I see that the Photographer's choice is now almost exclusively getting to one guy / one group of photographers. I don't say there is some cheating going on or anything similar, because in the end not a lot of votes are needed so if it's just a group of friends voting for each other's shots, this is not fromally against any rule but clearly not the spirit of Photographers's choice.
Especially as it is all other photographers that lose out in the end.
I would like to ask people to ease up a bit. Give everyone a chance! I can understand excitment for a friends shot, but there has to be limits.

No offense, but it had to be spoken out.

This is a topic that has raised before along with the fact that some photographers seem to dominate the top 5. PC is determined exclusively by viewer votes. As far as I know however, there is no minimum threshold for number of votes required for PC. Therefore, in the absence of any other votes for PC, an image that garners 2 votes could be selected. I do not have access to the votes, but perhaps another site crew member can chime in here.

It is also possible that photographers campaign for votes, or as you mentioned, groups of photographers vote for each other--very easy to do with exposure on social media. If there is a deliberate attempt to swing votes to certain photographers, or groups, I agree that it goes against the spirit of the activity.

Jehan

jelpee wrote:

It is also possible that photographers campaign for votes, or as you mentioned, groups of photographers vote for each other--very easy to do with exposure on social media. If there is a deliberate attempt to swing votes to certain photographers, or groups, I agree that it goes against the spirit of the activity.

Jehan

Well said, Jehan.

There have been speculations about this before and the consensus was that typically only few votes are required to get PC, which opens doors obviously. Seen from the site I would prefer to have some more variety there. Otherwise like Jehan I do not have any specific insights on this topic at the moment. We (normal screeners) can only see what Photographer's can see. So yes I am noticing certain trends as well, but other than that cannot say much (would be speculating).

Julien

^ pretty much what Jehan wrote. The crew does not have access to any PC vote information. The only solution is as many people as possible voting every day for photos they find worthy.

Thanks for your replies. I didn't expect /ask for crew actions to be taken.

I am rather asking the photographers in question to ease up a bit, for everyone's sake. After reading some other threads on here it seems like this is the result of a dispute between certain photographers (group of photographers). But again it is everyone else that loses out.

After all it is refreshing to see a deserving shot being on top of PC at the moment.... but I could bet money on whose shot will be next.

Hi ChrisKen,

Glad you spoke out. I've had a ton of the PC photos the last few weeks and it's quite the coincidence if you ask me. Let me start off with this. A particular member has been known to get the lionshare of Photographer's Choices for what seem like relatively vanilla (though nicely done) side on shots. While it is frustrating, I don't give a rats ass about it, nor would I ever say anything about it in public. That, however, changed as soon as this member called me out for "abusing" the priority system which was clearly proven to not be the case. In that thread, I mentioned it was rich for this member to be accusing me of anything, considering the fact that this member is known by many to abuse the Photographer's Choice system by using some form of algorithm or system. There is no history between this photographer and I. Not at all. I never have spoken to him even once before that exchange. See said exchange here:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1437169

Why am I telling you all of this? Here's why. Ever since I publically brought up his manipulation of the system, it seems he has stopped uploading and suddenly, some of my boring non-noteworthy photos are getting Photographer's Choice. Even photos that never even made the front page are starting to get it. This photographer is using whatever algorithm or system he uses for his photos to boost mine. I'm assuming he is doing it to make me look bad (which seems to be working sadly) but is actually arrogant enough to believe we don't recognize that it's his doing. It's truly despicable behavior of a megalomaniac who has no regard for this great website.

Here's an eye opening statistic to chew on:

Pre-Dec 19 thread (January 28th 2019 - December 19th 2019)... 7 PCs in 329 days

Post-Dec 19 thread (December 23rd 2019 - January 12th 2020).... 15 PCs in 20 days.

Either way. I'm sorry my photos are clogging up the front page. It's actually quite disappointing because some of those I am very proud of, but will never know if they were truly deserving of PC.

Dylan

Hello

Some has been said by the crew already. Yes, some campaign for votes others do not. It can be easily misused and I have had some photographers' contact me expressing their concern that images they believe are not worthy of being PC are being chosen for PC.

So just because a photographer has a few photos in a short period of time as PC doesn't mean they wanted them to be PC and they were concerned enough to write to me about it.

Again, it can easily be manipulated and I am going to review it and have the qualification standards changed. It is very clear there are some who collude and choose images to qualify. It is my aim to put a stop to that.

PanAm_DC10 wrote:

Hello

Some has been said by the crew already. Yes, some campaign for votes others do not. It can be easily misused and I have had some photographers' contact me expressing their concern that images they believe are not worthy of being PC are being chosen for PC.

So just because a photographer has a few photos in a short period of time as PC doesn't mean they wanted them to be PC and they were concerned enough to write to me about it.

Again, it can easily be manipulated and I am going to review it and have the qualification standards changed. It is very clear there are some who collude and choose images to qualify. It is my aim to put a stop to that.

Excellent!

A change is sorely needed. I'd be sad to see PC go away, so any possible way to discourage the abuse of the system would be wonderful.

Dylan

A system with a minimum of X votes would work best I think.

airkas1 wrote:

A system with a minimum of X votes would work best I think.

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

I think it would be sufficient to publish the voters. Would make it very transparent.
Otherwise upping the votes is not a bad idea, but what happens then if there aren’t enough votes?

Presently, in order to vote for PC, you have to be logged in. Also, the site only allows you to vote once per day. I presume therefore that the site knows who voted for PC on any particular day. If there are signs of abuse, perhaps the site administrators can review the voting data and check for irregularities and address it with the individual voters. It would be an alternative to making public those viewers that voted for a particular image. Transparency vs. Privacy???

Setting a minimum may only partially help since that threshold can just as easily be breached by either any kind of auotbot voting or group voting or voters registered under multiple accounts. And as Julien mentioned, what if there are insufficient number of votes to meet the minimum threshold?

Jehan

dgorun wrote:

airkas1 wrote:

A system with a minimum of X votes would work best I think.

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

But how do you know it isn’t some very experienced long term photographer with many photos on the site who is feeling upset by something and is doing this to make a point?

If PC voting does not attract a lot of votes every day and is subject to manipulation, then it might be time to do away with having the photographers select PC and replacing it with stand out shots selected by the screeners during the screening process.

Other option could be for screeners to tag stand out shots as being eligible for photographers choice and daily voting on these shots only, with a tagged photo still being eligible for PC for 7 days from date of upload.

Let me just say that with everyone that gathers lot of PC's saying that actually this is done by others to make him look bad, especially both parties that were having the argument that was linked above saying the same, it leaves everybody outside being left in a situation where one does not know what to think of that.
Honestly is there a "Mafia" that does vote to make people look bad? Do people even look bad with that (would there be this discussion if I hadn't started it?) or do they just get plenty of exposure?

Otherwise where are we when something that is supposed to be an award / a recognition from other photographers is supposedly used to make someone look bad. Again looked from the outside this is very weird.

And what is exactly the point one tries to make with that? @cpd

I am sorry, but I do not get that.

Again don't take me wrong; I am not accusing anyone of anything, I am just saying I am having a hard time to understand some motivations.

McG1967 wrote:

If PC voting does not attract a lot of votes every day and is subject to manipulation, then it might be time to do away with having the photographers select PC and replacing it with stand out shots selected by the screeners during the screening process.

Other option could be for screeners to tag stand out shots as being eligible for photographers choice and daily voting on these shots only, with a tagged photo still being eligible for PC for 7 days from date of upload.

As screener, I'd be OK with either of those!

Jehan

dgorun wrote:

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

So do I. Although I'm just assuming here, I think a large part of the (possible) manipulation can be eliminated if you make voting for PC elegible only for photographers with a minimum of 50/100/whatever number of photos in the database.

Other option could be for screeners to tag stand out shots as being eligible for photographers choice and daily voting on these shots only, with a tagged photo still being eligible for PC for 7 days from date of upload.

I like this idea as well, but I'm afraid this will lead to a lot of questions/discussion why a certain photo is/isn't eligible for PC. In that case it might be easier to replace Photographers Choice by Screeners Choice.

dutchspotter1 wrote:

dgorun wrote:

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

So do I. Although I'm just assuming here, I think a large part of the (possible) manipulation can be eliminated if you make voting for PC elegible only for photographers with a minimum of 50/100/whatever number of photos in the database.

Other option could be for screeners to tag stand out shots as being eligible for photographers choice and daily voting on these shots only, with a tagged photo still being eligible for PC for 7 days from date of upload.

I like this idea as well, but I'm afraid this will lead to a lot of questions/discussion why a certain photo is/isn't eligible for PC. In that case it might be easier to replace Photographers Choice by Screeners Choice.

Fully agree with what you said.

a) make votes really only for guys that have at least 100 shots.

b) Screners choice is not the best idea IMO.. This would only open discussion about favoritism and why one shot is selected and the other not. No matter if we make shots eligible or if we call it screeners choice. I mean in that case surely at some point also screener image would be selected and then I know what we'll hear.

Other than that I can only say that personally I am pretty lost on the whole stuff as well.

McG1967 wrote:

If PC voting does not attract a lot of votes every day and is subject to manipulation, then it might be time to do away with having the photographers select PC and replacing it with stand out shots selected by the screeners during the screening process.

Other option could be for screeners to tag stand out shots as being eligible for photographers choice and daily voting on these shots only, with a tagged photo still being eligible for PC for 7 days from date of upload.

It could also be an opportunity for a "Viewer's Choice" voted on by the photo-viewing public.

There used to be a separate Screener's Choice way back in the day, but it went away after the site redesign.

dvincent wrote:

It could also be an opportunity for a "Viewer's Choice" voted on by the photo-viewing public.

That's called "Top 5 of the last 24 hours" Most-viewed photos would automatically receive the most votes. Besides it gives an unfair advantage to the photos promoted by A.net on Facebook etc.

dutchspotter1 wrote:

dvincent wrote:

It could also be an opportunity for a "Viewer's Choice" voted on by the photo-viewing public.

That's called "Top 5 of the last 24 hours" Most-viewed photos would automatically receive the most votes. Besides it gives an unfair advantage to the photos promoted by A.net on Facebook etc.

Top of 24hrs is completely different than a weeklong voting window.

The point is that PC as a concept is broken and should be replaced with something better, and I say this as someone with his share of PCs under his belt.

cpd wrote:

dgorun wrote:

airkas1 wrote:

A system with a minimum of X votes would work best I think.

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

But how do you know it isn’t some very experienced long term photographer with many photos on the site who is feeling upset by something and is doing this to make a point?

Good point. It wouldn't be a guaranteed fix.

cpd wrote:

dgorun wrote:

airkas1 wrote:

A system with a minimum of X votes would work best I think.

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

But how do you know it isn’t some very experienced long term photographer with many photos on the site who is feeling upset by something and is doing this to make a point?

That's the problem right now. It's not a 100% fix.

jelpee wrote:

McG1967 wrote:

If PC voting does not attract a lot of votes every day and is subject to manipulation, then it might be time to do away with having the photographers select PC and replacing it with stand out shots selected by the screeners during the screening process.

Other option could be for screeners to tag stand out shots as being eligible for photographers choice and daily voting on these shots only, with a tagged photo still being eligible for PC for 7 days from date of upload.

As screener, I'd be OK with either of those!

Jehan

I second this idea as well.

I would really like to avoid having the screening team decide about PCs or even what is PC eligible and what is not. As JK said above, that is opening the well known favoritism can of worms. If the system is apparently not working perfectly fine with a large number of photographers being able to vote, imagine what would happen if there were just a handful. No thanks.

dvincent wrote:

Top of 24hrs is completely different than a weeklong voting window.

True, but it doesn't fix the problem of manipulation. In fact, it makes it much easier. Besides, getting the most votes and the most views from the same group (i.e. all viewers) seems redundant.

Miguel1982 wrote:

I would really like to avoid having the screening team decide about PCs or even what is PC eligible and what is not. As JK said above, that is opening the well known favoritism can of worms. If the system is apparently not working perfectly fine with a large number of photographers being able to vote, imagine what would happen if there were just a handful. No thanks.

I could not have said it better, Miguel.

As someone who has also had a mysteriously high number of PC’s recently, with no obvious cause, I would also support the system outlined by Kas, Jehan, JK, Daniel and others. Perhaps even internal to the site, a list of voters would at least (theoretically) rid of the bots. As for a voting mafia, I certainly hope that doesn’t exist, for the same reasons outlined above. While I of course am happy with the photos I produce, I do not like them receiving undue PC votes that obstruct some amazing photos getting the recognition they deserve. I can perhaps see some of them being legitimate, but there’s some where I feel the voting process was possibly tampered with. Thankfully, the string of questionable PC’s I unduly received seems to have eased up a bit and allowed some stunning photos like the Travel Service 738 and the night Qantas 380 to get the PC they deserve.

Thanks for your genuine replies all and especially DL747.

I think the first priority is to look at the votes, and I really hope the screeners pass these requests to the developers. Then we can debate of how "broken" is the system.

In the meantime let us all be more careful on what we vote. I admit that I have voted some the DL747s shots that himself (and me after a second look) thinks that they doesnt "deserve" to be there, albeit the good quality and newsworthiness of his work.

Can the same 'hacks' be used for the top of the day? Today we have four images by the same photog, of regular subjects in not-the-best light. I think this has been discussed before but I really am curious as to how they got there...

Karl

Crappy light, boring subjects and many shots in the database.............

JakTrax wrote:

Can the same 'hacks' be used for the top of the day? Today we have four images by the same photog, of regular subjects in not-the-best light. I think this has been discussed before but I really am curious as to how they got there...

Are we talking about a Swiss user? It does look odd that he got so many views for those photos, but I don't suspect foul play by him at this point. Whether others have been trolling, I don't know.

I'm not really sure what constitutes 'trolling' these days but it all seems rather sad that people play this game? What is there to achieve from it? This hobby has become so polarised lately; it used to be so friendly but, as with so many other things, social media has had a profound effect.

JakTrax wrote:

I'm not really sure what constitutes 'trolling' these days but it all seems rather sad that people play this game? What is there to achieve from it? This hobby has become so polarised lately; it used to be so friendly but, as with so many other things, social media has had a profound effect.

Sad that people self-promote their work? That’s what social media is. That’s how photographers get exposure these days. Play the game or fall behind.

I think Karl was talking about trolling. Guys that vote arbitrary shots as a PC to make people look “bad” or guys that do whatever that suddenly these 4 mentioned shots block the front page likely to make anet look bad.
And yes that is sad.

dgorun wrote:

cpd wrote:

dgorun wrote:

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

But how do you know it isn’t some very experienced long term photographer with many photos on the site who is feeling upset by something and is doing this to make a point?

That's the problem right now. It's not a 100% fix.

And the suggestion of screeners choosing photos would cause an even greater storm of controversy.

The responsible person(s) should just give up and find something better to do. This is just not worth it.

We used to be able to figure out who did vote on a photo by checking logs and IP’s. We even found users sharing their login data so a number of users seemed to have voted from the same IP, but they were actually voting on their own photos using friends accounts. Quite a few were banned back then for manipulating PC. However, there is nothing that says that you can’t vote on your friends photo but it gets ridiculous when a blue sky side in of a 737 from FamousAirline gets PC...

And currently happening again!

Smoketrails wrote:

And currently happening again!

In the case you're referring to the BA 747s, there were a handful of us up on the tower catwalk and we uploaded them that same night we got back to the hotel, hence why they both hit the page at the same time. Nothing overly suspicious to me that they got PC, considering the angle is fairly unique and involve the Queen? Most of my uploads didn't even crack page 1, including a Lufthansa A340 from the same angle.

What you should be suspicious of is when generic shots of bizjets/GA (mine included) with no special circumstances get awarded PC.

Apologies in advance if you're talking about something different.

I’ve been in contact today with the Swiss user and it’s not him. So the photos were likely linked somewhere, intent unknown. I’ll try to see if we can change the voting parameters, but with the pace that things are improved I’m not holding my breath.

KPDX wrote:

Smoketrails wrote:

And currently happening again!

In the case you're referring to the BA 747s, there were a handful of us up on the tower catwalk and we uploaded them that same night we got back to the hotel, hence why they both hit the page at the same time. Nothing overly suspicious to me that they got PC, considering the angle is fairly unique and involve the Queen? Most of my uploads didn't even crack page 1, including a Lufthansa A340 from the same angle.

What you should be suspicious of is when generic shots of bizjets/GA (mine included) with no special circumstances get awarded PC.

Apologies in advance if you're talking about something different.

Not talking about those shots but referring to the shots from our Swiss friend. See reply from Kas.

Smoketrails wrote:

KPDX wrote:

Smoketrails wrote:

And currently happening again!

In the case you're referring to the BA 747s, there were a handful of us up on the tower catwalk and we uploaded them that same night we got back to the hotel, hence why they both hit the page at the same time. Nothing overly suspicious to me that they got PC, considering the angle is fairly unique and involve the Queen? Most of my uploads didn't even crack page 1, including a Lufthansa A340 from the same angle.

What you should be suspicious of is when generic shots of bizjets/GA (mine included) with no special circumstances get awarded PC.

Apologies in advance if you're talking about something different.

Not talking about those shots but referring to the shots from our Swiss friend. See reply from Kas.

D'oh. My bad..

Some fellow photogs and I discussed that users hit count as well. I'll be candid in that I do share some of my personal favorite shots on a handful of Facebook groups, but they never ever garner views like that. Something is definitely up, whether it's the photog (unlikely in this case) or an external source.

Linking on sites/pages is alright and part of the modern way to share photos with a wider audience.

No probs KPDX!

I saw the photos in the top five (so a different thing, not PC) and while they weren’t super extraordinary, they were still reasonable. So I won’t begrudge that photographer those top 5 views.

I don’t tend to look at the top five anyway, I see what was recently added through the thumbnail display on the forum. That way I see some great photos well before they hit the front page of the site.

Starting to get bogus PCs again.. Very interesting, considering where I'm currently taking photos at.

dutchspotter1 wrote:

dgorun wrote:

I like the idea of upping the pictures required to vote for PC as well.

So do I. Although I'm just assuming here, I think a large part of the (possible) manipulation can be eliminated if you make voting for PC elegible only for photographers with a minimum of 50/100/whatever number of photos in the database.

Other option could be for screeners to tag stand out shots as being eligible for photographers choice and daily voting on these shots only, with a tagged photo still being eligible for PC for 7 days from date of upload.

I like this idea as well, but I'm afraid this will lead to a lot of questions/discussion why a certain photo is/isn't eligible for PC. In that case it might be easier to replace Photographers Choice by Screeners Choice.

I think the manipulation is being done by one or more long term contributors who are feeling disaffected or bitter about something.

What really should happen is the votes shown publicly for those photos, who voted for each one. Making screeners decide what is eligible is just a nightmare that will cause even more controversy.

I just browse through recently added images occasionally and look at any that catch my eye, then move on.

Hello All

We continue to look into this and have taken some action to reduce bogus shots from receiving the award. CPD is right there are two small groups who appear to do this. Since I last posted here we have identified them. We are now working on limiting their votes. With a fair few other issues we are slightly constrained on resources to do this but we're working on it.

Thank you

Paul

Hello All

This has not been forgotten as many have made some very good points here, we may not have posted but we took note of what has been said. The required amount of votes for an image to qualify for PC has been changed. We are working on what JohnKrist mentioned about IP addresses again being available for the Support crew to see.

We know more is required so please consider this an update of something we are working on. I don't believe we can put a stop to it but we can again have the tools available to the non screening crew to monitor PC.

Thanks

Paul

A change is sorely needed. I'd be sad to see PC go away, so any possible way to discourage the abuse of the system would be wonderful.