Do you use the photo gallery?

[jon]

In moving to new forum software soon one of the things we are considering is dropping the photo gallery. The new forum will allow you to drag and drop photos into a post, which from a usability standpoint will be awesome. But the photos will not be cataloged anywhere, so in a way they will be lost in that post. There will be less to maintain on our side, but a lot of those awesome photos will be buried.

 

If you have any input on this, feel free to take the poll or comment below. Thanks!

 

 

[Bronco]

Does that mean all of the photos in the existing TRs will go away?

[jon]

Does that mean all of the photos in the existing TRs will go away?

Absolutely positively no. Just the software itself, not the photos.

[ivan]

meh - most of the pain in the ass part is just processing the pix for size and quality before worryign about writing the t.r. - would the drag n' drop mean i wouldn't have to cut down the file size anymore?

[jon]

meh - most of the pain in the ass part is just processing the pix for size and quality before worryign about writing the t.r. - would the drag n' drop mean i wouldn't have to cut down the file size anymore?

 

That is a good question. The problem is most of the files coming of cameras these day are huge. I do believe that the browser can reduce image size before uploading to the server, whether the platform that we are moving to does that I'm not sure. I'll look into that.

[JasonG]

I think the main thing for me that would help is to not have to go in and individually edit image tags to get them to display larger than your current default. I resize them to ~1200 pixels on the long edge before I drop them into the TR, but then I have to go in and individually remove the "medium" from the image tag. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong?

 

Regardless, if you could drag and drop right into the text (and have it stay there and not move to the bottom of the TR) that would be great. Especially if you could drag and drop a thumbnail. This would be a huge improvement.

 

I wouldn't miss the gallery, I only use it to hold photos I'm going to put in a TR anyway.

[ivan]

god i fucking hate dealing w/ the photo gallery - i processed a dozen pixs for uploading, and all but 1 went through - i keep trying to upload that pic but i get an error message "can't upload zero byte files" but no matter how many times i reformat the original (or try the original) i get the same message - also many photos i've already loaded give me the same error message if i try again

[jon]

I should have phrased my question differently.

 

The software we are planning to move to has a gallery component. I'm not wild about how it works currently and am questioning whether having one less moving piece is worth losing the ability to browse photos. My suspicion is that people quickly get frustrated by our current software from a browsing standpoint: the UI sucks, people don't properly name photos or tags, there are 10s of thousands of photos now. I think it's just a shitty experience, and I'm wondering if we are better off having a great upload and viewing experience in posts at the expense of being able to browse photos. Then again, if I want to browse photos I'd probably go to 500px.

[JasonG]

I never go in the gallery to browse photos, mainly because I assume others are like me and put minimal metadata with the photos upon upload. I like seeing them in the TR/post context.

[diepj]

Power lurker here. I'm with Jason except I generate 0.005% of the content he and many other regulars do. I only use the gallery to upload photos to for the purpose of linking into a TR or sale post.

 

I have never found anything valuable from browsing within the gallery itself. Generally the photos are a lot more interesting and meaningful within the context of the TR. Plus for every great sunrise photo there are 3 filthy backpacks that were for sale in 2003. And again, when I see that great photo I want to know what part of the season it was taken, on what route, etc.

 

The argument from another direction - There are certainly some great photographers on this site and some of the highest quality photography can be found in the gallery. However, very, very few of the photos represent mastery of the art and truly "stand alone" outside the context of a trip report. The 250th grainy shot of Sahale at sunrise, randomly browsed upon in the gallery, really isn't worth looking at. Except it is when it shows the current condition of the 'schrund, illustrates the fact that you overslept and your partner is already halfway up, or just exists to remind yourself and others how good it is to be out there when your stuck in here.

 

Honestly, if you want a photobrowsing experience to be any good, it probably has to be curated in some way, rather than the current free-for-all. Telemark Tips (RIP) had this kind of thing going with their shot of the day. If someone grabbed the very best of the photos and stuck them in a gallery (Hotlinked to the TR?) that might be nice. Mountain Project kind of has this going with its little slideshow when you launch the home page.

 

Bottom line (IMO) make it really quick and easy to get good photos into the TRs and skip the gallery function. If you are really ambitious, consider making it a sort of special feature that highlights the top 1% of content that really shines.

[olyclimber]

awesome feedback diepj. thank you.

[layton]

The gallery was fun back in the day when there were less photos. Get rid of anything standing in your way to make posting photos easier. I may actually write a TR again.

 

 

 

[Rad]

I'll echo others: making it faster and easier to insert photos into TRs and other posts would be helpful to users (many have said as much). I don't ever go to the gallery other than to upload my own photos to put them in TRs. I suspect many others do the same.

 

Edit to add that some of the older TRs have no images because they display as boxes with question marks, presumably due to some technical error in retrieving them from the gallery. It would be nice if this were fixed.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Rad

[JasonG]

Most of the time photos don't display is because of a broken link to a photo hosted outside of this site. It would be nice if everyone uploaded TR images to this site, but that may be too much to ask.

[chris]

Rarely - is there an easy way to delete old photos (like stuff I put up for sale years ago?). Slide by slide is incredibly click intensive and slow.

[JosephH]

The gallery is currently on-the-rails (down) and the contact page isn't displaying a submission code.

[JasonG]

Jon and Porter are aware and are scrambling to fix it. I have a TR in the wings for when it is up and running....

[Rad]

...I have a TR in the wings for when it is up and running....

 

Ditto.

[olyclimber]

Jon is hoping to look at the gallery tonight.

[olyclimber]

OK the Gallery should be fixed now.

[ivan]

is the galley currently not working? i get a rude "access denied" message when i click on it

[tanstaafl]

So I just read through this thread and would like to confirm I correct in assuming there's no way to browse a user's old gallery, right?

[JasonG]

12 minutes ago, tanstaafl said:

there's no way to browse a user's old gallery, right

Yes, you are correct.  And sorry to not reply to your message about this @tanstaafl.  This just reminded me!!

[JasonG]

The gallery was one of the major reasons the decision to upgrade to the new platform was delayed for so long.  It is unfortunate, but it was the only way to move the site into the future.  The old board just wasn't working any longer.

[JasonG]

There is a newish issue though that is causing some of the images in old TRs to not display properly (i think they are being pulled from old gallery?).  This is on @jon's to-do list.