Queue Updates; a screening update for Jetphotos April 21

JP up a tiny bit, a.net unchanged, new screening rules at JP

State of the Queues April 21

Bundling SOTQ update with a blog post again, since it’s a bit more content rich. First roll of film has been scanned, a Nikon scanner for home scanning has also been obtained, so some comparisons will be coming soon also.

April 21, 2024:

Site	Queue Length (# of photos)	Last fully screened day	Number of days
Jetphotos	24,724 (incr.)	April 6, 2024	15 days (incr.)
Airliners.net	5,903 (similar)	April 2, 2024	19 days (unch.)

see SOTQ + part I for last weeks numbers

For a ROTW: not really a ROTW, but I posted on Reddit the most popular picture of the day for April 15. Truly shameful for Jetphotos to both accept this picture and to promote it in such a way. Believe it or not, there are many places on the internet to look at pictures of ‘NOT airplanes’, why Jetphotos decided this obstructed picture of an airplane, that clearly breaks its own rules is mind boggling.

Queue limits implemented by Jetphotos

On the long term we believe that a “slots based on acceptance ratio” system is the best way to go and we are hoping to implement it in the future.

As a first step, from today onwards, daily slots are limited to 10 for everyone.

Six-Sigma/LEAN approved? Unlikely

Big move from Jetphotos to implement something

There’s something unusual about this that in my opinion doesn’t make much sense. The reason that uploaders batch upload is that it takes so long for screening to happen that you are probably sitting on images that you have edited during the 2 week waiting period. An afternoon at a busy international airport could generate 80-100 aircraft on arrival in a 4-5 hour period.

Secondly, we need photographers to upload smaller batches of the same spotting session, at a time. Not only are those batches really demotivating on screening, but when accepted, they are also not the most attractive on our main page. Variety is the key here and by uploads of smaller batches, we hope to push for a bit more variety. This should make screening more enjoyable, and make JetPhotos nicer to browse.

Also dubious that this will achieve what they’re looking for. The way to get pictures accepted is to follow their formula. Clear skies, blue skies, super bright whites. Why risk having a rejection that puts you into a 14 day penalty box to try your luck with some “creative shot” (I suppose you could hire a model for your AIRPLANE picture, see above ROTW).

Previous Week

April 14, 2024:

Site	Queue Length (# of photos)	Last fully screened day	Number of days
Jetphotos	23,107 (incr.)	March 31, 2024	14 days (incr.)
Airliners.net	5,781 (similar)	March 26, 2024	19 days (unch.)

Will it work? Dunno

They are not particularly forthcoming regarding how metrics of success are for such an intervention. We’ll keep an eye on the queue times. If I was to assume from a “QI"" perspective, there was data to suggest that there is a high number of members that are submitting the max daily queue contributing to long queue times.

There’s something that’s incredulous about this claim, an uploader might have 5 queue slots (if you have less than 10 accepted images) and 20 slots when you have more than 10. The queue times as close to two weeks. It’s not POSSIBLE to hit your daily limit EVERY day anyhow…at least it’s not for a new user.

Will I give them the benefit of the doubt that there was some sophisticated analysis as to making this decision in the first place? Well it doesn’t matter, but I’m doubtful. They certainly don’t say that in their ‘press-release’.