How do you decide what order to add images?

Greetings,

Last week I visited a large hosta garden in a local cemetary and took MANY pictures. When I returned home, I found that for many of the plants for which I had pictures you had none or only a few on Plant Files. So, I researched the pics I had against existing references to ensure correctness and sent 25 pictures off to Plant Files. I know that you don't add them all at one - rather about one per day, but I'm really curious as to how you decide which ones to add. With a few exceptions, I sent them in alphabetical order and of the four which have already been added, they bore no resemblance to the order in which I sent them or even, necessarily, to those varieties for which you had NO pictures.

Please don't interpret this as a complaint. I'm just puzzled and curious. Is it pretty much random in which order they are added? Or are there criteria I'm not aware of?

Ann

That's a good question. There are a couple things that happen to "randomize" images when they're released from the queue into PlantFiles.

For one thing, I can sort everything in the queue by genus OR user, then instruct the system to choose one image from each user. I switch back and forth between genus and user sorting, so that different people and different plants will be highlighted on the PlantFiles main page for the day.

When the system sorts it by genus, all bets are off as to which image you entered first. (I can't tell you exactly what it does with the cultivar names, but I don't think it alphabetizes down to that level, so even if I have 100 Hosta images (for example), they won't necessarily be presented alphabetically by cultivar name (but all of the Hosta images will be found between the Hemerocallis and Iris images ;o)

If you enter a bunch of images at once, chances are good that a lot of them will be released without going through the nightly newsletter or appearing on the PF main page. Instead, they will be released en masse directly into PlantFiles.

I agree it would be nice to prioritize the images according to whether the entry has or doesn't have an image. Unfortunately, it would be a very time-consuming manual process to pull up each entry and review it.

Instead, I focus on trying to ensure that an image from each submitter will make it into the newsletter, and to keep an interesting assortment of images on the PF homepage. The third priority is to maintain about two days of "inventory" waiting to be released - generally speaking, that amounts to 40-70 images per day (one per user). Which means I need to go release some photos now ;o)

Thanks, Terry, for the explanation.

You wrote, "If you enter a bunch of images at once, chances are good that a lot of them will be released without going through the nightly newsletter or appearing on the PF main page. Instead, they will be released en masse directly into PlantFiles."

If that is the case, I should see it reflected in the number of images I have pending shouldn't I? Or not necessarily?

If yes, It would appear that they are going up about 1 each day as there are still 20 pending. LOL

That's fine with me.

Ann

I should be more clear - if you have submitted numerous images (anything more than, say 3 or 4), I will release all but 2 or 3 in one fell swoop.

I'd like to tell you I do the mass release like clockwork, once every 24 hours..but I'm not that consistent.

Each image still needs a cursory review before it leaves the queue, which translates into an hour (or two or three) set aside to do it properly. There are days when other DG (and non-DG) tasks take priority, and the queue quietly piles up until I get around to it ;o) I'm glad Dave gave every access to their own unposted queue from their memberpage - it's a handy feature when you're concerned an image didn't submit properly, or if you just want to keep tabs on them.

If you want to see which ones have been added by you, you can go to "My Info", and scroll down to where it shows your PlantFiles contributions. Click on the images link and it will come up with a list (with thumbnails) of all the images you have contributed! Makes it easy to find which ones have been added if you can't check the daily list.