Sat, July 2nd, 2005 by Brandon Stone
In response to Cameron's recent post about the end of the Photoblog Ring, I've created the Photoblog Randomizer. It's a very simple way to randomly browse photoblogs.
I've been browsing around with it for about an hour now and almost every site has been one that I've never visited before.
One thing about random browsing, though, is that you'll find several sites that are not photoblogs. When you come across a site that isn't a photoblog, it would really be helpful if you could mark it for removal. That way our database will become cleaner.
Anyhow, I've got mixed emotions about this new feature, but nonetheless it's an interesting way to browse the Photoblogs.org database. You'll definitely find something new... even though it may not be something you like. 
If you have any suggestions, thoughts, or questions, feel free to add them to the comments below.
July 2nd, 2005 at 6:07 pm
I'm loving it Brandon. Found a LOT of great sites that I probably wouldn't have found otherwise. Awesome stuff...
The profile link isn't working for me so far though... Not sure what the problem is.
July 2nd, 2005 at 7:03 pm
Even though there is a lot of junk in there, I am still finding a lot of good stuff that I didn't know about. It's kind of fun not knowing what will come up next.
"The profile link isn't working for me so far though... Not sure what the problem is."
What do you mean by "not working"... Are you getting any kind of error message?
July 2nd, 2005 at 7:49 pm
Brandon, this is great, thanks for doing this!
A general question, which anyone can answer, perhaps?
Can anyone tell me how to write the html that will link directly to a random blog? (I'd also post a link "courtesy of photoblogs.org" ...) - - or will it simply not work because it's driven by a database within photoblogs.org?
I'd rather it be a single click for anyone on my site who wants to use it. It's the user experience thing...
July 2nd, 2005 at 7:59 pm
"Can anyone tell me how to write the html that will link directly to a random blog?"
Ah, yes... good question. Anyone can just link to this URL and it will be a random photoblog:
http://www.photoblogs.org/random-site/
I hope that answers your question.
July 2nd, 2005 at 8:15 pm
works great! all new-to-me photoblogs so far. 'view profile' is working fine for me as well.
and 'random-site' URL is good too, thanks.
July 2nd, 2005 at 8:20 pm
too bad this new feature is not in the beta as well (i think?). hehe yea i am lazy and thinking for the new favourites i find i will have to bookmark it again later.
July 2nd, 2005 at 8:21 pm
All works great for me. This is really kinda fun. I guess one sort of cool thing you could add would be a php thing where the screen was split with a div floating on the right of the random photoblog that contained the profile. Then you wouldn't have to click on profile and replace the page you are looking at. That's probably a whole bunch of work, though. I like it.
July 2nd, 2005 at 11:41 pm
Bookmarklet? Browser tool bar? Huh? Who is this? No, really..how does it work.
Blogrolling has a bookmarklet this that I thought they put up there as a joke, too, with the direction "drag to your toolbar" Huh??
What are these evil little imaginary bookmarklets are how do they really work? Any suggestions?
July 2nd, 2005 at 11:56 pm
Ok, I kinda got it. But it was hard and I'm not telling anyone how I did it! Heh heh.
I do, however, love it and think it's a great idea, Brandon.
July 3rd, 2005 at 1:14 am
Great idea Brandon, works really well, it's kinda refreshing to browse around this way.
July 3rd, 2005 at 1:38 am
Very cool. Good job on this one. Will sure help to get rid of many sites that do no qualify as photoblogs.
July 3rd, 2005 at 2:19 am
This is a great development Brandon! It's the sort of thing that I envisaged from the beginning of the "random photoblog" discussion from over a year ago now which promted me to try the photoblogring option...
I predict you will initially get a LOT of suggest site removal notifications. I've been playing around with it for just on two minutes and I've already found 3 or 4 "404s" once the initial dead links are screened and removed however things should calm down a bit.
Good idea and implementation mate.
:-)>
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:22 am
This is excellent. Thanks so much for doing this Brandon, terrific way of discovering the unknown
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:33 am
At the seventh click I finally got a working site with pictures in it
Great idea, by the way!
Thanks, Brandon, for all the dedication!
July 3rd, 2005 at 9:34 am
Great url -- I just popped it on my desktop -- it'll help when looking for a Fav of the Day -- I did notice there's LOTS of sites popping up that probably aren't photoblogs -- or just plain dead links -- but - good tool to weed it all out... Thanks, B --
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:37 am
Brandon, thanks again, and the url for incorporating the html works fine, too!
Now, let's all slog this to death and start sending in the 404's!
(Brandon, is there anyone to whom you can delegate removal?)
July 3rd, 2005 at 11:17 am
I love it, Brandon. What fun! Some great unknown sites out there.
One question, when we make the removal suggestion, do you or someone else recheck just to make sure it wasn't a mistake or a malicious attempt at having someone removed?
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:09 pm
Nice... When I checked the site today there were a bunch of removal requests waiting to be approved.
Basically, the removals system works kind of like the top 100... The more people who "vote" a site for removal, the higher that site is in my "Top 100 Removals" area. Then I actually go through and double check the sites before removing them. The system is really easy to moderate and maintain... it just requires people to actually mark sites for removal.
Now that people are using the system, we've cleared out about 100 sites. So far so good.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Ya lotsa fun. There's a few junk sites though. Great stuff though Brandon!
July 3rd, 2005 at 2:34 pm
I think we should be careful, though: I'd love to update the url for my site in the database, but I don't think the capability exists.
July 3rd, 2005 at 4:01 pm
Wow. Just cleared out 40 more sites. This is really cleaning up the database. I should have created this feature sooner.
Thanks everyone for helping out.
July 3rd, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Excellent gizmo... Really like it a lot!
July 3rd, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Really like the new feature Brandon.
July 4th, 2005 at 1:49 am
Not sure if anyone uses firefox, but there's a cool feature whereby one can add the randomizer/updater to one's bookmarks, then assign a keyword, for example PR/PP.
You can also do this with IE, but you need to get a powertoy from microsoft, or edit the registry.
Then to go to either link just type PR or PP into the address bar, and PRESTO!! Enjoy
July 4th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Hey Brandon,
This is a cool feature
1) Do you plan to find a way to get help with removals? I am sure this will really fill the pipeline.
2) Do you plan to encourage members to post a random link? I think this was one of the key features of the ring, and although hard to enforce (but a script can do it), it does encourage viewers to experiment. It is also a "Peter Pan" thing, as popular photoblogs help smaller ones get visitors.
July 4th, 2005 at 11:11 am
There are quite a number of URLs in the database that aren't even photo related and just spam, not to mention those that aren't real photoblogs. I've just spend half an hour (off and on) hitting random sites and I've suggested removal of about 85% of links I visited. I didn't keep count, but at least 20 sites were junk.
I encourage everyone to work with Brandon and get these sites removed so the serious people can find real sites.
July 4th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
"1) Do you plan to find a way to get help with removals? I am sure this will really fill the pipeline."
I will certainly get help, if it becomes an issue. Currently, the pipline isn't filled up, though. I'm able to remove all the sites as quickly as they show up. I've removed about 200 sites since the Randomizer was introduced.
"2) Do you plan to encourage members to post a random link?"
Absolutely... I will create a web button and encourage people to use it. People can also just link to the "random site" URL if they want:
http://www.photoblogs.org/random-site/
The problem with that link, though, is that it links to junk about half the time. Once we get the Photoblogs.org database cleaned out it will make that link more enjoyable.
July 4th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Brandon,
I've been using this to help weed out the non-photoblogs and dead links. But, I've had a strange thing happen a few times now.
After hitting the random link, it brought me to a 404, so I clicked the profile link to suggest removal. However, the site had already been removed.
Here is one example:
http://www.photoblogs.org/profile/err.lolipop.jp/
This seems to suggest that the db for the random links may not be updated when bad links are removed...
Hope this helps out some.
July 5th, 2005 at 9:53 am
Jackson Ellis:
I ran into this a couple of times as well, and the problem is that the domain for the site changes when the error page comes up. I've had some luck trying to manually search for the proper domain, lolipop.jp in this case, and making my suggestion from there.
July 5th, 2005 at 10:06 am
Brandon, I was actually tinkering with an idea like this. It would be awesome to get something working that people could include in their site (one line of javascript) that would randomly generate some html (with css so they can customize it to suit their site) and link to a different photoblog every time.
See http://link.jui.cc .. please email me if you're interested.
monkey at jui dot cc.
July 5th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
this is really a great way to find some new interesting photoblogs, wich I usually wouldn't know of!
The thing I don't understand is the profile link. When I click a random link, it opens in the same window, so the random-site dissapears. When I hit "back" in my browser and click the profile-link, it doesn't work anymore. How do I do this?
(sorry for the bad english.. hope you understand)
July 5th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
this is really a great way to find some new interesting photoblogs, wich I usually wouldn't know of!
The thing I don't understand is the profile link. When I click a random link, it opens in the same window, so the random-site dissapears. When I hit "back" in my browser and click the profile-link, it doesn't work anymore. How do I do this?
(sorry for the bad english.. hope you understand)
July 5th, 2005 at 12:49 pm
sorry, double-post..
July 5th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
We're using the wrong interface to clean up the data base, I think.
Rather than the randomizer, why not just go into the alphabetical listings and do an inventory? Right click the link for each blog and open up a new window or tab; then it's easy to get to the profile and recommend for deletion if need be.
Concerned about repeating other's efforts? Don't start with the letter A. Start with another letter. Or pursue through the country organization, or languages...
Same process, and you'll have the profile link readily available.
If you're *really* concerned about not duplicating others' efforts, announce here what territory you want to cover.
(I'll probably hit this with some intensity after work...)
July 5th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
@ miklos. That's a pretty cool idea you have going at the link miklos. The old phtoblogring was set up to give people an option to randomly browse different photoblogs through a simple link on individual photoblog sites. The only problem with that is when I started it, I didn't know enough and chose the wrong vehicle (ringsurf) Now Donald has taken over the photoblogring and has a much better way of doing things, so that option is back on the boards as well ~ http://blog.photoblogs.org/2005/07/the_photoblogri.html
What with Brandon's randomizer for our bookmark bars, your cool idea and the new photoblogring there are now more options than ever to cruise random photoblogs. If I had known my stepping down from running the photoblogring was going to generate tis much activity (very interesting and productive activity at that!) - I would have thrown in the photoblogring towel ages ago!
;-)>
July 5th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
Frank, I wouldn't get too worried about duplicating efforts. The removals system actually rewards duplicate effort. If 5 people have a site marked for removal it will float way to the top and it will show up on my radar. If only one person has marked a site for removal, then it will be way at the bottom fairly unnoticed.
The system works so that we can all just work in whichever way we want and it will tell me which sites people want removed.
I've already cleared out over 400 sites (about 3% of the total database) since the Randomizer was announced and it looks like we're still going strong.
I think people are using the randomizer, because it's fun... and they're just cleaning out the database as an afterthought. This works fine for me, because it indirectly makes cleaning fun.
(Of course, if you really want to just jump in and start cleaning alphabetically, I'm all for that.)
July 5th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Hanneke,
It sounds like you may not be using the buttons the way they were intended. Try just clicking the "Randomizer" button a few times to see how it works. Then hit the "View Profile" button to see the profile of any random site.
Of course, I may not fully understand your question, so feel free to clarify, if you like.
July 5th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
hanneke, what browser are you using? i use mozilla firefox and can go back and forth as many times as i wish from the site to the profile with no problems in the same window.
great feature brandon! thanks.
July 5th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
I feel really stupid...
I thought I had to click the links in the random-site, never even bookmarked them...
July 5th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
Miklos, I emailed you about that Javascript idea. Hopefully I had the right email address.
July 6th, 2005 at 12:09 am
Yep, it's the right address Brandon.
July 6th, 2005 at 1:07 am
CAN'T...... STOP..... CLICKING..... RANDOMIZER.....
July 6th, 2005 at 2:45 am
Cleaning up question: Does anyone check before the final decision to remove a website for the database? My host has decided to be down for the past 20 hours now, and I am sure I will get some votes, but in fact my website is alive, albeit hidden because of my host's incompetency
July 6th, 2005 at 8:34 am
Yesterday I clicked through random and at least every other one was a dud. Today, I got through about a dozen before I hit a dud!
The cleanup is already paying off.
July 6th, 2005 at 9:41 am
Ioannis, yes all sites are checked by a human before they're removed. If your site is removed, though, it can still be reactivated, so no need to really worry.
July 6th, 2005 at 9:43 am
Also, another update. We've removed over 600 sites so far!
And I've really noticed that the randomizer is showing less junk now. Very cool!
July 6th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
By the way, we've removed about 1,000 bad sites from the directory so far.
July 6th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Great work Brandon
I've been working on marking some sites for removal over the last while and I've noticed one particular set that should be removed.
All of the splinder.it sites have moved to splinder.com and display a message to that effect. I've marked a number of them for removal but the list is beginning to get me down so I thought I'd mention it here so that you can do the magic in the database
July 6th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
i <3 the randomizer.
July 7th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
Brandon, you forgot a "has flower macros" option in the removal page
August 16th, 2005 at 1:01 am
schmoverlapdance
...
April 10th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
There isn't to be honest. Unless you stick to the way it is.