Country Reference Photos - what's it like 'there'?
 

Photos ...

Grant if you are out there ...

The dark background of ADV is far more suitable for showing photographs ... thats what there are loads there and few here.

I think what would be useful is a country specific reference foto section on HUBB where people can put useful fotos of people, road conditions and general nice scenery. If someone wants to know what to expect in Tajikistan, you go to the Tajikistan foto section and lo and behold you have all manner of fotos of Tajikistan ... the roads, the people, the key sights etc. It would be very useful for people doing research and trip planning.

Having the pics in ride reports is great when following the story, but its hard to look for all the trips that may or may not have gone through Tajikistan to get some pictures of road conditions. So I reckon a reference forum is needed. Fotos should already be stored online elsewhere and linked, so that it uses no storage space from HU resources, which is already the case for 90+% of pics anyway ... and of course the background of this proposed foto reference section must be very dark grey!

This is something ADV doesn't have and isn't likely to have is it is more a site for ride reports than actually getting the key travel information. As they say on the ride report rules there, it is the ride report section that is the "crown jewels of ADVrider". Whereas HUBB is not so much about ride reports, its more a reference source of genuine travel information, and that's why a reference photo section is suitable here.

Comments?

So I think it's a very good idea. :clap:

Excellent idea Walter, I like it, and I think it would be a great reference.

On the practical side, I'll have to think about how to make it actually work, and we need some suggestions on getting people to post their photos! And that is THE HARDEST part. Ideas?

I also think this is a very good idea, and don't think it would be too hard to get people to post their pictures--after all, it is easier to post pictures than to prepare a full-blown ride report.

Just thinking out loud here...

How should the pictures be organized for each country? Depending on the country, if people just dump a bunch of photos in a general country-album, it could quickly become unusable...It seems like they should be organzied somehow, maybe poster, by region, etc.

I would say that organizing by poster would not be that good, because then it would not be that much different from looking in a bunch of seperate ride reports to see the pictures. Organizing by region could also be tough, because you might not have enough pictures for most regions and therefore there would not be much to see... It would also be handy to be able to search by season, so people could see what the weather/roads look like in summer, winter, etc.

Obviously the best way to do it would be to have some kind of online database that would allow people to search by region, poster, season, etc., but that would probably be difficult to set up, and a pain for people to upload pix too (would have to set parameters, etc.

Maybe geo-tag the pictures and have their location displated in google maps, etc.?

A similar idea might be to have dedicated threads where people can post links to tracks for particular countries.

I wonder if it possible to upload the photos into a bin...and each photo uploaded has to have keywords input by the uploader.
These keywords/tags would allow photos to be categorized by a search function query...

That way...you don't have to set up separate sections for each region/country...let the search function do the categorization on the spot...based on how specific the user is on his search criteria...

It would be nice to allow other HUBB members to add additional keywords/tags to somebody else's photo to make it more usable...

That really is a very good idea.

Maybe the simplest solution would work okay? Just have regional forums, and people can start threads to post their photos from specific countries, with minimal captions/explanation. Sure you'd end up opening lots of different threads all with similar things inside, but it would still be quick and easy compared to anything else currently around on the web.

This would not be great for people just wanting to spend a bit of time looking at beautiful photos, but for someone wanting to research specific countries it would work fairly well.


On a slight tanjent:
Maybe all regional forums could be condensed into a sub-forum layout? The main page is really long due to the sheer amount of different forums, and this is something that I normally find off-putting when first visiting an internet community. You could have just one regional discussion section organised something like this:
Europe section
- Travel discussion
- Trip photographs
- Reccommended accomodation
- Repair shops
- For sale/private ads

This would keep specific info located in specific sections so it's easy to find, but would help condense the main page so it's easier for new users to navigate their way around...

Subforums
 

I think it has to be organised by country for most places and by regions within that countries for large countries with big varieties in road / climate / culture / weather conditions like Russia, China and the US. So you would have continents, countries, and sometimes regions under that.

I don't think there would be a problem getting people to link photos. My concern is there would be too many, and it does need to be useful from a reference perspective. Ergo ... I think part of a moderators job will be to manage (i.e. cull) photos that effectively duplicate the same information. Posters will need to be conscious that it is a reference section not an "I've been there too" thing. An linked foto should show something in terms of roads, weather, culture, people etc that is not shown with existing fotos.

Certainly it would be useful if information pertaining to date and maybe even geotags were included, but not necessary.

I see the biggest job being the moderators job of trying to keep the pics relevant, but if it works, I think it would be a super reference resource.

I think geotags would be the way to go, maybe something that integrates into google earth/maps.

maybe the poster could include the satnav way points of where the photos were taken?

I have often though 'wild' camping sites should be documented in this way.

:) Ahhhh Yep, that would be whats called "geotags"! :thumbup1::thumbup1:

I don't think a subforum would be a good idea. Then you have the confusion of where to post your pics. Maybe you wanted to post in ride reports, or you wanted to post in one of the regional forums, or ... Anyways, with so many places to post, pictures will be lost and difficult to find. And you want a mechanism that is able to easily include any picture no matter in what context it was uploaded.

Hence: ideally when uploading a picture one would be able to link tags to it, web 2.0 style ;-) For those unfamiliar with the concept: it's like assigning attributes to pictures, where each picture can have multiple attributes. If the input form is simple enough and right where you upload the pictures, i.e. usability is easy, I recon people will use it. Once you have tagged pictures, it's easy to provide a search option that finds pictures that were tagged according to specific criteria. So you might like to search for 'Tajikistan', or 'Tajikistan && good road' or 'Road of bones && road condition' or 'Road of bones && bad road' ... you get the idea. Make one of the tags take gps coordinates (ideally in a predefined format so it can also be searched specifically) and you have gotten yourself a seriously sweet database.

Question now is whether a tag-enabled gallery with a search function for tags already exists as an add-on to the HUBB software (vbulletin I believe) or if one has to whip it up from scratch ...

Edit: come to think of it, ideally one should be able to tag any kind of resource, not only photos. So you should be able to tag videos too, but also links to images, links to text, etc. So searching for 'Tajikistan' might bring up some pics, a vid, and a ride report link, whereas searching 'Tajikistan && image' (no need to tag it as an image, easy to know if it links to a jpg/png/tif/etc) will give you only pics.

good idea but ... what I would like to see on the HUBB is "What places do I need to visit" and that sorted by country ... and then you have the right place to put the photo's also ...

Long overdue I reckon.

Some of the most common questions are about road conditions. Often because the person might not have a very dirt orientated bike, or is 2 up or hasn't got a lot of dirt experience. Where others might search for more off the beaten track areas but have concerns about fuel availability and concerns about the use of that road/ track when things go sour and need to find people to get out of the situation.

So I reckon it may need a section per country spent on that. Maybe providing highlights of the country firstly. Then ways to get there which can get split up with direct or off the beaten path sub sections. Listing out fuel distances, water availability and general conditions. Maybe splitting it up in dirt highway, double trail, single trail.

There is nothing like that on the web and can strengthen this site more and more. The wheel gets re-invented too much at the moment.

I dont think there is any confusion. Ride reports are in ride reports. This section needs NOT to be an anarchic collection of as many fotos as possible, but only link a foto in when it adds value to the forum ... it covers something that is not covered. It should NOT be every foto you have, or even every good foto you have. Only anything that is new or of additional value. All that is needed is a simple url link and a few comments.

Good point. Video clips should be able to linked in ... Grant, at present we cant "embed" clips from youtube on the site, but that may be a useful feature in this reference section.

Huh? Youtube - yes - when writing a post, there's a Youtube BUTTON on the right side of the toolbar. Been there for ages.

If you don't see it, go into your options and make sure you have advanced editing turned on.

Re the reference etc section - keep the ideas and comments coming, I'm watching and taking notes! :)