User:Aperfectring/Random image page

From Geohashing

Image tagging is here: http://aperfectring.dyndns.org/tagging.php. Be aware that this is currently running on my home computer, and the page may take a few seconds to load. If the page doesn't load multiple times in a row, let me know, my IP address may have changed.

What it is

A page which displays a random image from the wiki, as well as a good representation of the kind of tags we as a community would like these images classified under. There are apelets (kind of like applets, but more "Ook"ey) running daily to keep the image lists and associated categories up to date. These apelets will add the date and location tags if they are linked by an appropriately named expedition. If an image is linked to by multiple expeditions, it will not add the categories.

Usage instructions

Click the checkboxes next to the categories you think should be added to this image. I currently run through these submissions manually, ensuring that they seem appropriate. I don't often run into inappropriately tagged images, but they do happen. If you want another image, click the "Suggest Categories" button, even if you have made no changes. This will only add differences to the list of "check these tags", so it won't trigger any extra work.

Future plans

I plan to make this page into a voting thing, in the vein of http://thefairest.info. In the meantime, just enjoy the images. I know that we geohashers aren't, in general, professional photographers, but I figure a little friendly competition will only encourage people to take some pretty photos when out and about exploring our world. This will require a lot of ranking effort by people, because we have over 20,000 images on the wiki, so in order to get meaningful results, we will need a lot of visits.

Suggestions for improvement

Could you display a link to the image, or better yet, the expedition it came from?

Yes I could. Once I get the voting thing up and running, I will display links to the images that were on the last page. The photos should be anonymous until the vote has been cast, to help keep personal bias out of it. The links will be to the images, and there should be a link to the expedition on that page.

Could you do xyz with this? Something doesn't appear to be working correctly, how do I tell you?

The best place, for now, is to tell me (aperfectring) in #geohashing on irc.foonetic.net However, you can also use the talk page here to tell me about stuff as well.

Current TODO list

Get the "which I like better" voting page up and running. Should only take a few good days coding.

How it currently works

  1. There is a cron job to download the list of all images on the wiki every night at midnight Pacific time.
  2. You visit the page, which is substantially written in PHP.
  3. A random image is picked from the list.
  4. The cache of thumbnailed images is checked for a copy of that image.
  5. If the image is not cached, download it, thumbnail it, and put it in the cache.
  6. If that step fails at any point, return to step 3.
  7. Get the category list for the image.
  8. If it is in "GPS receivers" return to step 3.
  9. If it is not in "Meetup in LAT LON", but is in "Meetup on YYYY-MM-DD", save the image name in a flat file noting that it need the LAT LON cat, and return to step 3.
  10. If it is in "Meetup in LAT LON" display the image.
  11. Repeat steps 3-10 to get a second image displayed.
  12. If a user clicks a "Report as GPS receiver" button, save the image name in a flat file noting that it could be a GPS receiver, and start over again.