Forum Photo Collections - Your Views Please

[Bill Edwards]

Dear All

 

Please READ this topic BEFORE voting in the poll.

 

I believe that photos are vital for our forum. I am extremely grateful to all our members who post photos for us to enjoy. We get to see equipment and funfairs that we couldn't hope to see normally. I'm sure we all have different expectations from photo collections and I would like to know what members think about the photographs posted in the forum, in particular with regards to storage, the quantity, quality and type of photos that you want to see posted.

 

We have, in theory at least, unlimited storage space, but in reality our storage bill is increasing. I pay for each photo stored and again each time it is viewed. True, the cost per photo is small, but overall the bill is significant and when coupled with hosting and software costs, the bill is substantial. I cannot afford to pay the bill personally, I rely on "Forum Supporters" making donations. If I continue to accept photo topics and store them for ever whilst the number of donations falls at some point in the near future outgoings will be larger than our income (at present I am about even). At that point I will either have to close the forum or make drastic changes to ensure it's future. In short, I HAVE to do something to manage our storage and I don't know weather members would prefer to see smaller, more compact photo albums stored for longer or bigger albums stored for a shorter period.  We simply don't have enough income to store every photo published forever.

 

Doing nothing ISN'T AN OPTION - We MUST DO SOMETHING. When the cost of our storage and hosting is greater than forum donations THE FORUM WILL CLOSE. (At present we are just about breaking even most months)

 

Whilst I appreciate there may be some cross over between the two types, I am going to ask your views on two types of photo:

1. Full frontal photos of equipment, one photo (possibly two if the shots are different) suitably framed, without any effect other than normal editing 
2. Extra photos - photos with special effects added, multiple shots of equipment from various angles, close ups of art, lighting, signage, swag, punters etc

 

 

Many thanks for your input.

 

All the best

 

Bill

[Nick Attwell]

<<<Full frontal photos of equipment, one photo (possibly two if the shots are different) suitably framed, without any effect other than normal editing>>>  I believe would be most cost effective option Bill

[John Carter]

As far as I'm concerned, there's a category of photos not described above. Fairs are by and for people and I want to see them. That means build-up photos with gaff lads, rides with punters on them and general scenes showing the full spectacle of an open fair. Am I alone in this?

[Bill Edwards]

17 minutes ago, John Carter said:

As far as I'm concerned, there's a category of photos not described above. Fairs are by and for people and I want to see them. That means build-up photos with gaff lads, rides with punters on them and general scenes showing the full spectacle of an open fair. Am I alone in this?

 

I've included these types of photos under "extras" 

 

15 hours ago, Bill Edwards said:

Extra photos - photos with special effects added, multiple shots of equipment from various angles, close ups of art, lighting, signage, swag, punters etc

 

Hopefully the poll  will show what members do want to see

[John Carter]

I should read more carefully, shouldn't I?    I have voted, however, in line with what the majority of members appear to favour.

[Bill Edwards]

7 hours ago, Nick Attwell said:

<<<Full frontal photos of equipment, one photo (possibly two if the shots are different) suitably framed, without any effect other than normal editing>>>  I believe would be most cost effective option Bill

 

Have you voted @Nick Attwell ??

[Nick Attwell]

Yes thanks Bill; voted yesterday 

[Simon Taylor]

Bill.

 

Would it be possible to get some finance for this website from the National Lottery or the National Fair and Circus Archive. The photo forums are my favourite part of the website and I enjoy looking at the photos people have posted over the Months and Years, it would be a shame if this part of the forum is drastically reduced.

Failing that perhaps only permit access to the Rides Index and Fairground Reports to Forum Supporter's?

 

Simon.

 

 

[Bill Edwards]

4 hours ago, Simon Taylor said:

Failing that perhaps only permit access to the Rides Index and Fairground Reports to Forum Supporter's?

 

The problem with that is that only a small fraction of our members are forum supporters - by drastically reducing the numbers who can provide reports, rides list updates and rides list photos, the information in these sections would suffer drastically and I'm sure we don't want to go down that route.

 

4 hours ago, Simon Taylor said:

Would it be possible to get some finance for this website from the National Lottery or the National Fair and Circus Archive.

 

I don't think our income/outgoing balance is sufficient to qualify for outside assistance. Being honest, we are just about even at the moment - some months I'm up, some month's I'm down, but over the course of the year we just about break even. But this assumes our hosting/storage costs don't rise (hence looking at the images we do store) and that our supporter numbers don't fall any further.

 

4 hours ago, Simon Taylor said:

it would be a shame if this part of the forum is drastically reduced.

 

There are no plans to drastically reduce photo albums. Quite apart from the financial aspect, the poll indicates (and I appreciate it's got a few days to run yet) that the majority of our members actually prefer to see smaller, more compact photo albums. We cannot please all the members all the time, so will always try to do the best for the majority. What I am going to suggest, if the poll comes out in favour of smaller, more compact albums is that members post there albums here and post a link to the other photos hosted off site - we manage our storage costs, members who don't want to see the other photos don't click the link, those that do visit the external album (Flickr etc)

 

Many thanks for taking the time to feedback - much appreciated!

[Richard Flynn]

When GOV.UK was set up one of its guiding principles was to use other vehicles where possible and not re-invent the wheel or create needless cost. So photos and videos etc are not stored on GOV.UK they are on Flickr or YouTube with appropriate links on the GOV.Uk pages. Although it appears that Government departments or agencies have their own websites in reality they don't - they only have pages within GOV.UK . Basically what I am suggesting is that members could post their photos/videos in free places and link to them on the forum.

[Steve Barton]

26 minutes ago, Richard Flynn said:

When GOV.UK was set up one of its guiding principles was to use other vehicles where possible and not re-invent the wheel or create needless cost. So photos and videos etc are not stored on GOV.UK they are on Flickr or YouTube with appropriate links on the GOV.Uk pages. Although it appears that Government departments or agencies have their own websites in reality they don't - they only have pages within GOV.UK . Basically what I am suggesting is that members could post their photos/videos in free places and link to them on the forum.

 

We have tried that Richard but with most of these free sites you only get a certain amount of storage space as a result Members were posting photo topics of links on ATFOTF but when they exceeded their free storage on FLICKR etc they were deleting photos on these sites to free up space but not deleting their photo topics on ATFOTF so we were left with topics with dead links. Another thing we found was that some of these sites offered 28 days free trial at the end of the 28 days some people didn't join so their posts on the hosting site were deleted so again we were left with topics with dead links, and the same thing happened if people moved from one hosting site to another they moved their photos from one hosting site to another and we were left with dead links again. I agree that off Forum hosting would be the best solution I still have and use my Flickr account from when we had to host off Forum but it only works if people update their topics on ATFOTF after they have made changes on these photo hosting sites otherwise we are left with a number of pointless photoless topics.

[Bill Edwards]

I'm not making any promises at the moment, but I am working towards a solution that:

• Keeps Gallery Albums compact
• Allows more economic use of our storage
• Allows members to post the "extra" photos
• Keeps the "extra" photos away from those who don't wish to view them

I'm at an early stage with this, but early signs are promising 

[Bill Edwards]

On 9/24/2017 at 13:40, Bill Edwards said:

I'm not making any promises at the moment, but I am working towards a solution that:

• Keeps Gallery Albums compact
• Allows more economic use of our storage
• Allows members to post the "extra" photos
• Keeps the "extra" photos away from those who don't wish to view them

I'm at an early stage with this, but early signs are promising 

 

I have this set up now and will be able to supply an additional Gallery (same software, different site) for all the "extra" photos that members want to post. It won't impact on our forum storage (it's hosted on my own private server). If the vote goes that way members will be able to post Option 1 / Option 3 photos in the main site Gallery and Extras on the supplementary Gallery. When posting their main album, members can link to the extra photos in the supplementary gallery. Those that wish to see the extras click the link, those that don't want to see them don't click the link. 

[Bill Edwards]

I forgot to add an end date to the poll when I set it up. We usually run polls for a week, which would be today. To give anyone a chance to vote who hasn't yet, the poll will close at 5.30pm tomorrow, Thursday 28th September 2017.