MSH FAQs

Tagging/Posting Questions

  1. What does it mean “Family Friendly?” Because we occasionally have young members in the group, we ask that you do not post nude photos or use extremely foul language.
  2. What are the proper tags? That’s an oldy but a good one. Visit this thread.
  3. Can I tag an existing photo to be included in the hunt, or must it be taken and/or uploaded this month? It’s fine to tag a photo from your existing archive, as long as it isn’t posted to the group pool prior to midnight of the beginning day of the hunt or after 11:59 pm the last day of the month.
  4. Why is a photo I posted today not showing in the voting app? The voting app is updated overnight at approximately 4:30 a.m. Eastern US time. or 09:30 GMT The photos posted today won’t be picked up until that time, but will be in the voting app the following day as long as both tags are formatted right. Don’t forget to add the photos to the group pool.
  5. Should I remove my photos at the end of the month’s hunt? No, please leave them for future reference. We keep them on the voting app’s archive.
  6. Can I use the same photo for different categories? Yes, just make sure to add all the appropriate tags.
  7. Can I use the same photo in different month’s hunts? Yes, but please make sure to add all the appropriate tags.
  8. Can I submit more than one photo per item? NO, with thousands of photos in the pool, one per category/item is plenty.
  9. Will my private photos show up in the voting app? No, your photos must be made public to be viewable in the voting system.
  10. What if we are having a problem? Leave a comment in this comment stream and one of the administrators will do some sort of hocus pocus to get everything right again.
  11. What if the administrators do not see my question in the comment stream? You can flickr mail Saffanna, Amberbamberboo, or tamaramarabobara… and they will fight over who gets to help you.
  12. Whose idea was this anyway? Kimbobananaboat aka Kimberelly started this group in November of 2005. The current admin came on board a couple of months later.
  13. What time zone does the voting app use for posting photos? The voting app is located in the Eastern USA time zone, but recognizes the upload time from your local time zone.
  14. Can I replace a photo, if I find a better entry? Yes, as long as you delete the first one from the pool, remove it’s tags and then make sure the new photo is added to the pool and tagged with the appropriate tags.
  15. How can I make the mosaics that I see in the Finished comments?

You can make a mosaic by going to Big Huge Labs.

It is fairly easy to do, just follow the step by step instructions. It is a little time consuming, but quite simple. You need to have a couple of browser windows open. It will give you two options to make the mosaic. To make a mosaic of your own photos, create a set in Flickr of your own MSH entries and use the set option. To make a mosaic of other people’s photos, enter each photo individually with the URL of each photo.

Flickrleech also has an option for mosaics made from your favorites of others’ photos. Enter the tag (ie. msh060711 – no dash) and you will get a page with all the entries for that category. Do a right-click copy (copy link location) of the URL of your favorite and paste it into the mosaic maker’s box in the other browser window. Double check the URLs to avoid my constant error of pasting one URL in two lines because you didn’t copy it correctly. Starting all over again is a pain.

Voting Questions

  1. Where do I go to vote? Find the voting booth here.
  2. How long is voting open for after the end of the month? When will THIS month’s photos show up in the voting app? Voting is open through the end of the second day of the following month (i.e. March voting ends on April 2nd). Near the end of that day (roughly 10pm Eastern US), the voting app is shut down, and reconfigured for the current month (April, to keep with the example). The first retrieval for the month will occur, and the voting app will then show only the new month. At no time will the voting app have more than one month’s photos available – you can be assured that any pictures in the voting app are the ones for which you are supposed to be voting for at that time.
  3. How can you tell if someone has voted for one of your pics…or how many votes you get? You can’t. The intent is to keep it fun and non-competitive. Do you really want to know that the picture you love so much is only a 2.5 in someone else’s eyes?
  4. Why do we vote if there are no scores? We vote and at the end of the month the admin have a fair non-biased way of identifying the top 3 in each category. Up until Gkaufman developed the program, a lonely little admin (Saffanna) would hand count each category (took forever and her family rebelled), then Saffanna would list who finished, and who came close. She would then, with help from other administrators, pick the favorite shot from each group as finalists (we tried to be fair and unbiased and spread the glory around as much as possible, but the group kept growing and growing and growing). The first month there were just over 60 members and then it went to just over a hundred and then 200, and now over 3,000. Although all members don’t play, it’s just humanly impossible without the voting apparatus and active member’s votes to keep track of the photos.
  5. Can I see what I vote I gave to pics, Say, I want a list of all those I gave a 10 – because I forgot to fave my favorites – and I don’t feel like going through all the pics again to make a mosaic of the best? The “My 10′s lister” will show you all of the pictures that you gave a 10 to. It’s available on the “my information” section of the voting app. And before anybody asks, there will not be an implementation of this for the 9′s, 8′s, etc. This was created specifically for those of you who like to create the mosaics of your favorites.
  6. Why is the voting application telling me this:
    Thank you!
    You’ve voted on all available photos.
    Please check back later to see if more have been added to the database
    Your activity in current hunt (mshXXXX)
    Total photos: 1863
    # votes you’ve cast: 1843

    Given that 1843 is less than 1863, shouldn’t there still be 20 pictures for me to vote on? They are your photos and you won’t see them. Other people will vote on them.

Acronyms and Glossary

  1. RAHV – Someone decided this is the French equivalent of LOL.
  2. OMD – A term meaning Oh mon dieu!/ Oh my god! (Thanks to Vaguely Artistic)
  3. true2clue - A term used to describe how closely an item fits the category. (thanks wiccked)

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