Hairstyle Gallery categories

 

For the hairstyle galleries, who decides which category a hairstyle goes into?  I don't want to complain at all, but I thought you should be aware that a lot of hairstyles, at least to me, don't seem to fit into the categories where they were placed.

 

For instance, this hairstyle, which has some hair at chin level was in the ultra short category:  http://gallery.hairboutique.com/details.asp?ID=7668

 

and so was Glenn Close's short (but personally I wouldn't call it ultra short) haircut:  http://gallery.hairboutique.com/details.asp?ID=7700

 

And, how these hairstyles got chosen as short when they're well below the shoulders is surprising:

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the hairstyles in the short category are much longer than those in the medium or long categories! 

 

Are some guidelines in place for those who submit to the gallery?   I know that some hairstyles might be acceptable in two categories of length, but it would be great if people could try to be more uniform in placing them in categories.

 

Thank you for all the time and energy you put into the site!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am bewildered by the long hairstyles that you pointed out and all I can think that happened is that when we updated the Gallery software (which we do at least 2x a year to improve the scripts) somehow they got misfiled into the wrong categories.

 

Unfortunately we currently have 8,000 photos in our gallery of which over 5,000 are currently active.

 

What determines super short, short, medium or long is definitely a major controversy.  What one hairdresser defines as short would be super short to a consumer and what another hairdresser defines as super short would only be short to a different hairdresser.

 

Ultimately there is no real agreement between hairdressers or between consumers or even between hairdressers and consumers.

 

We do have a general rule of thumb and we tend to go with what we think consumers would rate a hairstyle since the site is dedicated to hair consumers.  Yes we love professional hairdressers and support them completely but we do focus on hair consumers.

 

Hairboutique.com licenses or buys (yes...all those photos that you find on the web that look like they are from HB.com are usually "borrowed" without our permission and we did pay for them) all of the hairstyles from a variety of sources including celebrity photographers, professional hairdressers, photographers that do hair and beauty shoots and even some of our own shoots.  No one voluntarily submits photos...which would be definitely nice...because we have paid a lot of money for our current galleries. 

 

The gallery photo definitions are decided by the HB.com team members (there are 2) that manage and update the galleries.  They must first get any new images ready to be loaded into the gallery which means resizing them and other little tasks, and then they load them and categorize them one photo at a time.

 

We used to (in the beginning of our gallery creation in 1998) just have short, medium and long as the categories but we received lots of complaints about how the various "definitions" were put together and also, sometimes what looks short to one person looks super short to another.

 

Generally speaking super short would be where there is not enough hair to cover the ears, short would be hair that covers the ears, medium would be chin length, long would be shoulder length and super long would be to the middle of the back or longer. 

 

So that brings up the question....how would you define hair that is almost shaved like Natalie Portman when she had basically just a fine layer of fuzz after her shaved head started to grow hair?  Would that be super short or ultra super short?  And what about bald.  Does that need to be a category?  And so on and so on.

 

Then there are the people with hair that is below their waist, hair like mine that is to my thighs, hair like my friend who has knee length and then mid-calf and floor length.  Our software limits how many categories we define and so we have to group the best way possible.

 

It is definitely challenging.

 

We do try to follow those general rules when we can.  However, sometimes styles are also borderline. 

 

Also...cuts can be combined.  You might have someone with a super short cut with a few long "mullet" style strands in a modified supershort/medium shag. 

 

We do the very best we can and I apologize in advance for any inconvenience that anyone experiences when looking at our images in our Galleries.  I will definitely investigate the photos you mentioned that should be medium or long instead of short.

 

For the next Gallery software update I will look at ways to fine tune the categorization of our images.  Eventually (within the next 6 months) we will have over 8,000 photos available for viewing and voting.

 

Best wishes,

Karen

 

 

 

Thanks very much for your thoughtful answer.

 

[QUOTE=Karen Shelton]Generally speaking super short would be where there is not enough hair to cover the ears, short would be hair that covers the ears, medium would be chin length, long would be shoulder length and super long would be to the middle of the back or longer.[/quote]

 

I agree completely with your categories.

 

 [quote]So that brings up the question....how would you define hair that is almost shaved like Natalie Portman when she had basically just a fine layer of fuzz after her shaved head started to grow hair?  Would that be super short or ultra super short?  And what about bald.  Does that need to be a category?  And so on and so on. [/quote]

 

I think the categories you have now are perfect.  Although bald is a political or fashion "style" it seems a little silly to put it in a hairstyle gallery when there's literally no hair to style or even cut!

 

 

[quote]For the next Gallery software update I will look at ways to fine tune the categorization of our images.  Eventually (within the next 6 months) we will have over 8,000 photos available for viewing and voting.[/quote]

 

That will be incredible!  Again, thanks for all your hard work.  I enjoy the site very much.