SummitPost.org

Josh Lewis wrote:Michael, I have differing opinions from Mr. Chad about the bulk uploader. I consider it the greatest tool ever created for sp. It does save time because even though you have to type in the captions (same with single upload), the main difference is that you have to wait each time for the picture to upload. Lets say it takes 30 seconds to upload a single picture, and you have 20 pictures for your latest mountain page or trip report. The bulk uploader would save you 10 minutes of waiting because you have to be there uploading one by one, but with the bulk uploader you can walk away for 20 minutes or so until its done. Kinda like cooking.

Thanks for the love, Josh. One day people think the site is dying, the next that it's being "overwhelmed" by too many pictures. An abundance of pictures of mountains and climbs is necessary to build the pages on top of them that represent compelling content. The Bulk Uploader automates the drudgework involved in the former, so you can concentrate more on the latter. I realize that some people see the single page clicking, posting, waiting, editing as kind of a spiritual exercise, that winnows the list of items they ultimately upload to a jeweled minimum.

Well that is fine for them, and they should continue this meditation practice. Some people used to walk 10 miles to school too, and while I'm willing to admit those people had better character than the rest of us, I'm not likely to narrow my options to conform to their experience.

(edited to add the , because I can tell I'm going off the deep end here...hey, it's Saturday night!)

mvs wrote: I realize that some people see the single page clicking, posting, waiting, editing as kind of a spiritual exercise, that winnows the list of items they ultimately upload to a jeweled minimum.

Beautiful.

Matt, not sure it would help much but there are still obvious "useless users", here's a good example:

http://www.summitpost.org/users/JoshLewis/36973

This was my old profile back in the day (2007). The profile itself stores the peaks I've climbed, and it also has sp gear pictures (which is only 2) but perhaps there may be a lot more of these kinds of profiles out there.

Trying to make a page Saturday night 8-9 pm Central Time Zone. Extremely slow!!! Each picture takes 3-5 minutes to upload. Some do not upload after even 10 minutes. Very frustrating. I have to figure out how to bulk upload.

mvs wrote: I realize that some people see the single page clicking, posting, waiting, editing as kind of a spiritual exercise ...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvZyGp-LG4I[/youtube]

I don't know what happened here, but Summitpost's smoking today. Thank you Matt for saving my life. I wasn't looking forward to signing in today, but I'm glad I did to see something's been done.

Montana Matt wrote:It would definitely help for someone to go through and manually delete obviously useless users such as this one. Unfortunately it is very time consuming to manually go through 30,000+ users.

I assumed that you seemed so good with scripting that I figured perhaps you might have known some easy way to purge users who are "deactivated". No worries there.

nader wrote:Trying to make a page Saturday night 8-9 pm Central Time Zone. Extremely slow!!! Each picture takes 3-5 minutes to upload. Some do not upload after even 10 minutes. Very frustrating. I have to figure out how to bulk upload.

Sent you the link to "Bulk Loader" by Private Message. Hope it will help.

I usually post only to complain but today I am thrilled to report that I was able to zoom through images yesterday and today!!!

Thanks Matt and anyone else who worked to improve things! What a present to come back from Banff to!

mvs wrote:

mrchad9 wrote:That bulk uploader tool is perhaps the worst addition that has ever been made to SP.

If you are submitting an appropriate about of quality stuff, and providing adequate detail in your captions, it doesn't even really save you much time, you still need to write the captions. You only need to load up to 15 images or so for any kind of page in a day anyway (perhaps a limit should be put on the number of images an account can add per day). Bulk uploading primarily benefits those who are overloading the site with bullshit.

I just want to point out that the ability to bulk upload pictures has not been fingered as the cause of server slowdown.

Also the Bulk Uploader allows you to write your captions in the program before you submit for upload. It was designed so that you don't have to go visit the pages one by one. Finally, it can also submit the metadata in the photo for title/description. There is nothing preventing you from writing good captions for your photos with the bulk uploader...it was designed to make it easier for you to make good captions.

It was also designed to make it easy to use every photo you upload, by giving you a list of sp-formatted links to the photos after upload is complete, so you can embed those links in your trs, mountain pages, whatever.

Sorry, I know the application does have and will continue to have detractors, but the intention behind it and the feature set that went into it was built to ease the production of quality content.

I don't (and didn't) think the bulk uploader contributed to the site slowdown. I just don't think it cuts that many corners if you are only uploading 5-12 pictures in a day. If folks want to use it, that's fine, and it does have its upsides.

But there are downsides too, and I think they are a lot more significant than the upsides (since the upsides are small). It clutters up the site. A couple nights a week, for example, there are a few individuals who don't submit content but rather use it to store whatever random 50 photos from an irrelevant trip they went on, pushing everything else off the What's New page. And then there is just the quantity of photos some people submit. Yes, Josh swears by the bulk uploader, but one of his TRs has 173 photos attached. A lot of them are good, but just imagine if he was forced to submit them one at a time, and contribute, say... only the best 20 or so of the lot.

mrchad9 wrote:but just imagine if he was forced to submit them one at a time, and contribute, say... only the best 20 or so of the lot.

SP would never be the same if I only had 20 pics. I've used at least one site that allowed only a few pics per trip report. I eventually stopped using it because I feel as though the pics are important. At least I don't shoot in super high resolution (excluding panorama's) and on some of them manually resize them to save space. And I avoid posting many more of my pics to save space on sp and am encouraging others to do so (in person with friends). I guess I could post them else where and use raw html to display them. But that would make trip report making harder.


As for the 173 photos, that is an average of 19.222222 Photos per day for the trip, it was a 9 day series. When it comes to trip reports I try to work on quality rather than quantity. Sure I could post trip reports more often with only 15 pictures or so, but I figure people would rather me spend the time and write the really cool adventures. And then eye candy is very important. But if there are other folks who think I post too many pics I could slow it down.

OK... but the TR itself uses 88 or so pictures. That's all great... they are part of the writeup. What are the other 85 for though? I would think it unlikely that anyone would have a chance to go through all 173 of them, so why not limit it to the 88, or even 100, so folks are more likely to notice the better ones?

Thanks for your reasoned reply mrchad9. I guess it's a matter of opinion. I'm not inclined to see a problem because I never browse the "what's new in pictures" page, because for me, even before the bulk uploader, it was a boring page, requiring lots of scrolling, and I wasn't even likely to find pictures for the mountain ranges I visit. So pretty soon I adapted to use the "What's new in TRs, Articles, Mountains and Routes" instead, and to see the incoming picture stream as a kind of superabundant (often boring) raw material.

All this talk of limits makes sense if you really want to preserve viewing that image stream as an important part of the Summitpost experience. I guess a lot of folks do want that, we'll just have to leave that up to feature owners to decide among competing modes of use.

I don't know if this offers any insight into Josh's creative process, but I know when I upload a TR or route, I end up creating several pages (TR, mountain, route page or two, sometimes a custom object as well). I'll just bulk upload all the associated pictures, attaching them to something, then spread them around among the several pages I create. For me it's easier to get all my media on the site, then do the linking/attaching without having to worry about pictures. That way, I could do writing elsewhere, on another computer that doesn't have the image files, LightRoom, etc.

You are certainly free to believe it doesn't save much time, but in my experience it really does. I think that's why most sites that allow user created content have some kind of bulk upload capability.

All that said, I will readily concede that, yes, if someone is intent on uploading boring or useless photos in great number, then unfortunately the bulk uploader did make their job easier. I just think that if we focus on how productive users of the site will benefit and be encouraged to contribute more, then the problem of bad actors will remain a small one. I respect this community, and think that empowerment will achieve more positive results than limits.

Thanks again,
--Michael

I believe in Free Choice. I don't choose to use the bulk-uploading gizmo, but to each his own.

It can be compared to going to Costco to buy bulk provisions. If you buy too much of the same thing, you WILL get tired of it after awhile.

I don't buy (or vote) on pictures of blurry (out-of-focus and uninteresting) "scenery shots" that are a dime a dozen. Let's be creative, folks !!!

lcarreau wrote:...

I don't buy (or vote) on pictures of blurry (out-of-focus and uninteresting) "scenery shots" that are a dime a dozen. Let's be creative, folks !!!

Totally agree...in fact maybe that is part of the problem for some: I feel no responsibility to vote on anything, ever. If I like it, I vote, if I really hate it I vote. I miss huge gulps of things and don't try to "keep up" with any stream. Perhaps this is a citizenship problem on my part!