nartreb wrote:Have you got the original python code available for download? That way I won't have to wait for a Linux port (using a Visual Studio compiler? Ewww... ) Also I can remove the save-my-summitpost-password "feature", make the description box bigger, etc.
(I do like the fact that it auto-saves a lot of stuff, but I take passwords seriously. Saving the password should be optional.)

Haha, I understand your pain on imagining some kind of horrible Linux port from Visual Studio!

Well if I release it as open source I want to do it in an organized way, via a SourceForge project where we can share and validate checkins properly. Talking with some "elvish folk" I hear some worries about the power of this tool, thinking that people will try to overload the site with pornography or something like that. So as we hash all this out I won't go any further with more ways of distributing/porting yet.

Anyway, if I made a unix port I would write it on the Mac using the standard g++ compiler and X-windows...never fear!

Yes, interesting that you mention you don't like the password saving feature. I found it convenient, but then again I'm on a machine where 1) I'm an administrator and 2) nobody within 5 miles of me knows or cares what Summitpost is, so I felt safe. I'd be happy to make it optional.

New version released: 1.0.0.1. 6 bug fixes, 1 feature (bigger description box).

Follow the download link on the article page to get it.

Special thanks to my wife who tried it out and found a whopping 13 bugs! Nothing to crow about I guess!

Thanks for all the suggestions so far folks. They are all recorded on the page. Now I've gotta get some sleep.

Congratulations !
I used it to upload a dozen of pictures of Rozsutec, it works very fine.
Few remarks/suggestions (despite I don't really know if I use the latest version)
* I couldn't select the object to attach it to
* The description field is perhaps a bit too small with one line
* Enlarging the application should allow enlarging the description zone only and not all text fields on 1 line
* Why not allowing multiple-select on the file list to enter a common title/description for several pics in the same time ?
* A second tool (or check-box) to upload on MBPost ?
Well, this shouldn't hide the big quality of your program: simple and efficient... well made !
In which language have you made it ? Did you have to ask the Elves for permission ? Would it be possible to have the source code to "customize" it a bit ?
Thanks,
Eric

OK, first sjarelkwint I'm not picking on you. But, your test case (some of these ARE test submissions, right?) demonstrates why perhaps the SP world is not ready for a bulk photo uploader.

Second, Michael - you know I've enjoyed & admire your countless climbing submissions from both PNW & The Alps. I know that you've put in a lot of effort in developing this beautiful piece of code.

However, I think that sjarelkwint's test submission case demonstrates exactly why it's not a great idea to have this tool in the hands of the vast majority of SP members. I can see how someone like you could make a great use of it. However, for each member like you there are a 100 (more?) members who will just use it to dump the content of their memory cards onto the rest of us.

From personal experience, the bottleneck of the process is not the actual manual submission effort - it's the presort of the photos that I end up using in say a TR. For me also this is probably the most fun of all steps involved.

Anyway, hope you guys are not offended. This is my 2 cents. Ultimately, with or without this tool, useless submissions will continue I think.


(apparent duplicates highlighted)

edit in: photo deleted (long time ago actually, but image here lingered till I just noticed it...sorry).

Thanks all, and thanks for your comments RPC. I think it is important to address your thoughts.

As for the duplicates that sjarelkwint uploaded, that could be explained by the fact that the tool doesn't remove photos you uploaded from the listbox. You could easily press submit again and upload a duplicate! Oops. Tonight I will add the absolutely necessary feature that the tool removes items that were successfully uploaded so that this can't happen. So I'd file that under "kinks to be worked out" but I realize it doesn't address the full scope of concerns you raise.

(Also, sjarelkwint, I hope you'll take a look at your photos and address that problem? It is unfortunate that because you are the very first user, you need to set an example for the rest of us! ).

The remaining concern, that people will "dump" poor quality photos here, is harder to answer. Your notion that "it's not a great idea to have this tool in the hands of the vast majority of SP members" is interesting, and provides the start of some ideas. I do fundamentally disagree with this idea, I think it is more likely to be a minority of people who make the poor choices that annoy us, I think we need to discuss some solutions that allow most of us to be happy. I certainly don't want to either reduce the quality of photo submissions on Summitpost, nor do I want to create hours of tedious drudge work for Elves!

I don't know if this would work at all, I am just brainstorming, but does it make sense to try to define what is a "good" user? And limit usage of the tool to such users? Someone would have to add some lines of code to perform the authorization step on the server. My tool would co-operate by making it easy to identify the UserAgent of course.

Possible ideas:

A good user is one that an Elf says is a good user
A good user has power X
A good user is one who attaches photos to Mountain, Area, Route or Trip Report pages (I say that just because I've seen lots of forum threads decrying too many non-mountain related Albums and such)

I think we can solve those things, making life easier for all of us Summitpost fans, but also protecting us from mis-use. I am preferring to look on the "cup is half full" side.

(ps, I just thought of one more thing. Borrowing from some other folks who already mentioned this idea, I think it might be good to limit the size of uploads by auto-resizing the images. That will help storage space on the servers and also prevent (as of yet still imaginary) people from deciding to archive their full memory cards up here as a sort of backup location. That makes things clear: you are uploading a copy of your image here because it is worth sharing. And that is all.)

Appreciate your well-thought out response Michael. I'm sure you'll find the right solution to this. Cheers.

I used to pre-size my images to ~1024x768; bigger for panos. Full-size images for digital cameras are usually too big for most computer screens.

This last go-round, I uploaded a few full-sized pics, and my sense of parsimony is overwhelming me.

But regardless of the size in bytes, people can still swamp with numbers of items. It's a thorny issue. The site masters could limit the number of photos uploaded, when not uploaded by page authors. It's rare for a person to be able to contribute more than a handful of pictures with new content, to an existing mountain page. But then people might start creating albums or custom objects just as storage.

MoapaPk wrote:This last go-round, I uploaded a few full-sized pics, and my sense of parsimony is overwhelming me.

oh boy! santa gonna bring coals for you this coming xmas (hell, for THAT he might even take a dump on your livingroom rug!!). Naughty naughty!

MoapaPk wrote:I used to pre-size my images to ~1024x768; bigger for panos. Full-size images for digital cameras are usually too big for most computer screens.

This last go-round, I uploaded a few full-sized pics, and my sense of parsimony is overwhelming me.

But regardless of the size in bytes, people can still swamp with numbers of items. It's a thorny issue. The site masters could limit the number of photos uploaded, when not uploaded by page authors. It's rare for a person to be able to contribute more than a handful of pictures with new content, to an existing mountain page. But then people might start creating albums or custom objects just as storage.

Yes! I have always done a pre-size step at home before uploading to the web, but more recently I gave that up. After an external hard drive crashed I was happy that some of the images, although re-touched, were full sized either at Summitpost or Flickr where I put them.

Good ideas about setting limits. Sounds like there are some creative options. I'm not sure how much leeway we have to tinker with the system...my impression is that we need the site owner to approve such things and he is often away. But those are good ideas.

Yeah, I got the impression from lurking in forums that we already have the problem of folks creating Albums and not contributing to the (I think) canonical Summitpost taxonomy: Mountain, Route, Area, TR.

You know, we could take a page from Flickr: For the free accounts, they limit the number of "Sets" you can create. What about just limiting the number of "Albums" you can create, thus mirroring a good policy? That policy was untenable for me, so I bought a full membership. That might cause the whole "I love Albums but don't give a damn about your moutains" problem to wither on the vine.

That rug tied the room together.

Must say I agree with Bob and Radek here. SP is not about speed - mountains generally aren't either (Bob might disagree here). Out of the two or three hours it takes me to set up a page, half goes to uploading pictures and doing the layout of the page. Thanks to this I upload only about half the pics I make, which would be different if I used your tool. I most likely simply would upload the whole folder containing images related to a mountain.

Take your time and you can think about what you want to do with the picture.

As for your suggestions about good and bad users you unintentionally pointed out the problem directly. There are many possible criteria and none would work for all users. There are important contributers who are known to have swamped the site with pictures. There are low power users who certainly would use the tool according to common sense, etc... We are on the internet here and elvish life has told all of us that to contain anything here is outright impossible. The best thing you can do is ignor. Which would be difficult if there are too many new objects (pix) around.

Bottom line is that I'd prefer not to have this tool - neither me nor anybody - with you as the notable exception.

My 0.02€

Okay. Well your 2 cents weighs a lot more than that of course. In fact I was thinking of you, Radek and other high contributors as the primary audience. But I get the message and will quit pestering you about it!

I don't understand why, if you are a discerning user who selects his highest quality work to upload, you would suddenly become a mindless automaton and select entire folders just because you can batch upload? Now I've used batch uploaders for sites like Flickr for years, and I never became such a user. I always still chose for quality. Especially on a voting site like Summitpost, it always makes sense to chose that way. I'd argue to have a little more faith in our fellow users.

All the best,
--Michael