I massively enjoy building and improving the site, and now I have a new 100% WFH job I’ll have more time to work on caption.me.
The plan is to work through the features on the todo list according to the votes you’ve given. But aside from new features, I’m also interested to know how you feel about the site in a broader sense.
Is there anything you dislike about the way the site is run or how we manage the community? Anything that turns you off? There may be improvements I can make aside from the technology. Suggestions are very welcome (please create new topics on the forum), and if there’s anything you’d like to discuss more privately, please drop me a message. Thanks!
I’ve loved this website since I joined a few weeks ago, But it’s quite annoying how people are changing / editing their captions repeatedly, sometimes to ones that are completely different to their initial ones so they don’t use up additional captions when their initial one wasn’t popular, and sometimes pinching other peoples ideas by looking like they had the idea first because the time says an earlier time, even though it was edited…
Hi @KT_A and welcome to the forum. Others have also raised this issue in the past, and there are a couple of features on the todo list which should help with this issue.
showing which captions have been edited (with some kind of icon next to the caption) UPDATE: I have just implemented this feature
showing an edit history with any prior versions of the caption
These features are at the top of my list and I’ll work on them soon
have a time limit on editing (i.e. only within the first ten minutes after posting, say). (To be discussed)
allow captions to be flagged to admins by captioneers if there are suspicions of foul play e.g. edited to match another caption. Action can be taken against any persistent offenders.
I’ve added these features to the todo list and given them an upvote to help prioritise them. I encourage captioneers to help me prioritise features by voting for them on the todo list. Thanks
I would like to be able to see which captions I’ve voted for at a glance and have noticed that once the voting period is over on a photo the captions I’ve voted for are no longer highlighted.
I’d also like to be able to save my favourite captions to a list so that I can look back on them and continue to get enjoyment from them. My favourites are not necessarily the ones with the most votes and it’s difficult to remember who posted which caption, so locating them can be difficult.
For database performance reasons the site doesn’t store individual vote data beyond a certain timeframe, so when you browse older captions and hover over the voting buttons, you won’t see the voters. I will extend the timeframe a bit, but I want to keep it fairly short to ensure the site isn’t slowed down by the old data. There are other technical solutions that I’ll explore further down the line.
UPDATE: I’ve increased the retention of old vote data from 90 days to 180 days
That’s a nice idea and I’ll add to the todo list. Thanks
I think you misunderstood what I meant here, Chris. Apologies. I don’t think I explained myself very well. I’ve noticed recently that as soon as the three-day voting period is over on a photo, the voting button next to any captions that I have voted for which were posted for that particular photo is no longer highlighted in dark green, so it’s difficult to pick out the ones I voted for. I’m particularly interested to see who posted the captions I liked as soon as the names are revealed, so I miss this. I don’t know if this was an intentional change or if it could be the result of a glitch.
I know what you mean, Karyn. I feel the same. I thought maybe it was a problem with my screen. Sometimes I can see everything I voted for emboldened and other times I can’t.
Ah sorry. Yes that makes sense. I’ll see if I can do something to highlight captions you’ve voted for. Also want to highlight captions where you’re the finder
I’ve made no secret about not liking quotas. I can see the need for caption quotas, but comment quotas not so much. It no longer makes sense to make helpful comments or those asking for a nod, when it subtracts from your already low quota. I believe types of comments should be separated out with quotas removed for some types and perhaps raised for others. Vote quotas to me seem completely unnecessary, why limit participation? I’ve had to change my voting behavior. I don’t want to have to choose between captions that I like for fear of running out of quota, so I end up skipping some of the pictures entirely.
I like how you are always looking to improve/evolve the site and welcome suggestions on this from all of us.
Can’t think of much wrong with it tbh. Will have to get back to you if I think of anything.
Might be nice to try and get back some of the captioneers who have drifted away for one reason or another…Pete, Dan Dan, even Rob Falconer (remember him? had a quota of about 280 one week and wen’t in a cream puff when you cut it). An automatic “We’ve missed you at Caption.me” type email if they’ve been inactive for say 6/12 months and their account is still live.
As for comment quotas I have noticed that since imposing quotas, I’ve enjoyed reading the comments page more, as there are a wider selection of voices there and less noise.
Good idea @Troompa_Loompa. We’ve had some amazing, eccentric comic geniuses on this site (I sometimes wonder if they were professional comedians under pseudonyms).
I will email a selection of them to invite them back, but before I do so I would like to implement some of the “headline” features I’ve planned for a while - hopefully this will make the site more enticing.
Mr. Toad was an aspiring comedian (per his profile), I vaguely recall exchanging a couple of messages with him, and submitted jokes/sketches to Newsjack on Radio 4. Gordon Bannerman a journalist.
Back when the site used to send an email if someone added a comment to your captions I used it to try and persuade some to come back, Mr Toad, Tony Busby (who did return for a short while) and Rob Falconer are the ones I remember.
Missed the vote quota discussion but agree that it is better without one. There’s probably no silver bullet to solve all issues re voting but it’s good to try changes out but revert back / adapt if something isn’t working.
Re the editing, I agree with all the measures Chris has implemented/proposed, except maybe the 10 minute time limit on editing. Personal reason being, as a chronic editor I often tweak captions long after I’ve first written them. General reason being, often Captioneers make really good tweak suggestions that may come, or be acted upon, long after the caption is written.
As for major thematic changes, I’m not sure why people do this late, when a new fresh caption could be written that receives priority exposure. But if thematic changes are made then the new edit timestamp, and edit history to come (perhaps this could be added by clicking the edit timestamp), will show who the original user of a theme is if there are dupes.
In this case, and also with regular dupes, I think flagging to admins is a good idea. This way the admins could decide if a dupe exists and who did the duping, and add a Nod suggestion. That would take the onus off people feeling narky for suggesting nods, and would also mean comment quotas wouldn’t be affected (a concern Willie had).
