Image waitlist: new feature to even out front page time for uploads

Have you ever felt frustrated when you upload an image, and shortly thereafter a bunch of images are approved from the queue and yours gets bumped off the front page?

We're introducing a feature to try to counter this: the waitlist. Here's how it works:

• When a mod approves an image from the queue, it goes into the waitlist rather than being posted right away.
• When you direct upload an image, if you are past 7 direct uploads for the day, your upload goes into the waitlist. (Your first 7 direct uploads per day are not affected, and don't go into the waitlist.)

Every minute, a script runs, and if it sees that no images have been posted in the past 2 minutes, it takes the oldest image from the waitlist (EDIT: actually the one that has been on the waitlist the longest) and posts it to the site. In this way, rather than having all the pics flood the site at once, the uploads are spaced out over time.

We will be monitoring the size of the waitlist and may adjust the exact timings accordingly.

Quick question, is there a way for people to see the pictures they have in the waitlist to add tags and such before they go live?

They should be visible on your profile, just not in the main gallery of images.

They should be visible on your profile, just not in the main gallery of images.

I see, so other users could still see and comment on the uploads immediately, even though they're not showing yet in the Images section. Come to think of it, would any of the search filters "force" the images into view, for the slightly more savvy than average user?

Hmm, not really sure, they show up if you use basically any search filter, so you'd have to find one that somehow also matches all images. Not sure if one exists.

Huh, I thought some of mine weren't showing up in my gallery immediately, but testing with a few more, it seems they are, I may have just been misremembering the order they were arranged in when I uploaded them.

Interestingly, you seem to be able to see pics in the waitlist on a blank search if they're tagged and you do a filter for that tag, but not if you search for them by name or leave the search entirely blank. I don't know if it's worth supressing them in the tagged results for the sake of consistency, the only negative effect I can see is if people comment on a pic that's far into the waitlist, but most others are unable to see and respond to their comment until later, which seems fairly minor.

Have all the usual functions already been tested on waitlisted images (merging, deleting, renaming, adding to favorites, etc) to make sure nothing breaks?

but not if you search for them by name or leave the search entirely blank

Good catch, I fixed this so they show up when you search by name. This is important because otherwise subscribed people would get a notification when the image is first tagged with a name, potentially while still in the waitlist, and fail to see the pic.

Have all the usual functions already been tested on waitlisted images (merging, deleting, renaming, adding to favorites, etc) to make sure nothing breaks?

I didn't test those particularly thoroughly but I have no reason to think they would break due to how the waitlist is implemented. It's basically a flag on the pic that is set to true if an image is on the waitlist, and the only other place it comes up in the site code is when filtering the image index page (and the "most recent" / "recently commented" on the front page). As a result I have no reason to think it would affect merging, deleting, etc.

One area where I think bugs are more likely is when approving an image from the queue. I moved the actual approval (moving from queue to the site) to when the script processes it, whereas it used to happen when you actually clicked the approve button. I did test this but am not sure I covered all the cases.

Actually I just changed this to post the image that has been on the waitlist the longest, rather than the one that was uploaded first. I think this makes the waitlist behave more consistently / like you'd expect. For example, your waitlisted direct uploads don't get pre-empted by all queue approvals (since those were probably uploaded first).

That seems like a good change.

One minor thing I noticed is that when merging an existing picture into one on the waitlist, the latter doesn't get posted immediately. I think it would be better if it did, so that the picture isn't effectively disappearing from the site for an indeterminate amount of time (depending on how long the waitlist gets).

It's only disappearing from the main image listing when using no filters, right? So if someone has favorited it, they should still see it in their favorites.

Oh, and I figured out what was throwing me off with thinking I couldn't see my waitlisted images. It's that the pictures most recently taken off the waitlist and posted to the main site (i.e. the earliest ones added) show up at the top of your personal gallery. I don't know that that necessarily needs to change, as the pictures will eventually all end up in the original order again once they're done leapfrogging each other, but it is slightly confusing.

Right, when the pic gets off the waitlist, the "posted" timestamp is reset to that time to ensure the image is at the top of the front page.

I just tested, and yes the Favorites entry appears to update to the new image after merging even when it's waitlisted. Since you fixed waitlisted images not showing up in a name search, I guess the only concern would be images merged into ones on the waitlist disappearing from High Score / Recently Commented and so on?

They show up under High Score. It is true they don't show up under Recently Commented (on the front page) because I didn't want people to be able to front-page their waitlisted uploads by commenting on them.

Why do I only get 1 or 2 uploads a day (Direct to site) and then it takes almost the whole day or even longer before I can upload more?

As of right now there are 637 images in the waitlist, over 150 belong to one member who gets unlimited upload. And now everyone else is on standby waiting for who knows how long until his gets through the waitlist. At least maybe someone can make him put first and last names on all his pics. This might slow down the number of dumps he makes per week and actually let other people participate on the site.

I've got 20 pics in the queue that haven't even made it to the waitlist. It's a wonder I have as many uploads as I do.

Update I was wrong, he's got way more than 150 on the waitlist. In fact the overwhelming majority (which means a few hundred) of pictures on the waitlist belong to 1 member.

Yeah I made the suggestion of putting tempp in a separate waitlist, still waiting to hear back on that.

Not sure why the site wouldn't allow more than 1 or 2 a day. Seems it should be 10 or so and if it's abused with junk, you can just ban that member.

Yeah I made the suggestion of putting tempp in a separate waitlist, still waiting to hear back on that.

Good Suggestion! What about suggesting that he puts the model's name on all his uploads? If you look at the source names of his uploads, he usually changes that to the woman's first name. So he know's who the girl is!! Sometimes he uploads a slew of one girl and puts a full name on one and then leaves the rest blank or with only a first name or some combination of that. He obviously, doesn't give a shit about the images he uploads being them ever being found again and seems to be just concerned with the numbers he uploads. He doesn't favorite photos, or communicate or dialog with anyone and given time, most of his uploads would be uploaded by someone else on the site and probably those photos would most be given a name by someone else. I've uploaded a few photos on the site myself it's very easy to do, at least the way us mortals who can't just dump pics on the site have to do it. What is his use other than dumping image onto the site? you've got a bunch of people contributing to the site the right way, do we still need to give this guy special treatment to upload basically at will and tie the system up for everyone else??

Here's and example of the the time I waste because of him.... Before I upload any pictures I do a quick scan of what's already been uploaded of the model. When I don't see it's been uploaded I go ahead and upload. There have been 100's of times Chainer's great system has caught duplicates and 9 times out of 10, it's because the picture wasn't labeled. And 9 out of 10 of those it's a pic that tempp already had uploaded, but I missed because he didn't label it.