Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

[ColytonJohn]

... are using one of my images < this one > as their 'cover photo'.

Not of earth shattering importance, perhaps, but the e-mail announcing it brightened my day

Cheers,
John

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

It's nice when that happens isn't it smile:

[ctrollen]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

... are using one of my images < this one > as their 'cover photo'.

Not of earth shattering importance, perhaps, but the e-mail announcing it brightened my day

Well done, it's a lovely shot.

It's nice when that happens isn't it smile:

I wouldn't know. One day, perhaps

[colin C]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

Very well done John.

That is a very good, commercial image and I am not surprised they are using it.

[John Liddle]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

They made a good choice John!

[ColytonJohn]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

Thanks folks

Cheers,
John

[El Sid]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

I remember that shot... Shows Flickr do still have some taste...

[Nathaniel]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

Congratulations John. Well done.

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

I remember that shot... Shows Flickr do still have some taste...

Indeed. The top banner pics are human selected. Explore on the other hand is purely about views. faves, groups and comments. Oh, and whether you have borders, watermarks and are safe for all to view. So in some respects, getting a shot as a group banner is more of an achievement than being explored.

[John Liddle]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

...... getting a shot as a group banner is more of an achievement than being explored.

I guess that depends on who is doing the exploring!

[ColytonJohn]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

Thanks folks

... So in some respects, getting a shot as a group banner is more of an achievement than being explored.

Then my day has just been brightened even more

Cheers,
John

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

So, in case it's useful...

Because there are millions of photos uploaded very day and no one could review them all and select the top 500, getting into explore is at one level a numbers game. What you need is a lot of views, a good percentage of faves, not too many comments, to not be in too many groups and for the shot to be safe for general viewing. Flickr applies an algorithm to the numbers to give your photo a ranking and then takes the top 500 into Explore. In my case I've done reasonably well with 200+ views, 20+ faves, one or two comments and in five or six groups. The other part of the algorithm is that your photos are not eligible for selection every day. It seems one day out of nine or ten, your shots go int the hat and can be selected.

In addition there's some manual curating applied. Too many photos of one type, some get dropped manually. There are some subjects that are not in favour and get dropped - shots of trains and lego seem to be variously in and out of favour. Then there's borders and watermarks. Flickr curators do not like those so if you get into explore and consistently use a border or watermark, not only will your shot get dropped but you'll get banned from Explore. Anecdotally, other heinous crimes such as only posting shots of long diesel trains will also get you banned. And with a ban there's no notification, you just never get a photo in explore again.

The higher you're shot is ranked in explore, in general the more views you end up with. Some of our colleagues have hit the high levels of explore and we're talking tens of thousands, for example top shot yesterday had 82k views. And the way you know you're in explore is that the view count on one of your photos starts to go mad. And that ranking is recalculated during the day so you can find that your shot in the high 400s can be dropped because other shots ranked below got more views and moved them up the ranking to push yours out. But it can also go up the rankings if the views go up quicker than the shots ranked around it.

The explore selection algorithm used to be applied at around 4am and run on photos uploaded during the previous day. So upload early today and your shot will be in the mix for tomorrow's explore page. I say used to be because the last photos that my wife and got in Explore seem to have lagged by a day, her photo uploaded on Wednesday is in explore for yesterday but the view count on the photo didn't start to ramp up until today. A bit strange.

Because Flickr don't reveal the process for selecting for Explore or anything about bans, temporary or permanent, all of the above is supposition based on what I've seen happen and the discussions from the In Explore group on Flickr where there have been long discussions about how the process works.

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

One other item I've picked up on today is the theory that uploads with an image size less than 1600px on the long side are ignored.

[TonyT]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

In Explore (3) my maximum views were 7.5k, one was a strange one, I posted a picture of a Tit, someone commented that a tiny branch looked like it was sticking in its side, so I removed the branch and posted an image which was next in the sequence, so as near as damn it identical, the reposted image got Explore, over 6K views, 230 odd faves, and 40 odd comments, the other one got 390 views, 7 faves and 8 comments for what was more or less the same view, but not in Explore.

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: Flickr Group: 'Sea Based Industries of the UK'...

It's completely random isn't it. You can "game it" and optimise your chances but it's not based on the photo itself...