But there's one additional, also important fact. You collect votes for POTD till a certain hour, when the system switches to the "next day" and nominates the POTD. If you upload a picture immediately after that, you will have 24 hours to collect votes from the whole globe. If you upload a picture 2 hours before, or immediately before, you will have only 2 hours, or even none. That's why Americans are having an advantage, being awakened at that point of time. But this is too serious, it can not be a part of your joke story. Your points are more worth mentioning :)
Hi Vid,
Actually I was thinking this point was implicit in my article, as I spoke about the importance of posting time (see also below my answer to Mockba and my suggestion)
Basically the server is using North American Eastern Time Zone (UTC-5), which means that people in Asia and Europe are more likely to post in the morning (if they wake up early enough) than people on the US Western Coast. For example, you should post at 6:00am from Slovenia (UTC+1) to get 24 hours time to reach the Holy Grail. California is UTC-8: this means that people there should either go to bed very late or wake up in the middle of the night… which I guess some are doing… :-)
Actually, my article contains a real statistics about posting time, and the median for the last 50POTD was really at 1:39am!!! (means 4:39am in California, 1:39am in New York, 7:39am in Slovenia, and later morning/early afteroon in Asia). So you still have a chance, if you wake up early enough!
Hi Bruno,
Only a couple of hours ago I thought how stupid I was! Of course, we in Europe are in the best position. Wanted to post it immediately here and then saw your explanation.
All the best to you!
Vid
If would dismiss the paper as a combination of non-scientific anecdotal evidence and obvious truths, but stats make it tick. Are they the real stats though? You say that everything is fiction, does it mean that the numbers are made up too? Please clarify :)
BTW I think you got some important part about clans and cliques backwards. You see a mortal struggle to cheat members of POTD where I see just a normal human nature of appreciating nice words of encouragement. Of course when others leave good comments and votes for my stuff, it makes me interested in their SP life, and it's no wonder that I follow their submissions with greater interest. It is also natural that I would comment more often about their stuff, because, gee, I care. Not about their votes, Bruno. But about them.
I don't look nearly as much at your stuff, Bruno, because don't know much about Tibet - and also don't know much about you. The latter point comes from the lack of communication though comments and questions etc. Kind of like, most of the time you don't notice my stuff, I don't notice yours, we remain polite strangers. No POTD conspiracy here.
The only "best picture" stuff which I find slightly unfair, beyond the human nature kind of general lack of 100% fairness, is the 1am rule. I think this site can use sliding 24-hour window to redefine what's the best. But in the end, it isn't terribly important.
Thewhole article should be taken as a satire, as suggested above by another comment. As in every satire, some features are clearly exaggerated: for example I am describing Dan Dalton (who I don’t know at all) as a cowboy shooting at everything, while he only started one thread on this topic quite a long time ago…
The article is not only attacking a single group of member, but I guess is addressing most of us in the way we are sometimes behaving. I am mocking as much at Reinhold Messner for his usual pompous statements, as at myself for sometimes just looking at my own profile page…
I agree with you that we often “care” more for other members who we might know either personally or just through a few comments posted by this member. I do behave the same, and I am very often voting some stuff just because I clicked on the profile page of someone who dropped me a comment. This is very human. I also probably voted 90% of Corax pages, just because his pages are in the geographic area I’m interested in. Again, nothing bad with this.
I personally think that page scores are not relevant, as the research tool is very efficient. If I am looking for mountains in a given country or area, I’ll find it regardless of the score and votes. I guess voting is more about adding a bit of “spice” in SP, and getting more hits for the site owner. I also don’t see a big problem with this.
Now I come to the serious points you raised in you comment, and will give the requested clarifications (though I put a “disclaimer” that This article is pure fiction. Any resemblance to events or individuals having existed is purely coincidental):
1) Regarding clans, cliques and conspiration:
I only use the acronym C.L.A.N. for Common Love for Amazing Nature, but not the word clan as such, though I strongly suggest some behaviour amongst certain members that goes far beyond usual “friendship”…
Like you, I don’t believe in a “conspiracy” theory where certain persons would make “formal and organised voting groups”. I do believe that these kinds of alliances came up spontaneously, but in the end, the voting pattern is just like if there was an organised voting group, with a few core members extremely loyal to the group, and some other more loosely attached. As a result, at around 5-6am, most of their pictures are already rated between 87 and 88, and appear in the first page of the “Best new stuff”, and gain automatically more exposure. Furthermore, other “good” pictures (I take as a criteria for “good” the number of votes at the end of the day) which may be a serious competitor for POTD are systematically ignored by these otherwise very active voters (or voted only on a later stage). Though I have no connection with these other members who get their pictures ignored, I find this behaviour a bit childish and unfair.
2) About statistics
I actually made the statistics before staring to write the article, and I really invested a lot of time to have statistics as accurate as possible. All numbers given in the article are rigorously exact (at least I hope), except for two tables where it was not possible to get exact numbers: a) numbers of attempts for Everest, K2 and Nanga Parbat. To my knowledge, no data exist to compare number of summiteers with the number of attempts. How do we define attempts? We can draw statistics for expeditions (percentage of expedition with at least one member on the top), but not for persons. For example, it would be absurd to say that the 1953 Everest expedition has a success rate of 20% because only 2 out of 10 members reached the top… So I just made up numbers, which I guess was quite evident (I inserted the altitude of Everest and years of first ascent for K2 and Nanga Parbat) b) Voting pattern for the Top 5. As I explained below the table, this concept of Top 5 should not be interpreted strictly as a closed group of five members. I noticed in my analysis that number 4 was much less active over the past few months, while number 5 only entered in the game a few months ago. So I couldn’t analyse all 525 POTD for the same five members, as one is a new member. So what I did was to check around 20 recent POTD between December and January. The numbers may not be fully accurate in this table, but the pattern was extremely clear.
3) About posting time .
I also think the current system is not fair. Take my example: I am living in Asia, and am posting mostly on weekends (when I’m too lazy to go to the mountains) or occasionally during the lunch break. This means that my submissions are almost systematically posted in early morning hours considering the server is somewhere in the USA, so I indirectly receive more exposure. Interestingly, the regular POTD winners are from three different continents, but posting time is almost the same for all. I guess it would not be so difficult to change the programming code and consider the votes received during the first 24 hours for each picture (e.g. pictures posted on 8 February would be featured as POTD on 10 February), but maybe more simple is to cancel the POTD as some members suggest…
OK, so far for the serious answer. But again, this article was written for fun!!!
Thanks Bruno, I appreciated the provocative /sociological aspect of the article, and I sure appreciate it even more when I see what's behind the stats. Fun read too, sorry for my dour tone, it was just a surpise from reading a pretty good description of many of my own behavioral quirks on SP ... but all linked to a very alien idea of rigging the POTD contest. Thus a great surprise. Such a great observation power on your part, but the power to see the patterns of behavior contrasts with the apparent lack of power to see the cause-and-effect relations.
I have one POTD BTW, overrated because of its exposure on the front page, but a good picture nonetheless. I was curious to see what propelled it & I don't see much special. It was posted after 4 pm, never had a flurry of comments, but somehow got a dozen votes in its first hour, some from people I follow closely on SP but mostly from members who I really don't know at all. I guess then, all the statistical patterns have exeptions too? :)
Its funny how some photos really arent very good and they get great votes and then some are excellent and go on neglected. It seems that there is a complex criteria to appease summitposters. What can you do?
What can we do?Laughing! This is not real life! As long as the mountain pages provide good information, the main purpose of SP is safeguarded. The only danger is that some members may lose motivation to post quality articles because of this problem.
"As long as the mountain pages provide good information, the main purpose of SP is safeguarded."
Here here! IMHO I think that voting should be more to inform someone of the relative quality of their submissions to help maintain quality submissions (a hint to drop a photo on a crowded page, or put more work into a mountain page!)
I admit to being annoyed by the lack of sense in photo ratings, but only because the photos of mine that get the most attention are not the ones that I am most eager to share! Some are just plain boring. Perhaps the best spirit if you really care about such things is to make an album of your own Top 10.
there's always truth in kidding. :)
Great commentary although now I feel guilty replying to this. But wait I also posted a 10, yikes also a flower - no butterflies or kitties tho. Can't help it - I love the mutual appreciation club of photos whatever they may be. I'm doomed!!
Oops sorry, though I searched in dictionary (even slang dictionary), I'am not sure that I got the full meaning (my English is still shaky).
BTW, I also like butterflies a lot, and do believe that they have their place here in SP. I've actually a lot of yaks, flowers and "Children of the Mountains" photos thas I would like to post one day... But after such an article, I shall maybe better wait a bit...
Vid Pogachnik - Feb 8, 2009 10:19 am - Voted 10/10
This is a good one :)Really enjoyed reading it.
Bruno - Feb 8, 2009 11:44 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: This is a good one :)Thanks Vid! I hope this article will just remain something to enjoy, nothing more…
Vid Pogachnik - Feb 9, 2009 4:17 am - Voted 10/10
Re: This is a good one :)But there's one additional, also important fact. You collect votes for POTD till a certain hour, when the system switches to the "next day" and nominates the POTD. If you upload a picture immediately after that, you will have 24 hours to collect votes from the whole globe. If you upload a picture 2 hours before, or immediately before, you will have only 2 hours, or even none. That's why Americans are having an advantage, being awakened at that point of time. But this is too serious, it can not be a part of your joke story. Your points are more worth mentioning :)
Cheers!
Vid
Bruno - Feb 9, 2009 4:57 am - Hasn't voted
Re: This is a good one :)Hi Vid,
Actually I was thinking this point was implicit in my article, as I spoke about the importance of posting time (see also below my answer to Mockba and my suggestion)
Basically the server is using North American Eastern Time Zone (UTC-5), which means that people in Asia and Europe are more likely to post in the morning (if they wake up early enough) than people on the US Western Coast. For example, you should post at 6:00am from Slovenia (UTC+1) to get 24 hours time to reach the Holy Grail. California is UTC-8: this means that people there should either go to bed very late or wake up in the middle of the night… which I guess some are doing… :-)
Actually, my article contains a real statistics about posting time, and the median for the last 50POTD was really at 1:39am!!! (means 4:39am in California, 1:39am in New York, 7:39am in Slovenia, and later morning/early afteroon in Asia). So you still have a chance, if you wake up early enough!
edit: Slovenia/Slovakia
Bruno - Feb 9, 2009 5:43 am - Hasn't voted
Re: This is a good one :)Ooops sorry for the lapsus... and thanks for pointing it out!
It's like confusing Switzerland and Swaziland... I'll edit my previous comment.
Vid Pogachnik - Feb 9, 2009 12:36 pm - Voted 10/10
Re: This is a good one :)Hi Bruno,
Only a couple of hours ago I thought how stupid I was! Of course, we in Europe are in the best position. Wanted to post it immediately here and then saw your explanation.
All the best to you!
Vid
silversummit - Feb 8, 2009 11:12 am - Voted 10/10
What a hoot to read!Loved the statistics mixed in with the funny stuff and gems of truth.
Bruno - Feb 8, 2009 11:45 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: What a hoot to read!I guess there is some truth about almost each of us amongst regular SPers… But nothing so bad, as long as we all love the mountains!
Dmitry Pruss - Feb 8, 2009 11:55 am - Voted 10/10
Stats rulzIf would dismiss the paper as a combination of non-scientific anecdotal evidence and obvious truths, but stats make it tick. Are they the real stats though? You say that everything is fiction, does it mean that the numbers are made up too? Please clarify :)
Dmitry Pruss - Feb 8, 2009 12:09 pm - Voted 10/10
PSBTW I think you got some important part about clans and cliques backwards. You see a mortal struggle to cheat members of POTD where I see just a normal human nature of appreciating nice words of encouragement. Of course when others leave good comments and votes for my stuff, it makes me interested in their SP life, and it's no wonder that I follow their submissions with greater interest. It is also natural that I would comment more often about their stuff, because, gee, I care. Not about their votes, Bruno. But about them.
I don't look nearly as much at your stuff, Bruno, because don't know much about Tibet - and also don't know much about you. The latter point comes from the lack of communication though comments and questions etc. Kind of like, most of the time you don't notice my stuff, I don't notice yours, we remain polite strangers. No POTD conspiracy here.
The only "best picture" stuff which I find slightly unfair, beyond the human nature kind of general lack of 100% fairness, is the 1am rule. I think this site can use sliding 24-hour window to redefine what's the best. But in the end, it isn't terribly important.
lcarreau - Feb 8, 2009 5:24 pm - Voted 10/10
Re: PSSince becoming a member one-1/2 years ago, I think I was up
after midnight and logged onto SP two times.
In those two times, I was shocked and utterly amazed at the number of folks who were up that late; possibly posting photos.
Let's admit it, some of these folks have a pure OBSESSION for votes! And be it right or wrong, it's definately the truth.
Bruno - Feb 8, 2009 11:49 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Stats rulzDear Mockba,
Thewhole article should be taken as a satire, as suggested above by another comment. As in every satire, some features are clearly exaggerated: for example I am describing Dan Dalton (who I don’t know at all) as a cowboy shooting at everything, while he only started one thread on this topic quite a long time ago…
The article is not only attacking a single group of member, but I guess is addressing most of us in the way we are sometimes behaving. I am mocking as much at Reinhold Messner for his usual pompous statements, as at myself for sometimes just looking at my own profile page…
I agree with you that we often “care” more for other members who we might know either personally or just through a few comments posted by this member. I do behave the same, and I am very often voting some stuff just because I clicked on the profile page of someone who dropped me a comment. This is very human. I also probably voted 90% of Corax pages, just because his pages are in the geographic area I’m interested in. Again, nothing bad with this.
I personally think that page scores are not relevant, as the research tool is very efficient. If I am looking for mountains in a given country or area, I’ll find it regardless of the score and votes. I guess voting is more about adding a bit of “spice” in SP, and getting more hits for the site owner. I also don’t see a big problem with this.
Bruno - Feb 9, 2009 12:02 am - Hasn't voted
Re: Stats rulzNow I come to the serious points you raised in you comment, and will give the requested clarifications (though I put a “disclaimer” that This article is pure fiction. Any resemblance to events or individuals having existed is purely coincidental):
1) Regarding clans, cliques and conspiration:
I only use the acronym C.L.A.N. for Common Love for Amazing Nature, but not the word clan as such, though I strongly suggest some behaviour amongst certain members that goes far beyond usual “friendship”…
Like you, I don’t believe in a “conspiracy” theory where certain persons would make “formal and organised voting groups”. I do believe that these kinds of alliances came up spontaneously, but in the end, the voting pattern is just like if there was an organised voting group, with a few core members extremely loyal to the group, and some other more loosely attached. As a result, at around 5-6am, most of their pictures are already rated between 87 and 88, and appear in the first page of the “Best new stuff”, and gain automatically more exposure. Furthermore, other “good” pictures (I take as a criteria for “good” the number of votes at the end of the day) which may be a serious competitor for POTD are systematically ignored by these otherwise very active voters (or voted only on a later stage). Though I have no connection with these other members who get their pictures ignored, I find this behaviour a bit childish and unfair.
2) About statistics
I actually made the statistics before staring to write the article, and I really invested a lot of time to have statistics as accurate as possible. All numbers given in the article are rigorously exact (at least I hope), except for two tables where it was not possible to get exact numbers:
a) numbers of attempts for Everest, K2 and Nanga Parbat. To my knowledge, no data exist to compare number of summiteers with the number of attempts. How do we define attempts? We can draw statistics for expeditions (percentage of expedition with at least one member on the top), but not for persons. For example, it would be absurd to say that the 1953 Everest expedition has a success rate of 20% because only 2 out of 10 members reached the top… So I just made up numbers, which I guess was quite evident (I inserted the altitude of Everest and years of first ascent for K2 and Nanga Parbat)
b) Voting pattern for the Top 5. As I explained below the table, this concept of Top 5 should not be interpreted strictly as a closed group of five members. I noticed in my analysis that number 4 was much less active over the past few months, while number 5 only entered in the game a few months ago. So I couldn’t analyse all 525 POTD for the same five members, as one is a new member. So what I did was to check around 20 recent POTD between December and January. The numbers may not be fully accurate in this table, but the pattern was extremely clear.
3) About posting time .
I also think the current system is not fair. Take my example: I am living in Asia, and am posting mostly on weekends (when I’m too lazy to go to the mountains) or occasionally during the lunch break. This means that my submissions are almost systematically posted in early morning hours considering the server is somewhere in the USA, so I indirectly receive more exposure. Interestingly, the regular POTD winners are from three different continents, but posting time is almost the same for all. I guess it would not be so difficult to change the programming code and consider the votes received during the first 24 hours for each picture (e.g. pictures posted on 8 February would be featured as POTD on 10 February), but maybe more simple is to cancel the POTD as some members suggest…
OK, so far for the serious answer. But again, this article was written for fun!!!
Edit: formatting
Dmitry Pruss - Feb 9, 2009 12:29 pm - Voted 10/10
Re: Stats rulzThanks Bruno, I appreciated the provocative /sociological aspect of the article, and I sure appreciate it even more when I see what's behind the stats. Fun read too, sorry for my dour tone, it was just a surpise from reading a pretty good description of many of my own behavioral quirks on SP ... but all linked to a very alien idea of rigging the POTD contest. Thus a great surprise. Such a great observation power on your part, but the power to see the patterns of behavior contrasts with the apparent lack of power to see the cause-and-effect relations.
I have one POTD BTW, overrated because of its exposure on the front page, but a good picture nonetheless. I was curious to see what propelled it & I don't see much special. It was posted after 4 pm, never had a flurry of comments, but somehow got a dozen votes in its first hour, some from people I follow closely on SP but mostly from members who I really don't know at all. I guess then, all the statistical patterns have exeptions too? :)
ClimberMan420 - Feb 8, 2009 10:12 pm - Hasn't voted
summitpostingIts funny how some photos really arent very good and they get great votes and then some are excellent and go on neglected. It seems that there is a complex criteria to appease summitposters. What can you do?
Bruno - Feb 9, 2009 12:16 am - Hasn't voted
Re: summitpostingWhat can we do? Laughing! This is not real life! As long as the mountain pages provide good information, the main purpose of SP is safeguarded. The only danger is that some members may lose motivation to post quality articles because of this problem.
PellucidWombat - Mar 1, 2009 12:22 pm - Voted 10/10
Re: summitposting"As long as the mountain pages provide good information, the main purpose of SP is safeguarded."
Here here! IMHO I think that voting should be more to inform someone of the relative quality of their submissions to help maintain quality submissions (a hint to drop a photo on a crowded page, or put more work into a mountain page!)
I admit to being annoyed by the lack of sense in photo ratings, but only because the photos of mine that get the most attention are not the ones that I am most eager to share! Some are just plain boring. Perhaps the best spirit if you really care about such things is to make an album of your own Top 10.
klwagar - Feb 9, 2009 2:42 am - Voted 10/10
oopsthere's always truth in kidding. :)
Great commentary although now I feel guilty replying to this. But wait I also posted a 10, yikes also a flower - no butterflies or kitties tho. Can't help it - I love the mutual appreciation club of photos whatever they may be. I'm doomed!!
Bruno - Feb 9, 2009 3:17 am - Hasn't voted
Re: oopsOops sorry, though I searched in dictionary (even slang dictionary), I'am not sure that I got the full meaning (my English is still shaky).
BTW, I also like butterflies a lot, and do believe that they have their place here in SP. I've actually a lot of yaks, flowers and "Children of the Mountains" photos thas I would like to post one day... But after such an article, I shall maybe better wait a bit...
klwagar - Feb 9, 2009 3:37 pm - Voted 10/10
Re: oopsHi Bruno
Oops is something you say when you slip.
I loved the commentary. You were right on.