IOTD and Why It Needs Improvement

6.68 framoro #... · view views · 1 like
Chris White- Overcast Observatory: Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/ I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection. Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks? Like

6.68

#...

· 1 like

Chris White- Overcast Observatory:
Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/

I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection.

Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks?

11.99 Arun H #... · view views · 1 like
I believe at least part of the problem is with the way the IOTD guidelines are written: Excessive noise reduction: i.e. delicate details appear over-smoothed. Topaz NR Overdone: i.e. over-sharpened structures and creation of nonexisting ‘Hubble like’ details. Overly saturated colors or banding. Inadequate background correction: gradients, light pollution, or vignetting. Clipped highlights or blacks: space generally isn’t rendered pure black. So if someone finds an image that was promoted that has (in their opinion), clipped blacks, over saturation, or excessive NR, the above gives them grounds to say that either the judge was not paying attention, or the judge was unfair. While that may be true at least in some occasions (judges are human), it could very well also be that the judge considered the impact of the image enough to override these other issues. But in the absence of other information, people will always assume the worst (bias, lack of attention). So this where I think being more transparent about why a judge highlighted an image becomes beneficial. Yes, it to an extent forces judges to be deliberate, but more importantly, the community can see that they are being deliberate. At the risk of disturbing a hornet's nest, I would (respectfully) push back against the following statement by Luka Poropat (my emphasis on the word "win"): "I have few points to say about equipment: 1. Astrophotography is pay to win. If you dont accept that fact you will drive yourself crazy. " This should not be about "winning" and "losing", though I am sure this was not Luka's intention when he wrote it, as the rest of the post makes clear. But the statement bothered me enough that I felt I should bring this up. Just because your image was not selected for IOTD, TP, TPN does not mean you have "lost". While it is clear that the IOTD is not intended to be a contest, you can read some of the posts early in the thread to see that quite a few people see it that way. I think that is in large part what is responsible for the negativity - viewing this as a contest is an invitation to have fights about rules, fairness, and bias. You simply cannot avoid it. I hope that all of us appreciate the images shared on site - all taken with different levels of time, money, and effort to the various extents people are able to put in - and not think in terms of winners and losers. Like

11.99

Arun H

#...

· 1 like

I believe at least part of the problem is with the way the IOTD guidelines are written:

Excessive noise reduction: i.e. delicate details appear over-smoothed.
Topaz NR Overdone: i.e. over-sharpened structures and creation of nonexisting ‘Hubble like’ details.
Overly saturated colors or banding.
Inadequate background correction: gradients, light pollution, or vignetting.
Clipped highlights or blacks: space generally isn’t rendered pure black.

So if someone finds an image that was promoted that has (in their opinion), clipped blacks, over saturation, or excessive NR, the above gives them grounds to say that either the judge was not paying attention, or the judge was unfair. While that may be true at least in some occasions (judges are human), it could very well also be that the judge considered the impact of the image enough to override these other issues. But in the absence of other information, people will always assume the worst (bias, lack of attention). So this where I think being more transparent about why a judge highlighted an image becomes beneficial. Yes, it to an extent forces judges to be deliberate, but more importantly, the community can see that they are being deliberate.

At the risk of disturbing a hornet's nest, I would (respectfully) push back against the following statement by Luka Poropat (my emphasis on the word "win"):

"I have few points to say about equipment:
1. Astrophotography is pay to win. If you dont accept that fact you will drive yourself crazy. "

This should not be about "winning" and "losing", though I am sure this was not Luka's intention when he wrote it, as the rest of the post makes clear. But the statement bothered me enough that I felt I should bring this up. Just because your image was not selected for IOTD, TP, TPN does not mean you have "lost". While it is clear that the IOTD is not intended to be a contest, you can read some of the posts early in the thread to see that quite a few people see it that way. I think that is in large part what is responsible for the negativity - viewing this as a contest is an invitation to have fights about rules, fairness, and bias. You simply cannot avoid it. I hope that all of us appreciate the images shared on site - all taken with different levels of time, money, and effort to the various extents people are able to put in - and not think in terms of winners and losers.

Alan Brunelle #... · view views · 5 likes
Salvatore Iovene: Alan Brunelle: Perhaps there could be a forum designed with rules to allow people to simply state their ideas for improvements to IOTD, but not allow for responses, other than limited to technical hurdles, etc. Back in the day, when there were public forums related to discussing AstroBin, 90% of the posts were about the IOTD, the Likes, how unfair it was that "my image didn't get an award", and how the IOTD/TP should be split into categories. I had to explain the same reasons over and over again, because admittedly if you don't think it thru, categories are a good idea. The idea, tho, falls apart as soon as you put a bit more thought into it. Additionally, there were lots of bug reports and that gave people the impression that AstroBin was riddled with bugs. It's not, but as 10,000 people visit the site daily, if 1 encounters a rare bug every day, there would be lots of posts. Long story shorts, I shut down those forums with the goal of making the AstroBin forums a place for people to discuss Astronomy and Astrophotography. I did work to improve the forums as a platform and it worked, and AstroBin's forums today are pretty successful, IMHO. However, people accused me of stifling discourse, of being deaf to criticism, of sticking my head in the sand. In reality, I set up a Zendesk instance and concentrated support requests in a single place, so that it's easier for me to prioritize and address support tickets. Eventually, I created this forum here that's in a group that people must join before they can see the posts. Joining is free and the group is public, but at least it contains things a bit while giving people a voice. This is to say that this: Alan Brunelle: And any new forums that starts with "my image was better than that IOTD..." should be immediately deleted. would be met with unprecedented levels of protests. Truth is, I'm an engineer and not a marketer. I prefer to put my head down and do the work. I should probably put more efforts in PR and singing praise to AstroBin and its features... but that's not me 🤷‍♂️ My suggestion to delete such Forum topics really was just wishful thinking. Yes, I had considered that you would meet with endless grief using such a heavy hand. Truth be told, considering that Astrobin appears to be populated by adults, many of advanced age and supposed maturity, seeing "my image didn't get an award" is rather surprizing. I would have thought such a thing would be self-regulating. Hopefully you won't get nasty PMs from participants' mothers! Regarding your comments about forum rules, I am sure you understand that those who are presenting the more severe negativity on this thread are a very small percentage of the total AstroBin citizenry. There have been some valuable suggestions to pull out of the chaff over these very many pages. As you said above, even if you satisfy 99.9% of the crowd, the 0.1% will always complain. I remain positive about AstroBin. Like

Alan Brunelle

#...

· 5 likes

Salvatore Iovene:
Alan Brunelle:
Perhaps there could be a forum designed with rules to allow people to simply state their ideas for improvements to IOTD, but not allow for responses, other than limited to technical hurdles, etc.

Back in the day, when there were public forums related to discussing AstroBin, 90% of the posts were about the IOTD, the Likes, how unfair it was that "my image didn't get an award", and how the IOTD/TP should be split into categories. I had to explain the same reasons over and over again, because admittedly if you don't think it thru, categories are a good idea. The idea, tho, falls apart as soon as you put a bit more thought into it.

Additionally, there were lots of bug reports and that gave people the impression that AstroBin was riddled with bugs. It's not, but as 10,000 people visit the site daily, if 1 encounters a rare bug every day, there would be lots of posts.

Long story shorts, I shut down those forums with the goal of making the AstroBin forums a place for people to discuss Astronomy and Astrophotography. I did work to improve the forums as a platform and it worked, and AstroBin's forums today are pretty successful, IMHO.

However, people accused me of stifling discourse, of being deaf to criticism, of sticking my head in the sand. In reality, I set up a Zendesk instance and concentrated support requests in a single place, so that it's easier for me to prioritize and address support tickets.

Eventually, I created this forum here that's in a group that people must join before they can see the posts. Joining is free and the group is public, but at least it contains things a bit while giving people a voice.

This is to say that this:
Alan Brunelle:
And any new forums that starts with "my image was better than that IOTD..." should be immediately deleted.

would be met with unprecedented levels of protests. Truth is, I'm an engineer and not a marketer. I prefer to put my head down and do the work. I should probably put more efforts in PR and singing praise to AstroBin and its features... but that's not me 🤷‍♂️

My suggestion to delete such Forum topics really was just wishful thinking. Yes, I had considered that you would meet with endless grief using such a heavy hand. Truth be told, considering that Astrobin appears to be populated by adults, many of advanced age and supposed maturity, seeing "my image didn't get an award" is rather surprizing. I would have thought such a thing would be self-regulating. Hopefully you won't get nasty PMs from participants' mothers!

Regarding your comments about forum rules, I am sure you understand that those who are presenting the more severe negativity on this thread are a very small percentage of the total AstroBin citizenry. There have been some valuable suggestions to pull out of the chaff over these very many pages. As you said above, even if you satisfy 99.9% of the crowd, the 0.1% will always complain. I remain positive about AstroBin.

1.51 Tommy Mastro #... · view views
Salvatore Iovene: Tommy Mastro: I can't believe this thread is still going. Certain judges will never listen to reason and will never be open to any of these excellent and extremely reasonable suggestions. I hate to sound pessimistic, but this thread has made me so jaded to the Astrobin IOTD. Hopefully the OP and all the supporters of change will eventually win out. Astrobin is a great place but can be sooo much better! There are literally 4 action points that have taken, am taking, or plan to take as a direct result of this thread: - added more slots and reviewers: we’re now getting 2x as many top picks as before this thread - I started counting Reviewer views too, to determine if I need to add an auto-resubmit mechanism for reviewer too if an image doesn’t get enough view - I plan to implement the mechanism to make the judges choice more deliberate as proposed by Arun (short to middle term) - I plan to add a multiple vote mechanism at the judges level too (longer term as this is far more complicated) Suggestions about splitting the IOTD/TP into categories will still be met with rejection. There is no way to do this fairly. Splitting by cost of equipment is the closest you get to fair, until people start complaining that so and so has more free time because they don’t work, or don’t have kids, or so and so actually didn’t earn their equipment because they did t work as hard as me to afford it, or they live in a place with better sky and so on. See the IOTD FAQ. Thanks! This is great to hear. Thanks for being open and trying these changes! And hey, if it doesn't work, we can always go back or try something else. Like

1.51

Tommy Mastro

#...

Salvatore Iovene:
Tommy Mastro:
I can't believe this thread is still going. Certain judges will never listen to reason and will never be open to any of these excellent and extremely reasonable suggestions. I hate to sound pessimistic, but this thread has made me so jaded to the Astrobin IOTD. Hopefully the OP and all the supporters of change will eventually win out. Astrobin is a great place but can be sooo much better!

There are literally 4 action points that have taken, am taking, or plan to take as a direct result of this thread:

- added more slots and reviewers: we’re now getting 2x as many top picks as before this thread
- I started counting Reviewer views too, to determine if I need to add an auto-resubmit mechanism for reviewer too if an image doesn’t get enough view
- I plan to implement the mechanism to make the judges choice more deliberate as proposed by Arun (short to middle term)
- I plan to add a multiple vote mechanism at the judges level too (longer term as this is far more complicated)

Suggestions about splitting the IOTD/TP into categories will still be met with rejection. There is no way to do this fairly. Splitting by cost of equipment is the closest you get to fair, until people start complaining that so and so has more free time because they don’t work, or don’t have kids, or so and so actually didn’t earn their equipment because they did t work as hard as me to afford it, or they live in a place with better sky and so on. See the IOTD FAQ.

Thanks!

This is great to hear. Thanks for being open and trying these changes! And hey, if it doesn't work, we can always go back or try something else.

AdrianC. #... · view views
Chris White- Overcast Observatory: Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/ I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection. Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks? *Nobody can check Like

AdrianC.

#...

Chris White- Overcast Observatory:
Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/

I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection.

Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks?

*Nobody can check

AdrianC. #... · view views
Chris White- Overcast Observatory: Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/ I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection. Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks? After experiencing this thread photometry and/or spectroscopy seems more and more appealing Edited ... Like

AdrianC.

#...

Chris White- Overcast Observatory:
Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/

I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection.

Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks?

After experiencing this thread photometry and/or spectroscopy seems more and more appealing

Edited ...

6.68 framoro #... · view views
AdrianC.: Chris White- Overcast Observatory: Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/ I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection. Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks? *Nobody can check but who cares If you experience it as a competition, with categories, you should. Otherwise is like Heidi Krieger in the 80’s. Like

6.68

framoro

#...

AdrianC.:
Chris White- Overcast Observatory:
Today's image of the day showcases how very modest equipment can be used to achieve an excellent image: https://www.astrobin.com/tsiil1/B/

I don't think that equipment should be a consideration. Having excellent quality cookware doesn't guarantee you will make an excellent meal. Sure better scopes and skies help but this IOTD illustrates how important everything is after data collection.

Additionally, the equipment you declare for an image may not be the one you used for the image. One may declare ASI2600MC pro but actually use ASI6200MM with filters. One may declare a TS 102 F/7 doublet but actually use a Takahashi 106 FSQ. Who checks?

*Nobody can check but who cares

If you experience it as a competition, with categories, you should. Otherwise is like Heidi Krieger in the 80’s.

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

IOTD and Why It Needs Improvement AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum · Bill Long - Dark Matters Astrophotography · ... · 281 · 8987 · 3

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

IOTD and Why It Needs Improvement AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum · Bill Long - Dark Matters Astrophotography · ... · 281 · 8987 · 3

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