About pictures.

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Hagnat
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Re: About pictures.

Post by Hagnat »

Sasa, it is good to hear something about the experience of a silent viewer. There is nothing wrong with not posting. You belong to the majority. Perhaps luckily for the readers there are far more cam viewers and forum readers than posters.
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juta
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Post by juta »

I am posting just now as "ordinary" viewer not as adminn.
As many of us, I have very limited time to read forums especially at beginning of a season when birds arrive, lay eggs and so on.No way I can watch cams during day. It´s my personal problem and it doesn´t go to my head that somebody should post in a way "I want to be informed".
For me is a best way to scroll quickly through the pictures and I get almost like live overview about this day. If there is something very interesting I stop and read carefully.
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Marfo
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Post by Marfo »

I wrote this post last night for a large part.
ame wrote:i am not surprised if you have spent hundreds of hours on these pages if you really are counting the numbers of pictures of certain kinds of events. why to do that?
I am not unwilling to answer your question.
These are two different things you refer to.
1. After seeing a picture of Eagles rolling their eggs for the God knows how 'many-ith' time I wondered why it is nescessary to post a picture of this event every time. I was curious so I 'simply' used the search function to find out how many posts there were about this. I am not 100% sure but I think most posts have a picture of an 'egg roll'.

2. When there were confusions and discussions about which and how many Eagles were visiting the Latvian nest this Spring you asked for evidence for our opinions. Not very unreasonable and quite a challenge, I thought. That was one of the times I spent many hours searching the pictures and videos. I never said hundreds of hours, come on, I still have to work for a living.
ame wrote:the number of pictures per one post is to keep the posts compact and thus easy to understand. at least i have understood the reason so. in fact i think that the number should be lower nowadays: max of 3 pics per post would be more appropriate in the time of smart phones with their small screens.
It doesn't matter how many pictures there are per post, when some people just post many posts with only pictures in a row. Which happens often. The effect is a long row of pictures.
ame wrote:what are the questions for which you are looking answers for
It is not especially about me. Last year there were many occasions when someone, who was relatively new to the forum or visited only occasionally, asked a question about something that was discussed several times. Often the answer was: "this has been dicussed several times on this forum" (...).
Or, to learn to distinguish one bird from the other.
ame wrote:the "in's and out's" of the birds may be (and are!) of interest of ornithologists. one of the aims of these pages is to help them in their research. i don't know what the reason for reading these pages is for you.
Although I am not an ornithologist I am interesed in bird/animal life in a broad sense?
I think you all at Looduskalender should make up your mind about what it is you want here:
- a scientific website with scientific information to satisfy ornithologists and the like, or:
-a pleasant space for people who want to chat pleasantly about birds and post many pictures, or:
-something in between.
I really do not know, your rules and 'messages' are contradictory. On the one hand you have demands, on the other hand people can do what they please. (There is certainly nothing wrong with having a chat and having fun now and then).
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Post by Marfo »

ame wrote:at least Photobucket rescales pictures upon uploading them so one does not need to manipulate one's pictures at all before posting them. cropping pictures requires some extra action with some program at home.
You don't need an extra programme to crop pictures, you can do that in Photobucket. Very easy. So people need not be afraid of that. Only for cutting out the time stamp (if needed) and pasting that back on the cropped picture you need another program. I am sure there are easy programmes for these extra editing jobs.
You do need to resize them (depending on the size of the original picture) to the demands of the forum; 800 px wide etc.
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Post by Biker »

juta wrote:I am posting just now as "ordinary" viewer not as adminn.
As many of us, I have very limited time to read forums especially at beginning of a season when birds arrive, lay eggs and so on.No way I can watch cams during day. It´s my personal problem and it doesn´t go to my head that somebody should post in a way "I want to be informed".
For me is a best way to scroll quickly through the pictures and I get almost like live overview about this day. If there is something very interesting I stop and read carefully.
I do this also in this way and it would be a good solution for all?
*Please don't feed the trolls!*
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Post by Jo UK »

I do the same, Biker. It is a good solution.

There has been a "hitch" with ame's excellent post. As it was a double post one had to be deleted. While deleting, both posts vanished. One will reappear here soon :D
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Post by Biker »

Jo UK wrote:I do the same, Biker. It is a good solution.
a solution with which all could can arrange themselves? Like It is always in live: it don't fits all for all but...
*Please don't feed the trolls!*
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Janne+Ais
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Post by Janne+Ais »

I often think, that it would be a pragmatic and helpful thing, to install a function, where you can (if you want) hide pictures. Then only a link to the pics is visible. An you can read the text like a book. And when you think, the text is so interesting that you want to have a look at the pic, which is described, you can klick and open it. Do you know what I mean?
Could this be possible for the webmasters?
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Post by Marfo »

Again: I am not against many pictures as such. On the contrary. I would even like more people to participate. Different people see different things. It would make the forum more interesting.
It also makes people passive when there is always someone around who provides pictures in a nano second.
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Post by ame »

when i joined this forum the charm was in the fresh, almost live commenting of the events that we observed on the live cameras. pictures were added so that other members who were not able to view the live camera were able to read and see later, for example in the evening, what had happened during the day. in those times pictures and later even videos were accepted with joy. everything was very spontaneous and friendly.

the more serious reporting of observations became important (at least to me) later. writing notes about the "in's and out's" and food deliveries is part of this more serious work which is aimed at being helpful to ornithologists. besides this more serious goal very a important goal, actually the main goal of this forum is to increase general knowledge about nature among our members, and, of course, to have fun while doing it. this i have explained already earlier.

apparently some of you don't find these purposes appropriate for this forum, or are unhappy in the way in which these purposes are coming true in this forum. now i wish that those of you would explain to us what you think is the purpose of this forum, if they are something else than what i wrote above, or how the goals, either the above or yours, should be achieved. so far the comments have mostly been on the line 'this is not good' or 'there is too much of that', or 'i agree with the previous comment'. arguments like these are hardly going to lead us anywhere.

what is your alternative? if the posts what are being posted now are not acceptable then what should they be like? what's is a suitable number of posts or pictures per unit time? how to limit the numbers? who should censor the posts and/or pictures and based on what rules?
please elaborate.

one must keep in mind that most of our members have limited language and/or technical skills for example in picture manipulation. therefore each demand in the technical or even artistic quality of the pictures will drop out at least half, maybe even 9 out of 10 of our potential picture posters.

i also invite everyone to go to the Latvian Dabasdati forum and try to read at least one page in their forum with the aid of for example Google Translator. it will be a very enlightening experience, i can assure that. it will demonstrate perfectly what it is like to be completely without language.
here's the address of their Black Stork nest pages:
http://www.dabasdati.lv/forums/viewtopi ... =25&t=2590
Latvians may visit the Finnish Osprey's nest forum's Finnish pages to get the same feeling. :mrgreen:
http://www.luotio.fi/forum/viewtopic.ph ... db49f11679

after visiting one of these pages you may think about pictures in the posts in a slightly different way than earlier.

(i first posted this twice by mistake and asked someone to delete the double. the sometwo deleted both of them! :rotf: )
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ame
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Post by ame »

Marfo wrote:You don't need an extra programme to crop pictures, you can do that in Photobucket. Very easy. So people need not be afraid of that. Only for cutting out the time stamp (if needed) and pasting that back on the cropped picture you need another program. I am sure there are easy programmes for these extra editing jobs.
You do need to resize them (depending on the size of the original picture) to the demands of the forum; 800 px wide etc.
this is exactly what i wrote: no extra work is needed, the Bucket will do the trick. :nod:

in the Help-section i have described a very simple way how to crop pictures with the MS Windows Paint program.
viewtopic.php?p=463901#p463901
in the same topic there are also other ways how to re-scale pictures.

Janne+Ais,
people could just add the link to the picture in the post without the img-brackets, like this:
http://193.40.124.24/2016-merikotkas/20 ... -12-14.JPG
i think that our pages would look rather boring with only the links to the pictures though... and remember how it would look like for our language-challenged members: a desert of in-understandable text.
(i personally don't like the links very much because to see the picture i need to jump back and forth between pages, not being able to just scroll down with mouse wheel.)
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Post by juta »

Janne+Ais wrote:I often think, that it would be a pragmatic and helpful thing, to install a function, where you can (if you want) hide pictures. Then only a link to the pics is visible. An you can read the text like a book. And when you think, the text is so interesting that you want to have a look at the pic, which is described, you can klick and open it. Do you know what I mean?
Could this be possible for the webmasters?
I am not a webmaster, but know that this board is quite complicated and don´t think we will bother our only voluntary webmaster with this.
What information in general are you looking for at current time when life on the nest is calm and ruutine. Is it better only to read "female arrived, male arrived, chics are sleeping, eating, standing..." or see it on pictures. Or only some drama matters?
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Post by Hagnat »

Ame, scientific or ornithologist or not, clearly not everyone is expecting the same from this forum. Different people are looking for different things. Some are even not looking for anything but just want to post pictures, as many as possible, regardless of anything. Many are reading the forum because they have no time to follow the cam in question or any cam.

It is fine that your goal is 'to increase general knowledge about nature among our members', but in that case you have to present them knowledge and knowledge in a readable form in the first place. Real content, and real content can be very funny and interesting. Presenting a flood of pictures with much more duplication and repetition than content is of help to nobody, 'serious' and 'non-serious' readers alike. If you want to increase the general knowledge it is more effective to present your members with general documentaries about natures than with per definition specialistic webcams of breeding birds.
I am sure you can make many people ver happy with such documentaries, especially when there are cute little birds of prey to see. Don't give them lost eggs or young to watch, because that makes them very unhappy.

When you give preference to purposeless megaposters, as you and your fellow admins appear to do, then you can forget everything else, because they make almost any practical use impossible. Can that really be the purpose of the forum?
I already wrote earlier in this topic: "They seem to prefer the happiness of a couple of twittering megaposters rather than the (potential) quality of the forum. Spending a lot of money on webcams, but seemingly unwilling to make proper use of it and obstructing well meant attempts to make things better."

So, the public is diverse. I am not trying to push any category out, but to find a balance, with more emphasis on content.
It must be (made) clear that posting here is not only for your own personal need but in the first place for the need of others.
Sharing what nobody wants is no fun.
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Post by Janne+Ais »

People, please try to understand me favourably in my bad English: I wrote "if you want".
Only that user, who wants to hide the flood of pics, should use this tool! In general the pics should be visible for everybody else! I don't know, whether installing such a tool is possible at all, and how much work this would mean. But ame asked for constructive proposals. Here I wrote one, that's all.
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Post by Jo UK »

A tool to avoid seeing some members' posts and pictures? You already have it.
Go to User Control Panel You will see Manage Friends and Foes. Choose Foes.. Write in the name of the "foe", submit and then confirm
I know it works. I have just done it. This is the message you will see when a member's post is hidden from you.

This post was made by member who is currently on your ignore list. Display this post.
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Janne+Ais
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Post by Janne+Ais »

Jo UK wrote:A tool to avoid seeing some members' posts and pictures? You already have it.
Go to User Control Panel You will see Manage Friends and Foes. Choose Foes.. Write in the name of the "foe", submit and then confirm
I know it works. I have just done it. This is the message you will see when a member's post is hidden from you.

This post was made by member who is currently on your ignore list. Display this post.
No not the posts! This tool I know.
I mean only a tool to avoid seeing the pictures. Instead of them a placeholder, where you can click and open the pic, if the text below (or above) seems interesting for you. Phew, difficult to explain, sorry again for my bad English! :bow:
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Post by Jo UK »

OK. I understand your meaning.
Yes, we do have that tool.
Again, go to User Control Panel.
Choose Profile.
Choose Edit Display Options. But then you may choose to remove ALL images, not just some.
Not much help in this instance, but the choice is there.
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Post by Marfo »

ame wrote:this is exactly what i wrote: no extra work is needed, the Bucket will do the trick.
No it isn't. You wrote:
ame wrote:cropping pictures requires some extra action with some program at home.
So I wrote:
Marfo wrote:You don't need an extra programme to crop pictures, you can do that in Photobucket.
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Janne+Ais
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Post by Janne+Ais »

Jo UK wrote:OK. I understand your meaning.
Yes, we do have that tool.
Again, go to User Control Panel.
Choose Profile.
Choose Edit Display Options. But then you may choose to remove ALL images, not just some.
Not much help in this instance, but the choice is there.
:thumbs: That's it! WOW thank you so much! For me it is perfect! Just what I was looking for! Thanks! :loveshower:
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Post by ame »

Hagnat, this forum is for those who watch the webcams, for them to make observations and comments on the events seen on them. lost eggs and young happen every season in front of these cameras so they belong here.

real readable content (like in books) is what i like, too, but it can be very difficult to reach for our non-English-skilled members. did you visit the Dabasdati page with the introduction to the BS nest? many of our members see our pages like that. more than 5 lines of text may be too much for any such member who will have to use some translator machine. in DD-forum's text very often several words remain untranslated and that is enough to make the text unreadable for me. i think that may be the case with our English texts as well when translated to other languages.

documentaries on the other hand are made for different media by professionals and we can watch those on TV or in the cinema.

besides mega-posting pictures i have also sometimes inserted posts with lots of information as plain text. every time i do so i'm afraid that it will repel people more than a dozen pictures. i'm trying to write simple sentences and with no abbreviations (and with as few mistakes as possible) so that GT could translate as much as possible, but still i am afraid that the mere amount of text will make people scroll over...

i think i have an opposite opinion about why people come here: i think that people come and post here to satisfy their personal needs in the first place, and not to serve others. serving others before oneself is a very noble aspiration, but alas not the primary motivation of many of us. i think it's only realistic to admit this.
what are the personal needs then? i suppose there are about as many as there are members... :D

could you describe what is the "practical" or "proper use" of the forum which you have in mind?

Marfo, :hi:
i think i misunderstood. do you crop pictures in the Bucket (i.e. cut them)? i didn't know that it is possible. :puzzled:
i use Paint to crop and edit my pictures before upload.

i thought (and tried to write) that the Bucket rescales the pictures (makes them smaller) during the upload process, if the users setting allow it. one does not need to shrink the pictures before uploading.
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