About Rating Photos and Videos

[Marlene Hench]

Recently, Marilee wrote a blog asking everyone to start rating photos and videos. So now I have a few questions to ask of the site gurus regarding this.

1. How does rating effect the photo viewing? Is there a certain section where the higher rated photos will come up first? How will people actually find these photos anyway?

2. Is this rating done just on the cafe website, or does if have to be done also on Flickr?
(My own opinion is that I don't like using Flickr because when I import my photos to the cafe, it moves the order of the photos that I posted. I do notice that Google only lists photos that I have posted on Flickr though.)

3. ***What is the criteria you would like us to use in rating photos?

I see next to each photo there is a box called "rate". I can select stars 1 to 5. What qualities do these stars represent for us?

Are we looking for photos that best show what there is to do and see on our Untours, the best photography, what?

I think we need some guidelines.

I started to fool around with this rating thing. I went through some of the photos and rated a few strictly on "tourist info" content. If it showed a site, had a description, and was a good photograph, I gave it a 3-5 rating. After a few pages of photos, I decided that we really need guidelines. Help, please!!!!

[Marlene Hench]

Thanks Kim. I will wait for the guidelines before doing any ratings.

[Marilee Taussig]

At the risk of being wrong (when has that ever stopped me) I am thinking that the best guidelines is "go with your gut" ....for me, I tend to browse the new photos, using the Photo tab and when my eye sees something in the thumbnail size that draws me in, I click on it. If it seems also attractive, I give it 3 or 4 stars. If it is an AWE inspiring, wow-I have- never- seen-something-so good photo then I give it a five.

Since we are all so different, I wonder if such a thing as guidelines is realistic. The Cafe seems to work so well, so far when we let it grow organically, what would people think about "rating via instinct" for a while and seeing how those results come out?