Thanks, pspan. :)

Actually, the series was much longer. It was 12 eyes. I already reduced it from about 35 eyes I've collected. I've only taken the best ones. So I'm quite disappointed now that 7 of them have been judged as "boring". :(

Moderators, please take another look! They're not boring at all, especially not if presented in the context of this series!

I think I will just stop making series if this is the new way of handling them... :-((

From my 10+ explosions and fire also only half of it made it.
I cried for days ;)

******** *, *** and **** **** **** ****.
for example. hey were great stills i thought.

I'm always psyched when I see a still from Big L. Please don't censor him that much, or he will visit you with his bowling buddies... ;-)

I had a movie disapproved for having unsuitable content. But the still showed the essence of the movie, and the movie is excellent, award winning and all. On top of that, unsuitable content my *** seeing so many penises, horror gore scenes and other "unsuitable content" on this website makes me wonder why my particular still, black and white!, is considered unsuitable.

# 9794 no offense meant to the poster, but how many more variations on this theme can we expect!!

To lighten up the discussion a little:

IIIIEEUUWWWWW!!!!! I see a boob!! NSFW!! How did this get through?!?!?!
http://whatthemovie.com/beta/movies/view/9850

;)

boobs? take these. they're even nicer. ;-)
http://whatthemovie.com/beta/movies/view/9054

and indeed I could name more than enough shots they're bore me till I sleep too.

@naut

Thanks for approving 90% of my movies. But nevertheless, from the most recent 22 uploads you accepted only 8. That makes only 36%. And most of the time the reason was "boring".

I agree that the two eyes you posted here are not easy to guess. But in the context of the series they make perfect sense. And if you know the movie of the first one you have a good chance of recognizing it. It's not that generic after all. It contains a hint.

But there were five more eye pictures that would have been very nice, and far from generic! It's kind of a new game to recognize the actors from their eyes only. They're not boring shots, it's great cinematography, and beautiful actresses. And they're not too hard to guess either!

Please reconsider your decision to reject them! :)

Ok, you say now "I'm afraid that we couldn't approve your recent shots, because you posted the movies before. We sure take multiple scenes of a movie, but please not from the same poster.".

This is news to me. I posted second shots of movies before and they were accepted. I thought the only restriction was not to post them together. You never mentioned that it was not allowed that the same user uploads more than one still of a movie.

To quote naut:
-----
The 30day system allows us to take multiple shots of a film, because old shots just won't give you any more points. The only limitation we have is, we won't take snapshots from the same scene, because you could look up the old one and fetch the solution for the new movie.
-----
We usually take multiple snapshots of the same film if the scene differs.
Actually, we don't take any more snapshots of films, which are posted more than 10 times or so.
-----

To quote zanapher:
-----
Don't post many shots from the same movie at a time.
-----

So I simply didn't know that this was no longer allowed. And because the e-mails all contained the reason "boring" instead of "duplicate shot from same movie" I had no clue and I got angry.

Now we could start a whole new discussion why this restriction does or doesn't make sense. I think that most movies have the potential to contain several great stills and if a single person finds them all, why should he be hindered to upload them? I agree that they should not be uploaded together though. After all, you cannot prevent that users create several accounts in order to upload multiple stills of the same movie. So why prohibit it in the first place? It's about the shots, guys, not about the users who upload them! If the shots are great, please take them. It's almost like refusing a gift. It's rude and you might never get it again...

And sorry about the offense with the "clueless people". It was me who was clueless because you never let me know the true reason for rejecting the stills. ;)

(cancelling the raid with my bowling buddies ;)

@ Naut, if you have seen the movie, this particular still captures the essence of the movie. As the still won't be placed I will tell the title of the movie: C'est arrive pres de chez vous - a critically acclaimed movie about a serial killer being followed by a camera crew, and shows how the camera crew becomes more and more involved. This still is from the turning point, the scene in which the crew commits the crime together with the killer, without remorse, in the most disgusting form, making them morally no different from the killer.

I do agree the image is disgusting. It is "unsuitable". However, to what extent will you censor the stills? In the future I will chose more "suitable" stills, at the risk of it being deemed "boring" ;)

Nonetheless, I really appreciate all the work that you and your team put into this site, you can definitely be very proud of your work!! :D

Meh, the tone has really shifted from cordial to harsh in here in just a couple of days.

So I'll start by being harsh myself and say some things :
- Yes the choice is arbitrary at times (a lot of times). So what ?
- There are too many uploads per day (this has already been said), it's a problem, there's no easy way so we're refusing plenty of screenshots, even good ones.
- If Biglebowski doesn't want to post anymore, it's probably a loss since he's the best uploader and has a very high acceptation ratio (meaning his shots are generally good) but it's not that bad either. There are so many other uploaders that in a sense it might even be a relief. The site will still have enough to keep running. Get over it.
- "Series" are not necessarily the best thing. People have already complained (while others praise it). There's no reason why we should accept everything that comes as a series.
- The time it takes you to prepare your shots is of no relevance whatsoever. Although I'm sure everyone is thankfull for the effort, why should we accept an image purely on the hard work ?

*** long post ahead... sorry in advance (split in two parts)

That being said (in the tone of the general discussion), let me be slightly more moderate and explain a few things...
Moderating is hard and tedious. Moderating fairly is clearly not possible (at least I can't do it, and I think the other moderators can't either, and that's not an insult whatsoever). True, we don't know all the movies you take the screenshots from (which makes us "clueless moderators", even though it's not very nicely put). But that's not the only reason. There are plenty of images from movies that I've seen (and that I know well enough) upon which I hesitate. And the decision eventually is made only by my current mood, whether or not I have accepted many of the previous images, or other such purely arbitrary elements.

However annoying this might be to the uploaders, it's not that bad when looking from the website point of view : enough shots are accepted (too many even), these are reasonably good, everything's fine. Now obviously when you take a screenshot and it's not accepted, you take it personally, when there's no reason to.
Also the argument that "that other shot is also boring/gore/similar to another one" is not a good one. All it means is that that other screenshot could have been rejected as well. It does not mean that we should also take yours. But yeah, one passed and the other didn't, and there's no fairness involved. It was never stated that the selection would be fair.

As for series, I'm not particularly fond of it. Different people also said they weren't. The first ones were interesting and the concept funny. Making a habit of it is not necessarily a good thing. Now if you want us to reject all the series if some are not good because it's against the spirit, fine by me. But I don't really see why we should accept it as a whole. Your series aren't bad, mind you. But when I don't like some shots, I disapprove, that's all.

Besides, it's starting to become very hard (difficulty is still a debate, we believe the game should still be reasonably easy so that many people can find solutions). I agree that the eye images were all nice, and the theme was alright (and you probably spent a lot of time on it). But most of those are too hard to guess correctly. Why not make a "fade to black" series with only black screens. Of course we would only pick great movies, and the fade to black screen would be chosen at a key moment in the movie...

About the "boring" thing... Don't take it bad. We tend to overuse that argument. Know that there are very few possible reasons for refusal, s we have to pick one, even if it doesn't really apply. "Boring" (for me) means that this particular shot is not absolutely brilliant, and I was in a mood to reject it (again, plenty of possible factors there). It's not a personal attack on your choice.

@ Zanapher, point taken. Once again, I appreciate what you guys are doing here and hope this site will continue to florish.

"It's kind of a new game to recognize the actors from their eyes only".

Yes. It's called "What's the actor". If we are only able to recognize the actor but not the movie from the screenshot, then the screenshot fails.
Of course, if we recognize, say, the eye of James Woods, and then remember that Videodrome is the ONLY movie with James Woods where we see his eye, then ok. But come on.

@Nimmy

How many times did you recognize an actor or actress but not the movie? And you were still able to solve it, right?
So from your point of view, all pictures with recognizable actors should be banned? ;)

@Zanapher

I see where you're coming from. But I'm still opposed to arbitrary selection. It's simply undemocratic and unfair.

You should find other means to reduce the amount of uploaded pictures if this is really what you want to do. Set a limit to the number of uploads per user per week or something (but this might kill the concept of series). Or postpone the picture and release it at a time when there are not so many uploads.

Arbitrariness ist the killer of creativity. You will lose all your best uploaders.

And again: you should see the pictures as a gift from us uploaders. We don't get anything in return. And that's why arbitrary refusal is unfair and rude.

And what about the "no longer more than one still per uploader per movie" rule? Is this really the case?

As I said before, it's about the movies, and not about the uploaders. If a user finds more than one interesting still in a movie he should be allowed to upload both of them, although not consecutively of course.

But if you cannot agree to this, then why don't you block it right when we upload? You could perform a simple check on the database if this user has an active or pending picture with the same IMDb ID and refuse it right away. This would take this selection task away from the moderators. And the uploader won't get an e-mail saying that the shot was simply "boring".

Muten: it's not a problem in general, it's a problem that appears only in the context of a series. FWIW your four picture above are not boring. Note however that two of them would have been refused were I moderator at the moment (too few votes)

biglebowski: that's not an easy question. If the shot shows a well known actor but there is no way to recognize the picture from the shot, then the only way to solve it is to test the filmography of the actor. This is IMHO not whatthemovie is about. I'm not speaking about shots where everyone recognize the actors but only someone who've seen the film will find the answer (eg #10). I'm speaking about shots where virtually noone can recognize anything but the actor. IMHO these are boring shots. Boring has nothing to do with cinematography, boring is always about the game.

Also: You (and I) see pictures as a gift from us uploaders. You GET something in return. This game. This is not a commercial game. People are not paid to develop or moderate it (or if they are please tell me).

Zanapher, didn't you tell Nimmy? Every moderator is paid $ 100,- per month. We recently made so much money with the site to even afford 3 interns who check the spelling of movies.
NOT! haha, maybe someday :) whatthemovie is a fun project, and as long as we don't have to sell our houses, to pay the bills, it's fine.

Zanapher and Nimmy already stated some very good aspects. Thanks for that!

To chip in my few cents:

@ finker
You asked, to what extent we censor stills which are unsuiteable. The new guideline shall be: "we censor everything, Zanaphers little sister isn't allowed to watch".

@ pspan
You are right with the terms. We never intended to judge your uploads with the term "boring". It was a glitch in the system that these disapproval messages went out to you. Already changed.

@ big lebowski
Don't take the "arbitrary thing" too hard. The possibility to explain your shot in a few senteces should greatly minimize the random reject count.
And the reason why we don't want multiple uploads of the same movie by the same user (which by the way is rule #1 in the upload criterias for quite a while now)
is that we won't be able to draw a clear line. We don't want people to upload their favourite film every two days. It will just get boring.
You are however right, that a movie surely contains multiple great scenes. To find a consens, we're considering to limit the movie/person limit to three stills.

@ Nimmy
Great idea with the series thing. I agree, that we have to find another place for series. Probably a seperate category.

@ theoffice911
Very well put :) We have to find the right balance in difficulty. In my opinion, whatthemovie is still slightly to hard. I'll make a poll this afternoon to gather everyones position on that topic.

[quoting naut] The new guideline shall be: "we censor everything, Zanaphers little sister isn't allowed to watch" [/quoting]

My sister will be very happy to know that ;)