Problem - disappearing points

I could be that someone deleted their account

it happened to me also and i lost almost 5000 points. i notice that when i was posting some pics for my new list my points were decreasing of about 100 to 300 pts sometimes. in the past week i lost some points everyday and i saw something weird happened on the leaderboard, i was ranked 120 for a week and my friend lilli was 121 and the other one's were far behind from us (more then 10 000 points ) and suddenly i was ranked 121 but nobody who were behind us passed in front of us. i saw a users also get 24 000 pts in 3 hours that's a lot of points, he was 1000 pts in front of me and 3 hours later he was at 25 000 points in front. how can somebody do 24000 pts in 3 hours.

It could also be that people are deleting your pictures with votes on them. I am a moderator and I can see when people delete my pictures.
I've been losing points a lot lately and it's because a few users are deleting my "Duplicate" pictures which are pictures I posted months or years ago and they are replacing them with their own. Not cool dude

But the users don't delete others pictures, they report them as duplicates to the mods, right? So in the end the mods decide.

@Tom, I've been experiencing the same thing with list votes (which I track)recently and I agree. A few newer people who voted for my lists appear to have deleted their accounts.

it happened to me again i lost 160 pts during the night but at the same time i had 5 pic votes & 1 list vote from my friends... that means i lost about 230 pts in 8 hours and no friends or pics were deleted during the night. there's a problem but what ????

I can't see why people can't just add an image without deleting older ones that seem like duplicates... but I guess if they really care that much then go ahead. I'm just going to stop wasting time posting pictures.

I've never really liked that old images are deleted with newer ones but I am hoping to improve the system in the future.

I don't understand why something in significantly lower quality/size should be kept over something better.

Sometimes images that came out years ago and now available in higher quality than they originally were.

Maybe the better quality picture could replace the old one but stay the "property" of the original uploader ?

Well, I personally don't care about points and getting the credit. When I replace a picture I do it because I like to improve the overall quality of the gallery.
But a lot of people do get upset about this issue. So, maybe a compromise would be a good thing.

^ Overall quality of the gallery is the main thing I try and aim for also, which is why I don't enjoy hearing a bunch of whining from people over their images getting deleted when better versions are available. It just seems selfish to me. People should be more interested in the greater good of the gallery and making sure the gallery is as high quality as it can be, not getting all offended because a few of their pictures get deleted.

If you upload pictures on a regular basis, some are going to get deleted. That's just statistically how it is. I've had tons of images replaced -- I've posted 40k of those buggers so it was always bound to happen. And I take zero offense from it. I would much rather have the best pictures in the gallery versus clinging to mine and getting all upset whenever someone wants to delete it.

I sincerely hope that the system does not change. There is NEVER going to be a solution that pleases everyone. But our current system keeps the galleries from getting even messier than they already are. I can only imagine how trashy they would get if there were suddenly multiple versions of every picture.

ITA

I really don't care about points, credit, votes etc. I care about having the best possible quality images in a gallery. I see Listal as an archive. It's all about the greater good.

If someone has a higher quality version of an image I posted, by all means, please upload yours and report mine as a duplicate.

I've put a lot of time and effort into cleaning out and improving galleries. If some rule were to happen that a lower quality image could not be deleted for a higher quality one..... I would feel as though all the time and effort I put into helping this site was in vain if we are just gonna accept lower quality crap.

Seems to me that everybody's right. Those who want hi-res quality are right. Those who don't really like that old images are deleted with newer ones... are right, too.
So, how to make everybody happy?
My solution would be: a new "sort by image dimension/resolution" feature in "View pictures". This way, those who want hi-res could have it, but those who don't like old images being delete would keep them.
What do you think?

That would be too confusing because we'd get into duplicate image territory. And having multiple versions of the same image in a gallery will just clog it up even more.

The main thing is that if you don't want your image to get deleted as a duplicate: Make sure to post it in the highest quality available in the first place.

Just a quick visit...

Why is the issue of duplicates even being discussed? I thought the rules were very clear.

Are the rules correct? Yes...

Allowing original images to get priority would be absolutely ridiculous, as has already been stated, better images become available and surely Listal wants those images to be available on here. Who would visit Listal if all of the high quality images were only available elsewhere?

Allowing multiple versions of the same image would surely just result in Listal becoming bandit country (more than it already can be) with people uploading loads of versions of the same image in an effort to rack up points... a very silly idea.

Perhaps the only solution to the points loss issue is to put a system in place where points are not deducted for lost votes from replaced images. I'm not sure how doable that is, but safeguarding the points would at least keep those who upload for points happy.

Hope that makes sense.

Edit: We also need a new system that prevents replaced images disappearing from lists as soon as possible. I know this has been discussed, and it has been stated that it is in the offing, but it really should be a priority. It's a shame when people put a lot of effort into lists only to see them savaged by the system. There seems to be somewhat of a spite culture on Listal, and this would go some way towards preventing it.

@Brazilfashion

That would be too confusing because we'd get into duplicate image territory.

I'm thinking of an "image quality filter" along the lines of
ON="filter out dupes"
OFF="see dupes".

Let's say a new image with better quality is posted and the old one is reported. You (a Mod) would declare the new pic (let's call it "pic A") "best quality", and declare the old pic ("B") "dupe of A". But you wouldn't have to actually delete "B".

A Listal user who wants max image quality would leave the FILTER=ON (default), thus only see the new hi-res pic not the old one, when they browse image pages.

Another Listal user who doesn't want the filter would not be affected by it, though, and still see both the old and the new image. If they used the old image in a list, it would stay.

In any case, the person who posted the old image would keep all the points they got. Points are not important for you, but they are important for some other people.

The filtering solution is one that only half addresses the issues most of us are concerned with. Yes, it solves the part about wanting a high quality image, but the other half is that we also want the galleries to be clean. Taking an "out of sight, out of mind" approach to duplicates is not going to make me feel any better about them being there and cluttering up the gallery. As Onion Jack said, this is an invitation to people to post whatever the hell they want. And as brazilfashion said, us mods have worked way too hard on trying to clean up galleries as it is; changing the system now would make me feel like I've wasted a huge chunk of time.

My personal view is that the old versions of pictures are ONLY beneficial to the person who posted them. High quality versions are beneficial to everyone. And I don't support solutions that favor one person's pride over the desires of the majority.

As far as I know, the system already allows the original poster to keep their points. When we delete as duplicates, both parties keep the points; the only difference is the person who had their image kept has the opportunity to gain more points by getting more votes in the future (but they also lose whatever votes were cast toward the deleted image since those people can't vote for the new version, which is a system I'm not fond of).

If anything, I like SassyK's idea of having an image history. Other than that I see zero reason to change the system we already have.

Exactly, keeping old images are only beneficial to the single user that posted them (assuming that they care, if it were me, I wouldn't care), but the highest quality images are beneficial to the site as a whole.

The system we have makes complete sense. I'm baffled that people are actually arguing against it. If this system gets changed, I think I'm done with this site. It no longer makes Listal the archive that I care about.

I'll admit that i have reported some images here and there but not because i wanted to get points or just to have it that I posted the picture myself but because i want Listal a site "I Think" we all care about to have the best quality of images if that means updating old posters or images from years ago then i think it must be done.

i've made some test and it's not only some problems with deleting some images, i've rate some albums and my points dropped down. i've received 10 pics votes and my points dropped down of 28 points.there's something wrong in listal and a lot of users are deleting their account because of the "so called" decreasing points virus.

@DarkWarrior and @mikolajek
Have you also taken into account this?
a. Listal points are slow to update, sometimes;
b. Pictures over 3 months old need 10 views to count towards points
meaning that after 3 months you lose posted picture points in case there are fewer views.

...with a little problem maybe : anyone can increment his own pics views (unlike votes).

@ProdigalSon

So your basically saying you'd fill the site with an excessive amount of duplicate images for the sake of points?

I wouldn't dream of suggesting anything like that. :)
We were talking about old copies replaced by a better version, not of adding new low-quality dupes for the sake of points.


...

If y'all have to have your points system and not follow my Marxist Listal revolt (lmao) it's like OnionJack said: change the system so it doesn't deduct points when images are removed, it would probably be the easiest solution to be fair.

Agreed, OnionJack's proposal would solve one of the issues when old images are deleted. There is another issue though, that is, old images used in lists, leaving an ugly blank square when the picture is replaced by a new one.
If both issues can be fixed even deleting the images, I'm all for it. :)

There is another thing that I don't like at listal: Every picture uploaded to listal will be automatically reencoded and resized to a quite low resolution, especially pictures in landscape format. The quality of listal's database would be even better if the uploaded pictures wouldn't be reencoded to a smaller size. They could be stored with the original resolution and only displayed with a smaller resolution. Many other websides do it this way.

Of course there should be still a limit for maximum file size, so that pictures don't need too much space on the server. I would say a file size up to 2MB should be enough. Pictures with more than this limit would be reencoded (but not resized if possible).

We must have different settings; I see 100 to a page and so the pages you linked to must not show the same as you, since I don't see duplicates on there. But since it looks like 99% of the uploads are by Fla... who is a moderator and therefore completely capable of cleaning up her own mess.... I'm going to stop there.

Moderators have the power to delete their own as duplicates. I agree that it'd be a good idea to give this power to members as well. In the mean time, most moderators would probably be okay with it if you asked them to delete a few of yours as duplicates of your own pics. Or I would, at least. So long as I don't get swarmed with those requests, I am fine with helping out with that until a more permanent solution arises.