Today was a busy day on the website (70 online at one time), and the poor camera's were zooming in/out constantly. This is not great for the cameras and it seems that some people also really don't like the wide angle at Cook street. I know it can be frustrating when you zoom in, and then 30secs later someone zooms out. That's why I added the "Last zoom" time and I was hoping that people would use that and only zoom if that time was say 5 minutes from the current time...but it doesn't seem to be working. Also, the webcams are attracting a lot of new visitors on stormy days like today.

So perhaps we have 2 issues - how to stop the constant zooming in/out and how to minimize the zooming out of the Cook cam:

1. We are currently working on a way so that only 1 person at a time can use the zoom (Russian Dood has been working on it ) It should be ready soon. It might not fix the zooming out issue, but it should fix the zoom wars (which aren't great for the camera btw). Each person would get about 2 minutes to use the zoom then it would be passed onto another viewer. The only problem is that on a busy day you wouldn't get much access to the zoom.

2. We could make it so that only logged in forum members can see and operate the zoom buttons.

3. The other option is to just to disable the zoom and set the cameras on an agreeable setting.

I'm tempted to do option 1 and 2...only forum members could use the zoom and only one at a time. Suggestions?

thanks
dave

1 and 2 sounds great. Great work BWD and RD

I know some of the kiters wanted to see more of the width some times, and some people like to track the sky for a bit on the IV cam, but these are usually for lightish winds/waiting for it to fill in etc. I couldn't see any reason today for a super-wide view of the parking lot at CLover. I have a vision of some 40 year old with an IQ matching his age that is fascinated by watching cars go by.......

I noticed looking other the thumbnails of Columbia vs Cook today that Columbia doesn't have the same issue - it zooms in and out once in a while, but stays put in between much longer than Cook.

more force 4 wrote:I couldn't see any reason today for a super-wide view of the parking lot at CLover. I have a vision of some 40 year old with an IQ matching his age that is fascinated by watching cars go by.......

Ah so you think it might be Morewind then eh? I'll have a talk with him

Also, the suggestion was made to make the zoom available only to people that have donated $ to the site. That's not a bad idea. I guess we could have a password that is given out? Something to think about.

All good Idea's.
I do to like to see the sky and or just a wide angle shot once in a while. So I would like to see the controls stick around.
whatever logisticly works best, without going in programming code Hell!And I suuurrree do miss Ogden.

I think the best idea so far is the zoom by donation. If you are a user of the site and want control you should be contributing to the betterment of the site anyways. I would suggest a minimum donation/year amount also The registered member thing would be tough as there are alot of registered members and it's pretty easy to be a member.

I would suggest $50/year donation if you want to zoom the camera's. I for one don't donate enough to this site as I'm on it every flippin' day and it saves me huge travelling time and really if I was to think about it, pretty much keeps me entertained most of the day....HA!!

I wouldn't want people that actaully don't have an extra $50 to be excluded from the zoom thing but I don't really think that would include too many people and You could make the call for people like this.

I'm being pretty long winded but know that you(Dave) would never suggest the pay to play(with the zoom controls) but I think it's the most fair thing and will keep the zoom wars to a minimum or you'll get have enough donations so that you can one day buy the BIG GEAR that I know you want to sail on.....yes, bigger than your 5.8 dude!!!

Anyone else agree with this one or is it just me blabbing away

The side of me that has paid says: Sound fair.
The anti-establishment side of me says: But kind of exclusive.
Maybe something simple like, as wind speed increases so does the time between camera angle switches for all.?
Just an off the top of my head idea.
Or maybe ones who have paid get priority over the 40 year old watching the car cars.
Whatever... I'm easy! easy like sunday morning!

Thanks for the comments. Hopefully others will speak up to. I'm leaning towards allowing only logged in members access to the zoom that are part of a group. You could be added to the group if you made a financial contribution in the past or contributed some other way to the website (eg. Russian Dood, JL and webcam hosts give a lot of their time). Even if you just post actively or use the Sailing Log then you could be added. This would cater more towards the active people instead of the anonymous crowd? Sound fair?

I think this would cut the zooming way down and we would still be only allowed to zoom one at a time within the group.

On another note, I'm also thinking of making the forum and possibly the message board "members only" to cut out the Guest postings.

Comments?
dave

Sound fine and fair to me.
Definatly in the forum: no anonymous
But on the message board: wouldn't that interfere with the new OSR from your cellphone? If not, cool.

Registered to post in the forum sounds good. It will encourage the lurkers to actually register and maybe contribute their ideas more often. The message board seems pretty fleeting to me the anonymous are usually OK, but the trash talk gets tired pretty fast. Doesn't happen very often. On the odd time I've looked at Gorge cams, the message board there is almost all anonymous and you don't have a clue who is posting execpt by style or content if you knew the regulars I guess. Wouldn't want to go that route.

But hey, BWD, its your ball and you can go home with it whenever. We REALLY appreciate your taking the time to ask our opinions on these kinds of questions. It is that kind of attitude that makes this such a great site in the first place!

I totally agree with points one and two and agree even more with the donators only having access. My take is simple, it costs money to operate, maintain and of course host this awsome site, and thanks to Dave and others who have donated their time & money keeping everthing working, we get to enjoy the site. So hey, if your goin to use it, then how bout helpin out monitarily.

On the note of the forums, once again I totally agree with logins (no anonymous), if you got something to say, then you should stand by it/own it, contentious or not.