Hi,

On November 1st, I may potentially delete a few dozen pictures from my gallery in all albums due to a lack of interest. Lack of interest ranges from lacking number of views, comments, or not following the trends on the site. It’s unfortunate but necessary.

What I’ve learned over the course of the last year is: everyone wants more HIDs, the same vintage street lights over and over and over again, or it’s the end of the world because something might get banned. I don’t want to seem too sour, or maybe there’s a better word. We all know what a 115, OV-15, or EOLED whatever looks like.

There’s a really nice installation of the new Lithonia TWXs near my house, but why bother posting them if they’ll get 10 views over the course of 10 months. Why share quality pictures of a nighttime street before a LED gut-out in 2018 to be in the bottom 10 on my gallery? To better fit the trend here, I propose to delete pretty much half my gallery of photos that I believe don’t make the cut with the current trend. I don’t want to, but it’s on the table for consideration.
Pardon my rant, admins feel free to take the thread down.

Thanks for your understanding.

I understand your frustration.  We've probably all posted a top notch picture of a unique light only for it to receive fewer views and comments than some discount bulb on the shelf at WalMart.  On the admin side, we don't implement any kind of algorithm to promote certain photos over others like some sites do.  They are all equal and the amount of attention they receive depends on the audience and circumstances.  Sometimes certain pictures happen to ignite a fervent debate, drawing in visitors.  But frequently the conversation strays from the original subject, and the attention does not truly reflect the value of that photograph compared to others.  Other times a photo catches somebody's eye years later, bringing in far more views and comments than it had at the time it was first posted.  Ultimately we cannot guarantee quality pictures will be recognized, so you must accept that fact when you set out to photograph the lights, or you're setting yourself up for disappointment.  Personally I'd suggest focusing on taking quality pictures of what you enjoy over photographing what you perceive will be popular, but the choice is yours.  That's particularly true for existing albums.  If they're good pictures and you like them, why not leave them up?  Even if they never fill the comments section, I'm sure there are others who appreciate them, even if they are few in number.

As for the repeat photos of common lights such as the AE 115 or OV-15, this has been a topic we've discussed as a team.  So far we are not prohibiting such photos provided they do not duplicate other pictures within your own albums.  Putting in place restrictions on some of the most commonly uploaded lights could have its benefits, but drawbacks as well.  Besides being unpopular with many, the alternatives uploaded in their place might not be better.  For example, let's say we restrict the OV-15, so instead somebody uploads photos of a cheap junky LED flood or a busted up shoe box light that happens to be from a little-known manufacturer.  It's not necessarily going to be an improvement.

 I'd leave them right where they are Matt !!  Just remember , the very 1st photo on LG took 10 YEARS to get it's 1st comment !  Not every word in the Dictionary has been searched...Not yet !

 Out of the 45 pages that make up my "Most Viewed" section , I have to go to page 40 to see a photo with more than 50 views !
I wouldn't get to upset over it !! In my 4 1/2 years here that fads on LG seem to come and go like the wind .

Thanks to you both for your input. I appreciate it.

Agreed, if someone is searching for something specific one day, they put it into the sites search feature, and you may have a picture that’s never been commented on that’s the thing their looking for!, then while their on your gallery they will look at other things that come to mind.
I’ve found myself doing this many times! 

I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again. I couldn't give a [insert expletive of choice] how many comments or views my pictures get. If people look at them and comment, great. If they don't, they don't, it's not the end of the world. They're up there as a historical record of my collection, and to me that's what the site is for. I don't comment on the endless pictures of yet another cobrahead because they simply don't interest me, and as has also been said many times, we all know what an M250R2 looks like.

It's all down to people's personal interests. For myself, I like looking at lamps (the things that actually generate the light, not fixtures) and also what members have in their collections. Other people like street lights, and even (shock, horror) LED's That's fine (really.. ), we're all different.

At the end of the day, it's up to you what you upload or delete, but don't base that decision on whether it gets views/comments or not,that isn't the point, well not to me it isn't.

I have posted a lot of fluorescent lamps and fittings in recent times that have had very little views or comments. While it is slightly irritating when you put in the effort to write a detailed description, the main thing for me is that I have the item in my collection and can share it on here so those who are interested may find it.

Agreed; like a lot of things, it's all highly subjective and largely down to what people are interested in. As I've said, our interests here are lamps, not fixtures, so I'm far less likely to comment or even look at what seems to me to be yet another American cobrahead, and I'm definitely not going to look at an LED lamp or fixture..! Don't think me insensitive, I know a lot of people like to see them, but as Patrick said earlier, try not to duplicate what you've already uploaded. That way, there is less for people to filter through and decide which if any to comment on.

Back when I was posting pic's here, I wasn't doing it "for view counts" ie: to see if I could get a bunch of views (I rarely even look at the view count), same goes for comments, while its nice to get them, its no big deal if I don't.

Sometimes it'd kinda surprize me if I posted something that I thought was more uncommon or special , and some common 'nothing special'... and it'd be the latter that'd end up getting more attention. But its the type of thing where you just say "it is what is", or its simply random chance. .LOL.

As for streetlights, my gallery for those was on GOL instead of here - since at the time years ago when I found these sites that one was geared more to streetlights & HID, it seemed a better place for such (I had accounts on both sites and saw no point on duplicating everything on both sites so I split up what went where).
(sadly said site is dead (maybe gone too now if they don't fix it) so for now the streetlight gallery is down. .. .its pretty unlikely I'll even bother putting it back up anywhere else)
((that said if I see a nice old streetlight or something new/different than I've seen before I'll still get a pic if I can even figuring it may never be posted (have a few more pic's sitting waiting that I'd planned to add to my collection on GOL ) ))

Thanks everyone for your responses, I appreciate it.
 

Hello Econolite03,

the theme is interesting and timeless. It is always the case that reactions to images are subjective. The personal interests of most users here are firmly structured. It's the same with me. 

The answers to your amount are very specific. In my opinion, it is important not to post any (optically) duplicate photos of a lamp, a fixture or a gear. It is then better if you replace the "worse" photo with a better photo that you took later.

I think the answers from AngryHorse and Beta 5 are very good examples of the problem mentioned. Some topics are only noticed much later because someone was looking for something about them. 

2 examples from my personal experience: a report from OSRAM in Italian from 1959 about the (then) new MV lamps in the range. 
I translated it manually, i.e. typed it word for word from the magazine and “translated” the entire text into English using google translator. It took more than 2 hours and it wasn't fun. There were some views of this post, but not a single comment. So should I delete it now? 

The other example is very recent: a post by Hyperlynx (Guillaume) on the PHILIPS NTL-P fixture. Fluorescent lamps and the fixtures for them don't interest me. A few days ago I discovered and photographed such a fixture. All I knew was: this is an old fixture from PHILPS. So I took a picture of it and looked for the fixture in LG. I wrote a comment about this.  The last comment before mine was written almost 11 years ago. The development of comments is so different. 

My suggestion to you: maybe just sort out a few images that are duplicates of the topic.

Regards

Olav

Hi Matt,

I hope you do not delete your photos.  Often I am also fed up with LG, in sifting through the overload of near-identical images of the kind of things you mention which are similarly boring to me.  But then it is a real pleasure to come across the occasional gems that may not be respected by the masses, but are of very high interest to me and I am certain also interest a significant enough number of others to justify their place here!  Some great examples have been your recent images of older American incandescents.  Maybe those are boring as hell to most other Americans on here, but myself and many others here are from a different part of the world and your images of what other people might consider to be simple commodities are fascinating to us!

Like others have said, I really have no interest in how many views or comments my photos receive.  I would be happier if LG would not even display any view counter, for me that is irrelevant.  Even if one person finds it interesting, and that one person happens not to find it for a decade after it was posted, then it has still served its purpose and deserves to be published online.  The internet would be a much less valuable place if it only comprised what interests the majority of the population and omitted all the rest.  Its enormous diversity and that fact that almost anything can be found is what makes it interesting, and your images are helping to achieve that.  I hope that with time you might draw similar satisfaction from that knowledge, and understand that your contributions are definitely still being appreciated by others even if they happen not to fit into the mainstream of what the majority of members here seem to like.

We should also not assume that no comments means no interest.  I suspect that most visitors here only read, but do not contribute.  It's the same if you ever write a book.  Thousands of people may read and enjoy it, but maybe only one out of every thousand will make the effort to contact the author to give praise or ask a question.  That certainly does not mean that the other 999 people did not enjoy the read, and it would have been a shame if authors stopped publishing only because they do not receive enough reactions!  I feel the same is probably true for a few of yours and my images.

So please keep uploading more of the items in your collection even if only a few of us appreciate them.  And please don't ever delete anything, unless god forbid you also start posting more unwanted pictures of OV-15s and EOLEDs.  Then you can delete almost all!

Thanks for the replies everyone.

The photos will remain posted.