|
About PhotoBlink Contents
About PhotoBlink
-
PhotoBlink is a photographic forum/competition site that is built on the basis
of the contests of posted photographs and the comments to these photographs.
Its purpose is to provide simulation of a real life competition for advanced
and professional photographers and to educate amateur enthusiasts.
-
In order to obtain the maximum out of PhotoBlink, we recommed you read the detailed
help we provide.
PhotoBlink Team.
-
PhotoBlink is designed, programmed and maintained by me, Dr.Sergei Samus, your
Webmaster.
-
I am greatly supported by my wife
Tania who shares my passion for photography and gives me much inspiration in all I do,
and my daughter Asya who helps me programming the site when she is not busy with her schoolwork.
-
This site is a result of my love to photography. I try to actively participate as a member in the PhotoBlink
competitions whenever I can.
Here you can find my portfolio.
- You can contact me at ssser@photoblink.com
Rules of the PhotoBlink site
-
Material, presented on all PhotoBlink pages is copyrighted by its webmaster and by the contributing
photographers.
All image copyrights belong to the photographers. However, once a photo is
submitted to PhotoBlink, it is considered having been published on PhotoBlink,
thus becoming a natural part of the design of the site, which is copyrighted.
Therefore, we retain our rights for the indefinite internal publication of all
submitted images, within the site or using PhotoBlink Smart Tags/Scripts ©.
Any other usage of the submitted photographs, apart from their internal display
on PhotoBlink will require the authors' permissions.
-
By sending a photograph to PhotoBlink, you confirm your authorship for that image. If, under special
circumstances, you would like to submit someone else's photograph, you have to explicitly mention
the author of the image and confirm that the author gave you the permission to send this photo to PhotoBlink.
-
All rights are reserved. No part of this website may be copied by any electronic means,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the authors.
-
Under normal circumstances, PhotoBlink provides the facility for the removal
of your photographs. However, the removal
an image might not be possible, if this action affects the integrity and the
aesthetics of the site design. For example, if the image belongs to one of the
PhotoBlink top photos collections.
-
When posting a photo or a comment, you must give a real, working e-mail address.
-
Sent images should be in .jpg format. Image size should not exceed your maximum allowed limit.
-
Image width should not exceed 3000
and height should not be greater than 2000.
-
Please provide descriptions and technical details to your images.
-
The limit of your submissions depends on the type of your membership.
Each user can send up to a certain number of works per week, but per day, they can also send no more
that their allowed daily-limit. On the Send Photo page, the number of photos you may still send
is indicated.
-
The main purpose of posting to photosites for the majority of photographers, is
to get constructive critique. Please take commenting seriously, and leave
comments on the works of fellow photographers. We ask you to be polite at all
times, and try to make your comments useful to the authors and other
participants.
-
If you are a Basic Member of PhotoBlink, you will get the right to vote after posting
10 photographs. Before this, use your time to get acquainted with the
site and its participants, and to become its active user.
Primary Members have the advantage of being able to vote instantly.
-
We suggest the following system of rating:
10: Inspirational.
9: Excellent.
8: Very Good.
7: Good.
6: Interesting.
5: Average.
4: Interest Unclear.
3, 2, & 1: Experimenting. There is not a basic level of photographic
competency evident.
more>>
scale introduced by Richard
However, one should expect some dispersion of scores, as we are all different,
and we all have different opinions.
-
The votes should be based on merit of the photo only and not on personal
attitude to the photographer.
-
This site cannot be a place for participants, trying to cause moral pain to
other photographers by hurtful commenting and/or unfair low scoring, any
vengeance will not be tolerated. Their scores will be neutralized, and they
will be banned from using this site without any further discussion.
-
Do not try to cheat our voting system.Each author may only vote once for each
photograph.
Attempts of using multiple accounts for the purpose of getting advantages over
the other participants by multiple scoring will be followed by the disabling of
the voting facilities on all the accounts.
-
Any photographs of indecent content will be deleted.
-
Any photographs advertising racism will be deleted.
-
Photographs advertising cruelty will be deleted.
-
Blue voting is anonymous, but if your vote differs greatly from that of the
other voters, or if it looks unfair and hurts the author, you may be asked to
provide comments when you vote, even if grey voting wasn't used, and you will
have to do so.
Please note, that if your voting consistantly deviates strongly from the
average, then your scoring corridor will automatically be narrowed, or it may
even be turned off alltogether.
-
In case of violation of the rules, the Webmaster issues a warning to the offender.
The Webmaster also retains the right to reveal the offender's name and
their scoring (partially or completely) to other participants of the site. If the
offending behaviour continues, the offender's account may be closed without any further notice.
-
All nude photographs (Nu) are subjects for the Webmaster's review and consideration.
If a nude photo is found unacceptable for viewing on PhotoBlink for ANY reason by the Webmaster,
it will be removed without further discussion and explanation.
As a general rule, no nude children photos, or highly erotic photographs are accepted.
-
In every of the above cases the decision will be made by the webmaster and it
will be final. No discussions or explanations will follow.
-
PhotoBlink shall not be liable to its users or any other party for any damages, arising from or
related to the content, promotions, advertisements, or any other information provided by the
users of PhotoBlink.
-
Under no circumstances shall PhotoBlink be liable for any intellectual property infringement
claims or actions or for any libel claims or actions arising from the information placed on this
site by its users.
PhotoBlink will not be liable for any loss, damages, claims or injury, etc., that accompany or
result from the use of this website or any other website, accessible from PB, caused by
- the use or inability to use the web site or links found on its pages
- errors, bugs or failure in performance or our provider’s problems or line failure
- computer viruses
-
PhotoBlink shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, special, consequential
or incidental damages and expenses related to or arising from any access or use
of this web site or any other site, a link to which may be found on its pages.
If the law in any state may not allow us to exclude or limit liability for
incidental or consequential damages, and the claimant may have the right to
recover these damages, then our liability to the claimant for all losses,
damages, injuries or claims of any kind will not be greater than the amount of
money that the claimant paid to access this site.
-
These rules may be revised and updated in the course of time.
These rules apply to all PhotoBlink users. They must be obeyed by the
Primary Members, as well as the Basic Members.
About our Rating System
PhotoBlink provides you with a unique rating system. There are two groups of
virtual awards: the periodical or calendar awards and the top 100 awards. The
awards are marked as follows:
Periodical awards:
- Picture of the Day
- Picture of the Week
- Picture of the Month
Ranking awards:
- No 1
- Top 10
- Top 100
-
Periodical awards are automatically computed from the voting results for a
specified period at the end of that period.
-
Top 100 awards are updated with each individual vote.
-
Once a photograph has been given an award it will retain it for its life period
on the PhotoBlink site.
Grey scores
Grey scores are introduced as an effective protection from the scoring system
abuse. They are calculated according to the current standing of the photo, and
can be submitted only after the submitioin of a comment. They are not anonymous. A
Grey score appears after a comment on the image display page, and will be
neutralized if your comment doesn't justify your vote. They can be neutralized
by negative scores, and scores above ten. The decision is made by the
webmaster and is final.
Notes on rating rules
For an award nomination, a photograph must collect a predefined minimum number
of votes. For each award category this number varies and is defined by us. The
tendency will be to increase these thresholds as the site's traffic grows.
The current minimum numbers of votes for each 'Photo of' category are defined
as follows:
- Day: 6
- Week: 14
- Month: 20
- Top 100: 10
If two photographs have the same score, the winner is the one with more
votes. If the number of votes is the same, the winner is the photo that
was sent later, as it had less time for getting the score.
Rating of Comments
PhotoBlink goes one step further in photo competitions by providing the
possibility for photographers and other participants to separately vote for
comments to the photographs. This will potentially create an indispensable
repository of useful tips, advice, and merely enjoyable remarks. There are
three criteria by which the comments are rated:
- Presentation
- User Level (note that this does not contribute to the overall standing of the comment, it
solely indicates the skill level of photographers that the comment is aimed at)
- Usefulness
Benefits of the PhotoBlink Rating System
The reason I've developed this system is so that no good photographs will be
lost when they are inevitably pushed out of top 100 by other good (but not
necessarily better) ones. Eventually it will allow everyone to enjoy hundreds
of first class photographs. The Rating System also allows each author to
graphically trace the history of each individual photograph and compare its
success with that of the others.
Comment rating allows to extract and classify a lot of useful information from
a big number of various comments.
The Streamline and the Theme
Contests
PhotoBlink provides you with two independent competition models: the Streamline ©
and the Theme Contests ©.
The Streamline© competition
This is the main, continuously going competition that consists of a sequence of streams, each lasting up to
3 months.
PhotoBlink members vote for the photos that have been sent in for voting (note that you can submit a work
for commenting only, if you want to, as well). At the end of the day, the Photo Of The Day is determined.
During the day, some photographs may earn the status of being a Hot Item.
You will also find new Photos Of The Week and Photos Of The Month appearing respectively, every week and
every month.
Highest-ranking works earn places in the Top Pics and Popular Pics tables. Authors with the higest scores
will be placed into the Top Authors and Popular Authors lists.
After submitting a work, you have the possibility to change some of the properties, such as its description,
name, voting status (whether it is open or closed to voting), etc. You can even reupload the image, or
delete it.
The submitted images are commented. PhotoBlink even provides the opportunity for the commentors to
leave a cropping suggestion. As a sign of gratitude or appreciation, you can vote for comments.
Photos which have been sent to a Theme Contest are also automatically sent to the
Streamline. The works are voted for separately in the contests and the Streamline. This way, it is possible
to compare the reactions to your works of different categories of viewers.
After every stream Honour Portfolios are granted. We consider the top 10% of the authors, but due to the
fact that most of the winning authors usually already have Honour Portfolios, only about 10 - 15 new
portfolios are created each time. We also provide Honour Portfolios for the top 5 commentors.
At the end of each stream, the best images are left on PhotoBlink. The top-scoring among those are
recorded into the Top Pics list of that stream.
Approximately 5% of highest-scoring photos are placed into the 'Evergreen' section at the end of the steam.
Removal of images at the end of the stream
At the end of the stream, about 80% of the photos are removed.
This deletion is necessary to keep the quality of the photographs on PhotoBlink high, as well as to
decrease the strain on the site to improve its performance, and to lower the disc space usage on our provider.
The removal of the images is based upon their average score and number of votes they've received. Works which
have only been sent for commenting are deleted always. The algorithm for the removing of images is not fixed.
We retain the rights to alter it at any time.
There are certain image groups that are protected from the stream-end removal, regardless of their
scores or number of votes. This applies:
-
Authors' own images that have been placed by them into their honour portfolios
-
Photos, which have been included in Primary Member Galleries.
-
Finalists and winning photos of PhotoBlink Contests.
-
Photos that are currently submitted to PhotoBlink Contests.
-
Photos that are included in theDido's Deluxe Dandies Rating.
Please note that when your photos are removed, the
blinks that were
collected by those posts are cleared!!! This creates
a more realistic situation, in which it is the quality and not the quantity of your photographs
that determines your success. This echoes the main purpose of PhotoBlink, namely, to
simulate a real-life competition, an thus to help you become a successful photographer.
The photo removal process can take place at any time after the stream ends.
The Theme Contests©
The numerous Theme Contests © are contests on a specified subject, run over a limited
period of time. All the images, participating in these, automatically become participants of the
Streamline too. Note that the scores earned by the images in the contest may differ from those in
the Streamline.
more>>
Registration
Two kinds of membership are possible on PhotoBlink - Basic Membership, which is free of charge,
and Primary Membership, which offers you many cool options for a democratic price. The
Primary Membership has 3 different levels. To find out more about what Primary Membership
offers, read the
Membership Help
-
Photoblink automatically receives and records information on our server logs
from your browser including your IP address, information about your scores and
comments, etc. You are not invisible to us.
-
We collect personally identifiable information when you register for a
Photoblink membership, such as your name and your e-mail address.
-
Once you've registered on PhotoBlink, you are not anonymous to us when you are signed
in. But the information about your scores and your name will not be disclosed by us to
other participants of the site, unless your scores are abnormally high or low compared to
the other scores on the same images and we get complaints about them.
Multiple accounts
Several accounts on PhotoBlink that are coming from one computer, or several accounts created by
one person, or accounts shared by several people by passing login names and passwords,
are called Multiple Accounts.
The following rules are applied to mutliple accounts:
-
Only one account from a single machine can be given the voting access.
-
Out of several multiple accounts on one machine only 2 can exist, others are closed
-
Out of 2 accounts on one machine only one can vote.
Cross-voting accounts
Accounts from which members vote favorably for each other with the average number of
votes between each of these accounts sufficiently larger than the average number of
votes for other members are called Cross-Voting accounts.
The following rules are applied to cross-voting accounts:
- Out of two cross-voting accounts one is restricted to the non-anonymous voting only, or
in case of severe manipulation of the scoring system, is disabled for voting
Browser support
The site is designed to be used with Internet Explorer 5 and higher. The use of
other browsers may result in unpredicted behavior.
Download Internet Explorer 5:
|