The Local Guides 2022 Star Photos post was specifically created to feature Local Guide star photos throughout 2022, most of which were also included in the monthly Top 100 Local Guides Star Photos leaderboard posts (see a link in my signature below). I have always referred to this post as a “photo album” as I wanted it to have the look and feel of the photo albums we have in the physical world where one simply flicks through the many pages and sees all the beautiful travel and family photos that one takes. So the focus in these albums is the photos and the stories and memories behind them!
Sadly however, I dropped my guard a little and slowly but surely the 2022 album post lost that easy flow that I so wanted to create, and the great Local Guide star photos posted on it, became immersed in a sea of comments and questions about how to participate and so on. This not only made the “2022 photo album” uninteresting and difficult to enjoy by those interested in casually scrolling through the album and seeing these amazing star photos, but also difficult for participants to find their own star photo when it came time to update them for example, when their views increased or when they had a new star photo!
The New
So, to better control this in 2023, and with the hope of providing a much better and more enjoyable user experience, especially on mobile devices, this separate but closely related post was created as a place to add all comments and discussion about the star photos and the new star videos included in the star albums, and any other matter related to star photos and star videos, including how to participate on the star leaderboards! Therefore, if you’re commenting or asking a question about a specific Local Guide’s star entries in the respective 2023 album, then you should add your comment or question here in this post and add a link to that star.
The other thing that I believe will provide a better user experience, is to have consistency in the format used to present the stars! To help achieve this, a formatting standard has been set and a weighting factor has been added to each of the criteria within it. This is specified in the Steps to add your star in each of the star album posts and you’ll see the weighting factors shown in red against each of the criteria. The maximum achievable rating is 127 150 (updated 23 December) and the number of points less than 150 will help you work out what part of your screenshot you should look at correcting or improving. The hope is that this will help you identify what you need to do to make your screenshot better comply with the specified formatting criteria and hopefully, will save me a lot of time explaining things.
Those participating on the Star Photos and Star Videos Leaderboards will know of Lucy who is now geared up to lend a helping hand regarding the formatting of your star screenshots. You will soon see Lucy’s handiwork in the Star Photo and Star Video data entry section of the Top 100 System; giving simple clues on how to improve your star screenshot presentations.
Let’s work together and make this a much more rewarding and enjoyable experience for all throughout 2023.
Thank you @OmerAli for your kind comment. I have to say, when I read your words “I wonder how you manage that kinda energy”, I thought to myself, “I wonder how you manage the kinda energy to successfully completing a PhD”
Hoping you find your star and as well as adding it to the Album of Star Photos, you update the details using the Top 100 Local Guides System in time the first Star Photos Leaderboard post for 2023. You’ve got 2 weeks
I can see that I’m not alone when it comes to having a red star photo @katydarhel but I noticed something interesting when looking at both your star and my star today. Have you noticed that both our star photos are “burning out” so to speak, at roughly the same star views level? Is this just a coincidence?
Wonderful idea @AdamGT I love the idea to have a post devoted solely to photos. I love how I learned the word “red star.”
Same @OmerAli I was wondering how you answer all your emails, comments, and have time to write articles and compile all their leaderboards. I want to do an article or hear a podcast on how moderators time manage to get to everyone. You guys are superhuman. Maybe that will be the plot for the next Marvel movie.
Hi @AdamGT , I noticed it a long time ago. And Star Photos Leaderboard are the only rating where we are next on the list. In other rankings, such as Photo Views Leaderboard and Average Views per Photo Leaderboard, we are in completely different places on the list.
@AdamGT I’ve just completed the addition of my Star Photo to the new 2023 “album”. Unfortunately, it is the same “red star” from 2022, as my next nearest photos are still approximately 1.5 million views behind.
My other disappointment is that it is a portrait photo (contrary to your recommendation), but I have to continue working with it until one of my landscape photos gets into first place sometime in the distant future.
Thanks for your comment @AZ_2021 and I’m pleased that you also love the idea of separating all the discussion and commentary on star photos and the leaderboards into a separate and dedicated post. Let’s see how it goes!
Using simple analogies from the real world, in this case from the stellar world, helps explain things in simple terms. So in terms of star photos, each Local Guide has a star photo, and therefore with 160 million Local Guides around the world, we have a stellar world or galaxy if you will, of 160 million star photos! Some of these stars are brighter than others (have more star views). Some continue to shine brighter each month and some of these at a much faster rate than others (the red stars).
Lol we’re definitely not superhuman. We are Local Guides just like you and everyone else here. We answer questions and help out where we can, reply to comments, write articles, and moderate etc all on a voluntary basis and as moderators we each put in whatever time we can that fits in with our personal work and lifestyle. I love writing articles and sharing photos from my travels and I did quite a lot of this in my early days here on Connect but something had to give when I became a moderator and started the leaderboards back in July 2020 when locked up at home because of the pandemic. I thought this would be of much greater interest, fun and useful to many. Two-and-a-half+ years later, and with a number of great articles written by fellow Local Guides, a number of meetups, and lots of interesting discussion and commentary here on Connect, I’d have to say that it’s been a successful project. I’m confident that most will agree!
I love how you explained it. I love to read about the universe and galaxy. I think it is beautiful and I love your analogy of local guides star photos being a galaxy. I never thought of it like that.
Love what you shared too and yes- your articles are unique and I agree, they provide lots of value. Also, another value add is it gives encouragement to the Level 10’s who in the past would say now I got 100,000 points- now what. Now, it shows that anyone at any level can keep growing.
Also, I think a Marvel Movie is coming about Local Guides Moderators- photo below You all may just be superheroes in disguise.
My inbox at times is nothing short of crazy so I’m sorry that I’m only now just catching up with my replies here. First some house keeping. You may have already noticed some fine tuning of the Steps to add your star photo on the Local Guides, 2023 Album of Star Photos post. The most important of these are:
The change from left to centered justification of the screenshot of your star photo (Item #2),
The inclusion of a heading (Item #6) in bold and which should include the name of the place and perhaps a brief location (e.g. city, country)
The suggestion that you could include a link to the POI on Maps or even share a link to your star photo (Item #7).
The points or weights system introduced to help determine how well your star photo screenshot fits in with the preferred formatting criteria. Formatting is important especially on mobile devices so that it provides the best possible user experience.
Regarding formatting, I have noticed that each time you edit and save your screenshot, the Connect editor adds and extra blank line to each original blank line. Everyone needs to be aware of this and delete those extra blank lines as they impact negatively on the overall formatting when scrolling through the star photos album, especially on mobile. It’s a good idea that after adding or editing your star photo screenshot, that you should check it on both mobile and a PC for formatting and consistency with othe screenshots in the album.
It’s an interesting observation then that you made well before me @katydarhel about our respective red stars! I have to say that I have been using the Star Tracking feature inbuilt into the Top 100 System to monitor my top 10 photos and am thinking of writing a separate post on this.
I completely understand the point you are making @tony_b , and if your star was taken in portrait then you can’t change that now. While portrait photos have their place I prefer to take my shots in landscape as generally the work better on most platforms including Connect.
@AZ_2021 it’s great that you too like the simple analogy between our star photos, and collectively, with the galaxy of stars in the universe. My hope is that the leaderboards give encouragement and motivation to Local Guides at all levels Your Marvel Movie about Local Guides Moderators is just too funny and I noted the cameo appearance of moi in your photo…the big A was the giveaway They read it all…no comment left unturned, hmmmm yes but sometimes there is a delay as in this instance
By the way, I agree with the point you’ve made in the description of your star photo, and I think I commented on this before. One photo’s views might stall while that of another may suddenly take off because of seasonal factors or other similar factors! For example here in Melbourne, Australia, hardware stores became a hit during the pandemic. I commented about this and thought that perhaps people not travelling during COVID were spending time catching up with home renovation projects making hardware stores popular places to visit. Some places might be more popular than others during summer than in winter, and so on.
Please note that I’ve moved your previous comment from the Local Guides, 2023 Album of Star Photos post as we wish to make that post exclusive to star photo submissions As clearly stated in that post, “if you have any questions or wish to comment about star photos generally, the specific star photos in this album or how to participate here or on the star photos leaderboards, then please don’t add them in comments in this post. Instead, ask them in a comment on the Discussion on the Local Guides, 2023 Star Photos post, a post specifically setup for this.”
I should also mention that when you leave a message or reply to someone on Connect you should properly tag them so that they will get a notification of your message, otherwise they may not ever know about or see your message. To do this, first type @ then type the first few characters of their name until you see their name in the dropdown list. Finally, select the person’s name. You will see that I tagged you at the start of this message to you. Many think that this is done automatically when you reply to someone but it is not.
Hello @natapol and welcome to Connect and for adding your first post, your interesting star photo of the Sule Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar.
I’m just letting you know that I have moved your star photo from the 2022 star photo post to here in the 2023 star photo post so that it will be together with all other Local Guides’ 2023 star photos. I would also like to suggest that you read the Steps to add your star photo shown in section 3 and also section 6 of that post and consider joining the Top 100 Local Guides Leaderboards.
In the meantime, as you are new to Connect, I recommend that you read Your guide to Connect and the Help Desk as they will be particularly useful to you as a newcomer here.
Finally, I’d also like to mention that you might like to introduce yourself in our monthly Introduce yourself post.
Maybe that will be the plot for the next Marvel movie.
We appreciate all you do.