Quote from: Pilens on April 22, 2013, 23:50

OK. I wasn't aware that we're discussing some future expanded network. It's easy for me to "police" my 5 network buddies I am linking to. If network search is going to be fed from some central db, then, yes, we need some control over this db. It just feels like that central db violates the very idea of SY, which I understood so far as symbiotic relationships of independent individual sites. Now we are going to depend on a central db? With it now comes some central db police that is watching over the SY network and has power to kick out individual sites or reject their application to be part of it? I don't know, this just doesn't feel like Symbiostock anymore and is IMHO not a good direction to go.

I agree -- it's not a db as much as a table -- to make it easier to do searches over the network, to return a better match for the user.  anyone can submit to that table and the only requirements would be no porn, nothing illegal - no cops, no review , no authority.  anyone joining agrees to the rules.   when we post the list we state these rules, so  users know what to expect

what I plan to work on is a list of similar sites that are chosen at random (while limited to the 5 for processing reasons), then letting the user continue to search if they want to.  if you want to stay with the 5 designated sites, you can; if you don't want to participate at all, you can.

I am not all against a db/table/whatever that is a representation of our network. Just like the list you've published, just bigger and fancier. If we can have that without "no cops....", great!
I guess the second part of your post is were the worries come in. In any case, it is worth a try. We'll see to where it leads (and if worries are justified) soon enough. Opt-in/out should appease critics, anyway.

Quote from: Pilens on April 22, 2013, 18:57

Agree 100%. I don't even see the problem. If there's someone no one wants to network with because of, ahem, adult content, this someone will be left out of the network automatically.  And as far as child porn and/or other criminal activity is concerned the general usage terms for the SY theme could just say that the theme can't be used for such activity. Leo would be off the hook. Everything beyond that would be police work done by the pros (RCMP in my country). If you want to add a link for reporting criminals, OK fine. I might be just naive, but I really can't see that link being used all that frequently.

right -- the 5 network links aren't a problem -- but i'm looking to have a more expanded search network that would use the db of SY network sites, based on similar content -- so instead of selecting just 5, it would find a different, relevant, set each time.  in this case, those who participate opt in, and we can control the list.

OK. I wasn't aware that we're discussing some future expanded network. It's easy for me to "police" my 5 network buddies I am linking to. If network search is going to be fed from some central db, then, yes, we need some control over this db. It just feels like that central db violates the very idea of SY, which I understood so far as symbiotic relationships of independent individual sites. Now we are going to depend on a central db? With it now comes some central db police that is watching over the SY network and has power to kick out individual sites or reject their application to be part of it? I don't know, this just doesn't feel like Symbiostock anymore and is IMHO not a good direction to go.

Who I link to will be a limited number of people, and I will have control of that.

I want to link to photographers whose work I think is professional. Photographers who have the same or higher standards in shooting, editing etc., that I do.

The photographers who are on the network right now fit this bill.

When every and any person with a camera can join the network then the Photographers I want to link to, will stay away in droves.

Again I want to stress the difference between Leo's Network Theme, and The Symbiostock Network.  I think of them as two different entities.

As for people who don't seem to be concerned about porn showing up on the network.... from what I understand if it shows on my site, it has my IP address attached
It has taken many months to get my IP address white listed again after being black listed when I was hacked.  I need to be able to trust the people I network with, and the people they network with.....

. 

I am sorry to hear about your bad experience. It definitely explains your worries. As long as we stay with 5 hand-selected network buddies this won't be a problem at all. If we somehow expand the network/change the type of networking, I agree, this can easily become a problem.

I think what we should look for is some de-centralized networking solution that on one hand would greatly expand the reach of the network search and on the other hand would still be "self-"controlled (in a sense that each SY member's decisions with whom to network with will leave the bad apples stranded outside the network [of serious and responsible members]). Maybe up to 20 links (or more if you are still comfortable all of them are good partners) instead of just 5 would do the trick? Maybe every one of these many links could provide daily(?) a keyword list (with statistics) of images available. The search then would first look up these lists and decides then based on number/quota/whatever of matching keywords in each list which of the many links to use to actually show search results from. I am just brainstorming here and have no idea if this could work.   

Same here 

That is a very interesting feature! New for me. Thank you for telling and giving examples how this can be used. Very inspiring.

Quote from: Pilens on April 20, 2013, 14:55

It might be actually easier to realize than it sounds. Some sort of keyword statistic must be already available for the tag cloud widget. So maybe this can be tapped for refining selection of similars...

right, the count for each keyword is stored, so the weighting could be done as a normalization from 1 to 100 -- if the most keywords is 237, then each weighted keyword would be 101- 100([count]/237)  rounded down

237 --> 1
155 --> 35
1

I'd interested to see what similars your formula would dig up as opposed to the existing related images widget.

Quote from: jeancliclac on April 20, 2013, 07:25

 
yes I can see that, on the other hand, there is also a situation possible where nobody is linking to one of the SY site. What is the reason for limiting the number of links to 5?

I was thinking that a buyer would probably need a site with a minimum critical number of pictures. Even with 5 sites having each 5000 pictures this is "only" 25000 pictures. Probably not enough to cover all general themes needed by buyers unless having a kind of niche with a specific theme common to the 5 and make the sites known for covering the given theme.

the 5 site limit was set by Leo for the start because of concerns about processing time, so it may change

I agree with you about the need for a wider network, and I've suggested several possible solutions, while keeping to the 5 site limit for now.  as I also keep pointing out, we cant expect everypne we link to to link back to us, since that would create isolated groups of 6

one way to do this is by having a smarter choice of what sites to link to, and this will evolve too.

others may differ, but I expect most traffic to come from people with specific images 'XYZ" n mind, finding us thru google.  so while it might make sense as a site owner to link to people with different subjects, 'ABC', 'DEF, etc  that's not going to help the buyer who came to our site looking for 'XYZ'   to satisfy the buyer we should be linking to other sites with SIMILAR content to ours.  we need to concentrate on symbiosis -- not everything we do will have an immediate payback, but by directing buyers to other SY sites, we'll eventually prosper when we're the recipient

right now the other sites shown are based on what the siteowner decides to link, when what the buyer really needs is a network search more like the 'other similar images' search based on an analysis of other sites.  i'm exploring ways to do a more intelligent search without an exponential explosion of processing time

Agree. For us choosing the right partners to network with will remain difficult. And in any case, our individual idea of good network buddies might not match with what a particular buyer might want. So would it be possible that buyers themselves can influence the network search? Say with search options such "narrow down", "broader", "more of the same", whatever. These options could be each linked with a different (dynamic) set of network buddies.

Just brainstorming here...

I will have images on my site that I would not send to an agency, mostly because I know the agency would reject them.
for example http://stockimages.glennspecht.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/symbiostock_rf_content/1385-sunset-on-pacific-coast-of-ecuador.jpg

would be rejected because I don't have a release or the child's name.

I am not sure if this is wise or not, but we will see in time what works and what doesn't

Glenn

Exactly! I have set aside a bunch of images to sell RM mainly because they are so niche that their potential of a few purchases must reel in more than pennies. However, I never got around putting them on Alamy or signing up with other RM agencies.

So now I am thinking about putting them on my SY site with a premium RF price tag. Seeing how fast SY is developing there's even a chance that Leo has some RM selling option integrated before I even finish uploading all my other stuff.

SY is definitely the place to experiment and just try things especially when the buyers start dropping by...

I am not too sure about the value of likes and/or positive comments at all. Do they really convince an image buyer to buy a particular image? Maybe it's good for SEO. I don't have clue. I definitely don't want to police comments for spam and trolling. But I'd have no trouble dealing with a few more tick-boxes (if necessary), so everyone can decide for their own.

I reported some issues of that kind a while back: 3 of the 10 images I uploaded/imported into SY failed/had metadata missing. For two just using the same copy again worked. metadata was all there after a second try. (The third file had two dots instead of one dot in front of "jpg", which made it fail.) So, this may be a tricky one to track down...

I bought the script early January. I feel it is more directed at setting up an agency than a photographer's personal site. So I ended up deep into the php-side of the script. I never really followed through because I heard of the Leo's Symbiostock (SY) project. That's the route I am going now. So that is what I'd recommend to you, too. The community aspect of SY is much more fun and it's unique networking/SEO feature might make the difference between failure and success in the end.

Check it out, you can't miss the SY threads on MSG 

I used Lightbuner about 2 weeks ago and I worked flawlessly to distribute to about a dozen of sites. BUT: You need to carefully configure your channels. And not all of the preconfigured channels work. Preconfigured CS channel, for example, never worked for me. Images never arrived. I configured my own and now it works.

Yes, I see what you mean.
A title just for internal use could help. Or a checkbox that, if ticked, publishes the title on the site and if not ticked displays page without title.
Maybe Leo can do that some time when he starts getting bored 

Quote from: ajt on April 17, 2013, 12:56

Quote from: Leo on April 17, 2013, 12:49

Quote from: ajt on April 17, 2013, 12:46

Maybe not a bug, but what for is "profile" link under image? It leeds now to the same image page...

Modify in your User Area - you know, where you set up your user wordpress info.

I know,  but... I'd like to remove this link

we shouldn't remove the link.. you can just make it point to your about page and it will look nicer..

that link is very important imo..

agree. Leave it (at least as an option).