h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First off: Good job Tav

And now for the muddy boots;
I think 'AViators' is a good title because "AV" is generally understood to mean "Audio Visual" which is about audio, moving pictures (not just film but also animated .GIF and Flash animations) and still pictures (photo and art).
I have to admit that the first time I saw the title I thought of airplanes until I noticed the capitilized "A" and "V" .

This one is not just for the AViators but all groups; At the bottom you say "Pages needed", at #1 I'd say 'Group Page' or 'Workshop Page' because we already have a 'Front Page'.

On the subject of cropping: stills (photo, art) submitted by a Writer to go with the Entry should already be cropped correctly unless the Writer asks for assistance. This way the resizing of the still can be automated.

Submitting media (audio, still, video):
The media to go with an Entry should be 'hidden' from public view until it recieves an 'OK' from a Bullfinch. This greatly reduces the possibility of copyright infringement etc. on the public end of h2g2.

Another -slightly related- thought: The current works of the AViators are stored off-site (I believe in a Yahoo Group?), what are we going to do with that if/when we open h2g2 to media content?
Do we import them and make sure it conforms to our 'standards' (yet to be decided upon) or do we put linkies to them with a thumbnail in h2g2?

Oh, this sparks another one: Do we want to use thumbnails in the Media Library?

One more thought: Do we want to categorize the Media content the same way as the Entries as proposed in the G.B.D. (Great Big Ducument) and discussed here : A81968890 - Magrathea's Workshop - Categories and Tags

OK, the wind has stopped blowing so I stop writing for now.

I just changed quite a bit of this Entry after talking to the Aviators.

'Group page' was just the name I was searching for, thanks.

I also would prefer it if people would crop their own pictures, yes.

And I really *hope* that the media library will be categorized in some way.
I can't give you answers to the other things I fear.

If there's to be a merger of Community Artists and Photographers (which we've discussed elsewhere and I agree to on principle) we'd have to decide how we do business. The CAs work by a collaborative system I'd hate to lose - rather than competing to produce different images for the same Entry and voting on them, we usually let people pick an Entry and illustrate it - there's an unwritten rule that that Entry is "taken" then. This doesn't guarantee the picture will be used - if it's generally agreed that it just isn't good enough, it won't be used. There's also a chance to suggest improvements and so on before it is used.

I'd really prefer to keep it like that than to have multiple pictures competing against each other to be used in the same Entry - it's a wiser use of resources and allows us to get more entries illustrated, apart from anything else.

As for The Post: I think by far the simplest way to do this is to give The Post team the facility to upload their own pictures for The Post.

As it works now, we at send pictures to the BBC staff, who upload them on to the site. This is a bit unwieldy - it leaves us having to bother the Eds more than we'd like, and it also means that sometimes we discover images haven't been uploaded but we can't do nothing about it because the Eds are out of office. (To be fair to the Eds, they are great about this, but mistakes can happen to anyone. It's just easier if we had control over it ourselves at ).

I agree with you KB. The whole voting procedure of the Photographers also takes a relatively long time which is not necessary.


Of course people at The Post should be able to upload their own pictures. What I meant with a collaborative page with the Post is that if the Post need pictures that they cannot make themselves the Post staff should go there and ask the Artists to do it.

The only reason I joined the photographers group was to get one photo in for an entry I wrote! I have since supplied photos for other entries. The photographers group has ground to a halt, but I think it is because we are all working on Magrathea business.

I never liked the whole voting thing and wouldn't miss it a bit if it were gone. I would prefer some discussion, so I could get some feedback.

As far as consolidating all audio-visual content producers into one working group, I agree we should try it. It would make the coordination between graphic artists and photographers easier.

well, thing is, the Aviators seem not to be keen to join any other group so it would not be all Audio Visual content but just Photographers + Artists. Although Maybe I didn't get enough feedback from the Aviators yet. I only talked to Bel and 2legs (on the Aviators site).

Hey ho. They must have their reasons.

If the Photographers and Artists think they would benefit from a merge that would be the logical place to focus your efforts.

I don't have an artistic bone in my body and have never been part of any of these groups so I would rather not get involved unless you want me to.

I definitely think we would benefit. I guess I'll write an email to the Photographers group later and then try to contact the Artists.

I always thought it strange that the photographers and Artists were seperate groups anyway, I said so at the time when the photographers came about, one question about the new site
will there be a possibility that we could have non-square images back?

The standard image sizes at the moment are non-square (we got them since last year). We can definitely talk about sizes.

I think for having a consistent layout one standard size is quite important. At the Photographers they also asked for 'landscape' pictures so we should maybe define a standard size for them, too.

I mean we used to be able to do circles and such,
with transparent edges
but now everything is boxes
which i don't mind i was just wondering if you would bring back the different shapes (which were difficult to do mind)
or keeping rectangles
I think a landscape option would also be brilliant

Ah, I see, I misunderstood you. Well, I agree. If nobody has any serious objections we should have transparent edges again and all that. I can't really see why not.

The question of size isn't about dimensions but about (mega)bytes in storage.
I can have a 10" by 15" picture stored in 5 MB or 50 MB depending on the resolution (pixels per square inch used).
The shape of the picture is not the problem, the size of the file could be.
So, if we decide that a picture can be 5 MB max. in filesize and the resolution max. 120 dpi it is up to the author to provide a picture within these boudaries. The picture can still fill the whole screen but the quality will be poor or it can be size of a smiley with good quality. It depends on the use which end of the spectrum will be chosen.
!!! The figures are examples !!!

The question about size *is* about dimensions here.
I'm sorry, but it doesn't really help us to just define a file size. We have to define the number of pixels of high and width of a picture... the file size comes with that.

Indeed - in this instance, the question is one of layout and appearance, not file size. And whether to have a particular house style for pictures, and if so what it should be, and so on. These - along with file size - are the things the Community Artists and Photographers deal with, so we do know one or two things about them.