photoSIG

Earlier this year the photo review/critique site photoSIG underwent some major changes. When version 2 of the site was rolled out there were a number of sustantial changes made to how photoSIG operated. This was not without controversy, and to simply say there was some discussion about the changes would be to greatly understate the passionate viewpoints expressed by members of the group.

The changes revolved around a new scoring sysem for photos, one that strongly encouraged thoughtful critiques vs. quick “nice photo” comments. The latter would generate a lot of points for the photo submitter, but not necessarily provide as much useful feedback as comments being received under the new system.

Over the past few months, in response to user feedback, the owner of the site tweaked the new system in a variety of ways. For example, the required wordcount for a “compliant critique” was dropped substantially, and in addition, critiques may be previewed for compliance before submission.

There was, and still is to some degree, a sense that photoSIG isn’t as much fun as it used to be. I think this is simply because, in general, photos aren’t getting as many critiques as they used to. To be fair, some of that is because there were system problems the first couple of months after the upgrade.

Personally, I think I am getting slightly higher quality feedback now, but the excitement I felt when using the old system has not fully returned. I have to admit I never did fully appreciate the problems the site owner was trying to solve. But, his site, his choices. I miss some parts of what we had originally, but there’s still quite a bit of value and satisfaction to be gained from using the site, so I’m gonna stick around for the time being.

Here’s a link to all of my photoSIG photos.