Submitted Images - Queue, Process & More. - Part 2 (2013)

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Submitted Images - Queue, Process & More. - Part 2 (2013)

Submitted Images - Queue, Process & More. - Part 2 (2013)

[This thread is just temporarily in the General section, and will move to Admin and Mod Initiated Topics within a few days.]
A year, ago, I posted a 'Submitted Images - Queue, Process & More Thread. It's been dormant for a year so I'm just creating a new one now.

We have 3 immediate image goals: (1) to improve the quality of image submissions, measured by the percentage of submissions deemed usable (2) to increase the number of submissions, (3) to basically eliminate the image queue, and (4) to increase communications with image submitters about their submissions.

For a background, see the previous thread: http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=230021

Most of the questions and comments in the original post stand, and I encourage everyone to read it.

#1. In short, the image queue background currently hovers at around 3200 images. A huge portion of those images aren't bad enough to be deleted (or are too rare to be deleted), but not good enough to put online. A few are simply redundant. Most are of poor quality--sometimes poor lighting, but often blocked in part by other items (other machines, rags, soda cans on the control panel, etc.!). Today I added some additional 'please read' guidelines to the image submission page, though the more I add, often the less people read.

#2. A magic question is...do we put up some of these poor quality photos online (and mark them somehow as temporary?) In short, I'm inclined too in cases for which we have no better alternative. Some people have commented that marginal photos wouldn't reflect well on the site. While that may be the case, I think it looks worse to have no images at all. Especially for older (pre-1970s) non-videogame machines, images may be scarce.

#3 In addition to taking some images as in essence 'temporary', I'm inclined to create a 3rd category that can be selected by mods: 'archive'. That is, an image that we choose not to delete, but don't want to put online. For pre-1950s machines, there is a problem with people uploading an image to the wrong game entry. By having 'temporary (public) and 'archive' (private) images up, it may make it easier for the public and moderators to determine whether a new image belongs on a game.

#4 The biggest problem right now as mentioned above is poor quality image submissions. The second biggest problem is lack of feedback to submitters. Lots of people get frustrated that images take so long to process. This isn't helped by images sitting in purgatory. Occasionally forum members scream enough that I look into the members' individual contributions. Usually (but not always) the issue has been that their submissions are of marginal quality.

#5. We will continue to crop the background out of images. Someone expressed concern about quality loss on reprocessing a JPG. In short, we take steps to minimize issues related to JPG reprocessing. it's also the lesser of evils. If we didn't crop out the backgrounds we would likely reject over 90% of all images. BTW: I'm inclined not to take the trouble to crop the background out of a temporary image.

#6. Reacting to comments on the last thread, display of images online is different than image submission and processing. One of these days we are going to redo the standard game presentation page. When we do, screen shots for example will probably be clumped in a section for screen shots, for example, which should provide a better look, especially for games that have run-on screen shots (ie: the mentioned MK II). Additionally, some other images now like PCBs that online get a link, may end up getting a small thumbnail. Also, the system will continue to auto-keep the original versions as it has in recent years so it would be easy to reprocess all images if there was a need to for site redesign or special users (ie: tablet display).

#7. I intend to make it a little easier to tag images with short titles (ie: "European cabinet version"), in changing image types, and in adding a priority to images (so that the rare alternative cabinet type or cocktail table doesn't show up as the first image).


Thoughts and comments welcome...
 
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Here are some comments in regards to posts on the previous thread:

I think we should crop the pictures to a standard size (ex. 400W x ???H) also to save bandwith and size of the picture.


A couple of weeks ago i had a sneak peak of some of the pictures uploaded, and there are MANY that dosen´t qualify


Ill say yes, with a suptitle saying "Temporary Image"

Images have for a very long time been automatically re-sized to standard sizes.


... But I agree we should define a fixed size for each image type at the main game screen (summary screen), and making a 'link-type' for each image, such as some of the KLOV games have. If you have a larger image, the main page's picture will have a fixed 'standard' size (and smaller) and when you click over it, it will open a new window to display the full-sized image. This way we don't have to reduce pictures size and/or resolution.

Regarding cabinets, I'd quit the idea of editing each picture to remove its background. It's a HUGE work and will reduce dramatically the original image quality (from everything I've seen until now). It's noticeable the image loss. Even if you take a JPEG image and save it with 100% quality, it will have loss, it's a FACT! Unless you save it in a PNG format (will be quite larger), you will destroy the original pic. Leave it without retouching.

...

I just saw it and I have to agree. There are lots of good stuff, but the most part are pure junk we can trash right from the submission screen.

I agree here with a complement saying: "Temporary image - If you have an image with better resolution, please consider submitting it"

Yes, the goal is to increase the amount of larger sized images that can be clicked on. Again, quality issues on the JPG reprocessing is 99% related to the original image submitted. If you see a JPG quality issue, it's likely caused by compression caused by the submitted. It's amazing how many 13k cabinet uploads we get.

Do we need more than one photo per cabinet type? It would be nice to have one cabinet shot per cabinet type and link the cabinet types available for a game to an image. Then do something like Amazon, where you have a large photo shown above, with thumb nails of the other cabinet types available, as as you hover over them, it brings up those pictures in the larger window.

Again, this thread is dealing with the submission side rather than the display side. On the display side though, we might show one shot per cabinet type and then have additional smaller thumbs underneath.

I say no. I say 'quality over quantity'. I would rather there be NO image than a bad image, which, to me, makes the site look bad.

I'm forced to agree with this opinion! Mobygames, TAFA, Mr.DO's websites are that great today because of people thinking just like this guy. A top quality site can't afford to have bad pics, otherwise people will feel unmotivated to keep going with it.

I understand and am sensitive to this. Please keep in mind that Mobygames is dealing with the much easier world of console and computer games images. TAFA is only about 1% user generated, and 99% scanned by management (ie: Dan, etc.). There is a chicken and an egg problem though. If enough entries have no images, people simply move on. This is not a problem for the traditional 'KLOV' videogame entries that have critical mass, but is a problem with older machine entries. Clearly though, the more images we put online for the older machines, the faster rate additional ones get submitted.

While this is a great attitude to have in an ideal world where you can just go back and get another picture of that cabinet, in some situations, what about games that only show up once in a blue moon, and the best they could do is snap a photo of it at an auction with their cellphone camera (which is exactly what Brian Johnson, original KLOV owner, did at auctions).

Beggars can't always be choosers.

There's still some benefit in getting an idea of what a cabinet looked like for recognition purposes.

As much as I've been resistant to this, I'm basically there now...


I have the same opinion, rather a bad single picture than no picture, so if someone sees the bad picture, he/she upload a better one right away, that is put on in a matter of hours....

Isn't that the whole point of this discussion - to end up with a minimal image queue, and images that is submitted goes on the website in a matter of hours??
...

That's the idea. If people see there images go up quickly, or understand quickly why an image never will, the site will just keeping getting better.


...

We really can't allow bad images to be in KLOV only because they are on handy today. If a collector see that a game he owns doesn't have a picture at KLOV, he will provide one. Or someone else who owns that game will do it. It's just a matter of time.

I think it is an issue of tagging. Identify temporary images without insulting them but encouraging replacements.
 
A related issue is the fact that an incredible number of games have some weirdo rare oddball variant cabinet as the primary image. For example, Defender shows two different prototypes and a cocktail before finally showing a low quality image of the standard cabinet. Blaster shows the rare wooden cabinet first. Stargate shows an oddball prototype/conversion in a Defender cabinet. Bubbles shows the cabaret. That is just the classic williams games alone. That sort of thing is all over the database.
 
a crappy pic is better than no pic. Often times we start looking at games to say figure out what a converted cab used to be, sometimes something would be better than nothing.
 
Hey McLemore, glad to see you back here! :)

I agree that a poor quality picture is better than no picture, but only for extremely rare games that are almost extinct these days and can be rarely seen, or for those games that were most popular in Japan.

Examples of games that could have poor pictures are those who were only released as kits and have no dedicated cabinets. Man, It's freaking hard to find decent pictures of games that were released as a kit. The most part have missing labels, or have no sidearts applied, or have different button color schemes... it's a nightmare to find one fully assembed as it should be. Some games that come to mind now are: D.D. Crew, Saint Dragon (St. Dragon), Blood Warriors, Blood Brothers, Jail Break, Iron Horse, Jackie Chan (Both Kung-Fu / Fists Of Fire), Renegade, Gladiator... and the list goes on, and on, and on... Some of these are not even rare, but finding a well-mounted cabinet for them is hard!

And speaking of flyers, I have a suggestion that I could implement myself: If a scanned flyer has a picture of the dedicated cabinet/machine in good resolution (almost all flyers from TAFA have great resolution already), we could just crop these cabinet pictures from there to use as 'standard' at the game page as a starter image. Most flyers have the original full cabinet well photographed and with cropped background, so it would be fairly easy to edit those pictures and add them to the database as the main 'sample' picture. We could start from there and eventually replace it for a 'real' picture which has better resolution and nothing in front of it that could block the full view of the cab.
 
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A related issue is the fact that an incredible number of games have some weirdo rare oddball variant cabinet as the primary image.... That sort of thing is all over the database.

I'm about to make the first change to our definition of image types in many years. Then I'll put a tool up that will allow select users the ability to change image type and order within type. I think I'll knock on your door first...

I'm about to post a separate thread concerning image types and proposed changes...

a crappy pic is better than no pic. Often times we start looking at games to say figure out what a converted cab used to be, sometimes something would be better than nothing.

That's my opinion...

Hey McLemore, glad to see you back here! :)

...

And speaking of flyers, I have a suggestion that I could implement myself: If a scanned flyer has a picture of the dedicated cabinet/machine in good resolution (almost all flyers from TAFA have great resolution already), we could just crop these cabinet pictures from there to use as 'standard' at the game page as a starter image. ....

Good to be back. Life has been busy. Life will continue to be busy, which is why I'm focused this moment on fixing and automating some things so the site can continue to grow when I'm not around.

Whatever I can do to assist in this type of project - let me know.

Will Do... Thanks. For now, please just provide your 2 cents to my Image Type thread.
 
Personally, my opinion is any picture is better than no picture. So if all you have is the picture of a corner of a jamma conversion of MK3, at least that's better than having nothing up or the big ugly "picture needed" stamp. Of course you'd replace it when a better picture came in but people want to see what these things look like, even if the pic is sub optimal.
 
And speaking of flyers, I have a suggestion that I could implement myself: If a scanned flyer has a picture of the dedicated cabinet/machine in good resolution (almost all flyers from TAFA have great resolution already), we could just crop these cabinet pictures from there to use as 'standard' at the game page as a starter image. Most flyers have the original full cabinet well photographed and with cropped background, so it would be fairly easy to edit those pictures and add them to the database as the main 'sample' picture. We could start from there and eventually replace it for a 'real' picture which has better resolution and nothing in front of it that could block the full view of the cab.

That was also discussed AFAIR... but not all is usable (SWC...!)
Its good to see that theres something happening regarding the images! I will gladly donate some time to this.
 
I like that you guys are tackling this problem and I think you have the right idea.

Personally I find it the most frustrating when I see conversion cab pics up... It's one thing if the game was only ever released as a kit, but I've seen numerous pics in the database of games that came with dedicated cabs that were either in some other cabinet or had some other non-original modifications (eg: painted sides/missing side art, incorrect controls, etc.)

I've submitted a few photos for games were I felt the photos available were poor or incorrect, though none of them have actually gone up yet :p

------------

If I may propose a solutions that might work for everyone:

IDEA #1:
1. Only PUBLICLY post submitted photos that are good quality and accurately represent the game in question.

2. Anything that's been submitted that is at least accurate and isn't redundant can go into a PRIVATE photo page only visible by KLOV members... perhaps even tagged such that people viewing them can get an idea as to why it's not publicly viewable.

3. Allow KLOV members to view, comment on and up/down vote submitted images, as a way to meta-moderate and make the actual moderators jobs easier.


IDEA #2: - can be in addition to #1 or in lieu of.
1. Only PUBLICLY post submitted photos that are good quality and accurately represent the game in question.

2. Allow KLOV members to upload "personal" photos of their collection and TAG which game is in the photo.... this would then allow members to have a page where someone can look though pics of their game collection AND using the tag functionality they can view a game in the database and view pictures that have been tagged with that game.

This adds a bit of a social media aspect to the database and has the potential to let people view a lot of pictures of a particular game without it looking bad on the site since they're all "personal" pictures.


------------------

These are just some ideas, I dealt with a similar problem on one of my sites and handled it in a similar fashion to what I've described above.

If you need any help let me know... I work with PHP, MySQL, and Javascript daily
 
Ok.... In short, imperfect progress is better than no progress, so I'm starting to roll.

Images have a 'type' to them. One of the types is 'cabinet'. Cabinets can be further specified as to be an upright, cocktail, environmental, etc.

Separate from this, there is also a special attribute (optional) setting that can be set, regardless of cabinet style. If left unset it means nothing. Or a image can be tagged (one and no more than one of the following): Alternate Variety, Converted From Another Game, Conversion / No Dedicated Units Were Made, Modified/Altered - Not Original, European Machine, Japanese Machine, Prototype.

And lastly, an image title/memo field is being added, initially to just cabinet photos.

In displaying them, special type = blank is shown first, things like prototypes absolutely last. Then sorted by cabinet types (ie, upright first), then sorted by quality (2nd tier upright shot shown after good one, assuming that both stay online for any reason), and then lastly sorted by manual priority rating (that is... if there are two normal upright shots, we can assign which one is primary).

A related issue is the fact that an incredible number of games have some weirdo rare oddball variant cabinet as the primary image. For example, Defender shows two different prototypes and a cocktail before finally showing a low quality image of the standard cabinet. Blaster shows the rare wooden cabinet first. Stargate shows an oddball prototype/conversion in a Defender cabinet. Bubbles shows the cabaret. That is just the classic williams games alone. That sort of thing is all over the database.

Let's address those examples of yours:

Defender: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7547

I tagged the protos as 'Proto' and now they show up after the traditional dedicated instead of first, and show 'Prototype' under them. On a second line is the title/memo (which on this test is slightly redundant). Even the Cocktail format has 'Cocktail' underneath it. Most non-gamers don't know what a cocktail table is--might as well teach them the word.

Blaster: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7145
Wood version tagged as 'Alternate' and now shows up last

Stargate: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9780
Weird cabinet tagged as Proto. Text underneath says I'd like someone to prove it is (I assume it is...)

Bubbles: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7226
Ok... Duramold on top too.


I like that you guys are tackling this problem and I think you have the right idea.

Thanks. I really want to see it done too!


Personally I find it the most frustrating when I see conversion cab pics up... It's one thing if the game was only ever released as a kit, but I've seen numerous pics in the database of games that came with dedicated cabs that were either in some other cabinet or had some other non-original modifications (eg: painted sides/missing side art, incorrect controls, etc.)

I really look forward to letting users loose to tag these issues on the photos. We'll have to end up with a trusted group to make final decisions on some of these oddities.

Additionally, I've already added a database field for it, but in a future update we may have a way to tag photos that are problematic (ie: PG13+ nudity so the image shouldn't rotate on the home page, in need of recropping, in need of resizing, should be deleted, etc.)

IDEA #1:
1. Only PUBLICLY post submitted photos that are good quality and accurately represent the game in question.

2. Anything that's been submitted that is at least accurate and isn't redundant can go into a PRIVATE photo page only visible by KLOV members... perhaps even tagged such that people viewing them can get an idea as to why it's not publicly viewable.

3. Allow KLOV members to view, comment on and up/down vote submitted images, as a way to meta-moderate and make the actual moderators jobs easier.


IDEA #2: - can be in addition to #1 or in lieu of.
1. Only PUBLICLY post submitted photos that are good quality and accurately represent the game in question.

2. Allow KLOV members to upload "personal" photos of their collection and TAG which game is in the photo.... this would then allow members to have a page where someone can look though pics of their game collection AND using the tag functionality they can view a game in the database and view pictures that have been tagged with that game.

This adds a bit of a social media aspect to the database and has the potential to let people view a lot of pictures of a particular game without it looking bad on the site since they're all "personal" pictures.


------------------

These are just some ideas, I dealt with a similar problem on one of my sites and handled it in a similar fashion to what I've described above.

If you need any help let me know... I work with PHP, MySQL, and Javascript daily

There is already going to be an 'admin only' viewing level for things like really bad photos that we choose to save for some reason. Additionally, I could see some other photos as being available to only logged in members (as we actually already do with 'pending' photos), but I hope to avoid the problem at least some what via labeling conversions as such (and only keeping ones necessary).

Regarding members voting. That already is a key part of where I'm going with this and without it I frankly likely wouldn't have bothered to try to fix it. A longer discussion...

The social aspects, and tying members collections to game pages (for logged in members) was already something that I wanted to experiment with.

Recent VAPS changes were only about 30% visible (ie: MAPS), and 70% invisible to users. VAPS was only minimally patched to connect it to the main site and I'm in the process of fully integrating it and removing redundant fields, etc.
 
I need to take a break from this for a few days, but I'll be back later this week.

BTW: One of the things I'm working on is to allow submissions for photos in general, not just tied to a game entry. It's not public yet, but I've added support for attaching photos to manufacturers.

As a test, I uploaded a photo of some 1982 Atari wine glasses:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuf_detail.php?manuf_id=1277

Scroll all the way down below the list of games. There are a bunch of video links there already and if we add a bunch of manufacturer photos that this page might need to be broken up into two pages, an 'About Manufacturer' page in addition to a 'Games by XXX' list page.
 
I've done some work on it, but it isn't ready for launch yet. I'm working on other year-end issues right now but I am making good progress moving forward. I really want to get 2 days where I can hide from the phone and email and just work on the site. It isn't likely to happen between now and month end but I'm hope to at least start and then grab a good block of time in mid-January.
 
maybe no one looking at first thread.
Trying to move an image along of a prototype pinball playfield for Pipeline
above link doesn't go to a page with anything except to change category of image.
can't delete, publish, or send to image editor
 
maybe no one looking at first thread.
Trying to move an image along of a prototype pinball playfield for Pipeline
above link doesn't go to a page with anything except to change category of image.
can't delete, publish, or send to image editor
Seems like youre outta dluck.
 
I determined that there is a single character error in the ir_detail.php program. The image is located in a file with a "-" in the name whereas the php program is looking for it in a file with a "_" instead. All the other characters in the name are correct. As a programmer this would seem to be a simple fix, but maybe it's more complicated then that.
 
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