britta's dashboard

britta replied on November 09, 2009 22:59 to the idea "Some kind of gentle way to say "that doesn't look like a noticing"" in Noticings:

Hmm, do you mean that we should suggest this on the Flickr photo's comments? Can a person remove their own photos from the game if they've already been scored?

britta replied on November 09, 2009 22:42 to the question "What is a city?" in Noticings:

Glad to hear that, because I've been using a very liberal definition of "city", including construction in fields and mountains built for the benefit of nearby civilized areas, and feeling slightly guilty about it. :)

A comment on the question "Do crowds = people?" in Noticings:

Yeah, it's a subtle distinction. :) The sunset or cloud configuration seen in the photo would only last for minutes, but I think that parked cars tend to sit for at least an hour or two.

There's actually an art car that I've seen parked in various places in my neighborhood several times, although I don't know who owns it or where they live. I'd like to take a photo of it next time I see it. It's a local institution in its own way. – britta, on November 05, 2009 21:11

A comment on the question "Do crowds = people?" in Noticings:

I see how that makes sense. I choose to keep default filename titles for idiosyncratic aesthetic reasons, so the explanation of the subject is in the less-visible photo description. It's OK with me if my noticings get disqualified sometimes for that. :)

If you're curious, the photo description links to an article with context: the brown thing in the photo is an open box, in the center of a neighborhood, where anyone can drop off useful unwanted items and/or browse to gather items. ends up supporting the local community both practically and through random box-browsing conversations across the usual socioeconomic lines. I'm fond of it. There are a few similar installations in other places with radical pasts. – britta, on November 05, 2009 20:56

A comment on the question "Do crowds = people?" in Noticings:

Yeah, I remember something on the site about a parked car being OK, but not a car in motion.

Hmm, I just saw that my noticing of the local Free Box got taken out of play, and I don't know why. It's a static object, clearly visible in the photo... – britta, on November 04, 2009 21:05

britta replied on November 03, 2009 18:57 to the question "Do crowds = people?" in Noticings:

Yeah, it is an arbitrary rule. :) It's just my interpretation of the spirit of the game. Something like this sun-related coincidence is bending my criteria, but I figure it could be reproduced at the same time of day.

That fair sounds cool! I wonder if it would have counted to take a picture between presentations (if possible), with fewer people around, so the photo focused more on the chairs.

I think this relates to Some kind of gentle way to say "that doesn't look like a noticing"...

britta replied on November 02, 2009 16:52 to the question "Do crowds = people?" in Noticings:

Hmm, I would think that could count as a noticing if it were specified that the toilet-seat was a permanent feature of the room. My criteria is something like "Could a random stranger find this same thing if she or he came by these geo coordinates tomorrow or next week?"

britta replied on November 02, 2009 16:46 to the idea "Some kind of gentle way to say "that doesn't look like a noticing"" in Noticings:

Hmm, thanks for the extended thoughts!

I feel like photos either qualify as noticings or don't, and then they get points based on the type of noticing (time, location, subject, etc)...rather than adding and subtracting points for quality. I think there could be a separate system for quality — see Stemming the potential flood of dirge for some discussion, although I've changed my mind about point bonuses since I wrote in that thread. :)

I like the gentlemanly idea of only calculating points once and letting not-really-noticings stand, instead of removing those photos from the game. I'd like to encourage people to submit better ones in the future, rather than penalizing them for mistakes. This is all pretty idealistic and probably only works when everybody has good intentions, but the benefit of extra points is so subtle that it doesn't seem likely to be gamed in a negative way for now...

britta replied on November 02, 2009 16:35 to the idea "places search, could be noticings search with place context?" in Noticings:

Sounds related to Bryan's suggestion in the thread for Searching for a place by name: "I'd really like search to understand hierarchy too, so if I search for "helsinki" it returns all the results for neighborhoods that are within HEL."

britta replied on November 02, 2009 02:18 to the idea "Some ideas for seasonal bonuses" in Noticings:

Maybe a bonus for flowers in snow? My neighborhood has flowers year-round...

britta started following the idea "Nearby noticings - ignore the older ones for scoring?" in Noticings.

britta shared an idea in Noticings on November 01, 2009 19:19:

Some kind of gentle way to say "that doesn't look like a noticing"

Sometimes people upload photos of items that appear to be indoors and aren't specified as public places (photos of candy bowls, a jar of pens, etc), so I consider commenting something like "That doesn't look like a noticing..." on the Flickr photo, but I don't want to be rude. I just want to help guide the person into selecting better-qualified noticings, because that's more fun.

(I'd also like to give the person a chance to defend their choice, since I've uploaded photos that might look like bad noticings — such as this train car, which looks like it's moving, but it's part of a train yard where cars sit for weeks at a time, and the main part of the noticing is the set of vats in the background.)

This could take the form of a little button on the Noticings page for the photo that says "dear author of this photo, please re-evaluate this noticing", or maybe just a note on the blog encouraging people to politely dispute weird noticings.

A comment on the idea "How about a map on the player profile pages?" in Noticings:

Thanks for linking Boundaries. I'd seen it ages ago but had forgotten about it, and now it comes in handy. – britta, on October 23, 2009 05:19

A comment on the idea "Mass Edits of Tags and Bookmarks would be REALLY helpful" in Delicious:

Yes, there are comments on the Delicious forum about this, and we have it in mind for the future of the bulk editing tool.

If you acquired these unwanted tags by importing bookmarks, you may be able to re-import those bookmarks with the import options customized to "not add popular tags" and "Replace my Delicious bookmark with the imported one". – britta, on October 20, 2009 07:29

britta replied on October 20, 2009 07:19 to the question "OAuth for Twitter Integration?" in Delicious:

See our latest blog post — "We’ve added OAuth support. Go to your Settings page now and ‘authorize’ Twitter to avoid interrupting your URL tweeting when you save later on."

britta marked one of Tom Taylor's replies in Noticings as useful. Tom Taylor replied to the problem "A photo I replaced on Flickr is "currently unavailable" on Noticings".

britta replied on October 14, 2009 16:08 to the question "OAuth for Twitter Integration?" in Delicious:

Yes, this is in the works — see the corresponding Delicious forum thread for more comments.

britta reported a problem in Noticings on October 13, 2009 15:49:

A photo I replaced on Flickr is "currently unavailable" on Noticings

A few days after this photo had its turn on Noticings, I realized that I needed to adjust its color tones to make it more true to life (I went by the same building again and saw that the wall really wasn't purple, it was red). So I clicked "Replace this photo" on Flickr and uploaded a new version.

Since then, Noticings has displayed Flickr's "unavailable" placeholder on both the Noticings photo page and my Noticings player page. I imagine that this has something to do with the standard way to grab photos from the API — FriendFeed has this "unavailable" message on replaced photos too — and it might be more of a Flickr problem than a Noticings problem, but it just pokes out a little whenever I see it.

To discourage trickiness with replaced photos, I imagine you might want to store the thumbnail at the time of the turn (and the actual photo) and always display it, even if the photo at Flickr is replaced. Might not want to store so many photos though.

britta started following the idea "How about a map on the player profile pages?" in Noticings.

britta replied on September 29, 2009 08:08 to the idea "Show me the scores of people in my area." in Noticings:

I don't think there are other players in my area, so instead I might be curious to see a list of the closest players to me...even if those noticings are a hundred miles away.