Sounds good, esp. re. image size (in macro I'm increasingly finding myself posting links to larger images to show off detail invisible in 250k 800pix files). I'd remain to be convinced about the usefulness of a check-box, however.

Re. ahazeghi's comment, I think we should all want honest critiques to the greater benefit of NSN, but I would hate for that to be something that differentiated the birds forum from others - I'd want to encourage honest critiquing in all the forums. As a keen amateur, I cannot tell you enough about how much I've learned by reading, posting, and commenting here - a very very different, positive, experience from posting elsewhere as others have noted, and we must keep and promote this NSN distinctiveness.

I currently use Flickr quite a bit, but this is only because a) I don't currently have my own website/am not a member of NSN (I may yet be! but I feel that some of the membership benefits are a little too skewed towards a US audience for me to benefit from), b) I can store images there in quite large sizes if I wish, and c) I can contribute usefully to a range of conservation-oriented, or geographically specialized, groups in conjunction with the useful mapping feature. I *don't* use it for any useful feedback on my images there!

Is there a general developing view about the perceived increase in banal critiques? Is it because the longer you post here the more you feel you know the poster, and somehow consequent politeness militates against potentially negative commentary?

The moderators on here are excellent in general and set a good example for others on how to respond to images. Thanks all!

I was talking to a colleague yesterday about reviewing scientific papers and he commented that the usual system where authors are known, but reviewers often choose to be anonymous, is the wrong way around. The material should be what matters, not who wrote it, and a reviewer should be willing to stand behind their words. I know we've bashed this one around plenty already, but I find it hard to disagree with this suggestion and don't see it being very different to critiquing photos.
I think Greg's check box could be worth a try.


Could be.

Neil out.

Interesting: in Humanities peer-reviewed research (my field) the author is anonymous as well as the reviewer, with the journal editor acting as a go-between. Often, however, it is quite easy to make a guess, because specialisms can be quite narrow.

Basically, I don't think that anonymity would be at all helpful or desirable here.

Interesting. I'm in ecology and haven't come across that system.

Tapatalk plugin installed so I can use the Tapatalk forum app to browse both posts and view pictures on my Android in a much more forum friendly way. Easy to install and maintain.

What do people think about the search function? Sometimes I feel it's a bit clunky if e.g. I'm trying to input numbers to search for specific lenses.

I dunno if anyone else has commented about this, but I want to post larger photos. At least 1200 pixels on the longest side. Why? Because all of the wonderful details are lost at 800 pixels. In fact, what I really want is to post a smaller version of the shot with the option to view the original shot. I know, it eats up disk space. But, with all kinds of options for storage, S3 as an example, why not?

At least give us the option of hosting our own shots and posting here.

Forgive me if others have discussed this in the thread.

Best regards,

Bill

Sorry, I did not read the whole thread so my idea was probably mentioned. Check the 500px (http://500px.com) galleries and the popular like system. Maybe you can get some idea. Many of us are present on 500px.

Best, Szimi

PS: Good to be a part of the community again.

I would also like to ask for an iPhone and iPAD friendly version. I would also like to cast another vote as well for a larger file size. It is hard to critique and image sometimes with such small file sizes.

Larger image size like 1024 horizontal would work pretty nice.

Separate forums for Macro florals and bugs.

Ken

Will the critique areas in the new site design be "gallery" or "photo album" in appearance versus "forum" looking? I would prefer to see pages of thumbnails similar to the portfolio section of the website. I don't post often, nor do I peruse the image forums too often, and it is for this reason (presentation format).

I too support larger file sizes. You can also implement thumbnails, display sizes and then "original" uploads. On the travel photography site that I run we have 180 pixel (long side) thumbnails, 900x600 pixel display sizes, and 1500x1000 pixel "original" allowed uploads. People on slow connections or using mobile devices don't have to view the 1500x1000 pixel images. Those with fast ISPs or large displays can if they click on the 900x600 version. The user only uploads the "original" version. The site creates the thumbnail and display versions.

It would be nice to provide a "watermark" or other method of tagging Image of the Week selections. When I'm perusing the albums this will clearly indicate which were considered "the best".

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

A few updates:

The project is commencing slower than planned but only because we have opened up many cans of worms and will be implementing more major changes then we originally anticipated with respect to both look and feel, and functionality of the galleries specifically, but also other parts of the site as well (new articles section, unified log in etc.) We have already spent 1000's on man hours (which is why no one really sees me on the site all that much these days ) on the work and implementation, yet we are still not ready to ask for beta testers at this stage - but we are getting close.

We expect to be in beta within 30 to 60 days and hope to have a stable launch before the end of the calendar year. That seems a long way off but we promise it will be more than worth the wait.

Yes the appearance of the "galleries" will be changing and will be much more graphically pleasing with larger images and thumbnails. But they will still be using the PHPBB software to run them which will maintain everyone's postings, stats, etc etc.

The size of the images will be, at least initially, fixed at 950 on the longest side. Then, in time, we plan to have a full screen "mode" and the ability to upload even larger images and view them at various sizes; but for the interim we'll be allowing fixed 950 pixels on the longest side and a higher KB size than we currently allow (probably 450-500KB). For design purposes thumbnails will be square - with the ability to set your own crop.

We will eventually be doing away with the portfolios section of the site and utilizing a more integrated way of creating personal portfolios, but that will come in the next stage.

This will be, by far, the largest upgrade and most radical change ever for NSN, and we hope that folks will be happy what we are creating and will see the time, effort and money that is going into it. Just as a photographer's body of work, it will literally never be truly "finished". But, as we begin our tenth year on NSN, it will be exciting for sure

Thanks for update, Greg!
For one I'd like to see the image size to be fixed at 1024 pixels initially.
950 seems odd, no?!

For now, we're simply inching up the maximum size and keeping the pages looking nice without going beyond what many devices can properly display.

When designing a site for a minimum monitor screen size of 1024 the images shown cannot be 1024 and still work nicely into a page - you have scroll bars, padding etc etc. And these things become important for some devices that are limited by these dimensions -most ipads and iphones for instance (short of designing a specific "app" which we may do down the road as well.)

As I said, ultimately we're working toward a more dynamic "full screen" mode (in the next phase) where you should be able to post images that are significantly larger still and we will then simply dynamically display the image at it's maximum size, based on the screen being used.

In the meantime, we'll be increasing the maximum amount of pixels you can display by a pretty significant amount (30%). My guess is that many won't post up to the full 950 but will instead keep their images smaller than that - some might (and can) continue to post at 800.

This is great news Greg. Thanks for all the hard work and expense you guys are putting into this.

One of my pet peeves (I don't have many) are websites that detect you are on a smartphone and redirect you to their mobile site and you can't do anything about it. The mobile site usually is not as full-featured as the standard web page. I am more familiar with the standard site's page layout and menu items. Once on the mobile site, I then have to navigate back to the "standard" site. Thankfully, the accurate touchscreen of the iPhone makes it easier to take. Websites in general should allow users to select if they want to go to a mobile site before redirecting them there. So, the default site should be the regular site.

The new NSN will be both IPhone and Ipad friendly without hosting a separate "mobile" app for the site.

It's looking like we will be looking for Beta testers before the end of August - and we'll make an appropriate announcement at that time.

One last thought: the ability to generate easily printed forum threads.

Ken

Yep I'm all for the larger file size being available as the 250K is just way too small in this day of larger screen resolutions being the norm. Looking forward to the upgrades.