Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
>>Perhaps I should not answer because I am repeating myself, and you
>>already know how I stand on this. IMHO you are describing a voting
>>system for the www.POVidols.com site. The original suggestion was to
>>create a POVmuseum. No offense meant, there probably is a market for
>>POVidols also. I am not sure I would visit the site myself though.
> 
> 
> First of all: the link you gave doesn't work, it's either offline now (but
> googling didn't show up anything either) or you were trying to point me to a
> certain style of www-type of gallery. So if the following thoughts don't
> fit, perhaps clarify for me what you meant with POV-Idols-Site and how it
> deviates from POV-Museum.

The POVidols domain is something I just invented to try to get something
across (and failed apparently :( ). In many countries there are TV
programs called 'idols' 'popidols' or whatever. The main idea for
these programs is that the viewer decides which candidate is through
to the next round.
I wanted to contrast that to the way a real life (as opposed to web
based) museum works. Here some curators decide what will be on display
and what will stay in the basement, based on things like artistic and
technical merit, the place of a piece in its time, the influence it
had on other works, her personal taste etc. Also, I wanted to state
that the museum way has my preference over the community voting.
I know that the selection is partly based on personal taste and
that if I do not have the same taste as the curator I may be
disappointed and perhaps never return, as you suggested. My
experience (with real life museums), however, is that this is
seldom the case. Even an exhibition from someone with a
different taste is often more interesting than a random collection
of works. Simply because someone did think about it and put these
together in a meaningful way. That is why I prefer a museum
where the selection is put together by a knowledgeble curator
over a collection that a random collection of works selected by
the ignorant visitors like me.

> Now, to the point: if there are ten people picking what images are to be
> displayed, maybe their taste differs from mine so much that, in the end, I
> wouldn't like the museum at all. So, maybe that's just me, but we're trying
> to come up with an idea that will make the site worthwhile for old and new
> Povers, right? Additionally, I believe in interaction. It's not like I want
> thousands of subscribers to vote. But if there are 10 curators for a museum
> with an audience that come from about 150 miles off in the real world,
> what's a good relation for a museum that can be visited from everywhere on
> the planet?
> 
> But, don't just let people subscribe. Have them show some qualification,
> e.g. some work with POV-Ray to show that they know the basics and
> fundamental differences between POV-Ray and every other Modelling/Rendering
> App like 3D Studio Max or Cinema 4D. Have them point a few images of their
> own to show that they do know the topic on which they'd be voting. And thus,
> you get competent curators for the museum. Not 10, maybe even more than 100,
> but still, they're competent.

For me the curators do not have to prove themselves by showing some
masterpiece (in the original meaning of a piece made for passing an
'exam') of themselves. For me a master of arts title or experience
on the same level would do also.

Someone suggested guided tours elsewhere in this thread.
That was exactly what I had in mind by suggesting that we
could have a number of curators and not just one overall
decission maker and selecting these curators on their knowledge.
I think guided tours is a nice way of capturing that.
Therefor: minimal requirements to pass as curator should
also include ability to write a guided tour.

> Now, the larger the number is, the less likely is it possible to say: Let
> each curator decide for one image, since there's limited bandwidth and
> webspace. And that's where my idea of the voting system comes into play.
> 
I am not opposed to a voting or rating system, I
just want the selection of works to vote for be restricted
to a manageble subset of the available work. If there is a
relatively stable selection of, say, 50 works that everybody
votes for, the results are more meaningful then when you
have two thousand works to rate and that change every
month.

I am also not against being able to browse all the works
including the works not currently on display. I think it
should be a seperate section of the museum and bandwidth
is a real issue here.

(I do appollogize for the length of this mail, it is just that
e-mail sometimes lures me into taking too little time for
writing shorter texts).

    Andrel

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