that has not been the primary focus of my commentary. I am more concerned with everyone being loosely on the same page, including the Committee, about the fact that an anomaly was observed and needs to be addressed in moving forward. This (a) reaffirms that we hold ourselves transparently accountable, and (b) ensures that we can always attain the very best results possible. I started the beginnings of a workshop three days ago with the intent of helping achieve this goal and look forward to collaborating in doing so, but again, it is requisite that there first be agreement.   — C M B J   14:12, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I checked Commons talk:Picture of the Year/2013#Workshop. It is nice to see specific (no vague) proposals. Yet please remember you have to check all the votes somehow - and I'd like to advise you to stick to script voting and tool checking. --miya (talk) 15:06, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I think there is little value in questioning the past results except to learn from them in order to do better. POTY is not something of such earth shaking importance that we can't tolerate some bad decisions here and there. My impression has been that the kludglyness of this process is mostly due to a lack of exceptional software to facilitate something which is a fundamentally challenging task. Making a representative and fair comparison of hundreds of images sounds like the sort of subject someone writes their PHD thesis on— and I've not seen it solved anywhere else. --Gmaxwell (talk) 11:26, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The results of R2 (Final)

Thanks to Rillke's javascript and followup and Kalan's counting tool, checking of the Final result was done almost automatically. There were several multiplevote which I checked here and corrected the count table. Please check the result in the pages below.

• Counting tool output: http://toolserver.org/~kalan/poty2012.f.html
• Commons:Picture of the Year/2012/Results/R2/gallery (large images - all results in the Final )
• Commons:Picture of the Year/2012/Results/R2/thumbnailtable (small image)
• Commons:Picture of the Year/2012/Results/R2/count (no images)
• Commons:Picture of the Year/2012/Results/R2/Voters (nonvoters)

If they are ok, we can release the result officially to the top page (Commons:Picture of the Year/2012) and announce the Final result. Great thanks to you and all the people who joined this contest.--miya (talk) 15:45, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe Template:POTY2012/state should be swithed to "end" state ? --Kaganer (talk) 12:42, 22 February 2013 (UTC)