A TO24 is a nice feeling.

[miningcamper1]

Originally Posted by amtrak07t

...there's a train in Vermont crossing a bridge...

Actually, that's a really nice shot IMO!

PhotoID: 662924 Photograph © Kevin Burkholder

[amtrak07t]

Originally Posted by miningcamper1

Actually, that's a really nice shot IMO!

I actually wasn't referring to that one haha. But still, he links to at least a dozen pages. There's plenty of shots of his that made top24 that never would have if it weren't for sharing on FB.

I don't understand why the privilege of linking to the page was revoked to a few users, while some do it constantly.

It's frustrating when you have a decent shot but _____ posts 5 images and shares the heck out of them.

[KevinM]

Not being an IT guy, I can't appreciate the complexity of the coding that would be required to implement this, but the ideal solution to the To24 problem would be to promote only the Top 4 photos in the past 24 hours, based on RP site hits. That would come closest to making everyone happy. The "World's Greatest Railroad Photographer" could still link his images to every photo site on the internet.....but he couldn't muscle his way to To24 unless the RP Audience agreed that the shot was one of the day's best. RP would still get the external hits, and I think we all realize that's important to their advertisers. And best of all, each shot would either rise to the top or not, based only on how interesting the RP viewers think it is, not on how many links the photographer can establish.

[amtrak07t]

Originally Posted by KevinM

Not being an IT guy, I can't appreciate the complexity of the coding that would be required to implement this, but the ideal solution to the To24 problem would be to promote only the Top 4 photos in the past 24 hours, based on RP site hits. That would come closest to making everyone happy. The "World's Greatest Railroad Photographer" could still link his images to every photo site on the internet.....but he couldn't muscle his way to To24 unless the RP Audience agreed that the shot was one of the day's best. RP would still get the external hits, and I think we all realize that's important to their advertisers. And best of all, each shot would either rise to the top or not, based only on how interesting the RP viewers think it is, not on how many links the photographer can establish.

As a software engineer, I can say that what you're describing is very simple. Remember when one could view the source of the page views? The functionality of how to acquire the previous page exists. All it would take is:
1.Get the page source.
2. if the source contains Railpictures.net
-increment the internal top shot count and page view count.
3. Otherwise, increment just the page view count.

[ATSF666]

I have had two top 24's (which I haven't actually seen) of the last two photos I've uploaded. I haven't up loaded them to Facebook yet, but probably should as they were slightly newsworthy (UP detour on the Oregon Trunk). I suspect someone else linked them somewhere as most of my shots don't get many views.

[vcode455]

So, as a test, I linked one of my photos to a FB group with about 2500 members. It was a view that I would have expected to get 500-700 views w/o FB and ended up getting over 1400 with the link. End of experiment. Shows you the power of linking I guess, and while frustrating, it won't stop me from posting.

[miningcamper1]

Originally Posted by vcode455

So, as a test, I linked one of my photos to a FB group with about 2500 members. It was a view that I would have expected to get 500-700 views w/o FB and ended up getting over 1400 with the link. End of experiment. Shows you the power of linking I guess, and while frustrating, it won't stop me from posting.

I have one word for Facebook's incessant prompting to "Log in/Sign up":

Fuhgeddaboudit!!!

I did manage to click on one of KB's recent photos there, and it didn't bring me to RP.
So is there a particular place on Facebook that the serial linkers use?

[RobJor]

Originally Posted by miningcamper1

I have one word for Facebook's incessant prompting to "Log in/Sign up":

Fuhgeddaboudit!!!

I did manage to click on one of KB's recent photos there, and it didn't bring me to RP.
So is there a particular place on Facebook that the serial linkers use?

In FB you can have an individual account or be a member of a group similar to other sites. You can upload your own photo with text or include a direct link to Railpics or other. If you use a link, the link will be displayed so if you did not see the RP's logo it was not a link. Individuals who are well know can have a lot of followers and people will see their post.

Without seeming to promote rail sites, some of the groups I like are community nostalgia sites. A couple I like are Yooper sites from the UP of Michigan. People post photos from a winter, an old scene sometimes rail related. The members seem pretty nice and I don't see much unpleasant.
So there is a post from downtown from the 50's or 60's with old cars and stores and people will chime in like - my father owned the XYz store on the corner or we used go downtown every Saturday, do you remember the lunch counter. Being from a micro small town I find some of these very pleasant and some neat local rail nostalgia shows up als0.

Bob

[vcode455]

Camper1: Scroll down a bit. Most of them are linked.

Bob, I agree. I really limit the social stuff on FB, but there are a lot of cool sites from a historical standpoint. Cars, trucks, trains, boats, cities/towns, etc. The Yooper sites are great. You don't always get RP quality photos, but the subject matter is often priceless. Plus most of them really try to limit the political BS to preserve the purpose of the site.

[Joseph Cermak]

Originally Posted by vcode455

So, as a test, I linked one of my photos to a FB group with about 2500 members. It was a view that I would have expected to get 500-700 views w/o FB and ended up getting over 1400 with the link. End of experiment. Shows you the power of linking I guess, and while frustrating, it won't stop me from posting.

As a followup test, I linked one of my photos to three FB groups (about 2200 members total assuming no duplicates) after it had been on RP for 24 hours. It had 381 views before linking and 410 after linking over an additional 24 hour period. I'm sure linking is what gets some images to the top, but I'm not sure where they are linked or to what extent those views account for. Do the links just provide enough views to get to the top 15 or 30 images (where I assume the majority of the RP audience clicks first) and then normal RP viewers carry it to a top spot? Or the linked views the primary source of views? I don't know and without the feature anymore to see where views came from, its hard to get any concrete answers. Just thought this was interesting to test different scenarios.

[KevinM]

Originally Posted by Joseph Cermak

As a followup test, I linked one of my photos to three FB groups (about 2200 members total assuming no duplicates) after it had been on RP for 24 hours. It had 381 views before linking and 410 after linking over an additional 24 hour period.

Question: When the "World's Greatest Railroad Photographer" links his images to Facebook, do Facebook users actually see a thumbnail of the image, like we do on RP, or is it just a URL link.....meaning totally blind? On many other sites, the links are indeed blind, meaning the user has no idea what the image looks like before clicking.

[Joseph Cermak]

Originally Posted by KevinM

Question: When the "World's Greatest Railroad Photographer" links his images to Facebook, do Facebook users actually see a thumbnail of the image, like we do on RP, or is it just a URL link.....meaning totally blind? On many other sites, the links are indeed blind, meaning the user has no idea what the image looks like before clicking.

Here's a screenshot of my linked post. It kind of appears as a thumbnail. It's larger than the RP thumbnails to the point you can almost see enough of the image to not need to click, but they are usually cropped a bit, probably depending on the aspect ratio used on the photo as well.

[RobJor]

There are a lot of things that can derail(smile) your way to the top-24. Besides facebook links, some people have a strong following with built-in advantage, a screeners choice can fall into place, an SP photo almost anywhere, PA's on the Santa Fe, cooking sausages, a wreck anywhere or of course -
Besides the obvious question of serendipity? , is she going to step on the rail with the flip-flops.

Bob

PhotoID: 663604 Photograph © Gary R. Schermerhorn

[miningcamper1]

Originally Posted by RobJor

There are a lot of things that can derail(smile) your way to the top-24. Besides facebook links, some people have a strong following with built-in advantage, a screeners choice can fall into place, an SP photo almost anywhere, PA's on the Santa Fe, cooking sausages, a wreck anywhere or of course -
Besides the obvious question of serendipity? , is she going to step on the rail with the flip-flops.

Bob

True story. Somewhere along the Maine Central's Mountain Sub, I spotted two young boys who had managed to get their snowmobile stuck in the flangeways near a crossing. Imagine the abject terror on their faces when I told them the train from St. Johnsbury was moments away. Naturally I helped them pull it free in time. Could the train have stopped in time? Who knows!

[BarrySr]

Originally Posted by amtrak07t

It was mentioned in the site discussion form that we would see less photos in the top24 from "a certain user". Now that the user is under a new id, he's back and linking to his photos.

I think the feature should be rolled out for all users across all accounts. There's a lot of gems that will never see the front page because there's a train in Vermont crossing a bridge or a CN engine in some random, mundane part of Canada.

From one of your posts on the previous thread:

"A lot of good, quality photos get pushed aside, as Mr. Link Sharer campaigns for his roster shot on Facebook."

Who are you referring to here, Mr Fiume?

[amtrak07t]

The "Mr. Link Sharer" was meant to be generic as there's certainly more than one person who does it.


I'm still not sure what the official policy is.