November 2023 update

Performance improvements

I have worked on several performance improvements, chasing slow queries and doing some changes to AstroBin's infrastructure. At the moment AstroBin is extremely quick! There were too many micro-optimizations to mention, but the four most important ones are:

• Discovered and fixed a slow query that affected load time of galleries featuring collaborative efforts.

• Discovered and fixed a slow query during plate-solving activities.

• Made significant query time savings by fetching numbers of Likes and Bookmarks as one query instead of image-by-image when loading galleries.

• Added a segregated read replica database used only for non critical operations that might risk affecting the speed of the website, such as the read-only API, the search engine updates, and several non-critical background tasks.

IOTD/TP process improvements

I spent some time working on improvements in the area of the IOTD/TP:

I applied several performance improvements to the pages used by the IOTD/TP staff. This helps them be more effective and perform their activities more often.

I formalized and notified you about the IOTD/TP rules. You are now required to read and accept them before you may submit your images for consideration. Acceptance can be expressed in your preferences.

I made it so that IOTD/TP badges are only assigned once they're really final. For more information, please consult the FAQ “My image has been X days in the IOTD/TP process, and received Y votes by Submitters/Reviewers. Why doesn't it show an award badge?” on the IOTD/TP FAQ page.

I made it so that images that are not viewed by 80% of their designated Submitters automatically start the process again. This ensures that images do not "fall thru the cracks" if they are unlucky and get submitted for consideration at an unfortunate time.

I increased the number of voting slots for Submitters and Reviewers. As the volume, but mostly the quality, of your submissions increased, it was time to allow more images to be awarded.

I added an informative window where you can check how many views and votes your images received in the IOTD/TP process. You can access this using the (i) badge available on images that are currently in the process or were awarded, or the View → IOTD/TP Stats menu entry for all other images.

I performed an analysis of some metrics I collected by IOTD/TP staff members in order to understand and correct potential misunderstandings and align values. As a result, I implemented two new notifications for staff members. First, they get notified when they Dismiss an image that ends up being awarded (this is okay in moderation, as opinions differ and there's a subjective element in evaluating astrophotographs; however, if this happens systematically, it could signal a misalignment of values), and they get monthly reports with metrics that they can use to improve their activity as IOTD/TP staff members. In the future, these metrics will help with having the best possible IOTD/TP team.

Image collaborators are now also notified when an image they collaborated to gets awarded. Previously, only the person who uploaded the image was notified, and not the people tagged as collaborators.

Other smaller but noteworthy improvements

I improved the compatibility of the Uploader page by falling back to HTTP POST request for individual chunks in case PATCH requests fail. Some antiviruses, firewall, or security extensions might have trouble trusting the PATCH request that AstroBin makes. Additionally, the API calls are not happening via cross-site requests as the frontend app now proxies them to a local server.

Added text inputs in addition to sliders to RA and dec search filters. The sliders alone were too difficult to position to the desired values.

I added an image viewer to the forums, comments, and image descriptions. So if you upload large images there they can be clicked and zoomed to view them at full resolution.

Bortle 4.5 is now available. This was added to Wikipedia on April 2023, and is now available on AstroBin too.

I made several SEO improvements involving sitemaps and canonical names. Hopefully this helps people find AstroBin images and forum posts via search engines.

As usual, I performed dependency and security upgrades!