Top Photo Algorithm

Before I ask the following questions, please let me qualify that I am very satisfied with Dolphin and believe that it is great value for money (very cheap to start a community network). Unfortunately, this means that we need to be very clever in the way we utilise the limited functionality if we wish to create a world class system.

Here is the question for discussion, debate and perhaps ideas...

After two years, our site still presents the similar top photos, This is Art

Does this seem logical to everyone? How does the Dolphin algorithm rank photos and are there smarter algorithms out there? What would you change?

Now Dolphin sorts photos the following way:

- default: by recently added

- top: by rate, items with the same rate are sorted by rates count

- popular: by number of views

Thanks for the info AlexT. It really helps to understand the underlying assumptions and issues.

The algorithm is fine for the first several months of a site but once the top photos are in place they become more embedded over time, i.e. the top ranking photo is clicked on more often than other photos (same with videos). Eventually the entire top photo page becomes "trapped" by earlier submissions, which makes it impossible for new photos to be ranked well and it renders the entire presentation stagnate / misleading.

There must be a better algorithm that reduces the priority of older photos, videos and members. Does anyone know it would be?

I agree, I'm tried of my "top" pages now... is there a way to re-set the stats?

Thank you Netneeds

 I had the same thought but you worded it perfectly 

So what is needed is a time flag for how long the top photo has been sitting at the top; nice for this time flag to be set in the backend.  So when the top photo has been sitting at the top for say a month, three months, whatever we decided to set it to, it is then rotated out of the top photo list.  This would allow other top photos to be rotated into place and thus be seen and clicked on to be viewed.  We may want it to be a rotation process where they will eventually be rotated back up.

Of course we need to discuss this, fine tune how it should work, discuss any problems that may occur, etc.  Or we may toss this for a better way to prevent the situation where top photos become stagnated and the same photos sit there month after month.

 I think a time frame would be good. Then perhaps after that, they get moved to a "Hall of Fame".

You could devide the total votes/views by the total weeks/months it's available, giving you a weekly/monthly average.

Or do this for this years entries and entries older than a year in a suggested hall of fame.

Just have a Top This Week; with a reset of stats weekly.