Help pick the best photos, but watch out, it's addictive!

Since we launched WildlifeNearYou 12 days ago over 3,000 photos have been imported from Flickr and added to the site. Many of the most popular species appear in a large number of different photos, so we need a way of picking the most representative photograph for each species to display as a thumbnail in various places around the site.

We started out using favourite counts for this, but that metric is flawed in a couple of ways. Firstly, people tend to favourite photos that are striking or different, but not necessarily the photo that is the best representation of a certain species. Secondly, only a small number of photos have attracted any favourites at all, leaving most species without a clear leader.

Instead, we've launched a brand new feature. Take a look at www.wildlifenearyou.com/best. You'll be presented with two photographs of the same species and asked to pick the best one. Your vote will be used to help determine the overall winner, and you'll be rewarded with another pair of photographs. Watch out though, it's pretty addictive!

The feature has been running for just a few hours and we've already accumulated more than 5,000 votes. If your photo is one of the top three for a species you'll get a shiny medal on your photo page - we plan to start adding these to your profile page in the near future so you can instantly see how many best-of-breed photographs you have taken.

Please be warned though, we reserve the right to tinker with the scoring system - so don't be too upset if your photos move around in the ranking in mysterious ways in the future.