Order for posting locality photos

Often I post an overview photo of an outcrop or locality, then follow that with a close-up of rocks or minerals exposed there. If I post the overview first, which makes sense for the photos uploaded “today” or “yesterday” displays, I find that the order is transposed in the permanent files, especially in my own gallery. If I post the close-up first, that doesn’t seem to make as much sense in the “today” and “yesterday” sections, but works better in the personal galleries. However, I have noted that in the galleries for larger locality groupings, for example Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada (loc-572), the 47 photos there are not quite randomly mixed together, but they are indeed mixed together. Mine are scattered among others. Where they do occur, they tend to disrupt those uploaded by others. It’s a mish-mash. Just thought you’d like to know that some of us have noticed these islands of disorder.

PS (the edit): For example, I posted my Rossport Granite outcrop photos today (August 1, 2011), and they are in proper order for reading that makes sense in the "New Photos Today" section. But I expect the order to be reversed in my personal gallery.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 12:59AM by Norman King.

"the 47 photos there are not quite randomly mixed together, but they are indeed mixed together."

The photos in the locality site galleries are ordered by the title. So instead of "Close up of Title", use "Title - Close up" to get the photos grouped together.

"But I expect the order to be reversed in my personal gallery"

The photos in your gallery are displayed by default from most recent to oldest. You can view them in oldest to most recent order.

David,

OK, that explains what's going on. I can edit titles to fix one issue. I'll work on the timing thing, too. So, I need to upload the first one in a set first, which means they will indeed be in reverse order on the "today" and "yesterday" pages. I will have a mix of oldest to youngest and youngest to oldest to be the "correct" order because I already experimented with it. Guess that's the way it is.

Thanks

Norman

Wouldn't it be nice if in your own gallery, you could move your photo's,
into an order you want, even being able to move much older photo's to
be next to some newer one for compairison? ;)

But I would guess that would be a bit much.

Still, all in all, it's a GREAT site !

KOR
Wayne

"Wouldn't it be nice if in your own gallery, you could move your photo's,
into an order you want, even being able to move much older photo's to
be next to some newer one for comparison?"

One of the things Jolyon is working on is the "slide show". You will have complete freedom in ordering photos in that.

As we get more site photos on mindat (at least where there is more than a single page of them), it may be more advantageous to group them by photographer as the default mode.

Thank you for the vote of confidence, Wayne!

After I responded to David this morning, it occurred to me that I can make any order I want for the photos in my locality gallery. My inspiration is Ernest Vincent Wright, who wrote an entire novel (“Gadsby,” publisged in 1939) containing over 50,000 words without using a single “E.” Making judicious use of synonyms, adding a word here and there, and turning the phrasing around, in the manner of Gadsby (and as David suggested), I can craft sensible, correct, and flowing titles to put any photos with larger numbers (those added later) in front of earlier ones (smaller numbers). In fact, I could reorder my entire locality gallery in whatever way I choose, and, if I do it well, no one will think anything is out of place.

Although tempted, I won’t clutter the files of mindat with a random paragraph or two from Gadsby, but you’ve got to download it on the web and read several paragraphs or maybe a chapter. It seems fully literate, and if you didn’t know the gag, or weren’t looking for them, you’d never notice the lack of “E’s.”

So, when I have it all reordered to my satisfaction, the titles will still appear completely normal. Will this be fun, or what?

But I will still be interested in the coming slide show feature David mentioned.

David,

I wasn’t able to make much progress in my plan for creative titling of locality photos in my personal gallery. I still cannot see completely how this works. It seems that actually the locality name itself determines where things are filed in my personal gallery of locality photos, and that trumps the photo number. All photos from Thunder Bay District, Ontario and all photos from Sudbury District, Ontario, Canada, as examples, are sorted alphabetically by locality (not title). Then within individual localities, they are by either ascending or descending photo number. Also, I found two places where the numbers do not go in numerical order; they jump around by a few numbers–one instance for Mono Lake, Mono Co., California, USA (loc-22789), and another for Soudan Mine, Soudan, Vermillion Range, St. Louis Co., Minnesota, USA (loc-23200). I guess a few glitches are understandable, but not if the computer is doing this according to some algorithm. If it’s not systematic, it's a non-starter.

You said that descending or ascending order is the default in personal galleries. That suggests there is another system available, or another system that may come into play (which seems to be what is happening here). Whatever mindat does is OK, but I’m just trying to find out what that is. Or, I could just wait for the slide show if that will do what I want.