What has happened to the identification/links of raters on the ratings grid?

Bill, please let Rajeev and the photo.net Board know your opinions on how indispensable I am.

 

On low ratings, it is only two days of data so far, but as it happens the number of 1-2 ratings is lower on those two days. To be completely truthful, one person seems to have gone nuts and deleted himself, but not before leaving move than 50 1 ratings. After I deleted those, the number of 1 ratings (which in fact is normally only about 1% of ratings), was essentially non-existent. As I said, only two data points, but so far that particular aspect is looking OK.

Two possible alternatives:

 

1) Exclude the date from the rating and maybe order the rates by value. At the moment, the timing of many rates make it easy to figure out who rated what.

 

2) Eliminate the numbers page entirely so people will only see who bothered to rate. That's more in keeping with the 'vote' concept. If you keep the ratings page, I suspect some people will try desperately to figure out who did what.

Brian, you deserve a raise without any shade of a doubt. You are totally indispensable.

 

Plus if you leave, please win the lottery and avoid stepping in front of any buses with bad brakes.

 

I remember working on an oracle based payroll personnel system for schoolboards (has 12 month and 10 month calendars = very complex) and only one man really knew how the 8 page SQL statement "worked."

Yes, agreed, Brian, terrific job on an amazing site, keep going. whether i agree or disagree, i trust you know i value your efforts, along with thousands of others. you are helping an entire generation of photogs develop exponentially faster than if we were in our own hovels marveling at our own work with friends bored by yet another slide on the wall . . . have said that, i've test driven, and i'd go back to the old way, for the reasons others stated -- it builds connection, and that is worth whatever abuse -- you advice in other posts to have a thick skin on ratings. well ironically, your advice has worked with me, and i've learned to use the ratings to gain some insights and make new friends, even if i still prefer no ratings. your choice. i can live with the compromise, but its not as easy to get around and identify people's work worth getting to know and study.

Thank you for your generosity, but I dont think this is right, I am in a way offended. The point of me being a patron has been discussed long back in another thread and i dont want to take it up here as its off from the topic here, we can discuss it offline if you like to. I think freedom of speech is not just for patrons, if there is a suggestion or comment which comes from a non-patron, i dont see a problem there, its anyway for the management to take the points and then make the decision. you cant bribe Brian or the management by sponsoring someone to take a particular decision. And for your kind information, we have 'Heroes' on this site, who are not patrons, but bring so much to the table, so i wish you are more considerate next time when you make a comment.

 

I am sorry if I came out harsh with my words David, if Brian or the management think that its better that i dont participate in these discussions, then i would apologise, and gladly keep quiet. happy shooting and cheers!

I am new to the site-couple of days.I read all the above comments and as a scientist i am going to make a rating experiment in PN, "using" members randomly as "Guinea pigs".

I am not a paying member either, but not by choice;the system does n't allow me to register.

So, what i should do? Quit visiting PN or what?

... hiding the link between the identity and the rate level, while keeping visible the name of the person who visited, has the immmense advantage to attract you to the portfolio of the rater, at least a person who spend time (short or not), without any anger or too favourable opinion that could affect seriously and quite naturally your judgment and eventually your back rating...<p> so Brian, you set is definitely a great tool to both limit the revenge but also the mate story and back-scratching however you name it which seriously pollute the visibility and drag down the whole quality of the site...

I agree...and disagree with some/much of above.

-Will be interesting to see in the next days how it pans out.

 

How about if this option was availble to each individual?

If I want the rest of Photo.net to see the different people's ratings I could

choose to do so...? I do believe that the majority of ratings are genuine... and

we have all had our fair/unfair share of ratings/comments. We should all be

able to take it. Myself ... I have been tempted several times to get back to the

one in questioning... and have done so only one... not with a rating, but with a

short explenation to stay clear unless there is a explenation from them as of

why the rating is "off" from the other ratings. It's always going to be a way

around.... if you check right after requesting you can see the hightest rating of

the different persons... if you're there... you know...or then again not...

anyway... I do think it would be nice to see who likes/dislikes your work. Most

people won't have a problem going back to someone telling them

constructively how they feel. I might enjoy a picture of i.e. Pradeep immensly

one time... 7/7... but then next time 4/4... so what... that's the beauty of it... to

have a discussion! It's no rocket sience we are doing...it's personal taste! :-))

Se you folks!

 

Ivar ;-))

This is perhaps the final straw for me. In previous attempts to get useful input on my photography I was forced to use the "critique" option which 9 times out of 10 landed me 10 or so quick useless ratings and no comments. The only thing going for it was that I could go and see what these raters posted and/or what other photos they thought were good and use this to determine if I valued their opinion. Now, I get 10 or so anonymous ratings. Freakin' useless! I've always frowned on mate raters, revenge raters, etc, but they pale in comparison for my distaste to the site's obvious preference to turn this into another "rate my <whatever>" site that appeals to the masses and doesn't have a place for serious photography and serious photography discussion. My subscription is expiring within the next few months and right now I have no plans to renew it.

FWIW, one of the draws of other photo sites for people who have left photo.net is that one can tune out annoying raters (not let them rate your photos). The other is that one can choose to be a "comment-only" poster, meaning, when they comment, they can't rate (indicated by CO), and when someone posts something on them, it can only be a comment (at least I think that part is true).

 

That said, I see validity in an "all-points system," different than an all points bulletin. I note on some of these other boards there is substantially less traffic. I post on a few, and I note that there I will get a half-dozen to dozen views and maybe one or two comments. Photo.net is pretty consistently much higer in the view category and factors higher in the rating catergory. Plus, it is impossible to tell where one stands in the ratings or views on those boards, but on photo.net you know where you stand.

 

So, I think it is all about trade offs. But photo.net has its penache and gererally it is a good one.

 

Steve

Also, as a note, unless the "staff" randomizes the names listed associated to having left a rating, it seems to me that the names are in the order of the ratings. Thus, not hard to figure out who left a bad or good rating. Unless my short study proved randomly unrandom??

 

R,

 

Steve

Ok, one more comment.

 

I have often thought how interesting of an experiement it would be (if done by the staff, just to make a point), if one were to create a pseudo-user and with the artists permission, of course, and post a random selection of various well-known photographers more obscure photos, but under the pseudonym. I believe we would all be amazed at the resulting ratings. It is my opinion, but I have pretty much concluded that if left to the photo.net community, we would de-throne a few of these famous artists, at least, not mark them as high as history has; or mark them as high as editors and publications have.

 

Obviously, I am not seriously suggesting this, but it would be a very interesting experiment to see how many 1's and 7's we would see on this pseudo-poster's photos. My guess is that history and photo.net would differ. Especially if the postings were b&w as many old photos do tend to be.

 

food for thought.

 

Steve

I read a photo netter has posted one anselm adams picture...

Brian used to propose what he called a 'ratings trap' where images that were especially good or bad were run through the ratings queue to see how often these images were 'misjudged'. I think it was more of a tongue in cheek proposal, but let's be honest, it runs contrary to the stated site philosophy that all rates and opinions are valid unless there's a clear pattern of malicious intent. I do think that Brian and Bob should both set up anonymous accounts and run uncontroversion photographs through the system to see how changes like this affect them.

 

From time to time, someone posts links in this forum comparing two images. The intent is to show how two similar shots by different photographers can have dramatically different rates or how one version which is clearly not as well done still gets the same rates. Setting up categories would show that this is quite common, and is perhaps one of the reasons we don't have them.

I did exactly that I repeated an image which got 170+ rates second time round a year later

it got 20+.

louis

Yikes! Pradeep, it was meant as a joke and I was serious about sponsoring you. I've read the other threads and I was feeing charitable, that's all. Maybe if everyone that wanted to get rid of anonymous ratings would be willing to add an extra year to their subscription or sponsor someone then that would certainly add to a strong message. <BR><BR>Is there anything else to add to this topic? It seems completely discussed.

I like the old rating system - please go back to it.

I'm very new to this site and really care less about the rating system. I was a bit disturbed by it at first, but I don't really look at who rates what. I take an average rating and look at all portfolios of those who rated me, in combination with the comments and judge my own work based on that. The rating system, albeit a functional way to receive feedback, is really not helpful at all if you receive comments. Again, I'm new, I may not yet understand the value of knowing who is giving low ratings.

I agree with J Croeder. I left PN for a while to look at other places to have my work critiqued, I have had less visitors to my site but more comments. Brian you may want to look at what other similar sites are doing and then take the best from them. I too look at who rates my pictures, one of the criteria that I would use would be to select the highest and the lowest and see what they were rating me against. One of the reasons I have remained is hat I found some more comments recently than in the past and have tried to answer as many by commenting. I really don't like to rate images I would rather comment and post a suggestion, I recently discovered that I rated someone low on a picture but never looked at their portfolio which was excellent. So now I look at all who have been listed on my rating and look at their portfolios, I generaly disregard anyone who does'nt post any images because they are not telling me anything. I find myself spending too much time in these sites anyway. But it beats watching television.