Is it me or is Airfighters becoming a tad middle-aged? There are a few indicators to suggest this...

Firstly there seem to be more and more 'old gold' contributions back from the 70's and 80's which is not a bad thing (I think my last uploads were from the same era ) however these seem to be in danger of outweighing contemporary subject posts.

Then we had the debate regards missile/ordnance photos and there seemed to be a very strong though minority opinion against such photos even though no other database accepts such photos. Airfighters pioneered specialist subjects such as nose and tail art, the Boneyard, and Classic Warbirds, however regarding missile/ordnance photos it clearly collectively wimped out!

And now a rejection! I had a photo rejected a few days ago for 'motive'.

Personally I thought it was a great shot; it was taken with a hand-held camera with 100 ISO film in a hanger facing large windows into the sun. The aircraft is an NF-111A at Edwards AFB surrounded by test equipment and several techicians working on what seem to be a few blueprints. This is the reality for most test aircraft at Edwards AFB, they spend 99/ of their time in the hanger being reconfigured and tested and their total time in the air is minute compared to 'normal' military aircraft. I really don't understand the 'motive' problem here when the "opposition" accepted the shot and it has been viewed there over 800 times:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/General-Dynamics-NF-111A/1642920/L/&sid=4329b4658c060f98a68546ba8b421c91

It just seems to me that Airfighters is becoming risk-averse which is such a shame, as a military aviation photographer I could rely upon this website to consider photos which perhaps other databases would reject yet this seems to be changing.

Michael

Hi Michael,
I'm not sure. True, we have been accepting a lot of photos from the 70's and 80's, which I'm personally delighted about, but we're getting our fair share of newer shots as well. Sure, it would be great to have more newer shots as well, but we can only accept what people upload. A lot of the photographers that were uploading when the site launched are not uploading anymore because they were not getting 2546 hits in 2.5 minutes. I'm really shocked by that because they were expecting those kinds of results from a brand new site, and comparing us to another that had been around over a decade at the time. A couple told me that it's really not worth their time anymore, which I think is completely ridiculous because it literally takes less than 30 seconds to upload a photo here, and with the data persistence feature, one can really upload a lot of photos fairly quickly. They couldn't tell me that they're only after hits and don't want to support the site anymore.

Traffic has grown steadily over the past months and continues to grow on a daily basis. My goal for the site is to be more than just a photo database. We have added other features that deal with aircraft info, etc. and in the coming months even more features will be added to make the site as comprehensive as possible. It all takes time, and won't happen over night. End of March, on our 3rd anniversary, we'll be launching a completely new site design along with 3 or 4 new features. After that, I expect to have 5-6 more features added to the site before the end of the year. So stay tuned, lots of good things are on the way.

Regarding your photo Michael, we had a lengthy discussion about it in the crew forum and at the end decided that there was simply too much stuff around the plane. You have a right to appeal it and we'll be happy to give it another consideration. I see it got accepted to the Damned Media site, but as I have seen over the past few months, they will accept just about anything to compete with the other big site in terms of number of photos, so I wouldn't use that as a good indicator at all. Of course, that doesn't say anything about your photo, that's just my opinion.

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admin :
A lot of the photographers that were uploading when the site launched are not uploading anymore because they were not getting 2546 hits in 2.5 minutes. I'm really shocked by that because they were expecting those kinds of results from a brand new site, and comparing us to another that had been around over a decade at the time. A couple told me that it's really not worth their time anymore, which I think is completely ridiculous because it literally takes less than 30 seconds to upload a photo here, and with the data persistence feature, one can really upload a lot of photos fairly quickly. They couldn't tell me that they're only after hits and don't want to support the site anymore.

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Ray, it's not a question of expecting high hits from a new site, it's a question of having the acceptance standards being proportionate to the traffic the site generates. Why would a photographer take the time to upload here when it's easier to get a shot accepted on a site that gives more exposure (if you'll excuse the pun)? It's a question I asked myself some time ago and as a consequence my uploads here ceased. I expect the other photographers to which you refer also came to the same conclusion.

Hi Jeremy,
Good to hear from you again. I have to disagree with that statement. I can count on one hand the number of photographers that have left because they couldn't take the rejections anymore. The photographers I'm talking about actually never had a rejection.

Thanks Nathan. I appreciate all your support, and the hundreds of other photographers over the past years.

Guilty as charged... I am middle aged and uploading old stuff. IMHO there is so much contemporary material on the web already. Good digital images come with busloads these days, a good K64 scan is still hard to find.

I also think the threat of people going to Airliners or Jetphotos is overrated. Having seen the competition, Airfighters works best for me, here are some reasons why Airfighters is here to stay I think:

- Very user friendly search engine / photo upload tool. I hate the awkward picklists the competition offers; it is a hassle to find any aircraft type or airforce there.

- Military only

- Quick and consistent screening.

Ray, thanks for all the good work, hope more people will discover and like Airfighters.

cheers, Henk.

Yup, I have said that in the past, and I stand by my words. I guess you can add Anet to the list as well now. Lets face it, they are not what they used to be. They have gone from one extreme to the other.

Personally, I think we have pretty lax rules when it comes to accepting photos. We strive to be as fair and consistent as possible, but don't forget it's a system run by humans, not robots, so there will be some fluctuations once in a while. Have we rejected photos in the past that should've been accepted - YES. Have we accepted photos that we should've rejected - YES. And, it will happen again, I can almost guarantee it. We're only human. That's why we have an appeals process where the photos get seen by many screeners and voted on, as well as a photo re-upload feature so you can improve on your previously accepted photos. You'd be surprised how many photos get accepted the second time around after some small improvements.

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TomG :
Well, I'm just a plain old enthusiast who likes to share his images with like minded people who appreciate them. 'Generated traffic', 'rejection stats', 'benefits of uploading', 'high hits' - all mean nothing to me to be honest but plainly it means a lot to some folks.

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How do you judge appreciation? The quick and easy way to judge is by hit count. As much as we all love to say we don't care about hits, in reality we all secretly do (to varying degrees). Some of us are happy to admit it. Others feel ashamed of such feelings and plead indifference. Would you take time to upload to a site if not one person bothered to look ever? I very much doubt it.

Many photographers here also upload to JP.net and A.net. Why would they do that if it wasn't to get more exposure? Surely if Airfighters was enough, then there wouldn't be a further need to share images with like minded people who appreciate them.

Certainly appreciation means different things to different people. Numbers are just numbers to some people.

Obviously the people who are here appreciate the site and I thank them for their time and continued support.

I think this thread has gone way astray from the original topic starter. No more posts please.