Names Back Beside Ratings

I just discovered names are back beside the ratings, after being

accused of rating someone with a 5/5 when in reality I had rated it

a 6/6. I clicked on the ratings number and lo and behold! names are

back beside the ratings (and I DID rate 6/6). I'm thinking I just

need to quit rating altogether because too many people dwell on the

ratings and get upset if you rate them with a 5 or 4.

Actually, I think I like the revised system ... it allows a lot of freedom in choosing how to rate / critique ... thanks Brian ... I think this just might work!

With this always was problem , maybe good result would be don't rate photos which don't like:). BTW, 5 it's good, i understand problem.

We know that sometimes when photo have a average ~6/6 at 20, 30 rates then if somebody give a 3,4 maybe looks as intentional downrate , i know such childish members here. I think that at 4, 3 we should give always comments, what's wrong.

Brian: I went back to "rate recent images" following the logic of the changes you made. However...after only rating VERY few images, the photo.net engine defaulted back to the index list of all of the categories. When I picked a category and chose the "new listings" and then rated a new image in the street category, the rating was treated as a "direct" rating and is then essentially dissallowed as a rating of any value using the new layout. This restricts me to rating very very few images subjected for critique. In this case I was able to rate on less than 10 images before the default index re-appeared. I think that certainly more than a few folks are submitting images for "rate recent" is this some kind of flaw in photo.net where only a few "new" (recently submitted images) are held in some kind of buffer? i.e. If I submitted an image for critique/ratings THIS morning, it would no longer show up in the rate recent qeue and all ratings submitted to the image would no longer have any value?

The Rate Recent Queue has the last 40 days worth of photos that have been submitted for critique. Currently this is about 28,000 photos. If you are coming to the end of a particular category list and being brought back to the index page, it is because it is a small category and you've rated (or skipped by) everything in it already, or else there is a bug. By the way, it is not the case that only "Rate Recent" ratings are valued. Only two of moret than a dozen ranking methods are restricted to the "Rate Recent" ratings. It is true that the default ranking is one of those two, but there are many other ways to look at the photos only a click or two away. Also, your personal "Favorite" photos are driven by your ratings, whether they are "Rate Recent" photos or not.

I care about the numbers less and less and really enjoy receiving thoughtful comments from people whose work I enjoy. That said, I do think the rate recents showing in the breakdown as anonymous opens the door for more drive-by (Kim's term) hate-raters (my term). Bird photographers beware!

Brain: thanks for the prompt response, especially on a Sunday. I have to assume that this is some kind of a bug and I've noted it before. This is what happens: I rate using the "rate recent" category. After x number of submitted images, the "rate recent" shuts off or becomes non-functional (does not allow me to go past a certain image), OR defaults to the category index with the most recent submitted images. (The home page?) Now, if I'm in this "situation" and I click the "rate recent" category, I CANNOT re-enter the category, especially if it just became non-functional while rating. Instead, I have to go to another task, then come back to "rate recent" or purge my IE cache and such, which takes time. I have noted this in the past and I noted that others experienced this as well. If "rate recent images" would not have this bug, I would be able to rate much more in this category which BTW I feel is the way to go...

OK, yes, I like the name back beside raters, but those who vote through the critique forum remain anomymous? In my morning, I had all raters' names, now only those who voted going to my page. Why?

The anonymous raters should also be named. Why are they not?

 

There should be total openness to remove the malignant elements from this site and make

them transparent. It is easy to move through the Rate Request Queue, and trash your

enemies. Openness should be our watchword, then people may really start behaving

themselves!

 

Why should people be afraid to leave a rating now that the system is open? Revenge

ratings will be obvious and transparent!

 

Openness, openness, openness!

 

Nick.

This is a move in the right direction, but lets not have any half measures!

I have already been able to identify 2 obvious and unscroupulous revenge raters of my work.

Now they just look silly and incredible, but they will find new ways unless all is open. Brian et

al do the right thing! - transparency is the new benchmark!

 

Nick.

Now I get how this works - if you rate directly by going to a page, your name shows up. If you rate through the critique forum on "rate recent", you are anonymous. However, the photographer's name DOES show up as you rate "anonymously", so it's still easy to low-ball (or high-ball) someone's photos, but only if they post for critique. I'd just as soon have it that your name shows beside your rating no matter what. I don't mind explaining to someone why I rated their picture as I did and in fact, I generally do leave a comment when I rate.

<p>Because people keep saying they want to know who rated them. So it is a compromise. They get to see who rated the photo by going to it and rating it directly, but they no longer get to see any information at all about who rated the photos through the Rate Recent queue. Those ratings are now completely anonymous, unless they were high ratings that one might come across by finding a photo in someone's "Favorites" list. People can stop sitting at their computer trying to figure out who is giving them a "low" rating in the RR queue, and take more photos, or spend time with the spouse and kids.

 

<p>Contrary to what some people keep saying, making the ratings semi-anonymous was not primarily intended to stop mate-rating. The main reason was to stop people from retaliating against those who were giving them "low" ratings, which at that time meant 5 or below in some people's minds, and is slowly evolving into 6 or below.

 

<p>Although I didn't count on people sitting at their computers all day watching the ratings come in one at a time, which makes them not quite as anonymous as I had hoped, the semi-anonymous ratings did help cut down on the amount of revenge rating and bickering about "low" ratings.

 

<p>By also making it difficult for someone to find out who had given high ratings, I hought the semi-anonymous ratings would cut down on mate-rating. I thought people might not engage in <em>quid pro quo</em> rating so much if they couldn't be sure that they were getting the quid for the quo. This didn't work out. People manage to let each other know when they are throwing around the high ratings.

At the same time, making the direct high ratings semi-anonymous gave some cover to people intent on plastering the gallery with highly-rated average images.

 

<p>So the direct ratings are public now, and the rate recent ratings are even more anonymous, although still not quite absolutely anonymous.

 

<p>I am not worried about low ratings. Low ratings are deleted fairly quickly. Most of the complaining about abusive low ratings is from people who can't bear the presence of a low rating on one of their photos for even a half a day while an administrator or our software finds it -- or from people who tend to think that any rating lower than 6 is an abusive low rating.

This is rediculous, I submited a photo not long ago, it was doing great at 6/5, then all of a sudden, it got hit by three anonimous drive by's, not long after this change!

 

This is no good!

 

Ken.

Brian, I understand your point, but a compramise is never a solution. It should be all or

nothing. Everything should be totally anonymous, or everything should be totally open. You

will just cloud the matter any other way!

 

Nick.

I think this is a good compromise, Brian. You're right, that 5 and 6 are the new "low rates" in people's minds. A "5" is "good" and a "6" is "very good", yet some people get very offended and act like you said their picture was bad if you rate them like that. I'm almost afraid to give a 4 or 3 any more! I think I should completely stop rating and just leave comments only.

I vote that everything should be open!

 

Nick.

Or, perhaps, stop all rating completely, and just leave us with the more valuable comments!

 

?

 

?

 

Nick.

Brian, I really think you should post your own photos on the site for a month to get a better feel for what goes on. These changes in my opinion are well-intentioned, but in effect are making the site less and less user-friendly for people who are here to dialogue and connect with other serious photographers -- who I submit are the bulk of your membership. Some initial reactions:

 

1. Anonymous ratings are a bad idea in a very competitive culture, which is what you have right now. They allow people to downrate others with impunity in rate recent so that their own photo can, relatively speaking, rise closer to the top. This is going on right now.

 

It also makes it much more difficult for people like me to connect with other photographers. I've gotten dialogues started with numerous people who at first only left a rating on one of my photos. I go to theirs and leave a comment, encourage them to comment on mine and off we go. So you have eliminated a signicant way in to other people for me, particularly at a time when the comments to rates ratio seems to be dropping, making it harder and harder to connect through comments.

 

2. Are you now allowing rates outside rate recent to count to default TRP? If you are not, then photo mates who come to a photo outside of rate recent remain discouraged from leaving any rate at all, making your change showing those individuals' rates most beneficial to mate raters, and only encouraging that practice.

 

Sometimes Brian, as my father-in-law says about kids, you just have to shut off the hearing aid. I think there is too much monkeying with the system. Otherwise, if you keep reacting to the negative rather than affirming and encouraging the positive, the fun will gradually dissipate like smoke in the face of an increasing wind of competition and policing of that competition.

 

3. Please answer this: is encouraging dialogue/comments re photo postings a priority to this site? Are there are plans to encourage it?

Brian does post his photographs, and they are rather good!

Heck, I like 5's and 6's, I even dont mind 4's on photo's of mine I feel are average, its the 2;s and 1;s I have a problem with, when I feel it deserves at least a 4!

 

Since very few give comments, the numbers are a vauge indicator as to the quality of what IM submiting, if it get's a lot of 3's, then I know I need to do better!

 

But when one is getting a bunch of 5, 6, and 7's, its hard to fathom why someone felt it deserved a 1 or 2, these I feel are drive by's, and to make the rate recent totaly anonimous, is to give these people a totaly free hand, at making things even worse!

Ben has a good point, but it comes back to the dialogue! - it is the comments that are

important, unless we want to make photo.net a competition!

 

Nick.

I remain with you on this one, Brian. Seems to me this is quite good! An alternative would be for the rater to check a box for anon or not allowing a little faster rating while keeping your intent. :)

Ken Dennis, that is nonsense. The most frequent rating on that photo was 4/4. There is a spread on either side. I guess you were all happy because for a while the photo had a higher average than it merited because some over-generous person slapped a 7/7 on it that was bringing up the averate a bit. You then got a couple of outliers on the low side, a 2/3 and a 3/2.

 

Those aren't drive-by "low" ratings, and they aren't as much outliers as the 7/7 was. They are from people who just don't like the photo. Their opinion is not far from the consensus view, which is that the photo is average. I don't like it so much myself, tending to think that the two others in your "Experiment" folder are more successful exemplars of this technique. If I were rating photos these days, it would be a stretch to call this one more than average. As you say yourself, "totally oversaturated, way blown out, and disfigured" by a dark band at the bottom. I guess you were hoping people weren't going to agree. They did.

Ken, if it's the cat photo you were talking about, I went and left you a comment. Hope you will find it helpful. Sometimes people who rate your images with 6's or 7's are not helping you, but rather hope to get that rating back in reciprocation. You will not learn that way and I assume that's why you joined PN in the first place.