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Jeffbax Velocicaptor: Thank you for the constructive comment. Since your reply was to me specifically, I will mention that I did not raise a single aggressive remark, if by that you mean a remark directed against a person. My comments were always against the process and never against an individual. Passionate debate can be had without getting personal. I think we all have improvements to Astrobin and imaging as a common goal. |
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Arun H:Jeffbax Velocicaptor: *This specific statement in my answer was not for you. It was to explain the point I developed CS |
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What I don't understand is why you need a grading system in place like IOTD as long as most people argue here and on other forums (CN) the AP is not a competition. A grading/rewarding system will promote competition and will not be perfect. At its core this hobby is not competitive, but the IOTD system makes it so. The best way forward, in my view, is to abolish the system all together. |
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AdrianC.: I truly believe it was never intended to be a competition. However, it has, perhaps unavoidably, evolved to become one. When there is recognition involved and a limited number of slots for such recognition, humans are naturally inclined to become competitive. The original goal of the system, as it remains today, is to promote high quality images that people could aspire to take. The IOTD was originally determined by simple popularity, but this was found to have obvious flaws and has hence changed over time to what it is today. There was even a time when judges could not have their images in the pool for IOTD consideration (which would have significantly removed bias), but it was found that not many people were then willing to become judges so that requirement was removed and changed to simply not voting for their own images - that alone should tell you that great importance is placed on this type of recognition even by people who already have an excellent portfolio of images. The main problem that I see today is that the pool of people who image is very different than the pool of people that were doing it ten years ago. At that time, you had people taking DSLRs and portable trackers to dark sky sites, getting images worth a few hours. It was something that was reasonably achievable by anybody and with not a huge amount of investment. Today, you still have that, but on the other end, teams of astrophotographers generating hundreds of hours of data from dark sky sites. I think this is great - it has led to new discoveries (like the OIII loop in M31 and various previously unknown PNs). You also have people who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on setting up scopes in dark sky sites on remote mountaintops, again generating great images. This requires effort and deserves recognition. But then, we should not be surprised when more and more people do not find the IOTD relevant when these images are placed in the same pool as the ones they may take in their backyard and hence cannot reasonably aspire to take. The natural answer for this is categories, which is done in sports, as an example. Aside from men/women, you also have weight categories in wrestling and boxing, and different levels of leagues in soccer, American college football, etc. Yet, for some reason, this is a kind of red line of Astrobin. I know, because people have said as much, that they would see this kind of change as diluting their accomplishments and perhaps what they see as their advantages. I have no dispute that someone that discovers an OIII loop in M31 deserves recognition. So too, the excellent images taken by those who have invested in setting up remote observatories. But that same system cannot be used to recognize images that the majority of people here take or promoted as examples of what they could aspire to. The resistance to this I see here reminds me of the resistance to abolishing the arcane bowl system in American college football to determine the national champion. The natural answer to this was a playoff system as is done in every other sport. All kinds of arguments were made by vested interests why this was a bad idea. All kinds of changes/tweaks were made to the existing bowl system, very similar to the tweaks being made here to the IOTD process - they never worked. When the playoff system was eventually put in place, it became hugely popular and is now being expanded. |
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AdrianC.: * Isn't it good to have choices? Those who dont like the IOTD system can choose not to use it and all others can. BTW, i have been a submitter since last fall and i am impressed how sophisticated the system is. That is not to say that it is perfect. But it is literally cotinuously improved. There are quite a few staff discussion threads with lots of constructive ideas of how to improve efficiency, fairness etc. And Salvatore is putting considerate time into implementing many of these ideas. A recent major new feature is that staff members get a monthly feedback which is a great help to adjust. But that is only one new feature. Statistics are continuously monitored and if too few TPN, TP are issued, submitters' and/or reviewers' slots are adjusted etc. Again, a great system that is getting better every month. It definitely by far the best AP award system around. Thanks to all enthusiastic volunteers who put considerate time and ideas into it ... Cheers, John |
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Arun H: It's the good old "break the IOTD into categories" proposition. I don't dismiss the reason to approach this subject, and I have discussed this at length sooo manyyy timessss :-) My thoughts are best summarized in the IOTD FAQ: Q: “I feel that images acquired with expensive equipment / from pristine skies / from remote hosting facilities get awarded too often. Why isn't the IOTD/TP process split in categories?” All these years, I have yet to hear of a definition of categories that would actually solve any problems. Plus, there will be sandbagging and cheating, and who's gonna check if you really imaged from your backyard or your just saying so? I know that people want contests, and they want contests with some constraints in the participation. I've promised this in the past and I'm late with it, but I'm getting closer every day to being able to work on that. |
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Salvatore Iovene: Sal - respectfully -I see this slippery slope argument all the time. From my perspective, it is an excuse. You can use the same argument in sports - that there never will be an end to categories. Yet, somehow, we come to agreement and a working model. The slippery slope argument is used in politics as well to preserve the status quo. By those who benefit from it. The problem I see, again respectfully, is that you have made is crystal clear that you are not open to any type of categories. You throw up all kinds of reasons why it will not work. The people who participate in these discussions are primarily people who are vested in the current system. See the comments here - it is great! It has some problems, but show me a system which is better! People will cheat! Well, don't people cheat outside of AP? Whereas, if we accept that the premise is a good idea and needed in some form, the community could come up with a reasonable model. |
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| The only two easily made and implementable categories would be Deep Sky/Solar System. And that's it. And yes, while unfair to most of us the IOTD is what it is and going to stay that way. |
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andrea tasselli: That could be a start. While I disagree that that is the only model, it will at least break the indefensible (in my mind) concept that categories are an impossibility. |
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Kinda skimming through this thread, here are some thoughts:
The IotD system does a serviceable job. Sometimes it has problems, like now with top picks. However as alluded to in this thread, changes are being made and considered to fix this issue. Also I have to say, the proposition of ranking images instead of voting for them is ludicrous and not well thought out. Apologies, but I am not going to sit down for hours on end every weekend to judiciously rank the hundreds and hundreds of images in my queue from 1 to X to the implied standard. Who is going to pay me to do that? If you think award decisions are arbitrary now, wait until you force Submitters to try and delineate between what makes one image ranked 213 and another ranked 214. |
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Arun H:andrea tasselli: Easily done, just two buckets instead of one and the same procedure. Any solar, lunar, planetary bodies at large and comets as well as other atmospheric phenomena (e.g., auroras) in one and all the rest in the other. One IOTD and one SSIOTD. Done. No way to cheat and far fairer at least for the solar system categories as you don't need much to make/capture exceptional pictures. |
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andrea tasselli: As much as I agree that this is feasible indeed, this is not the problem most people have, and Arun mentioned. That is remote vs backyard, and having lots of money vs not having lots of money. |
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Salvatore Iovene: Yet, it would be a start in the direction of addressing that imbalance as even Arun agrees. So, why not? Note that I'm pretty neutral in all this debate, whichever way it goes. |
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andrea tasselli: It would, at a minimum, open up more slots for BOTH categories. And it would be an easy beta test of whether categories are feasible and how the general Astrobin community would receive them. I also want to address the comment @JohnHen made about choices. If we agree that the IOTD system is, for all practical purposes, a contest and a fundamentally unfair one given the vast difference in types of images, investment, etc. etc., the solution is not to say in very cavalier fashion that you have a choice not to participate. That's a bit like, as I pointed out in another comment, combining women and men's categories in sports and, when women don't win, telling them it is too bad, but isn't the choice to participate good, and they really shouldn't be too concerned about awards and medals. That isn't how unfairness is addressed in functioning communities. |
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Kinda skimming through this thread, here are some thoughts: Very cogent remarks, @SemiPro . In terms of objects chosen for awards, it comes down to the volunteers and what they prefer. That is was decides what is in vogue and what is not. Perhaps people find the current aesthetic stale because we have by and large had the same staff for a while now, especially at the upper levels. Supposing we ranked all images, they would still be ranked in such a way that you would get the very same images awarded that you do now. Instead of people choosing dusty images for their six slots, they would just rank those images the first six out of whatever they would have to judge. Indeed, although I would say I prefer many of the "dusty" images (upon which derision has been heaped here) because they tend to be more off the beaten path. The Rosette, Soul, Melotte 15, Crescent, M51, M42, B33, M101, and many others have been done to death. Images of those are going to have to be extraordinary to break through. I remember one day last December, I counted 57 Rosettes in my queue, many of which were quite nice, and none of which I promoted. So I know that one thing that is at play here is a weariness of seeing the same things hundreds upon hundreds of times. You don't have to be a submitter for very long for this to happen to you. It is absolutely a competition, despite official documentation saying otherwise. That is my opinion. However, the baseline stakes are very low. You lose absolutely nothing by entering it, and all you win is some additional recognition from your fellow imagers. There is no obligation to enter it to remain on this website either. Whatever high stakes people attribute to it are of their own doing, and that is on them and not Astrobin. Agreed. It's a competition, and the stakes are indeed very low. I remember attending a city council meeting a few years ago where the big issue on the agenda was whether to put the dog park next to the skateboard park. There was yelling, screaming, and name calling. One councilmember remarked to me, "The lower the stakes, the nastier the fight." If you base the worth of images, including your own, on how they do in the IotD process, that is on you. In this particular case, it looks to me like the OP has something to sell. He's been on here a year, has 28 images, and 26 of those have been selected as TPN or TP with one possibly still in the queue. I don't see anything to complain about there. But if you're selling yourself as a premium astrophotography data service, I can see why you'd want to be at the top of the heap all the time. It took me three years to get my first IOTD. I'm totally okay with that. But my livelihood doesn't depend on my reputation as an astrophotographer. The IotD system does a serviceable job. Sometimes it has problems, like now with top picks. However as alluded to in this thread, changes are being made and considered to fix this issue. It's not perfect, but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place. It beats the heck out of two guys in their mom's basement picking images they like. Also I have to say, the proposition of ranking images instead of voting for them is ludicrous and not well thought out. Apologies, but I am not going to sit down for hours on end every weekend to judiciously rank the hundreds and hundreds of images in my queue from 1 to X to the implied standard. Who is going to pay me to do that? If you think award decisions are arbitrary now, wait until you force Submitters to try and delineate between what makes one image ranked 213 and another ranked 214. It's even worse than that. How long do images stay in a queue? What happens after you've ranked the 214 images in your queue? Do you now wait for 214 more to show up? Is it a set number that triggers the obligation to rank? Or is it a time period? What if you miss a day? How many people need to complete their rankings for them to be tallied? How are the rankings scored? A couple of points you didn't touch on, SP: First, the issue of categories that rears its head over and over again. As Salvatore has repeatedly pointed out, that's just an administrative nightmare. I've never seen anyone who advocates for IOTD categories come up with a workable set of them--not even close. Nor have I seen them propose specific procedures for administering them and policing them. And they always seem to ignore the fact that as a practical matter, there's only room for one image on the banner. Cramming 16 images at the top of the home page would create a cacophony that renders the whole thing useless. Further, also as a practical matter, IOTD really only exists for one main reason: to promote Astrobin. There are ancillary benefits such as rewarding excellence, creating a searchable list of excellent images to learn from, promoting astrophotography and science in general, and more. But in the end, this is about what's best for Astrobin. Another thing I read a lot in these threads is how disappointed and disgusted large swaths of people are with the IOTD process. I say poppycock to that. When I started as a submitter two years ago, I had maybe 50 images a day in my queue. When I moved from there to the reviewer team in January, that number was closer to 300 a day. Some of that was due to process changes. But not all of it. People are submitting images to the process more than ever before as far as I can tell (SP, you could probably produce some hard stats on that). Finally, I totally acknowledge that the process isn't perfect. There are things I don't like about it and I've respectfully asked for practical changes, which have not and probably will not occur. C'est la vie. If, however, I ever do get my way, it won't be by starting a public thread entitled "IOTD and Why It's a Farce" in order to troll for controversy. If I ever felt like doing that, it would be time for me to move on to other options as a free human being on this planet: (1) not paying for the 'paid service of the IOTD'; (2) simply not submitting my images to the process; or (3) starting my own website with its own IOTD and spending a decade building it up and listening to sour grapes. One thing I've always liked about this site is that it's more civil, more on topic, and far more useful than any other social media platform that exists today. But sadly, this whole thing makes me pine for one feature Astrobin doesn't yet have: A block user function. |
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Timothy Martin: Jeez, 300 images submitted per day? Then I guess people are more interested in "likes" and IOTD than just simple sharing ... |
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AdrianC.: Of course they are, lol, it is human nature! As I mentioned, even judges who have excellent images cannot bring themselves not to participate and miss out on the chance to get a badge of some form! Visible recognition of some form by one's peers always is and has been something that is desirable, even if there is no monetary value attached to it. It is the reason why we have so many issues with social media. It is the reason why people who have worked hard or invested time and money to gain this recognition will be incredibly resistant to changing it because they see it as diluting the recognition they have "earned". May be the one simple thing we can all agree on is that the IOTD is indeed a competition in everything but name. Because the pretense that it isn't is simply not defensible. And change the manifesto to reflect that, and people can then decide what they want to about it being fair or unfair. Heck, even some of the most vocal defenders of the system in this thread (and previous threads) agree it is a competition! Incidentally, 300 images being submitted per day is hardly evidence that the system is functional. It simply means that people are interested in this or some other type of contest. And it isn't as if there is some other contest or some other platform where they can participate. |
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Apologies, but I am not going to sit down for hours on end every weekend to judiciously rank the hundreds and hundreds of images in my queue from 1 to X to the implied standard. Having hundreds of images for individuals to go through on a frequent basis is untenable as is, regardless of if they are cherry picking or stack ranking. There's just no way to provide fair and equitable review of that many images. This is likely a very strong reason why so many great images are being left behind. |
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Bill Long - Dark Matters Astrophotography: Daily mages submitted for IOTD/TP consideration over the past 14 days: 145 207 106 93 64 82 78 78 80 90 71 63 78 49 (not sure what happens these past few days, perhaps people coming back from their eclipse trip and submitting images?) Each Submitter gets half of that number in new images every day. Many of those images are easy to quickly dismiss due to severe technical issues. And, of course, if an image is not viewed by enough Submitters (80% of the designated ones) by the time it expires from the process, it's automatically resubmitted and assigned to the other half of Submitters. Additionally, Submitters who are insufficiently active get warned by email, and automatically removed from the process if they don't return to a sufficient level of activity. Images are not being left behind because "there's too many to review". The process accounts for that. To be honest, after years of refinement, I have addressed so many nooks and crevices, thru years of commitment and hard work. Those here who are fellow software engineers and have worked on big projects will know what it's like when the young new hire comes along and says "I could rewrite this in <insert shiny new programming language here> in a weekend". This goes to say that whenever you propose a major redesign of the process, and expecting it to work better than something that iterated and improved for a decade, you are massively underestimating what it would take. |
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Arun H: It certainly belies the assertion that it's a "farce" or that there's some widespread dissatisfaction with it (remember that I only saw half the images submitted-but they could stay in my queue for several days). When I look at the images that are awarded IOTD going all the way back to 2013, I can see with my own eyes that it is not just "functional," it represents the single best accumulation of amateur astronomical images in the solar system. And I can see a steady improvement in it over the years. Part of that is improvements to the process, part of it is improvements in technology, and part of it is the growth of the hobby. But I think the lion's share of it is that people just keep getting better and better at this whether they're shooting with a Kodak Instamatic and a toilet-paper roll from Times Square or a 100-megapixel CMOS and a CDK1000 from a mountaintop in Chile. And a big part of the reason they are getting so good at this is that they can come here and see how accomplished people do it. |
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Bill Long - Dark Matters Astrophotography:Apologies, but I am not going to sit down for hours on end every weekend to judiciously rank the hundreds and hundreds of images in my queue from 1 to X to the implied standard. I will never even submit images but I have followed this thread with interest and just clicked on your name. EVERY image you have submitted gets recognized, you are the last person who should complain. I am amazed you would start a thread like this. Of course it's a hard ridiculous task to pick the BEST image every day, no matter how many eyes look at them. In other photography disciplines I do like Landscape, Bird photography etc., websites have routinely done Editors picks, it has NEVER come up as an issue on these sites that I know of and they have done this for years. I look at all the top pick nominations, I think that is a good representation of the best current imaging each day, Picking THE BEST ONE each day is just arbitrary and I think MOST people who post here think the same. |
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Salvatore Iovene: There's no data collected that I'm aware of that explains the reason an image is not promoted. To assume it wasn't due to severe technical issues, while likely correct in some cases, isn't quantitatively determined. That's being assumed otherwise. I'm not a new hire with a shiny new programming language. Nor is one needed to address the legitimate concerns folks have raised. Discounting feedback because of this view wouldn't be a very smart approach either. Salvatore Iovene: Similarly, assuming status quo is the best way to do it, because it's always been done that way is greatly underestimating the value in the feedback provided. The folks providing it may have very strong reasons and significant (multiple decades) experience managing such changes on services greatly larger than Astrobin. |
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Timothy Martin: I never made any claim that it was a farce. You will have to debate that with the person that did. And of course it represents the "single best accumulation of amateur astronomical images in the solar system". Astrobin is by far the dominant platform. The system is designed to select the best images regardless of how they are taken. It can hardly avoid being that. It is inarguable that the way they have taken them has changed. And changed drastically. Even you will have to agree that there is a vast difference between the quality, both practical and theoretical, of images taken from places with excellent seeing and very dark skies and those that are possible from people's backyards. Not to speak of the volume of such images that are possible. To say nothing of collaborations where orders of magnitude greater integration times are possible. The issue I have and always had is the pretense that it is not a competition. It is the first line in the manifesto. In bold. Everyone, it seems, agrees that it is indeed one. And if it is one, given the vast differences in how images are taken, it is an unfair one. A Toyota Camry cannot beat a racecar on a racetrack on any consistent basis simply by the driver getting better. May be at this point, accept the reality that it is a competition, admit it, and live with it. And change the manifesto to reflect that accepted reality. For what it is worth, I do believe that there are very practical ways to address the issues you raised (for example, even Sal agrees that it is possible to have a deep sky and solar category). But there is no point in having that debate if there is deep institutional resistance to making that change. |
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Bill Long - Dark Matters Astrophotography:Salvatore Iovene: I MASSIVELY rely on community feedback to improve AstroBin and plan my roadmap. As I have said to many people over the years, I only have 2 eyes, and I'm massively grateful to have such a proactive and clever community. However, this doesn't mean that I should implement every single suggestion I get. I appreciate your feedback, Bill, but I don't agree that there's a problem specifically with what you're bringing up, and I don't think your proposed solution would work, is all. |
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Arun H:Timothy Martin: Yeah I already changed the title yesterday. That's the third time he's mentioned it, so apparently it hurt his feelings. 🤷 I've brought up categories separately and the resistance to change is just too strong for any of them to be taken seriously. The more I learn about how this works under the hood, the more fundamentally flawed it becomes. The real world experience shared that a volunteer has hundreds of images to go through is plain evidence that the popularity of the site and the volume of imaging data has exceeded the efficacy of the existing process. Sure it still functions and produces some output, but as many have shared - it's hardly representative anymore of the true population of data. IOTD is most definitely a competition. There's feedback from participants in the reviewing and judging process that have additionally made it clear they operate it like one. |
