Paul sez, "Geograph British Isles got its millionth image this morning! The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland. All the images are CC licensed and we think we're building a useful educational and historical document which will be freely available forever." Geograph hits one million photographs! (Thanks, Paul!)

(Image: Minor road near Aberuchill, a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike photo by Dr Richard Murray)

  • sub3000

    “I love this kind of stuff, but when will people realise that having too much content with no good starting point really hurts a website?”

    There is a starting point – the images are tied to the national grids – images are accessed from an interest in a location. Once you know where you are interested in, then this site works. It is the big difference between geograph and other photography sites.

    Cannot get too worked up about the archaepelago name – it is a group of islands north of mainland Britain – now known as Brittany. Amazingly the East Island has more than one nation on it – don’t get too many arguments over naming the East Island.
    What we really want is more West Island contributions. Long ago I suggested a .ie domain name for the site to help this along, .uk is annoying as *&*& in Scotland, so I can imagine it being a turn off in Ireland.

  • sub3000

    British Isles – an archaepelago north of Mainland Britain – now part of France. No probs.

    Could do with a geograph.ie address for the site. Simply not enough contributions from Ireland, and most of those are from one of the East Island nations on holiday.

    Meanwhile – the lack of popularity ratings etc is a strength of the site. There is a way in – off the National Grids. That is the niche geograph occupies – photographs are uniquely sorted by coordinates and can be indexed from a map. Good news, is that it is probably that the site will soon have enhanced mapping in itself. Meanwhile keep sending in the piccies – especially from Ireland.

  • retrojoe

    @#4> The term arose during the period when Ireland had the same monarchy as the UK. It is no more an official term than ‘Great Britain’ (which doesn’t exist at all). ‘British Isles’ was appropriate when they were unified, however now it is considered anachronistic. Those who live in The Republic do not refer to their portion of the island as being part of the ‘British Isles’ and the UK Government refrains from using the term. I think everyone should respect that things change. They weren’t always called the British Isles and it doesn’t have to be called that in the future.

  • barryhunter

    Geograph Photos on a (openspace) slippery map…
    http://openspace.nearby.org.uk/geograph.php?eastings=446000,northings=371000

    Or on OSM maps for real
    http://www.free-map.org.uk/freemap/
    (open the toggle, and select the Geograph layer)

    Or on Google maps
    http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?moduleurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geograph.org.uk%2Fstuff%2Fgmapplet0.xml

  • trr

    #2, #7,
    What succinct term do you offer for the group of islands including the UK and Ireland? As long as people understand “British Isles” and there is no good substitute, it will be used by some.

  • Paul Lockett

    @#7>Great Britain is an official term; it refers to the island made up of mainland England, Scotland and Wales.

  • soupisgoodfood

    Great, 1,000,000 photos and no apparent way to view the most popular or highest rated etc.

    I love this kind of stuff, but when will people realise that having too much content with no good starting point really hurts a website? The average person just having a look is going to give up and move on to the next link on the blog they’re reading if you don’t show them something interesting right away and give them a reason to hang around and dig deeper.

    I’m sure it’s useful if you have an exact idea of what you want, but surely that is not their only audience?

  • abitskitzo

    Why oh why do people outside of Ireland include Ireland in the ‘British Isles’. Irish people REALLY don’t like it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_isles

  • Beanolini

    There’s a picture of the building I live in on there, clearly taken on private property- should I sue them?

    (Er, no.)

    I love this site, I have wasted a lot of time on it on previous occasions…

  • sirwebster

    @2 Because the ‘British Isles’ does include Ireland, it even says so in the wikipedia link you posted. It’s the collective name for the group of islands Ireland is a part of. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less true.

  • barryhunter

    Thank you SOUPISGOODFOOD for your feedback. Yes its true we dont really target the site like that. Its more for people looking for a specific locations, or images on specific topics.

    Having said that I have just added a links to a few collections of interesting images to the homepage. (in the green box)

    Also yes ABITSKITZO we are aware of this issue, FWIW we use it in a purely geographical sense. But see http://ireland.geograph.org.uk/
    :)

  • Anonymous

    Well, SHIT! There goes my rainy British Isles stock photo website!

  • acb

    What would be even cooler would be if they made the photos browseable on an OpenStreetMap draggable map.

    OTOH, they are sponsored by Ordnance Survey, the geodata pigopolists who are fighting tooth and nail to keep their profitable monopoly on mapping data gathered at the taxpayer’s expense.