POLANOID miniFAQ
· First of all - How do did I get to this very page?
(for the sake of Aristotelian logic and to not endanger the space-time continuum, you must not read any further if you don't know the answer to this question)
if you 
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if you 
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· How do I add somebody as a friend on here?
(obviously less intuitive than I thought - my contritestest apologies for that)
necessary steps:
- 1. Select "edit.. my profile" from the "I wanna" dropdown (right top of the page)
- 2. Type in (or copy/paste) the name of the buddy (or budette) you wanna befriend into the box below "Friends info" (approximately in the center of the page)
- 3. Hit the + button on the right side of the box where you just entered the word "WebMeister"
- 4. Select a different key image for your new friends from the iframe above
- 5. Type in a few flattering, poetic words about your new friend into the box that says "About WebMeister"
- 6. (or 4. or 5. depending on your lazyness with the above) Hit the "Save" button in the "Friends info" box
· How can I replace one of the pictures in my account with a bettah scan/larger version?
(Do I have to delete the old one and re-upload the new version?)
NO! by all means - you don't have to delete and re-upload.
This would mean that you would not only have to enter all the meta-information for this pic again (title, descripton, camera, film...) but also would loose all votes, favs and comments this picture had collected so far.
The much more reasonable thing to do, is writing down the links to these pictures you wanna replace (the "www.polanoid.net/jump/?to=pictures&pid=..." link in the thin black bar below every picture on this site) and send your new scans, along with the corresponding links to the admin, the lazy sloth needs to be kept busy anyway. he will gladly replace the pix you have online with the new versions, so that all otha information stays in place and nuffin is lost.
This would mean that you would not only have to enter all the meta-information for this pic again (title, descripton, camera, film...) but also would loose all votes, favs and comments this picture had collected so far.
The much more reasonable thing to do, is writing down the links to these pictures you wanna replace (the "www.polanoid.net/jump/?to=pictures&pid=..." link in the thin black bar below every picture on this site) and send your new scans, along with the corresponding links to the admin, the lazy sloth needs to be kept busy anyway. he will gladly replace the pix you have online with the new versions, so that all otha information stays in place and nuffin is lost.
· Why don't I receive mailmule notifications for commentreplies, even though I selected them in my preferences?
(or - Why do I receive only notifications for replies but not for guestbook messages? I turned on *both* in my preferences! )
case (A): you are using an @msn or @hotmail email address for your polanoid account.
explanation: Microsoft does not deliver mails it classifies as SPAM.
yes, well.. yes
these mails are simply not delivered - without *any* notification for neither the sender nor the reciever.
"SmartScreen is the spam filtering technology developed and operated by Microsoft. SmartScreen is built around the technology of machine learning. SmartScreen's filters are trained to recognize what is spam and what isn't spam."
but Microsoft is of course "not able to go into any specific details about what these filters specifically entail, as this would render them useless."
(please see here for the complete story)
send an email to admin@polanoid.net and tell me about the problem.
explanation: Microsoft does not deliver mails it classifies as SPAM.
yes, well.. yes
these mails are simply not delivered - without *any* notification for neither the sender nor the reciever.
"SmartScreen is the spam filtering technology developed and operated by Microsoft. SmartScreen is built around the technology of machine learning. SmartScreen's filters are trained to recognize what is spam and what isn't spam."
but Microsoft is of course "not able to go into any specific details about what these filters specifically entail, as this would render them useless."
(please see here for the complete story)
solution 1A (little prospect of success, I'd guess): write an email to bill gates and tell him that you think it's a bit rude to make your mails *vanish* without batting an eyelid, instead of moving them into a "spam" or "junk" folder, so you would have the chance to decide yourself.
(while you are at chatting with him, please also ask him why some users are protected from evil guestbooknotification spam while other users are protected from evil commentnotification spam, even though all mails are sent from the same IP address and the same sender (the poor poor mule))
solution 2A: well... I think you know yourself... I don't want to incur the wrath of bill ... but well, you know... there are otha free email providers too, and none of them uses such a smart SmartScreen - they all work with good old fashioned "Junk" and "Spam" folders, and let YOU decide which mails you want to receive and which not.
You will understand that of course I don't wanna make any advertisements here, but there is a rather good freemail provider around, that offers several GIGAbytes of mailstorage for free ("and counting"). if you want, drop me a line on webbomaestro@gmail.com and I will tell you which one I'm talking about...
case (B): you are using any OTHER email addresses (NOT @msn or @hotmail)(while you are at chatting with him, please also ask him why some users are protected from evil guestbooknotification spam while other users are protected from evil commentnotification spam, even though all mails are sent from the same IP address and the same sender (the poor poor mule))
solution 2A: well... I think you know yourself... I don't want to incur the wrath of bill ... but well, you know... there are otha free email providers too, and none of them uses such a smart SmartScreen - they all work with good old fashioned "Junk" and "Spam" folders, and let YOU decide which mails you want to receive and which not.
You will understand that of course I don't wanna make any advertisements here, but there is a rather good freemail provider around, that offers several GIGAbytes of mailstorage for free ("and counting"). if you want, drop me a line on webbomaestro@gmail.com and I will tell you which one I'm talking about...
send an email to admin@polanoid.net and tell me about the problem.
· How is ShotOfTheDay determined?
(How can it be that a picture with only 13 votes won today, and not my picture which has already 30 votes?)
In the early days of polanoid.net, SotD was simply the picture that had the highest number of votes at 1:23 AM (CET) every day (night).
But soon it turned out that when just counting votes like that, always the same *popular* people won and I tried to create a "vote-weighting" algorithm that should guarantee also winning chances for less known/seen pictures as a reaction to the growing unhappiness and resentment of users who said (rigthly to some degree) that SotD has nuffin to do with picture quality but is only a "mere popularity contest".
The rather complex algorithm, that was in use for almost 9 months now, weighted each vote according to different factors of the voter (total number of different pictures the voter has seen) and the owner of the picture that is voted for (how "popular" is the person, how many times has the person won SotD before, how many days have passed since the last win,...) and also the ratio of votes and "distinct picture views" (how many different users have seen a picture - the "Views:" number in brackets in the infotab of a picture).
The whole idea was to have a bigger variety of people on the cover and above all, to make the process more fair also for less popular, less "seen" pictures and users.
Now since the confusion about this process and the criticism that the calculation is too esoteric and unsearchable, not transparent at all - I have been rethinking the whole process and it's inital motive and now came up with a new, much simpler calculation, which I think couldnt possibly be more fair and reasonable and hopefully will keep everybody satisfied.
the new process is rather simple:
winner is the pic that has the highest vote *ratio*, expressed as the percentage of votes per distinct views. a rather simple and straightforward approach, cause only people who have *seen* a picture can *vote* for it.
so if 20% of all people who have seen a picture voted for this picture, it will win over a picture that only 5% of viewers have voted for - even if the 20% may be only 5 votes as compared to the maybe 20 votes of the pic with the 5% vote-ratio, if the picture is the one of a very "popular" person. (you might select "order by votes" when viewing all pictures and look at the numbers of votes and distinct views to get an impression)
So to keep the whole process transparent and to satisfy the often expressed wish to reveal the exact algorithm - here is what happens every night (CET) at 1:23 ...
Unlike in the previous algorithm, no further vote adjustment is made, no matter how often the user has won before, no matter if he won just the day before.
the only thing that counts is the votes/distinctViews ratio, which should eliminate all "popularity" concerns.
If anybody has a better/more fair idea, or finds any logical flaws in this algorithm, please tell me so, I'm open to suggestions.
But soon it turned out that when just counting votes like that, always the same *popular* people won and I tried to create a "vote-weighting" algorithm that should guarantee also winning chances for less known/seen pictures as a reaction to the growing unhappiness and resentment of users who said (rigthly to some degree) that SotD has nuffin to do with picture quality but is only a "mere popularity contest".
The rather complex algorithm, that was in use for almost 9 months now, weighted each vote according to different factors of the voter (total number of different pictures the voter has seen) and the owner of the picture that is voted for (how "popular" is the person, how many times has the person won SotD before, how many days have passed since the last win,...) and also the ratio of votes and "distinct picture views" (how many different users have seen a picture - the "Views:" number in brackets in the infotab of a picture).
The whole idea was to have a bigger variety of people on the cover and above all, to make the process more fair also for less popular, less "seen" pictures and users.
Now since the confusion about this process and the criticism that the calculation is too esoteric and unsearchable, not transparent at all - I have been rethinking the whole process and it's inital motive and now came up with a new, much simpler calculation, which I think couldnt possibly be more fair and reasonable and hopefully will keep everybody satisfied.
the new process is rather simple:
winner is the pic that has the highest vote *ratio*, expressed as the percentage of votes per distinct views. a rather simple and straightforward approach, cause only people who have *seen* a picture can *vote* for it.
so if 20% of all people who have seen a picture voted for this picture, it will win over a picture that only 5% of viewers have voted for - even if the 20% may be only 5 votes as compared to the maybe 20 votes of the pic with the 5% vote-ratio, if the picture is the one of a very "popular" person. (you might select "order by votes" when viewing all pictures and look at the numbers of votes and distinct views to get an impression)
So to keep the whole process transparent and to satisfy the often expressed wish to reveal the exact algorithm - here is what happens every night (CET) at 1:23 ...
| · | the 250 pictures with the highest numbers of votes (10 votes minimum) at this moment are chosen for further calculation. |
| · | for these pictures the votes per distinct views ratio is calculated >> (votes/distinct views) *100 (=16.88% for today's SotD) |
| · | in case of equal rank, the net number of votes is taken into consideration. |
| · | in case of still equal rank, the system flips a coin (random number generator decides). |
If anybody has a better/more fair idea, or finds any logical flaws in this algorithm, please tell me so, I'm open to suggestions.
· How is the Winner of the weekly Project determined?
Unlike the winner selection for the SotD award, which is a transparent and purely democratic automated process, solely depending on your votes, the winner of the weekly "Project" is chosen by the "grande jury" consisting of members of the polanoid headquarters
and a variing number of invited external polaroid experts.
Therefore the result is not necessarily depending on number of picture views, number of SotD-votes or anything else, but purely expresses the personal, subjective taste of the jury.
Therefore the result is not necessarily depending on number of picture views, number of SotD-votes or anything else, but purely expresses the personal, subjective taste of the jury.