Every substantive critique counts, whenever you give it — visit a few threads and join the conversation. See where you stand on the leaderboard, and browse the hall of fame for the best critiques ever written here.
For those on NPN 1 each person’s icon header as I recall had their personal CP (Comment to Post) ratios. Was a quick running daily perspective on ones activity.
Is “weighted critique” the ratio that Paul noted? This is good motivation. I’m generally about a 10:1 person (critique 2-3 images a day and post a one or two images a week when I can, but it’s easier to give than receive when I’m not very creative during a given week).
I’m also always impressed by folks that have a good image to share daily! Time to up my game now that I’m retired. I’m also thinking I should try to critique an image or two per week in a category that I don’t work in as a photographer. It would encourage me to think abstractly about creativity, composition, etc.
Very interesting concept David! I am hoping this new idea will encourage more photographer’s participation. I will say that I have noticed a couple of new folks jumping in and getting their feet wet.
Glad this landed well, and it’s great to see the first report working as intended.
One change for next month: I’m removing the “weighted critiques” column. It’s an internal score, and a raw number with nothing to compare it against doesn’t tell you much about your own participation. The weighting still matters and is doing real work behind the scenes (more on that below), it just isn’t a number worth publishing.
Paul, I’ve brought this back in a new form. You’ll now see an indicator next to a member’s name once they’ve given a good number of helpful critiques.
It only ever shows positive activity. A visible ratio has a low end as well as a high one, and publicly marking someone as taking more than they give tends to produce less participation, not more. So this celebrates generosity and stays quiet otherwise.
Similar idea, quite a bit more involved. Three things go into it:
Substance. Thoughtful, detailed feedback counts for more than a quick “nice shot”, and quoted text never counts toward substance.
Helpfulness. Feedback others found valuable earns extra credit, and an award from the photographer you critiqued counts most of all, because “this helped my work” is the strongest signal there is.
Breadth. Spreading your attention across many photographers counts for more than stacking replies in one thread.
There’s no shortcut here. The fastest way to climb is to write critiques people genuinely find useful, for photographers you haven’t helped yet.
New: awards for critiques
There’s now an award button to the left of the heart on every critique reply:
“Helped my work” only appears on replies to your own photo. Nobody else can say whether a critique changed how you work.
An award replaces your like on that post. Discourse keeps one reaction per person per post, so awarding a critique you’d already hearted will swap the heart for the award. The dialog warns you before it happens.
Giving these awards is a critical piece of making all of this work. They drive the scores and they surface the best critiques on the site. Please use them judiciously, where genuinely warranted.
Hm…I do wonder about the Helped My Work award being limited to only allowing it from a poster in direct relation to her own work. Recently I put up a quick rundown about the advantages of using a polarizer for macro and received a couple of these awards from folks who found it useful. Not trying to shine my own behind here, but I think that’s a good use case and I can certainly see awarding it to others based on feedback or processing ideas, etc, on someone else’s photo. Knowledge and ideas for our own work can certainly come from that source. Just an idea.
First of all, thank you for your ongoing efforts for continuous improvement. Clearly you’ve dedicated a lot of time and effort (and Jennifer and your team too!). And most all these efforts have indeed improved the experience here on NPN. So Thank you!
As far as the “awards”, the “leaderboard”, etc, I think the proof will be in the pudding as they say. I expect that those who are regular and consistent participants will continue to be recognized… but then these members contribute regardless of these kinds of things. They are certainly appreciated, but I’m not sure they’re critiques or the number of critiques will increase for those who already contribute quality critiques. The HOPE I’m sure is in motivating those other members who are occasional or intermittent contributors and even new members, to increase critiquing activity. That I think is the hope. I guess what I’m saying is, “no harm, no foul.” I don’t think this strategy has a downside, and I do hope it will encourage more critiques from the occasional, intermittent and new member. Time will tell.
I think this is a reasonable goal to have. For me, I’ve always committed to commenting in the category I’m posting images in. The downside is that I don’t normally have images worth posting for Astro, Macro, Birds, Wildlife, etc. So unfortunately then I don’t normally comment on images in those categories. But also, when leaving lengthy and thoughtful critiques, there just isn’t enough time in the day to comment in all the categories, as much as I would like. Yeah, I’m retired and have more time on my hands that most…
David, could you clarify this? Is it only the quoted text that is discounted, or the entire response? In other words, I someone is quoted for something trivial, like responding with some laughing emojies, but then the person goes on to write a thoughtful response relating to an image or critique, is the whole post ignored, or just the quote? I’m guessing just the quote… ?
Lastly, As more and more things are added to NPN, it’s often difficult to find them again later. Your announcement here is a good example. Other than the notification appearing under my avatar, screen shot below, where is this post located? Say a couple weeks from now and the notification rolls off my list, how can I find this post again? Yeah, I see the “Leaderboard” and “Hall of Fame” links in the lefthand popout navigation under “More” - but neither of those have this thread? I’m guessing it’s pretty easy and it’s likely because I tend to just go to the same places within NPN and don’t spend time poking around…
Well, I’ll keep posting and critiquing as long as I have images worth posting… An improvement in my own behavior would be commenting and critiquing when I don’t have images to post…
Rising critic of the month: @Huw_Thomas — 112.2 weighted critiques in their first weeks. Welcome, and thank you for diving straight in!
