It would be very nice if someone on the admin team could find out who keeps uploading undersized World Coin Gallery photos to the Numista catalogue. They are appearing with increasing frequency and are nothing less than catalogue vandalisation. Here are some examples:
These images are terrible but someone, presumably in good faith, seems to be going through World Coin Gallery and systematically replacing images on Numista with images from there. I don't know which countries are affected but I'm seeing a large number of instances for Southern African countries.
It would be really great if we could:
1. Look at the catalogue update requests to determine which user is doing this, and then contact them to ask them to stop.
2. Perhaps update the image upload script to discard image changes when the uploaded images are below a certain size.
3. Perhaps get in touch with the referees of the affected countries and ask them to stop blindly accepting image updates without first checking the image sizes by clicking on them and seeing the size of the big version of the picture.
But most of all, I just want to stop seeing these tiny images replacing the perfectly good images already in the catalogue. I'm also going to contact some of the referees of some countries I know to be affected and ask them to please keep a lookout for this problem.
Actually these images (for the 2 coisn pictured above) are not new and have been there since 2010 as they're the original pictures uploaded when both pages were created. It is just that no member has uploaded better pictures.
Do you have more recent cases I can look into?
Sapientiae plerumque stultitia est comes.
Si c'est un grand plaisir d'être reconnu par ses amis, c'est peut-être encore plus flatteur d'être reconnu par ses adversaires.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Цитата: "pejounet"Actually these images (for the 2 coisn pictured above) are not new and have been there since 2010 as they're the original pictures uploaded when both pages were created. It is just that no member has uploaded better pictures.
Do you have more recent cases I can look into?
Hi PJ! Thanks for the response and your time looking into this. Here are some additional examples from South Africa:
I'm sorry to drown you in so many examples, but I want to show how widespread this problem is. And perhaps highlight the need for some kind of automated image quality control (at least regarding the size of the image) for Numista.
The problem extends beyond the African section of the catalog. There are numerous exsamples of undersized photos for Central American coinage. Below are some examples of offending pages:
The shame of it all is that the photos in World Coin Catalog are actually quite good, unless you download the thumbnail version then do some kind of wild manipulation of the picture. Note the same scratches on this coin:
Picture in Numista:
Thumbnail in World Coin Catalog:
Full size picture in World Coin Catalog:
The shame of it all is that the photos in World Coin Catalog are actually quite good, unless you download the thumbnail version then do some kind of wild manipulation of the picture. Note the same scratches on this coin:
Picture in Numista:
Thumbnail in World Coin Catalog:
Full size picture in World Coin Catalog:
Honestly, I don't agree. The World Coin Gallery images - even the full-sized ones - are actually quite a bit smaller than the ideal Numista image size. The full size ones can work at a push, but they are far from ideal.
Цитата: "andrewdotcoza"Honestly, I don't agree. The World Coin Gallery images - even the full-sized ones - are actually quite a bit smaller than the ideal Numista image size. The full size ones can work at a push, but they are far from ideal.
I can't argue with that. The few I looked at were somewhat smaller than the better Numista pictures. I guess my point was that if those full size World Coin Gallery pictures were used this forum topic would probably never have been started.
The size of the field that receives the obverse and reverse images on the page is 250 by 250
By taking the first coin from the list: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces10321.html
images are 212 x 212
they will appear in the box with their original size until they have the minimum of 250x250
beyond this size the image will be reduced to a thumbnail of 250x250 but visible in its larger original size by clicking on the thumbnail
Note that the image is the complete photo, background included. The piece depicted should take up the entire image, the edges of the piece flush with the edges of the image
Unless you you search for bigger pictures ... please don't simply enlarge low quality pictures to a certain size this doesn't enhance the quality in any sense of the word.
I’m not sure that resizing the existing pictures and resubmitting them is the right thing to do here. The World Coin Gallery pictures have a terribly low quality and even 300 x 300 is far below the usual Numista standard.
I was going to submit better pictures taken of the coins in my collection where possible. But now I’m concerned that if we resubmit bodged pictures to fix the size issue, it will be a lot more work to find and correct the problem.
Certainly as a referee, I’d reject 300 x 300 pictures. So I don’t think you should do this. When I made my original post I was more interested in stopping the problem from getting worse than with fixing the existing instances. Because the existing instances will be fixed with much better pictures over time.
it is always possible to replace bad photos with better quality ones
each member who creates a file and submits a photo of their piece feels a certain pride in collaborating on the catalog, the community also benefits. it is better to have a bad photo than none at all.
while waiting for better, we might as well do with what we are provided with, try to improve while preserving the rights
Too bad we don't always see what happens, or that we don't have the time, if you want an anthology it's possible. Unless you prefer that I restore the original photos? 111,117 images and on the 20 added pages I never saw the parts, only the photos. https://en.numista.com/forum/topic118491.html#p976537
Цитата: "CREPOSUC"it is always possible to replace bad photos with better quality ones
each member who creates a file and submits a photo of their piece feels a certain pride in collaborating on the catalog, the community also benefits. it is better to have a bad photo than none at all.
while waiting for better, we might as well do with what we are provided with, try to improve while preserving the rights
Too bad we don't always see what happens, or that we don't have the time, if you want an anthology it's possible. Unless you prefer that I restore the original photos? 111,117 images and on the 20 added pages I never saw the parts, only the photos.
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic118491.html#p976537
I'm sorry, CEPOSUC, but I can't really understand what you are saying a lot of the time.
What I'm trying to say is that when the World Coin Gallery pictures are small, it is easy to see which coins they belong to and correct them. If you resize them, it is going to be much harder to see them and fix them. We should definitely aim for the best pictures possible, but if we move too fast with a half solution then we make the full solution more difficult to do.
It isn't my decision because the catalogue isn't mine. But my advice would be to cancel these submissions for the coins in this thread, not do the 300x300 resize, and give people time to upload nice, high-quality photographs for these coins. Doing it with this quick resize doesn't fix the problem, potentially makes it worse, and makes it much harder to fix properly. If you read the thread you will see I'm not the only one who thinks that.
I don't know what you mean about the other thread you have linked to, or the 111 117 images. That isn't what we are talking about here and I don't think we should cross the topics over like that.
Цитата: "pejounet"Actually these images (for the 2 coisn pictured above) are not new and have been there since 2010 as they're the original pictures uploaded when both pages were created. It is just that no member has uploaded better pictures.
Do you have more recent cases I can look into?
Same case here and for the other links, all these are dating back to the time of page creation (2008-2009); good thing is that it is not a new trend then. It is just up for improvements.
On some other points of this thread (not necessarily Andrew's ones):
1. Generic statement that also applies to a couple of other threads I've seen lately: One shall keep in mind that not everyone has the material or is able to provide high quality images. I agree there is a minimum but again it is not possible to enforce a 600dpi criterion for instance. We will then always have some discrepancies on the images side at some point given catalogue size.
2. Resizing these images is not useful: bad quality image resized is still bad quality image and does not help figure out much more details. It's just time-consuming for no effective improvement.
3. Yes image thumbnail frame is 250x250 but when clicked images are rendered in full/bigger size so bigger images (not resized here, see above) are still better to avoid bigger but blurrier images.
4. Perhaps WCG images are not HD images but the full size images are still good enough for Numista unless there are better images (be it from members or other sources). If you have the coins, as usual, I encourage you to upload yours; it is always nice to see members coins.
Sapientiae plerumque stultitia est comes.
Si c'est un grand plaisir d'être reconnu par ses amis, c'est peut-être encore plus flatteur d'être reconnu par ses adversaires.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Perhaps something similar to how www.findagrave.com works. If someone requests a photo of a grave in a given location, the site emails those within a few miles from that location asking if you'd like to volunteer to go take said photo.
I imagine Numista could PM users known to have such coin in a similar fashion? Maybe limit this function to referees so not every user who doesn't like the look of an image can spam everyone?
Цитата: "Slipstreamed"To be clear, does Numista have permission to use WCG images? I'd presume so based on this conversation, but wanted to make sure before I use them.
Цитата: "Xavier"Hello,
Small pictures are better than no pictures. Still high-quality pictures are the best!
I just implemented 2 features to facilitate replacing them:
Цитата: "Xavier"Hello,
Small pictures are better than no pictures. Still high-quality pictures are the best!
I just implemented 2 features to facilitate replacing them:
For both features, pictures are considered small if they are small than 360px × 360px.
4 things:
Elongated and similar tokens have different sizes, so at least one large enough side should probably be enough not to list such item in the list.
This list would be probably better off as a link after FAQ link, where in brackets you may see how many of pages of coins/tokens you have, that can be updated.
Is it possible to add some mark to each request, that something regarding the specific request has already been added and is waiting on referee approval. This way less duplicated work...
For big list, links to sections below at the top of this page would be user friendly.
NICE!!! Just added some pictures and the piece went of the list automatically.
Thank you Xavier, everyone will be able to improve their own catalog
but with the risk of having several requests when the same 'defective' part is held by several members
ps : I only speak French, native and official language of Numista, here I use GoogleTranslate, MicrosoftTranslate, ImTranslator (American) or Yandex (Russian) if necessary among 200 languages they offer Afrikaans
Indeed. I went down the link 
