I will definitely agree with Redwic on a few points:

1. Obscure pages that are well done do not get the appreciation they deserve. I've seen Redwic post some good pages that I felt went "unnoticed". One of my best mountain pages I've ever posted (perhaps my absolute best) is actually one of my lowest rated. This is because the mountain is not very well known, despite the fact that it is a awesome climb pumped with tons of details. I inherited the page which means it will never show up on what's new (back in the day when it did, the page was not so good). So I feel for Redwic on this one

2. There is a atmosphere of votes equaling quality. The truth is that that is not true. Need proof? I've seen an airplane photo with no mountains in the background whats so ever get more votes than some truly amazing photos. I have many examples but the point is that votes do bring up a lot of quality content, but they do not necessarily speak out how good that content actually is. So here's the wording I personally don't like "Best Mountains & Rocks". I would have called it "Best Rated Mountains & Rocks" which makes it much more accurate. Not a big deal, but it does create an atmosphere of what the "best stuff" is. Kinda like the 7 summits being the best pages on the site... right? (Fletch did honestly impress me with the Denali page upgrade)

3. I really enjoyed Redwic's point about having a standard. We already have one. But in the past I've had a case where the admins seemed annoyed by my postings because they were afraid I'd raise the standards. This is good in content, but bad in the sense that it scares off new posters. The way I see it, most of the obvious mountains in the world are taken. So if your going to put up a page on something, let it be a good one. I can't tell you how many times I've not been able to contribute good information because the page was taken with only fair quality.

One minor suggestion.

Is there a way to correct the ages on the user list to read our actually ages? Unless our birthday is on January 1st, the system ages us before we need to. Next January 1, SP is going to make me turn 40 six months before I actually do. Oh, the horror.

I'll mark that in my custom object. I completely agree and have noticed this over 5 years ago.

Montana Matt wrote:I do understand your concerns Redwic. And the goal with the new system was to try to make the voting system more "fair" for everyone and reward the people that submit the best content of the most valuable types of content.

The way I see it, one of the best advantages of the new system is not its "fairness" but the fact that it creates a real opportunity to provide feedback - in the simplest way - to the maintainer of a page about what standards the voters expect.

yatsek nailed it!

Our only options as really to either give every page a flat score, or implement a system that uses community votes to try to acknowledge quality. Any member that isn't contributing because they are afraid they won't get votes is probably putting more importance on it than anyone else is.

Redwic you mentioned that you felt it would be better if you understood the system more. Please read my lasts posts in the SP voting thread, and the SP FAQ. It's all there.

Any system where we try to acknowledge quality is going to be subjective. And ANY system that is subjective is not going to be perfect. Period.

Scott wrote:Is there a way to correct the ages on our profile to read our actually ages? Unless our birthday is on January 1st, the system ages us before we need to. Next January 1, SP is going to make me turn 40 six months before I actually do. Oh, the horror.

I can't see any issue with the code. Can you provide me an example where the profile age is older than the actual age?

He's talking about the user list Matt.

http://www.summitpost.org/users

The ages there are based on calendar years, not actual birthdays. Note Dow is a year older on that list than his profile.

Tiny bit of code missing somewhere.

I'm not 21! www.summitpost.org/user_list.php?userna ... wer&page=1

Don't know how others feel, but I'm not too crazy about some of the changes. On the front page, photos are now on the right and pages on the left - seems to me like it makes photos more prominent than pages. Also couldn't help but notice that the photo at the top of the list was of a wading bird - nice photo, but nothing to do with mountains, climbing, etc.

The server speed is definitely a big improvement. The rest of the changes seem OK.

I hear you on the front page Buz. The left to right layout was something I suggested to shake things up, but I too wonder if it now decreased the prominence of the mountain pages. It is easy to adjust, and if others feel the same then don't consider it permanent.

The top photo mechanism will change later, we thought this a good start while Matt works on other things in the meantime. It semi-randomly chooses from a group of the top images, not totally random, but there is little that can be done if folks vote for non mountain pages. But that's why there is more than one. There's at least a few mountains that show in that group.

Not sure if this is already included, but Photo of the Day and Photo of the Week should be excluded from the Photo of the Moment. I haven't seen them be the same, but I don't know exactly how the system was designed. When Featured photo is out, make sure photo of the moment cannot select a featured photo. This wau we avoid duplicates.

Josh Lewis wrote:Not sure if this is already included, but Photo of the Day and Photo of the Week should be excluded from the Photo of the Moment. I haven't seen them be the same, but I don't know exactly how the system was designed. When Featured photo is out, make sure photo of the moment cannot select a featured photo. This wau we avoid duplicates.

Matt just adjusted the POTM mechanism, as previously we were seeing some photos multiple days. Currently it should be a new batch every day, all from different members. I don't think we will see any POTD that can show up as POTM, but it can (and perhaps should) be able to happen the other way around (I think that last part is accurate... that it currently can happen where POTM becomes POTD later on... but who knows at this point).

I was the one that brought it to Matt's attention about the system being locked (Photo of the Day/Week). But perhaps he already knew. It was fixed quite soon after I sent my message. Perhaps I didn't phrase myself well enough, but a photo of the moment should have the opportunity to get photo of the day/ week.

Evidently we both harassed him today.