The ranking problem is always interesting, more so when it deals with social media. Arguably, one the hardest such problem is when social media is a art form, like photography, and when the evaluation is highly subjective.

A few others have stabbed at this problem algorithmically, all of which surface best photographs, rather than best photographers, a slightly less difficult problem. Two popular efforts are Flickr’s own Interestingness, and this other effort.

In view of this, the community itself has taken up the challenge. One clear direction is the activities of the 100_Best_Level1 and 100_Best_Level2 groups. A few photography enthusiasts also periodically write about their own top picks, including those from globalvoicesonline, boudist, squashyfrog, and epicedits.

Overall, the problem hasn’t yet been algorithmically viewed. My bootstrapping effort just ranks users based on their historical authority within Flickr. See what comes out here: Best Popular Photographers on Flickr.

This list is based on an approximation of PageRank which works quite well in surfacing authoritative pages/hosts on the Web. Not good enough here. The problem, however, has various dimensions, and biases, that have to be discounted for, including:

• Participation/engagement of the Photographer on Flickr
• Reciprocity in Flickr; both comments and favorites
• The influence of posting in various groups where commenting is explicitly required, unlike these others.

I’ll address these. Feedback welcome, on this first iteration at a very interesting problem.