Discussion summary
Discussions centered on art visibility and value, with some debating the purpose of art sharing platforms. Participants mentioned the oversaturation of art, technical issues with cloud services, and the importance of exposure.
What the discussion says
- Some believe the platform's goal is to showcase art regardless of click counts.
- Others argue that art is oversaturated and artists struggle to earn.
- Technical issues like Cloudflare problems are affecting users.
- There is a debate about the meaning of 'begging the question'.
“We don't care about click counts. We just want people to see art.”
“Most artists aren't earning much due to oversaturation.”
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- Hacker News
- I enjoyed this one. Their other work was quite somber and then this title threw me for a loop https://www.artic.edu/artworks/151439/uranus-8by appplication
- ...I can't work out what this is.by kreelman
- How many of these images are there? I cycled through a few and ended up hitting at least one duplicate [1] that I do actually enjoy (but I can't find the name of it now that I refreshed the page, I know it had the verrazzano narrows bridge in the title)
Is there a chance a site like this could ruin their metric by inflating all the views for these lowest viewed items? Or do these not count?
[1] https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/67395c18-c83c-865f-b0db-4736574...
by Klathmon - Querying the API, there seem to be 112998 artworks with this label as of this moment.
(I'm deliberately not posting the direct API call in case it's expensive for them to run. Documentation is found here: https://api.artic.edu/docs/#fields-collections-artworks)
by w-m - If the views are all real views it's hardly "inflating" anything.by Retr0id
- We're not worried about ruining this metric. We want people to see art.by zach_garwood
- The site calls the API directly (www.artic.edu), so yeah, probably it will ruin^W change the metric. It's probably the creator's idea?
Some, ahem, video sites, have "Popular videos". Of course the videos that end up there get more views and get even more popular...
by netsharc - I remember reading a post by soneone who really liked imusic, i think, and the filter options it used to have.
They had a playlist that was "all songs with four or five stars that i haven't listened to in 4 years or more" or something like that. This person apparently had a massive music collection, so there were always a few nostalgic hits to listen to.
by natosaichek - This is awesome. It's interesting to me how it messes with my incentives. At first I was just pulling the lever on the slot machine, then I went back and clicked on the pieces I really liked (to mark them as "viewed" for the Art Institute and show some love), but finally realized that I was systematically working to remove my favorites from the pool of images people would see.
In the end I just clicked on the "refresh" button a few more times.
by djsavvy - This was my favourite of the ones I saw:
https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/813984c9-f0a6-c340-5e89-f1c00af...
Really moving piece. Great idea on the part of the API devs!
by monk_grilla - Just professionally, I'm curious whether they derive has_not_been_viewed_much by some nightly cron process, by an insert trigger on a `user_image_viewed` table, or by some monstrous full table join that HN is currently obliterating.by noduerme
- There's a scheduled task that runs every month to pull the view data from Google Analytics:
https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/data-aggregator/...
https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/data-aggregator/...
The site hasn't been hugged to death yet,
by zach_garwood - This feels like I am violating something that is sacred.
The last time I felt the same was when I accidentally found a Japanese Youtube channel that had tons of clips of konbini storefronts, a few seconds long each, most of them with zero views.
by anilakar - I love stumbling upon these kinds of things, especially if they've been long abandoned. I feel like an archaeologist digging up artifacts of a forgotten tribe, or perhaps an explorer in an abandoned hospitalby mghackerlady
- As a konbini enthusiast whenever I leave my continent… Link for the konbini storefront channel?by yreg
- I like the first one I got: Honorable Mr. Cat - https://www.artic.edu/artworks/79175/honorable-mr-catby crazy3lf
- There used to be a site called Forgotify that would only play songs from Spotify that had zero listens. So each song played, of course, removed that song from the set that could ever be played by Forgotify. Doesn't look like it's around any more, sadly.by Ogre
- Seems likely that Spotify is stuffed full of "songs" with zero listens now.by dofm
- There's a couple of those for YouTube.
https://vid404.com/ is for videos with zero views. It generates search queries for finding them.
For videos with low views there's https://petittube.com/ (loads a random video with low view count) and http://astronaut.io/ (which has an "automatic stream" of videos).
by andai - I thought this was lovely, and was surprised by the date: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/196937/summer-moon-at-miyajim...by tacitusarc
- so beautifulby livealife
- wow, that really is lovely. my favourite one so far.by zem
- In a "that's so recent" or a "that's so old" kind of way?by AlecSchueler
- 1930s is the tail end of Shin Hanga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin-hangaby rwmj
- The colors look so different here:
https://nipponprints.com/images/tsuchiya-koitsu/summer-moon-...
(non-deeplink: https://nipponprints.com/tsuchiya-koitsu/summer-moon-at-miya... )
by Sweepi - I opened this and thought hoooooooold on, I know that; I have a framed A2 print of it on the wall to my left.
One of my favourite parts of my trip to Japan (only been once so far), the tide was out at the time so I stood under that Torii gate and have a few photos of it of my own that I use as wallpapers.
by alias_neo - I used to borrow the books which had "to be disposed if not lent in the next 3 months" slip in them. Never regretted reading them. The best one included a very odd short story by Flann OBrien about a carpenter who walls himself inside the oak panelling of a build he is working on, and a woman convinced Sago farming will cure Ireland's famine.by ggm
- > Never regretted reading them
Interesting! I'm surprised to hear you've had that experience. I pick out books at the library largely by the cover & back blurb, not by whether they're popular or well reviewed or whatever. And to be honest, I've picked out a lot of crap this way, where I turn it back in after just a chapter or two. I suspect that frequency of being checked out & popularity/well-reviewed-ness are correlated. So I also suspect (admittedly without evidence) that my algorithm of picking somewhat randomly means I pick out books that are not popular with some frequency, and I've definitely regretted many of my choices. So it's surprising to me that you haven't had any that were terrible.
by coldpie - Struggling to find the carpenter’s story, do you remember the title by any chance? Thanks!by cloud8421