Giving credit to critics...

OK... There seem to be a great many complaints over ratings and comments.

What if there were a way that you could see how valuable other members felt a critic was. If a critic could "earn" points with well thought out comments this would help, I think, with the ratings issue.

Imagine if X went around educating people in a polite, helpfull teacheresque way, and gave great nuggets of info. Imagine if everyone that saw these nuggets could give him/her a +point or a -point for that nugget as in.... hey, thanks that makes sense, and helped me or that was just dumb, and rude.

You could even give a weighting factor to their ratings, if they were really valuable patrons.

ooh... plus it would give you a quantifiable way to select say... elves/curators etc.

Sure there could be abuse of this system, but not really... as it would matter only if they had lots of points or something.

Another problem this would solve would be the "fly-by=nighters" becuase if they only rated 50 or something photos... then their critiquer score would be low. or if they rated 2000 photos, but got nothing but complaints... they'd have a low score, but if they commented, and rated 2000 photos, and had complaints only from the low scores, but the comments were really good, they'd get positive feedback from folks other than the photographer who agreed with their comment, or others who valued their comment as an onlooker.

.... I wonder... but not a rating system, just a +, -, or no opinion... because then it would be simply a tally of how many people appreciated their response. The other thing this would do is keep it so that you'd really have to be busy to have enough critic points for it to matter.

What do you all think?

I take your point to mean that some critiques are more useful than

others and that a way to distinguish one from the other would be

useful. I agree, but I'm not convinced that there is widespread

support for making a distinction. Some have suggested that the length

of the critique would be a quick and dirty way to make a simple

measurement that a database program could easily recognize. Others

think that a group of experts could be used as a basis for comparison,

although that refers to ratings more than comments.

I went to a local camera club competition last night and came home

completely discouraged. Here's a judge / professional photographer

who often misreads light, makes it clear that he can not appreciate

most genres, and gave awards to images that were very weak with

obvious flaws that most of us would see immediately. My point is that

good judges are hard to find, and while there are quite a few on this

site, they have not been nurtured in a way that will encourage them

all to be active and influential. .

maybe I did misread your post. If there was a +/- button after each

comment that could only be accessed by the maker, one or the other (or

niether) could be entered and factored into the proposed wieghting

system. It would have to be fairly sophisticated in order to separate

out the appreciative 'wows' as well as the constructive criticism

accompanied by a low rate which would often as not draw a (-). Making

the selection publically visible would help reduce abuses. A lot of us

do get appreciative emails and this would be an easier way to indicate

appreciation. .

ok... so the access would be anyone reading a comment post. ANYONE could give it a + or - or not bother at all.

the + would say... I saw the image, and read the comment and learned something.

the - would be that... either the comment was stupid, or inflamatory... or whatever.

The point is... the EVERYONE that reads a comment could say... hey this was usefull or not. And the single " - " a constructive but not positive comment would get from the image's owner could be outweighed by the other +s if others agreed that it aws a good or helpfull comment.

This seems to not be a very popular idea... and I'm not sure why.... it's an EXTREMELY simple system. and would be more difficult to abuse than the PN rating system, because it isn't between only the image creator (who tends to be bias, and defensive) and the critique. It would actually be an onlooker's point of view, on how well the critic did in terms of critiquing someone elses picture.

IT would give a way to quantify a users non photographic contributions.

Quantifying a user's contributions would give a way for people to evaluate the validity of comments made, and ratings given.

Ok . . . I like your idea, but I think there's a risk that on some

pages where we've seem debates, you could imagine a whole boatload of

pluses and minuses depending on your point of view.

I still think that the greater abuse is ratings without comments and

if your idea takes hold, I would hope that it would be in the context

of required comments. At least it requires you to slow down and

actually look at the image long enough to think of something

intelligent to say.

I think we're no where near close to a consensus on understanding what

a critique is or even if that is a required part of a comment.

You might consider starting a thread on how to critique a photograph.