Media Gallery Survey Results

[Wrichik Basu]

As the number of media items increased with time, the media gallery needed a number of new sub-categories so as to properly organize videos. This recommendation was made in this thread, shortly after which @Greg Bernhardt introduced new categories in the media gallery. For example, Biology and Chemistry were introduced under the Other Science category, and Optics, Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism were introduced under Physics, and the former Classical was changed to Classical Mechanics.

Shortly after this, with permission from @Greg Bernhardt, I set out to reorganize the gallery. The primary aim was to put the videos under the proper sub-categories. But while doing this, I found that many videos were no longer available, but the web pages still existed for public view. There was a need to remove these videos from public view, so that visitors would not stumble upon such videos.

As the mentors and the Admin already have a great responsibility of running the site and looking after the day-to-day activities, I decided to help them out by doing this myself.

Why suddenly concentrate on the Media Gallery?

During my short tenure at PF, I understood that PF has three main parts - the main forums, the insights and the media gallery.

While the main forums and the insights are the most helpful to visitors and members, the media section, on the other hand, supplements studies by providing an audio-visual approach to topics. Instead of searching for good videos throughout the net, many people, who know about PF, first come here and search the topic they are looking for in the media gallery, because the media gallery of PF provides authenticate videos, and learning from them is the best way to be sure that one will not be learning anything wrong. Moreover, in several posts like this and the ones after that, the mentors and the Admin themselves talk about the utility of the media gallery.

The Results of the Survey:

Mostly the videos that were added in the early years, have been affected. I have removed all such videos from public view. The number of videos removed per sub-category is as follows:

Classical Mechanics: 3
Quantum: 2
Relativity: 1
Astronomy: 4
Calculus: 1
Interviews: 3
Pop Science: 3
Entertainment: 3
Other Science: 7

Total: 27

Will this survey be conducted again?

With the permission of @Greg Bernhardt, I would like to conduct this survey annually. This would help in keeping the media gallery free from all videos that are unavailable.

Hope that this endeavour of mine has helped the PF administration in their working.

Wrichik.

 

[jedishrfu]

You've answered a question I had recently of why Greg's media count was decreasing.

Initially I thought that Greg had become a BH and that it was the result of Hawking radiation :-)

@Wrichik Basu this is a very noble cause. There may also be duplicate videos too as the software apparently doesn't really check the newly added url against all the other urls. @mfb found a few examples in the ones that I had posted twice.

How are you conducting the survey? manually or have you found a way to automate the process?

If not there may be a way to screen scrape the web page and then use a script to query each url. Alternatively, @Greg Bernhardt may be able to provide a csv file of the video urls and their descriptions.

Category-wise there needs to be a larger choice or a means to post to multiple categories (tagging or keywords). These are things that @Greg Bernhardt needs to think about.

Alternatively, the album approach for groups of videos may be the best way especially the ones I've posted under Calculus.

 

[jedishrfu]

I found this script on Github that may help automate the process:

https://gist.github.com/dominic-p/8729136

 

[Wrichik Basu]

@jedishrfu no automation at all. I scrolled through each and every video in every category. It was a bit laborious, but at the end I finished it within two days (leaving the videos that have been added very recently, hoping that they are fine).

Removing of duplicates was another difficult chore. I tried to remember the video thumbnails and the video names, and once I was into the job, I found that it was not that difficult. As far as possible, I've removed all duplicates.

If not there may be a way to screen scrape the web page and then use a script to query each url.

I do not have any background in javascript or html. I learned java in school, and then MATLAB for use in Physics. So, the only option was doing it manually.