Behind the Scenes of 365 Project

Today I thought I'd use the blog to clear up a few myths around 365project.org, and how the site works.

In the last few years the site has been running I have had hundreds of emails asking about the popular page and various other aspects of the site and how they work.

I thought I'd take the honest and transparent approach today and give away all of my secrets, tell you exactly how they work and why they have been designed the way they have. I may have been intentionally illusive in the past regarding some things (the Popular Page especially), but only because I didn't want people to try and cheat the system (a few have tried - and been caught).

I'm opening up my brain and how the site works, you guys are the life of this site and I'd like to share with you just how it works, and put at ease any concerns about the various systems used.

Most of these pages spawned from my inherent geekiness, and were invented purely to satisfy my urge for programming and building "intelligent" systems and to see what was possible, it's quite funny that these pages have turned out to be some of the most viewed and talked about on the site. They were after all just experiments.

1) The Weekly Top 20 Charts

These run from a Wednesday to a Wednesday and published on a Friday. (Yes it changed) It is based on the number of Fav's each photo has accumulated in the last 7 days. This means a photo uploaded 2 years ago could still make it to the top 20. I haven't seen one yet, but it is possible. The photo must have been taken close to the date it is uploaded for - with some slippage allowed for time zones etc. There is a maximum of 3 photos per user in each top 20 (I got bored of seeing one user have 7 shots in it each week, that's not fair). There is absolutely no manual intervention on the photos chosen.

2) The Popular Page

This page contains photos uploaded within the last 3(ish) days to the site. Every photo uploaded is rated on a score of 0-100 by a computer, the top rated photos within this timeframe are displayed on the page.
There is absolutely no human intervention in this process, and I can't boost or degrade photos even if I wanted to.
The scores are generated through an algorithm that looks at each photo and the number of favs, comments, views and the scores of your other recent photos (as a normalisation process) This hopefully puts all users on a level playing field as super popular people will have a handicap (like in Golf) and have to outperform less followed people to get on the page.
I did my best to make this algorithm as fair as possible and not biased to the 1% of really popular people on the site who may get hundreds of comments on every photo they upload.
Yes the algorithm has no idea if the photo is a "good" photo, as that is subjective, it only looks at the *response to the photo* - So potentially a highly controversial shot (but poor quality), with lots of comments might get on to the PP, but a good quality, mostly ignored shot, would not.

3) New Faces Page

This is exactly the same logic as the popular page but it only features users that joined the site in the last X days (currently 30). This is to highlight the "newbies" as there is some great shots that would otherwise get missed, and it's a great way for new people to gain some followers, which encourages some to continue when they may otherwise give up.

4) Ace member - "Top rated photos"

People often ask me why the order of these seems illogical, but re-read the above point about the popular page and you will see why :-)

5) Ace member - The Suggestions Page

This is another algorithm that suggests photos you may like, it does this by looking at the people you follow, the photos you fav and comment on and what your friends like, it then mixes all that information together and spits out some beautiful photos to look at. It's often an eclectic mix of photos, which I love. I don't want the system to get too clever as you could end up in a "filter bubble" only seeing the same types of photos, and I really wanted the page to be inspirational with lots of different ideas.

6) The Weekly Theme Top 5

Yup, this one I take total responsibility for. I pick the finalists. I don't take this job lightly and every wednesday I spend hours going through all the entries, thinking about how they fit with the theme, if they are within the rules outlined, judging technical aspects of the shot and trying to get a good variety of photos in the final (not all macro or all of cats etc). I know many people have a different taste to mine, and it is totally subjective. If I don't pick your photo I'm sorry, keep being brave and taking great shots and you will make it.
I'm always open to suggestions on a better way to pick the Top 5, but nobody has recommended a feasible "fair" method yet.

I hope this has cleared up some questions, please link to this page if people ask about any of these subjects in the Discussion area. If anybody would like to ask any other questions about how the site works I am happy to answer most things.