Photo overload

Apparently I started this topic in the wrong forum so I am restarting it.

After looking at the millionth photo for a route that seemed more appropriate for a Facebook page I have an idea.  All photos should be tagged with something like "Personal Interest", "Route Beta" or "Scenery" or similar so that way if you are after route beta you could filter the photos you have to look at and download. It is really getting out of control with the belay selfies and the like that really do not add any way to info on route finding or belay stations etc. Maybe there could be vote buttons as to what category people think the photo should be. If this is too much work for admin how about using artificial intelligence to sort it out? 

 I just went to a multi pitch route for beta in Mt Project and there were pictures of four different couples proposing. I am happy for them but....There were 85 photos for this particular climb. Of the ones useful for beta many were redundant like five of the start of the climb. Below are just some random photos of the type I am referring to.

Appropriate beta photos are often very helpful especially in places without guide books or with new routes.

I'll thumbs up that.  Keep IG/FB style photos off MP routes.

Another idea......If it is too much work to change the system for admin or the web programmers then make it worth your while and monetize it. Have AI tag Facebook type photos and then require a fee to post them. It might actually be a money maker because I think there are people out there who would pay quite a lot to have their faces on some popular route. Its all about that selfie.

Tagging and filtering photos is a nice idea, or being able to select which ones you want to download. Usually I screenshot any beta photos I need so that I'm not reliant on the MP app - I've had it surprise me before by not showing photos that I thought were downloaded.

Technically, there is a voting system in place. The star rating rearranges the photos with the most stars up front.

However, you need to use the website to be able to rate them. 

Igor Chainedwrote:

Technically, there is a voting system in place. The star rating rearranges the photos with the most stars up front.

However, you need to use the website to be able to rate them. 

The OP mentioned one of his concerns was sifting through the “Facebook type” photos when downloading all photos for an area for offline use. Not sure if the star ratings apply to downloaded photos for an entire area. 

Not Not MP Adminwrote:

The OP mentioned one of his concerns was sifting through the “Facebook type” photos when downloading all photos for an area for offline use. Not sure if the star ratings apply to downloaded photos for an entire area. 

Good point. I guess the only thing we can do with the existing system in place is to bomb 'Facebook type' photos to try to bury them down lol

Igor Chainedwrote:

Good point. I guess the only thing we can do with the existing system in place is to bomb 'Facebook type' photos to try to bury them down lol

and another comment was: " then require a fee to post them. "

Neither of those changes will fix the problem since people can just upvote their social pics.

tom donnellywrote:

and another comment was: " then require a fee to post them. "

Neither of those changes will fix the problem since people can just upvote their social pics.

Nobody is upvoting selfies on the top of Cat in the Hat, homie. 

Not Not MP Adminwrote:

Nobody is upvoting selfies on the top of Cat in the Hat, homie. 

Oh yes they do, sometimes at least.   And often there are also lots of scenery shots, that don't provide beta.  This is the photo with by far the most votes: mountainproject.com/photo/1…

The point is that a significant and useful voting system does not presently exist, nor does it seem likely.  Voting would require a huge effort by users in order to get to useful results.  Most are not going to do this, so the sample votes can be easily inaccurate.   I haven't really used the photo download option due to the photo Overload.  One question - if you do download all the pics for a route to your phone, can you then delete the many pics you don't want?  I have only managed to tediously do this by hand, basically putting the pics I want into a separate file.

However an idea such as the OP's seems valuable to get photo posters to categorize their photo as "Personal Interest", "Route Beta" or "Scenery."   MP could have an option to only download the pics with Route Beta.  Imperfect since many pics could be considered under multiple categories, but better than nothing.  If someone is looking for beta, they don't want even top-rated personal and scenery pics.  Under the present system, it seems all potential categories are weighted equally, maybe since the website is just going for maximum clicks.

tom donnellywrote:

Oh yes they do, sometimes at least.   And often there are also lots of scenery shots, that don't provide beta.  This is the photo with by far the most votes: https://www.mountainproject.com/photo/107073813

Turns out Cat in the Hat was probably a horrible example   However, this is still the first photo of cat in that hat…

The point is that a significant and useful voting system does not presently exist, nor does it seem likely.  Voting would require a huge effort by users in order to get to useful results.  Most are not going to do this, so the sample votes can be easily inaccurate.

As Igor pointed out there is a voting system in place that orders/ranks photos based on the rating that users give them. Granted, based on your previous link, the total amount of votes does not seem to 100% correlate to where the photos rank. So there does seem to be a significant and useful system in place. It just doesn’t seem to take votes as the sole determining factor. 

However an idea such as the OP's seems valuable to get photo posters to categorize their photo as "Personal Interest", "Route Beta" or "Scenery."   MP could have an option to only download the pics with Route Beta. 

I think this is the best solution; having the option of categorizing photos and then also creating an option to only download a specific category of photos for offline use

I have been learning more about AI lately and it would seem to me that it would not be that hard to train an AI to categorize pictures. If bodies or faces occupy a certain percentage of the screen then they could be put in a selfie category. The difference between beta and scenery would be harder unless the photo had route lines, anchor Xs and text drawn on it. I would think an AI could figure that out pretty accurately.  Another problem is multiple photos of different climbers doing some crux move. It's not betta at that point it is a selfie. There needs to be a question when you post a photo. "Is there already a photo of someone doing the crux move or pitch? If so please consider not adding another one."   Tags selected for a category by climbers other than the person posting it might help to train an AI so this would not be any kind of popularity vote. This could be gamed I suppose by climbers and their friends who really wanted their selfies to be downloaded as route beta but hopefully the need for attention is not quite that strong.

Sometimes you want to see what a belay station(s) looks like but it would be possible to do that without having it be primarily a selfie. This would be pretty extreme but an AI could probably recognize belay stations and blur out faces so there would be less incentive to post them if a selfie was the real objective. That could be a question. If the faces were blurred out in the photo you are submitting would it provide any useful information not already posted?  There could be exceptions if the AI determined it was a really sexy woman but then it would have to allow photos of sexy men. There could be a filter option for that for the download.   

Using Mountain Project like Facebook is less of a problem for small towns with small crags but even then do occasional visitors want to download a dozen selfies of a bunch of people they don't know and probably won't meet? Having a Facebook page for your homies would be a better solution.