Photo Rating Suggestions

Drop the ratings, keep the comments. Good photographs will inevitably draw more comments, so change the "top-rated" for "most popular".

 

It would be nice to have categories too (portrait, landscape, wildlife, sport, etc).

 

Sounds like photocritique.net, doesn't it?

A lot of people have suggested things I really like, but I'll echo them here anyway...

 

- Assign some sort of "value" to the numerical rating. 1=waste of electrons, 2=well, could be worse, etc.

 

Why: Well, I do like to see, when people rate my photos, how I stand in relation to other photos they've rated. But it's hard to quantify "try cropping the top 1 inch, and I think it would be better," isn't it? If each number has some sort of a "value" like this, it would to some extent help standardize the process, but it would give more information about that person's opinion at the same time. I like the actual numerical rating because it can be quantified. Sure, what does it mean when one of my photos gets a 1/1 from one person, and a 7/7 from another? One person didn't like it, one person did (within reason), which brings me to another point...

 

- someone mentioned "photos this person found interesting" or "photos this person rated highly", or something similar, that could be added to a member profile. I LIKE IT!

 

Why: If someone rates one of my photos with 1/1, unless s/he give a reason for it, I know they didn't like it, but I don't know why. If I find that all the pictures they like have dogs in them, and mine was of a cat, well, that gives me a clue of how their mind works. If all the pictures they like have cats, but they still rated my cat low, maybe I'll even write to them (or my cat will!) and ask them how to improve.

 

- standard deviation on the "this member has rated X photos, with an average of Y for originality and Z for aesthetics." Please.

 

Why: Someone rates a photo of mine, for example, with 7/7. I look at his/her profile, and find that s/he has a mean of 5/5 for the 100 photos they have rated. Now, that could reflect 50 photos that got 7/7, and 50 photos that got 3/3. That still would yield a mean of 5/5. But, if it says mean of X and SD of Y, that tells me more about where I stand in relation to their likes/dislikes.

 

A couple of things that have been suggested, either here or in other threads, are not among my favorite ideas. The top ones are:

 

- require a "real" (non-hotmail, non-yahoo) e-mail address in order to be able to rate photos.

 

Why: I have one computer. It belongs to my company. I can take the laptop home with me, but if I want to surf, I have to connect through the company's server, and use the company's software. Which limits my non-work e-mail use to ones that are on the web. I have Yahoo at the moment. Why don't I use my work address for my membership? Because I'd prefer to limit the number of non-work e-mails I get at work.

 

Suggestion: Prefer, but NOT require, that if one uses a hotmail, yahoo, etc. account, one also provides, FOR CHECKING PURPOSES ONLY, and only at the time of registration, a working "real" account.

 

- "you can't rate anyone else's work until X of your photos have been rated."

 

Why: If a photo of mine is not rated, there might be at least two reasons: 1. Low "visibility". If it doesn't get seen, it ain't gonna get rated. 2. it's not a good photo.

 

If no one has rated my photos, does that mean that my opinion does not matter? Or, to really throw fuel on the fire here, does that mean that I don't have a right to an opinion?

 

Suggestion: Please, don't put on this restriction. In my opinion, that will actually lead to shenanigans, as people who want to act like DaBomber will get their "cohorts" who can rate, to rate their photos, so that then they can be DaBomber and give everyone low ratings. Did that make any sense at all?? :-)

 

I'm sorry this got so long. But I think this is a question that needed to be asked, so thank you for asking it.

 

Elizabeth

It seems to me from my perusal of this thread that the general consensus is to either do away with the ratings, or significantly change the process. I have also seen a majority talk about how comments are helpful/appreciated and ratings are either not helpful, or certainly not as helpful as the comments. I would suggest that the ratings be set up in such a way that a significant (or at least pertinent) comment must first be posted and that comment becomes your "ticket" into the rating page. (I personally don't even so much as glance at the ratings, but I do read and take into consideration ALL of the comments.)

Keep photo.net a free, public site, but why not move photo.net accounts to a subscription-based service, with a fee for those who wish to set up an account. Wouldn't that cut down on the abusers, duplicate accounts, and number of hit-and-run artists? That way the ratings and comments system becomes more valuable, and can stay as is. With the money I spend on annual photo magazine subscriptions plus others I buy on the news stand, having the photo.net community is worth at least $10 to $20 a year to me.

 

p.s. Mark Meyer's suggestion of "Add this photo to your favorites" is a good one.

Subject: Response to Photo Rating Suggestions

 

This thread got too long, so these suggestions may have already been made, but here's my vote:

1. Eliminate the numerical rating system entirely.

 

2. Require comments like in the nature critique forum.

 

3. Limit postings to one a week, like on the nature forum. This will eliminate mass postings and cause people to be more choosy about what they post.

 

4. Limit the option to post to people who have first made at least five comments anywhere within photo.net (except the unmoderated forum and the classifieds) before they can post a picture for critique. You shoud have the technology to do this, as you can already search for comments and other contributions within photo.net when you click on someone's name. That way, you are limiting the option to post pictures to those who contribute to photo.net, while eliminating people who merely want to take from photo.net.

 

I rarely look at the galleries. The shear volume and the arbitrariness of it all discourages me. I usually will view someone's gallery only if one of their shots pops on my screen and I really like it. Only when I am really bored will I search for top rated photos after I have changed the search criteria to >7, >7. If you implement these changes (and throw out all the old fluff), I will start looking at the galleries.

 

Thanks for asking for feedback.

There will be no concensus until we agree what the problems are. I would propose an issue list.

 

What are the general solvable issues?

 

1. Remove abuses

2. Promote USEFUL discussion in image reviews, feedback to posters

3. Minimize time impact on philg and gang

 

Does everyone agree that these three items are the key to finding a resolution to the photo rating system?

 

How do you resolve 1? User moderation system

How do you resolve 2? Provide insentives for people adding USEFUL feedback on images... ie. User moderation system

How do you resolve 3? User moderation system, no fixed moderators.

 

Just my 3.5 cents.

Vuk has noticed that the elves seem to have done away with all "1/1" ratings. True.

 

But they have failed to recalculate the resultant averages correctly, giving wrong numbers of ratings and then wrong results as the averages underneath the picture. The average rating for a particular picture seems to have remained unchanged (?).

 

Is this a plot? or just a bug?

 

And I agree with Mike Spinak... it's useful to know what kinds of pictures "sell". The Ratings System gives an inkling of this to those who are interested. Sometimes we're not the best judge of our own work. This assumes of course that it's "OK" to want your work to be judged. It's the old "Noble Artist Shivering In His Garret" vs. "Show Pony Who Goes to ALL The Openings" syndrome rearing its ugly head again. Some of us revel in the attention and others declare, "I vant to be alone". All I can say is, "it takes all kinds" and stopping the ratings smacks of puritanistic censorship.

 

Let us shallow, vain, deluded dilettantes have our fleeting moment of glory (and sometimes it's not so glorious either). You idealists out there (and above) can hack off your ears in disgust at our naiveity and do the hair-shirt and ashes hermit thing - no one's trying to stop YOU. Why should you try to stop US?

 

Reform the system (and fix the calculations while you do it) and get on with Life in the fast or slow lane - whatever takes your fancy.

How about only allow people who have uploaded photos to rate

photos. Sometimes I get low ratings from someone on a shot,

and I think it just might not be their cup of tea. But when I check

them out, they have nothing posted, so I can't tell if my picture of

satan just clashes with their kitten shot sensibilities.

Get rid of the ratings. Completely. Personally, I like the way it used to be -- allowing photo uploads and comments to them, but without a forum dedicated to critiquing and without numerical ratings, both of which have torn apart the community rather than brought it together IMO.

I don't think the rating system or the top-rated page should be scrapped as I think that they are useful to a lot of people. I'm a beginner and like to be able to get examples of good photos and going through the top-rated page, while imperfect, is one of the easiest ways to do this. Without ratings it would be very difficult to find the best and I would probably give up trying.

 

I like the "photos this person likes" idea, which also gave me another idea. Why not have a list of all the photographs a person has rated along with the ratings instead of just the average? Then when someone gives you a rating you can actually see how and what they rate, giving you a better idea of the worth of their opinion. If they give bad ratings to photos you think are good then you can ignore them. It would also give you an idea of what photos they do/don't like and maybe show you if your stuff is/isn't what they are into.

 

Just an idea. Lisa.

"There is an inherent silliness in assigning quantitative ratings to artistic expression." Yes!

1) replace the numeric rating with the number of comments.

2) verify user login has valid email address, when a login is created.

3) only allow one comment per user login per image.

4) provide a list of most-commented images.

 

Comments are the most valuable piece of information that a creator can get. Roger Ebert would be writing obits in Onarga, IL if he didn't back up his star rating with informed criticism.

 

Yes, people can abuse the system by putting in acronyms or mono-syllabic flames, but they can only do it once per image.

 

Tighter control of user logins would be widely beneficial to photo.net.

 

Thanks for for the good work.

Problems noted here include: critiquing by members who don't themselves have any photos posted; targeting of members by others with punitive or "revenge" ratings; and photos not getting rated at all. 

<p>

 

Something that would help: Limit the ability to rate photos to a feature which would be inserted into the photo uploading process, that would <i>require a member to rate 1 photo (or more) for every photo of theirs that they upload</i>. Also, make the photographer <i>anonymous</i> to the rater at that stage � i.e., you just see a photo, and the rating box and optional comment box. Also, don't show ratings already given to that photo. Set it up so that you can't upload <i>your</i> photo, until you rate the displayed photo(s). </p>

<p>

 

Advantages: You have make a contribution to the forum (by helping somebody else get an idea of how they're doing) in order to get a benefit from the forum (getting your own photo seen). It's fair, it may deter some folks from just posting stuff for the hell of it, and it will contribute to everyone who has posted a photo having a chance at getting some feedback. Also, at the time you make your rating, you don't know who the photographer is, so you can't nail 'em out of personal spite or puff 'em out of personal friendship, and you don't know how other folks have rated the photo, so you can't just follow the crowd (or be an intentional contrarian). </p>

<p>

 

An important aspect of this has to be: This is the <i>only</i> way photos are rated. Sure, it's random, but if there's really all this anguish about people targetting other people, that's the only way you're going to effectively address it. If you want to specifically comment on the photos of someone you wander across, use the "Comment" option. Also: no capability to go back later and "adjust" your rating. You ought to have to live with it. Maybe that will make people think a little bit harder about what they drop on somebody. Also, leave in place the current system by which the identity of the rater is disclosed.

<em>A killer may kill u once but a hacker have this chance as long as you live.</em>

<P>

Sorry, photonet conscience, but I missed something. When hacking is worse than death, you may as well put a gun to your head, because you've lost the meaning of living. If you're using a bogus username to protect the customers in your business, than get a personal, separate email account to write more direct commentary. Using the tactics of "hackers" only legitimizes hackers.

Although not specifically related to ratings per se, one of the interesting and overarching ideas I've picked up in all this is a mechanism to limit the number of photos that a person posts. Given the junk one has to wade through, I think this is an excellent way to improve the site in general and it should also provide a tighter sense of community here that may promote greater honesty in evaluation. I would also gladly pay a $20 yearly fee for advanced member privileges.

 

Also, as I've said before, if any changes are made to the ratings system, the current totals will be rendered invalid--in fact they already are: my educated guess is that making everything open to view has probably led to some substantial overall scoring inflation (one is less likely to leave a low points and face retaliation, confrontation or simply looking mean-spirited), which is going to favour more recent pictures over old, established photos that have received most of the rating they can expect. How is this going to be dealt with? Will everyone have resubmit everything? I don't see a simple solution, perhaps someone else does.

 

BTW--Tony is correct in spotting the current calculation error: I am getting a phantom pair of scores (1 and 1) added to the tally even though they don't show up in the list of ratings for the picture. For example, it will say that picture has been rated 7 times, but if you look at the details only 6 are listed; plus, the phantom 7th is being used in the average.

 

Vuk.

Please do not change the top-rated photographer page and take away the most important goal in my lif right now -- catching up to Mr. Potato Head the Travelling Tuber.

I was trying to figure out why I object so much to the numerical ratings, since I don't participate. However, <b>the problems from the ratings spill over into the forums</b>. Who needs that?

<p>

A member gets a 1/1 rating from another member, and writes to find out the reason for the rating. When he receives the reason, he gets hurt, feels oppressed, and starts a thread of more than a hundred contributions that have little to do with photography.

<p>

One of the most useful things about photo.net is the rating of sellers by members. We don't use numerical ratings for that. Why not? <b>Because they are useless.</b>

I think its useful to draw a distinction between provding critique and feedback to aid learning and giving ratings to indicate approval, provide encouragement and to help identify worthwhile/interesting photos. I think the former is much better served by comments but for the latter numeric ratings are also very useful if only to allow a search/filter facility for finding the better pictures (assuming that that many come here, at least in part, to look at, enjoy and learn from good photographs and that noone wants a fcaility to search for bad pictures).

 

Therefore I would like a ratings system where the ratings are either not to leave a rating or to rate on a scale of 5 to 10. This is not to discourage criticism (quite the opposite) but to confine it to comments which would would hopefully make it more helpful and constructive than simple low scores whilst still retaining the advantages of a numeric rating.

 

Such a scale would also solve a lot of the abuse and acrimony as you can't really give be malicious with a 5 (or at least not as effectively as it is implicitiy some kind of approval). If you disagree with a picture's high rating you can still register disapproval via a comment but have to back it up with your reasons.

 

I'm also in favour of a requirement that you rate and comment on (say) 10 photographs for each of your own you submit for review. Overall I'd rather have a reduced number of high quality and instructive/encouraging reviews than the current random number of often unreliable numeric ratings. Also submission for rating should be an explicit opt-in to accomodate those don't want any part of the ratings system.

 

I would keep the "top rated photographers" list but I think its primary benefit is to draw attention to the interesting porfolios and its current incarnation promotes the sort of competetiveness that leads to lot of the problems with the ratings system at present. I would make its entry criteria more stringent, order it alphabetically and not publish the overall scores. It could be a sort of "Highly Commended" section (or two or three sections with increasingly stringent requiements for entry).

 

Matthew

By the way, Spud (the travellin' tuber) has not created any custom data fields.

<i>"Please do not change the top-rated photographer page and take away the most important goal in my lif right now -- catching up to Mr. Potato Head the Travelling Tuber." -- Jeff Moag</i>

<br><br>

Jeff, I understand how you feel. Until a revenge ratings bomber got me, I enjoyed several days directly atop Amy Powers.

<br><br>

Matthew, you've brought up some good suggestions, but how do you propose we deal with ratings on pictures already uploaded and rated if switching to a new 5-10 system?

The top-rated photographers list, which contributes to "ratings fever", relies on ratings which implicitly assert a degree of precision that is unjustifiable. Anybody remember "significant digits"? If you measure something only to the degree of precision represented by an integer, you can't take your data and average it out and then assert that you can distinguish a difference between two things that come out at, say, 5.01 and 5.02. Given the degree of accuracy in your measurement, that distinction is simply not significant.

 

<p>The top-rated photographers list, if it is retained, should be "banded". The simplest and most defensible way to do it would be to have 10 "bands" (i.e., avg. 0.00-0.99, 1.00-1.99, 2.00-2.99, etc.), and to then list people alphabetically within bands. It would give a general idea of how peoples' work is assessed, without the wholly unrealistic sense of exactitude that the rating averages now imply, with their significance pushed out to the .01 level.

We seem to have two camps here on photo.net: those who think the ratings are worthwhile and those who don�t. How can we make them both happy? Opt-in.

 

Make participating in the ratings game a per user variable:

* No! You can�t reduce Art to a mere Number.

* Yes, I wanna race with the other rats!

 

Until you opt-in, you cannot rate other photos/galleries and no one can rate yours. Comments and commenting would be unaffected.

 

Just because we cannot make ratings perfectly free of abuse does not mean that it�s useless to try making it more difficult to abuse. So, you can�t opt-in until certain criteria have been met:

* you have a validated e-mail address (hotmail, etc. OK if validated)

* you have uploaded at least N pictures

 

Why have the posting requirement? Well, with comments your words stand on their own (but see below). But with ratings, we need something with which to calibrate information (the Satan/Bunny conundrum). For those of you too lazy^H^H^H^Hbusy to contribute any of your own works, you can still contribute exactly as you do now with comments. Optionally, a �photos that I like� section could substitute for posting, but there would have to be a minimum number of different photographers represented.

 

You can opt-out at anytime. If you do, then all of your ratings, both of your photos and ratings you have given to others, are erased. It�s all or nothing. You can always opt back in again (perhaps after uploading at least N new photos?)

 

Comment feedback: For each comment on a photo, the photographer can indicate: this comment was helpful/interesting/useless/insulting. Aggregate data on this goes into a user�s profile. Suggesting little stars next to the commentor�s name based on this feedback is probably a little too crass, but you get the drift. While this is somewhat subject to abuse, you will at least have an indication who is tactful/helpful and who is thin-skinned/vindictive.

Vuk wrote:

 

"Until a revenge ratings bomber got me, I enjoyed several days directly atop Amy Powers."

 

Whereas I have until recently been directly atop Spud the travellin' tuber. I think you got the best of this deal.

Matthew,

 

I hate to say this, but if the scale is from 5 to 10 then the blitzers will give 5/5s instead of 10/10s. Think about it....

 

I really don't care too much if someone gives me a genuine very low rating. If they don't like a pic then good for them! It's the blitzers that pattern-rate who make the skin crawl (this goes for the 10/10ers as well - and yes, I have a few of THEM in my ratings lists, to my great embarassment).

 

I've also been "guilty" of irrationally rating pictures low in the past just because I don't like the genre or the subject matter. That's my prerogative, ain't it? I've also rated many pictures highly and the average aesthetics rating I dole out (according to the elves) is about 5 - near enough to average. Sometimes I'm in a bad mood and sometimes I'm in a good mood. Sometimes I'm just tired. Sometimes I don't look carefully enough at the details (because the thumbnails are so small). But that doesn't mean I'm a blitzer. The other raters will correct any mistakes I made with the Law of Averages.

 

But I've also posted the first or second rating on POWs a few times, well before they were adjudicated as such. So it's swings and roundabouts.

 

All this stuff about trawling for IP addresses, and publicly shaming people who rate low, freezing their ratings etc. is getting very totalitarian indeed. What do you guys want? Everyone gets a 10 and a teddy bear?

 

The thing that started all this was a few stupid blitzers who had a hack into the system because it was easy to do so. Photonet Conscience has identified a few (they stood out like dogs cojones anyway, but his analysis and defense of it was masterful). Many of these guys and gals have disappeared from the site or deleted their offending images. Good result!

 

If Mr. Conscience can do it, why can't the moderators of this site? (as noted above, they've tried, but the last attempt fell a little short on the math). The answer is of course they CAN, and I hope they do. But I vote against getting rid of the system altogether (do I, do WE even have a vote?).

 

One of the things I discovered from the ratings system was that B&W "street" shots are well-commented, but poorly rated. Color shots of pretty landscapes rate better, but excite more gushy comments (i.e. flattering but generally of lower analytical standards - not that I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth or anything ungrateful like that). Anti-B&Wism is a site-wide phenomenon - there certainly seems to be a bias against B&W candid photography. This is important if you're considering re-envigorating a career in professional photography. You have to know what "sells" (again, as proposed above). As a direct result of the ratings game I've consigned my B&W efforts to the "private use only fine art" domain of my photographic efforts. Disappointing personally, but pragmatic.

 

I see nothing wrong with subjective ratings or voting in general. If the voters are reasonably genuine then there's no problem. Most of the traps suggested above would slow the process down. There MUST be a way to eliminate the rogues as they're so easy to spot "manually". Surely some software whiz could do it without turning photo.net into Fort Apache, The Bronx or (worse) some kind of therapy page for sensitive souls or (the WORST) a photographic site where photographic appreciation is confined to only being allowed to say nice things about others' work. Sometimes a photographer needs a blunt and brutal kick in the ass to get him or her to realise they're on the wrong track. I've sure had a few and "thanks" for that whoever you are. It did me good.

 

LASTLY...

 

A section of the "Services Photonet" post that has received little or no discussion is the proposal for we photo.netters to provide private lists of blitzers. Surely they aren't serious? This is straight out of Stalin's text book. The elves should be able to detect these themselves without the use of anonymous "informants".

 

Goodnight all...

Dave.

 

It doesn't work exactly that way in psychometrics. What you would have to define instead are ranges of significant differences from a fairly elaborate calculation that considers number of votes, mean scores and standard deviations (although you'd be violating all kinds of statistical assumptions like homogeneity of variance, random sampling and equal cell sizes, given how the system functions here). In any case, I don't think it would really do away with competitiveness, as people would probably be clawing and scratching their way into a higher division, and then stomping on those at the top of the lower one to avoid relegation. I can just see distrubutions of scores with everyone clustered near the top and bottom of groups. (Then just imagine those final decisive games at the end of the season and all the bribery/fixing/shaving we'd have to deal with ;-)

 

Erik.

 

The eBay-style character assas^H^H^H^H^Hrating is a great idea! Have a section in the member profile where others can leave comments about the person as photographer, critic and contributer.