Geograph or supplemental

Published: 30 June 2007

What is a geograph?

If you are new to the site, please have a look at our guide and the Geograph Quickstart Guide first, which should help you get started. The information below provides more detail to help you understand what does and what doesn't constitute a geograph.

Our Aims

The aim of the Geograph website is to be a widely appealing website that will gradually produce a freely accessible archive of educationally useful, geographically located photographs of the British Isles.

The Ordnance Survey grid has been chosen as the basis for the geographical referencing system.

To get an idea of the type of image we are interested in, think what a child looking at a map in a geography lesson might find useful when trying to make sense of what the human and physical geographical features in a given grid square actually look like, or what would he see if he looked further afield from a given viewpoint.

There are many, very broad, subject areas that could be useful to the child in interpreting the map information, including:


These can be photographically interpreted in many different ways - this is definitely not an exhaustive list!

The success of the site depends on a high image submission rate as well as on the accuracy, quality and usefulness of the submissions. We try to make the site appeal to as wide a range of potential contributors as possible so have guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules and have introduced a competitive element in the form of geograph points and a leaderboard.

We hope that as time goes by, most geographs will be taken specifically for this purpose but realise that many people may also wish to contribute pictures from an existing collection.

Don't be disheartened if your image is not classed as a geograph; if your image has been accepted as a supplemental it is still a valued contribution to the project. Only a very tiny percentage of submissions are rejected!

Geograph or Supplemental - How are pictures moderated?

(From 11 May 2016 the Supplemental classification is replaced by Image Type Tags: see Image Type Tags Update ).

If you're the first to submit a proper "geograph" for a grid square you'll get a geograph point added to your profile and the warm glow that comes with it. And the square will change from green to red on our map viewer.
So what makes an image a genuine geograph (there can be many geograph images per square)? And what types of photo or description are discouraged on either geographs or supplementals?


There are thousands of images being submitted each week, and a team of moderators, so mistakes can occur. If you think your submission has been given the wrong classification, click "edit picture information" on the screen for your image, and explain the problem in the box "Please tell us what is wrong...". This raises a ticket that will be reviewed by moderators. But be aware that some aspects of moderation have changed since the site started; for example there is more emphasis on getting into the square to take photographs.

Examples

Examples are on a separate page.

Which square?

Our page Which square? gives guidance on which square to enter as the subject - for close up, wide view, macro and telephoto photographs.

Reasons for rejection

Very few images are rejected. If an image is rejected, only the submitter or a moderator can access it. It is displayed with a short text giving possible reasons for rejection. This text is amplified in Reasons for rejection.

About this document

This article and the linked Examples article were based originally on material in FAQs, help screens, and on submission screens. The information is collected together here, and updated in the light of experience when a team of moderators was established, and discussion in the Geograph forum.
Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]   Text © Copyright June 2007, David Hawgood; licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence.
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