Before voting

Fotopedia Quality Guidelines

At Fotopedia we like great quality photos that document the world. They inspire us to build products with beautiful visual experiences.

The Fotopedia Quality Guidelines shares our high quality requirement. It presents basic criterias that will help you chose photos to vote up, down or to report.

On the importance of voting

By voting you decide which photos get attention in the article and in which order they will be displayed. You decide which photos won't make it and will be removed from an article. Thousands of photographers are watching you. The quality of Fotopedia depends on you. Will you turn your thumb upwards or downwards?

Be impartial

When you vote we ask you about the quality and relevancy of the image. Answer impartially. Be fair and objective.

Your photo is great, but don't other photos in the article deserve fair votes?

Your friends are great, but their photos might not be good enough for an article or might not respect the Quality Guidelines. Let them know, this is what friends are for.

Voting

You can express an opinion about a photo in different ways:

• Vote on quality. This photo is of great quality.
• Vote on relevancy... This photo illustrates perfectly the article.
• Leave a comment. Before submitting your vote, you can leave a comment to give more informations about your vote.

Voting on quality and relevancy and vote quota

When joining Fotopedia, you will not be able to vote. This will come with the reputation you will gain while adding good quality and relevant photos to the encyclopedia. You can vote when your reputation score is above 30. You can read more about this in our topic dedicated to the reputation system.

To vote on a photo, click on the score of the photo and a window will appear.

Use the quality and relevance sliders to vote on a photo. For instance, you can give +1 on quality to a photo, but give -1 on relevancy, because the photo doesn't illustrate perfectly the topic covered.

Each slider accounts for a vote, and you have a limited number of vote per day, depending on your reputation score (you can see how many times per day you can vote on your profile page).

Remember that your votes are influencing your reputation score. Vote positively on really good photos and negatively on bad photos will improve your reputation score.

You can vote once on a photo.

Leave a comment on a photo

You can leave a comment on a photo while voting. It can help the photographer understand your vote and the reasons behind your decision.

For the moment, comments are hidden and not visible by the photographer, but we are planning to make them public soon, we will keep you updated.

If you think a photo is inappropriate because it doesn't respect the Quality Guidelines, is irrelevant or worse, violent, hateful, offensive or stolen, you can flag it.

What happens once I voted?

Hooray! One new top photo!

Once a photo is added it is submitted to the votes of the community. If the photo attracts a certain number of votes it will be displayed in the article view with the best and most relevant photos.

At any time, you can see the number of votes on a photo.

Removal of photos with a negative score

A photo that has a negative score in a given article for 7 days in a row will be removed from the article automatically. For example, if your photo is voted down to -1 in an article and nobody votes for it during the next 7 days, it will be removed from this article. If the photo goes back to 0 or higher during these 7 days, it will remain in the article.

We don't send any messages when a photo is removed because of its score.

Follow the article

In your Fotopedia news you will receive information about any article you voted in.

FAQs

Why was my photo voted down?

Having a negative score doesn't mean your photo is bad but maybe that the community thinks your photo isn't a good illustration for the article you added it to.

Here are some possible reasons for having a negative score (the list isn't exhaustive):

• the photo doesn't respect the Quality Guidelines
• the quality of photos already in the article is higher, although your photo isn't bad
• you added your photo to a large article like New York, without adding it to a more specific article before, like Empire State Building
• your photo is relevant but not people would expect in that article
• composition: an irrelevant object is in the front or the composition lacks dynamism for example
• the horizon isn't straight. Please straighten your horizons!
• compression or post production generating blur or noise
• no particular focus, the eye doesn't know where to look in the photo

If you still can't figure out why your photo has a negative score, you can post a link to it here telling us why you believe the community is wrong.

A photo featured is really not as good as other photos who are not on the top of the article.

Fotopedia isn't perfect and you may find photos that aren't good in the top. In these cases, the best is to flag these photos as inappropriate explaining why the photo shouldn't be there and vote it down.

If a bad photo is in the article it doesn't mean we can let more bad photos join it.

Why can't I vote down on photos?
To vote down on a photo you need a minimum reputation score of 1000. We made this choice because we thing before giving a negative signal to a photo you should prove to the community that you have a sharp eye by adding stunning photographs, and voting up quality and relevant photos. You can still flag photos that does not respect the quality chart. Learn more about reputation...

I can't find top photos and candidates, what happens?
We removed the distinction between candidates and top. We noticed that novice users were only voting for photos within candidates, and ignoring good and relevant photos already in the top. Now photographers can compare photos altogether.

Cheating Fotopedia and using multiple accounts to vote

If members trick the system to get their photos in an article in a self interested way, Fotopedia will get worse and good contributors will leave and visitors will leave.

It is not allowed to use several accounts on Fotopedia. Each member can only have one account.

We detect suspicious patterns of voting and delete the accounts involved.