PaD Group

[vid64]

Jeanne's right - it needs to be bigger! I've dropped off the bottom off the page already and I've still to think up today's pic! Pressure!

[slug]

hi.
dazedgonebye pointed out to me that some kind of meta-PaD page would be useful, so here we go:
http://www.pbase.com/pad

the initial list of PaD galleries was taken from jeannius' excellent list.

now there are links at the very bottom of the edit gallery page to set/unset your current PaD gallery.

the /pad page just shows the most recent addition to any gallery marked as a PaD gallery.
it's set up so that each person can have just one such gallery to avoid "spamming" of the PaD page.
so if you organize your PaD galleries month by month or otherwise separated, just remember to set your current PaD gallery whenever you create a new active gallery.

(yes there are other things i'm supposed to be working on, but it's hard to resist a fun 1 day project)

-slug

[argylemonkey]

Slug, thanks for all that you do. I think that's what keeps all of us here! It's the personal touches that really make the difference.

[dexmadden]

you the man! Slug
or
you the slug! Man

MetaPaD active and working woohoo! creates quite a nice gallery

[procyon_g]

Thanks, Slug for setting up the PaD Meta-Gallery. It looks perfect to me. Once there were more than about two dozen of us PaD'ers, it was impossible for me to keep up with everyone with just my "favorites" page. Now I can see everyone's most recent additions plus I'll be able to see the new people as soon as they come on-line.

Gregg/procyon

[clickaway]

I've just looked at the new page for the latest updates. Obviously the highlighting of the new page has prompted others to start a Picture-a-Day. Great!
But I've noticed one or two new people are posting what appear to be a non PAD gallery here. I hope that this is just a mistake by someone and not an abuse of the system to highlight images to a wider audience.

Ray

[tamn]

Beautiful!
I share Ray's concern about possible abusers in the future, but for now it's a tremendous help keeping up with fellow PAD'ers.

Thanks Slug!!
-Mike Hess

[djarvik]

Great!

Thanx a lot!

-----------------------
Links to other Photo a Day sites:

http://www.pbase.com/djarvik/links

[jeannius]

You rule. You can't imagine how wonderful this project has been. I speak for many of us when I say we have all become connected to each other in more ways than photos. Your site, and now your PAD SUPER SITE has made this all possible, So thank you from the bottom of my martini glass, that I just drank as a toast to you!

Signed,
Jeannius in San Francisco

[darter02]

Actually, now that we have it, I'm not sure I do like it. It seems there are more no PAD galleries being added and also a lot of people just making "digital art" and placing them. I liked the community feel and the fact that everyone was actually posting shots they took that day.

[clickaway]

I can relate to Darter 02's comments. There are many new names on the new page now and some are genuine PAD photographers and some are just using this facility for additional exposure. I cannot track who are doing PAD's and who is not - and that's rather a shame on those that are genuine.

Its a real pity that inclusion into the pages cannot be more strictly controlled. Is that possible?

I am making a point of not commenting on non PAD work that is displayed here, even if it is exceptional.

We have a good community in our group - as more people undertake this, it is bound to suffer, but I hope new entrants can join in this too. Alon Brik is/was attempting to list all new PAD people, but that job seems to be quite difficult now, and I can fully understand why his list has not recently been updated.

[slug]

the noise (non-pad galleries posing as pad galleries) will continue to increase.

eventually i'd like to set up a moderation system somewhat similar to that of slashdot.org's discussions.

the basic concept is that all pad galleries will have some kind of score, say 2 to start with. then people will have a certain very limited number of votes. say 1 vote every few days.
your vote can be used to increase or decrease a gallery's score.

when viewing the pad meta gallery, you'll be able to choose your threshold of viewing. the default would be 2 which would only show galleries with score 2 or more.

as people apply their votes, non-pad galleries will probably go below 2 and thus not be shown. real pad galleries will rise, and then be immune to a malicious down-voter.

since you can choose your viewing threshold, you could for example view at threshold 4 which would almost always show real pad galleries.

assigning a very limited number of votes to many people makes things so that no one is burdened with too much moderation work and a malicious person can't cause too much damage by improperly voting a gallery up or down.

anyway, that's a theoretical solution that i think will solve the problem.
but it's not yet a huge problem so implementation can wait.

-slug

[dazedgonebye]

I've made a habit of welcoming those with actual PaD galleries and ignoring those without.
If moderators are needed, I'm sure we can find volunteers.

[jeannius]

Thanks Slug for your thoughts.
Has anyone thought to send a message to the NONPAD galleries telling them that they must have mistakenly linked their otherwise lovely gallery to the PAD group? I thought about that...Maybe a little note stating, "You have lovely work. However, I see you have accidentally linked to the PAD Group. You can easily fix that by clicking REMOVE on your edit page. Thank you" Maybe if enough people send that message people will remove their NON PAD galleries?

I feel kind of bad about it, Maybe I shouldn't have stopped the links page, b/c now we have a bunch people posting in the PAD galleries that aren't actually doing a PAD....And I feel bad that SLUG went through the trouble and it's being abused. What a shame. Thank god for the favorites page...I use that and my links page mostly!

Well, I for one, will keep my links in place....I just can't keep up with the
new people...

As for the voting thing, I'm not sure how that would work, but I would guess some how someone would use it to be malicious. The sad state of human nature.

NOTE: I have edited this post. I am sorry if I offended anyone by it. I just wanted to express a desire to have all the PAD links REALLY be PAD galleries. I apologize for calling you boneheads. That was rude.

[srlee]

[quote="jeannius"]
"Has anyone thought to send a message to the boneheads telling them that they must have mistakenly linked their otherwise lovely gallery to the PAD group? I thought about that...Maybe a little note stating, "You .have lovely work. However, I see you have accidentally linked to the PAD Group. You can easily fix that by clicking REMOVE on your edit page. Thank you" Maybe if enough people send that message people will remove their NON PAD galleries?"

So I am trying to understand something about this entire debate, particularly since I am one of the "boneheads" and "eejits" that I guess is messing up this entire thing for everyone else. I guess I missed the explanation of the allure and the need to ensure that if someone claimed to have a PaD gallery that they absolutely MUST post a new picture EVERY SINGLE DAY. It may be obvious to you, but it was not to me and I suspect to other. Particularly after looking at some of the other PaD galleries. It seems an entire clique and culture has formed around this phenomenon (you referred to as the "community"). In my own case, this new option simply appeared in my galleries, and I thought it would be a good idea to simply tag the gallery I post to the most as my PaD gallery. I figured posting something new every couple of days or so was in the spirit of a PaD gallery or there would have been more explicit instructions with the new option. Given there was no real explanation of the apparent absolute strictness of this, I assumed something that I, evidently, should not have, despite the empirical evidence to the contrary (a search of other PaD's illustrates that not all post a new image every single day; which I did before tagging mine such).

I guess my suggestion is that a better explanation of the expectations for a PaD might have been helpful up front. Perhaps some text along with the option that appeared to everyone. Just state it plainly: "For this gallery to be a PaD, you MUST post a NEW image to it EVERY SINGLE DAY" right next to the handy option that appeared in all of our galleries. That would have been clear. It might not have stopped all the "abusers," but it would have helped people like me that stumbled into this and missed the clique community that formed over some period of time. I guess I also wonder who in the world has time to police something like this as well, but hey, if that's the will of the community, its OK with me.

- Stephen