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I continue to be amazed at how the Flickr ‘interestingness’ algorithm reliably finds brilliant photos. I got to thinking, though…what are does Flickr think are the least interesting photos?

There is, of course, a Flickr group for this phenomenon, but I thought I’d check out a few popular tags, to see what kind of images come up. The algorithm is considerably less effective at the bottom end. I think, for example, that the wedding photo is fantastic. Only the travel photo seems truly boring to me.

I can guess at the reasons why it’s difficult to rank boringness. A lack of attention is hard to measure. I note also that these photos seem quite old–many are from the first months of 2004. Of course, by posting this, I’m Heisenberging the results, so in a few days some other travel and dog photos may be less interesting.

The linked photo goes to that photo’s Flickr page, and the text link goes to the lowest ranked photos for that word.

Cat

Dog
(ironically, from Flickr co-founder Caterina)

Vancouver

Computer

Birthday

Party

Wedding

Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Photography. Tag Testing Project: No Tags. Photo by . Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.