Childish Behaviour

As I expected after my criticisms in the recent Bailey Seals thread,

AZ alias Bailey Seals has now decided to rate my entire portfolio and

again as I expected not a single comment.<p>I thought I had made it

perfectly clear that I had no respect for his opinions, which is I

suppose why he has now chosen to rate all my uploaded work.<p>I

appreciate that AZ/BS is held in high esteem by those that matter

here but I do find this irritating and childish. It�s no wonder that

many have simply given up posting images or have removed them from

the site. photo.net is simply the best online resource there is, but

the Gallery section is rife with this kind of behaviour and it does

the site no favours at all. Quite frankly why on earth should I

bother posting my work here anymore?

I've had a few of those experiences. I also made a few complaints to people through email and received some rather insulting responses. Oh well. In the end I decided that it's not going to make any difference one way or another. People are people and all of this is based on personal preference (or as some people call it subjective opinion), whether it meshes with our own or not. The best you can do is ignore it.

"<em>Quite frankly why on earth should I bother posting my work here anymore?</em>"

<p>

I don't know. Why did you post it here in the first place? If you wanted comments, you'll still get them. If you wanted other people's opinions on your work you'll still get them. If you only want praise, you're out of luck. If you don't want ratings without comments, that's never been an option.

<p>

It's really 100% up to you how much you let other people's opinions piss you off. You're 100% free to ignore the opinions you don't like.

<p>

Were the ratings you received "retaliation". Were they all 1s and 2s? If so, notify abuse@photo.net. If not then it's not really reasonable for you to be able pick and chose who you allow to rate your work.

Keith,

 

Explain to me how you're /not/ being a child by crying and complaining about a rating?

 

If you don't like being rated, then don't post your images. It's as simple as that. Why you think ratings even matter to begin with is beyond me but that is better left for another thread.

 

You're being a hypocrite, Keith. I suggest you re-evaluate your statements.

Now who's being childish?

 

You actively participate in all this fuss talking about another individual on the site, discussing and criticizing his rating behaviour and contribution to the site. He doesn't complain, even though some of the comments posted at this discussion (not specifically by yourself) could easily be considered uncalled-for or maybe even offensive.

 

Now you open another thread in the site feedback forum to publicly inform us that he has rated your portfolio. (who cares?) And you're publicly meandering about you own personal questions as to what value there is in posting your work here. The way you put it, it seems like some ratings, and specifically from a person whose opinion you do not care about, are the cause of it.

 

Besides the oxymoron, there lies the issue of whether your appropriation of the forum for rants, gossip and ego-centered topics is any better than the behaviours that you accuse AZ of.

 

Come on Keith, you've been a member here for how long? I guess enough time to have figured out what ratings mean, what they don't mean, and how serious they're meant to be taken. I guess long enough to be able to tell what is abuse and what is just habits/opinions that while perfectly in-line just happen to be not your liking. There are thousands of members here. Do you think we all agree and love each other and just scream in ecstatic satisfaction about everything they do? The answer is no, in case you haven't figured out. We just get along in a mix of opinions and backgrounds, get what is valuable, ignore what is worthless, put in the best we can. It's a community.

 

If it's such a big matter for you (and it seems to be) and you feel the need to go on and on about how another member rates and why he rated you, and how you're going to leave the site because he did, then maybe this place is just not working for you. Or maybe you should participate in other ways, find a better formula that works for you. But going on about it like that is as childish as your headline accuses AZ to be.

 

Don't get me wrong if I sound negative. I have no personal affection or feud with you or AZ and in many ways I appreciate both your and his contribution to the community. Different types, yet valuable all the same. I just think it's pointless to be bringing our own personal grudges to the forums, because this transforms them into an informal public trial, and this hurts the community. If you think you have a case of abuse, there are established regular channels to report it. If you just want to rant, then try to do it without attacking fellow members.

Bob, I'm certainly not complaining about the scores AZ/BS has given me, infact it would seem that by his standards they are high and no I'm not looking for praise. If I was only interested in the numbers and praise I certainly wouldn't be posting many of the images I have. But what is the point in someone rating my work when they know full well that their opinions are not wanted, other than spite.

Dang, you complaining is almost as bad as Robert Byrd

Rob, I am not complaining about a rating in terms of the scores given, but rather about the mindset of a ratter who has rated 25,000 images with little backup in way of comments. Frankly I would love to see the numerical rating of images die a painful death.<p>Nikos, I wish AZ/BS had joined in the previous thread. God only knows where you have got the idea that I am accusing him of abuse and that I have at any time threatened to leave the site is beyond me. If you are going to argue the least you can do is get your facts right, please!

Nikos, I have no �grudge� against AZ/BS, didn�t even know he existed until a few days ago. This is not a case of a grudge against a fellow member and I resent the accusation.

Keith, I think you might be right that the photo.net Gallery is not the place for you to post your photos. You seem to want to be able to control who rates your Gallery photos and how, and you can't.

 

I will probably get around eventually to giving subscribers the ability to opt out of the rating system entirely. But apart from the ability to opt out, I am not planning ever to give people a veto over who can rate their photos, or set their own rules about how many photos the rater must have uploaded, or whether the ratings must be accompanied by comments, etc, as you seem to wish.

 

If you want to display your photos on your own terms, then I suggest that you take down your portfolio in the Gallery and use your photo.net homepage (http://www.photo.net/homepage) to host your portfolio. This is a subscriber benefit, to which you are entitled. This gives you 15MB of space and (currently) unlimited bandwidth, and you will be in complete control of the presentation. The downside is that you will have to figure out how to drive traffic to your portfolio on your own. At present, anyway, apart from the fact that they are hosted by the same server and have a photo.net URL, there isn't much of a connection between subscriber homepages and the rest of photo.net. Also, at present, homepage users don't have access to the commenting engine available in the regular Gallery for user comments, so you won't have the ability to receive comments, other than through a mailto: email link.

 

Many people already don't upload their photos to the Gallery because they don't want to be rated and critiqued by any Tom, Dick, or Bailey on the Internet, and they don't consider that receiving a share of 3 million photo views per day on photo.net to be worth the aggravation of receiving ratings and comments from people who they think are less knowledgable or cultivated in taste than them. You have to decide what YOU want, and the photo.net Gallery may very well also not be for you.

 

As for Bailey: its good that he got around to rating your photos, if he hadn't already, so that the rankings of your photos reflect his opinion, as 21,000 other photos currently do.

<i>God only knows where you have got the idea that I am accusing him of abuse</i>

<p>

Well I don't seem to be alone in getting that idea. Bob's suggestion to keep abuse reports to the abuse@photo.net mailbox is very much along the same lines to my suggestion. Again, I did not state it as a fact. I said <b>IF</b> you think it's abuse, there are established channels to report it. On the other hand if it's not abuse to your eyes, then your creation of a forum topic to inform us of AZ's ratings of your images can only be seen as a rant. Which part of the above did you misunderstand?

<p>

<i>and that I have at any time threatened to leave the site is beyond me</i>

<p>

First of all, I didn't say the word 'threatened' and rightly so because your or anyone leaving the site (perhaps excepting Bob and Brian) is not a grave enough event to constitute a threat. In this context I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to get <b>your</b> facts right. Beyond the use of the particular word, in case you're wondering where I got the idea that you have suggested you are considering to leave the site, and since you obviously can't afford the effort to soberly reread your first post I have undertaken the courtesy of highlighting a revealing excerpt: <i>Quite frankly why on earth should I bother posting my work here anymore? -- keith laban</i> Now, given reasonable reservations regarding English not being my mother tongue, how am I supposed to read this? Please enlighten us.

Brian, you are quite right. I will take down my images until there is an ability to opt out of the ratings system.

Nikos I have never questioned whether or not I should leave the site, but merely questioned whether or not I should post my images to a Gallery that has a numerical ratings system. I apologise if it was my wording that led to the confusion.

I'd like to invite AZ/BS, Rollo Tomasi and Kaiser Soze to rate my photos, even those for which I've requested no ratings. I'd consider it an honor to receive middling ratings from such esteemed parties.

Brian, I am trying to delete my folder but I'm just getting a server error???

<i>merely questioned whether or not I should post my images to a Gallery that has a numerical ratings system</i>

<p>

As I said in my first post, I am not trying to dispute you and be negative towards you. All I am saying it that the question you pose above is personal and not of public interest. If you add a rant for another member's rating of your images, this goes beyond simple lack of public interest. It becomes an act of bringing personal disputes or disagreements with the site's functions into public discussion with focus to particular members, raising half-defined accusations that do not belong in a public forum.

<p>

Beyond all this, your thoughts about the value of the ratings system are valid and respected. Similar thoughts have been discussed plenty of times in those forums (but fortunately not in terms of personal references) and the conclusion seems to be that the ratings system is here to stay, simply because there is no alternative to a site-wide curatorial mechanism. I'm sure you are aware of this because you are a long-time member and seem to read these fora.

<p>

So, do what you want with your images, or even discuss with other members what could make photo.net a better place to be. But do it outside the context of particular actions of referenced people, simply because that would be a more civil way of doing it.

And as a side note, I would suggest you to reconsider removing your work. It is interesting, and it has attracted the attention and thoughts of many fellow members. I personally feel you have gained from posting your work here, at least as much as the rest of us have gained from viewing it. Don't let a minor discontent grow on you and drive you into a hasty retraction of an interesting gallery, it's just not worth it.

Nikos, I take your point, but please believe me I have always intended that my argument is with the system rather than the individual. AZ/BS is just one of many who make up the system.

"<i>Similar thoughts have been discussed plenty of times in those forums (but fortunately not in terms of personal references)</i>"<p>Sorry Nikos but I do have to disagree with you on this one. There has been a multitude of personal bitching about individuals ratings habits on this Forum, perhaps it rubbed off on me on this occasion, LOL!

Still can't delete the folder.

I have not read all the posts here and I don't really think I have to.

Everyone who receives an unusually high number of rates from a

particular member has to wonder what motivates that behavior - high or

low. This has happened to me about a half dozen times in the last

year and each time I was able to see a pattern from that member and an

apparent motive when I obsereved how various other members were rated

and compared it to mine. For all of you who think Bailey is just a

high volume rater who has the best interest of the site at heart, ask

yourself why he stopped rating me as soon as the default pages changed

that no longer valued qualitative rates but simply the number of

rates. (He was doing this to quite a few members, but significantly

not everyone.) In fact at that time, he simply disappeared for quite

a while. You may call it a coincidence if you like and I'm sure we

has a story at the ready that you might buy.

 

You wouldn't notice this sort of thing unless you uploaded regularly -

a couple of times a week - over the past year. That's why Bob and

Brian don't fully understand the ramifications of each change in the

ratings process or in the way that certain members respond to those

changes. If you uploaded reasonably good images without using your

widely recognized names, you would understand.

 

Kieth.

 

It's a wierd game Bailey plays. Try to focus on one simple truth:

one more rate moves you up a page and gives you just a little bit more

visibility so that people who actually want to talk about your work

will be more likely to see it. Rates on old images are of no

consequence at all since photographers are not notified in any way

when a rate without a comment occurs. You see, there's no point,

since rates have a curatorial purpose only over the very short term.

Nobody else rates old images. . . . in quantity . . . . without

comment.

 

The people who moderate the photo critique forum should perhaps

contribute to it regularly. Then and only then will they understand

what's going on. Copping an attitude against Kieth or me or Marc

tells me you don't understand or care why so many of the photographers

that I would have thought you respected have stopped contributing to

this forum.

 

Note the recent formation of ad hoc groups to avoid all the negative

consequences of the ratings abuses. That tells me that you're not

doing what is necessary to fix the problem. Raising money is great,

but don't let that compromise the quality of what you're offering .

If you don't care about the numerical ratings, why do you waste your thoughts on the ratings you receive? Forget about them, ignore them, it's very easy to do, they're just numbers.

 

Taking down your pictures because of them is the opposite of thinking the numerical ratings are stupid. It's taking them very seriously.

 

I too think the numerical ratings are silly, so I don't give any, not even to people who want ratings.

 

In fact, to me the only purpose of the ratings is to cause two out of three threads here on the Site Feedback Forum. It's great fun, probably the single most entertaining part of photo.net. I'm sorry for all the people who miss out on the fun just because they have deselected it from their unified view :-)

Carl, many thanks, but it is not really AZ/BS I have the argument with, just the numerical ratings system in general. I'm afraid though that it's here to stay, getting rid of it is not an option, would spoil to many peoples fun, probably reduce the number of punters and therefore subscribers. I really do appreciate your support though! All the best to you.

Ivar, I suppose it is the mindset of the ratters rather than the ratings as such, I know I shouldn't let it but it just gets up my nose.

" ask yourself why he stopped rating me as soon as the default pages changed"

 

Sorry, Carl, but although you may believe that I am involved in a Masonic conspiracy

related to your photos, you are wrong. My life does not even revolve around Keith,

either. :-) In fact, I've been away for several months, only popping in sporadically. I

have more time for photo.net now, and, ensconced with a new throwaway email

address (in the event that a certain pesky Russian habitue here decides again to sign

me up for email pornography) I am back, posting more ratings lately.

 

If you are complaining that I haven't rated any of your photos lately, please don't

worry, I will, soon enough. I'm sure you'll find something else to create a conspiracy

theory about soon enough -- perhaps that I *am* rating your photos again. ;-)

 

As for my rating Keith's photos today: Keith I am glad that you do not believe that I

rated abusively. I didn't. I liked some of your photos and rated them as such.

 

And Lex, I took you up on your offer. Thanks! (Diafine rules, dunnit....)