WAYWO usage
admin
We thought this would be a pretty clear little bit of netiquette, but perhaps it could be spelled out better.
In the What Are You Working On (WAYWO) threads lately, we've been seeing single posts with a ton of images in them. Or posts with very large not-well compressed images.
We think this is a bit selfish, and not in keeping with the intent of the WAYWOs.
Too many big images make these threads too slow to load for too many people.
Please be considerate of our viewers on mobile. Also, the longer people have to wait for your images to load, the less likely your work is going to be seen.
How Do I WAYWO, Dude?
Embed a single image/video/sketchfab with a link to your own Topic so people can go see more of your great artwork, give you critique, etc.
In your own Topic you can put as many images as you want, and make them as big as you want. (beware though, lots of people will close your thread if they have to wait for them to load, so be considerate.
Within a shared WAYWO topic, one embed means one image, or one animated GIF, or one video, or one 3d viewer like Sketchfab, or one SoundCloud audio player, etc.
If you upload a JPG to WAYWO we'd like it under 1000x1000 resolution so it will be an acceptable file size. It doesn't matter what compression you save as, since the uploaded image is re-compressed by our server. This is done for security purposes, to scrub metadata, get rid of weird headers, etc. 1000x1000 JPGs end up around 500kb, which is a pretty acceptable size for mobile peeps.
If you embed an animated GIF in a WAYWO it should be less than 2 mb.
If you use an external image host (Imgur, Blog, etc.) your still image should be less than 500 kb in a WAYWO.
Avoid PNG format please. It often makes very large image files. PNG works well if the image is mostly large areas of flat color. However, saving a JPG converts a 8MB PNG down to a less than 500kb JPG, and it looks virtually identical.
More embed tips in "Information about Polycount & New member introductions"
Your own topic also allows us to frontpage your work more easily, and to get your work into the banner up top (if you're lucky!).
No one is going to post meaningful critique in a WAYWO thread, but they will if you make a Topic!
It's all good!
In the What Are You Working On (WAYWO) threads lately, we've been seeing single posts with a ton of images in them. Or posts with very large not-well compressed images.
We think this is a bit selfish, and not in keeping with the intent of the WAYWOs.
Why One Embed?
The point of posting in a shared thread is to share a quick update of whatever you're working on. You really only need one image to do this.Too many big images make these threads too slow to load for too many people.
Please be considerate of our viewers on mobile. Also, the longer people have to wait for your images to load, the less likely your work is going to be seen.
How Do I WAYWO, Dude?
Embed a single image/video/sketchfab with a link to your own Topic so people can go see more of your great artwork, give you critique, etc. In your own Topic you can put as many images as you want, and make them as big as you want. (beware though, lots of people will close your thread if they have to wait for them to load, so be considerate.
Within a shared WAYWO topic, one embed means one image, or one animated GIF, or one video, or one 3d viewer like Sketchfab, or one SoundCloud audio player, etc.
If you upload a JPG to WAYWO we'd like it under 1000x1000 resolution so it will be an acceptable file size. It doesn't matter what compression you save as, since the uploaded image is re-compressed by our server. This is done for security purposes, to scrub metadata, get rid of weird headers, etc. 1000x1000 JPGs end up around 500kb, which is a pretty acceptable size for mobile peeps.
If you embed an animated GIF in a WAYWO it should be less than 2 mb.
If you use an external image host (Imgur, Blog, etc.) your still image should be less than 500 kb in a WAYWO.
Avoid PNG format please. It often makes very large image files. PNG works well if the image is mostly large areas of flat color. However, saving a JPG converts a 8MB PNG down to a less than 500kb JPG, and it looks virtually identical.
More embed tips in "Information about Polycount & New member introductions"
Merciless Moderation Mom-ness!
Breaking these rules may cause merciless editing by a Moderator. Deleting all but the first image, replacing your giant PNG/GIF/whatever with a JPG screencap, etc.
This is only done in the WAYWOs, because they're a shared resource. In your own Topic you can put as many images as you want, and make them
as big as you want. (beware though, lots of people will close your
thread if they have to wait for them to load, so be considerate.
Make Your Own Topic!
If you want to show more images, or to ask for feedback, please make your own Topic for this.Your own topic also allows us to frontpage your work more easily, and to get your work into the banner up top (if you're lucky!).
No one is going to post meaningful critique in a WAYWO thread, but they will if you make a Topic!
Thank You!
Thanks for your consideration in this. In the end this makes the WAYWOs more friendly to repeat viewers, which in turn increases your visibility. This also improves your own personal threads, which means people are less likely be impatient for image loading and exit your thread before seeing your artwork.It's all good!
Replies
Aside from the image size issue, the default being 50 posts per page probably should be changed (there's probably some sort of account setting for this, but that doesn't change the fact that the default is too high for threads like that).
Agreed. While often I am hesitant to suggest to add hard limits on the forum side of things, it can be useful for people with slower internet and small data caps. Plus it can be an optional setting in the user's preferences rather than something that has to be forced on all users.
Yeah you're right. But it's better to say something publicly, at least to have something to point to when we smash down their post.
I've warned a couple people today. Edited their posts down to just one image, and sent them a quote of their original, in case they want to make a thread.
But that's tedious work.
I'm also reluctant to enforce hard limits, or to recompress peoples' images automatically.
I don't know what the solution is. This is kind of the first step though.
But... we get a lot of new users coming in all the time. So that would just mean more warning work to do?
One easy fix would be to set a limit on the number of characters per post. Currently this is 40000, probably too high.
But that doesn't limit # of images. Also setting the limit to something like say 1500 characters is likely going to piss some people off, and discourage some meaningful posts. Besides all the other unintended consequences a change like this tends to cause, which you don't find out until you get a bunch of users breaking it and getting pissed off over it. Haha, that's fun.
It's just not an easy thing to solve. Those forums that have put solutions in place have done so with a considerable amount of fairly expensive coding time, or they have a code-savvy site owner with a lot of free time on their hands.
We certainly throw money at Polycount, and will continue to do so, but we're smart about it and it has to have a limit. We're not going to do a Patreon or god forbid a Kickstarter. We all know quite a few who have gone down that road and not ended well.
I've probably shared more than I should. But we've all been together a long time. Transparency is a good thing I think.
If a file is above a certain number of MB, it's "minimized" by default.
Slack does something similar to this, and it's a great feature.
Though I do understand it would probably not be easy to implement.
So could it help if this sort of information was part of the general sign up process?
Like on the sign up page or after they click the confirmation email they get sent to an info page like this, or before their first post.
@Eric Chadwick Please avoid limiting characters as it hinders having a decent discussion immensely. I don't know if you've been to a place with harsh character limit but 4chan has a 1500 character limit and it hinders having any meaningful discussion as you always have to make sure you can cram your point into a single post every time which just hurts the discussion more then it prevents whatever it's supposed to prevent. Anything resembling a guide would be impossible and posting links isn't something you do as they tend to be very long.
But any set of rules is bound to be dismissed asap, it's just human nature. tl;dr
I think ultimately a combo of plugins and regular enforcement is probably the way to go, along with some commonsense rules spelled out somewhere.
But yeah, in the end some sort of automated system is probably needed.
It's probably the best method because people would always see it when posting in the forums.This would also catch the attention of people who don't visit general discussion.
A popup when you hit Reply? I guess it would have to parse your contents, decide if you've gone over some attachment limits, then prevent posting until you fix it. Hmm.
But anyhow, even if we had limits or higher compression, image URLs from other image hosts won't respect any of our limits. So then should we limit it so you can only use our server to show your images? That would be unfortunate I think.
You could have a jquery function that checks if "what-are-you-working-on" is in the URL, and will then count attachments while a user is making a reply, and if the amount of attachments is greater than 2, it disables the submit button, and either has a tooltip on the submit button explaining the reason, or you have a popup explaining why it's being disabled, and how the user can remedy it.
At the moment, when I land in the thread, the top post is all I see, until I scroll down, which isn't ideal, I think.
If noone mods it, then the community just falls apart because no one wants to deal with it anymore. Benevolent dictatorship seems to work OK though.
"Downsize your images to 1600 or less before attaching or embedding."
and
"Images must be less than 1280 wide"
Hopefully the 1280 was a typo because I don't like the idea of having to save out an image for my thread and separate image for waywo.
What max size do you people think is good? 1280? 1600? 1680? 1920?
I kind of like the 900px limit idea. It's already the display size. It's fairly small, but it would generate more traffic through mobile, and it would be nice for desktop browsing as well. People can dump their 12+ 4k images in their personal thread if they want.
And my following comments are also in regards to what you see when you click.
I think 1500px is a happy medium for when you click.
I dont think an art focused image based site should be pushing such a tiny limit like 9000px especially not in 2016. If not then whats the point of having a nice lightbox feature built into the site if we're not going to use it in the most popular thread?
Suggestions:
-Stick this post with a Bold Red font at the top of polycount.
-Embedded 900px images or 2 pictures at max 1600px?
-Simplify rules at SignUp with bold and red color.
-Dev stuff. (many ideas).
ps. does the green rounded and happy guy have a name? I never thought about that.
WAYWO is supposed to be about sharing an update, not whoring a ton of stuff.
Undecided about WAYWO image size limit. If we make a 900px rule, we have to enforce it.
Enforcing is potentially a lot of work... these are high-traffic threads, the policing would have to be done every day. It's also a bit emotionally draining, constantly telling people they're wrong, and getting occasional backlash. At least, policing the Work sections is like this already.
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