Out of whack

My latest critique posting, "Jimmy 'D'", received direct ratings of

5.50/5.75; among anonymous raters, the numbers were 3.80/3.60. It

seems to me that this breakdown clearly demonstrates the dysfunction

of the anonymous system. Allowing raters to sneak around the site

discredits the entire process.

I agree 100%, the only thing it does is breed cheating, but that is how Brian wants it so thats how it is. Why Brian wants it this way I cannot understand, you would think he would want people to join and become paying members, however all this does is scare off the new people and "po" the others.

Excuse #467!

I assume you'd rather have photographers chase after people who leave non-anonymous

low ratings on their photos just because their pathetic egos can't handle critique? Or even

differing tastes? Sure, that sounds like an ideal system.

 

Next!

Bill, you have to appreciate the history of how it evolved to this point. In the past, mate raters would form a circle of "cyber-friends", some of whom were fictitious. As soon as they posted a new shot, they would email this circle who would instantly score it 7/7 (whatever the content). This would ensure high exposure on the site. Anybody who honestly scored their work 5/5, would get flamed and retaliatory 1/1 ratings. There were several different mafias who specialised in different types of photos. Brian finally got fed up with this and changed the system. It's not perfect but its a hell of a lot better than what went before.

Bill, have you thought about the possibility that the anonymous ratings you had are perhaps much more honest than the direct ones? I've seen many photos here with much greater differences between anonymous and direct ratings (including some of my own). Yours is not that bad.

 

Looks like Brian finaly is doing something to fight back this mate raters era on photo.net and I can only give all my support because I'm here to learn. If anonymous people rate my photo low, I think what is wrong about this photo and what should I do next time to make it better? (even if unfortunately they don't leave any comments why). Why do you assume that the direct raters are honest in their appreciation to your photos and anonymous are nothing but a bunch of people who just want to make you feel bad?

Well I've had a few low marks on my stuff, including a 1.0 on aesthetics but I'm not losing any sleep over it. I personally think the numerical rating system needs a major overhaul. Two categories are just not enough to cover all the aspects of a photograph. Originality is OK, but Aesthetics is too blunt to allow any meaningful criticism. I could see a minimum of five categories off the top of my head: Lighting: to mark how the photographer perceived and captured the lighting of the subject. Exposure: is the image exposed correctly to accepted standards, ie details in highlights and shadows, good tonal range? Focus: is it well focused notwithstanding purposely blurred or soft focus images? Composition: is it pleasing to the eye, cropped well? Originality: is it a new perspective or simply a rehash done many times before? I have rarely seen a picture here that would rate low on all these points. I suspect that when the original two categories were implemented they were intended to be a quick and not too serious tool for members. The designers did not realize how much of a barometer they would become for many of us. Perhaps now is the time to review and improve the system.

It's been said many times before, the rating is not perfect, it never will be. A more complex rating system favours photographers, a simplified one favours the site. Personally I prefer critiques to ratings, a rating tells me nothing about the raters state of mind and that is what I want to know about.

 

I think we should be even more radical, have a single score of 0-7 that includes all aspects. It has many benefits, less time to rate, no ambiguity, less performance overhead for the site, no retrospective impact on already rated images (rounded averages).

 

Anyhow, that's my 2 penneth.

Normally (and I say that because there are exceptions) when one rates a photo directly it is because they liked the photo. Those ratings tend to be higher than the anonymous ratings, which are received from people skating through the RR queue. I think it's been most people's experience that about the first rating received in the RR queue is a 3/3, so you have to start from there. All the arguments have been made, but this system is an improvement over the mate/hate rating system. The intricacies of it are somewhat difficult to comprehend at times, but as many people have said, ratings are for the site, not for us. Cheers.

Bill and John, the less you care about ratings the better your photos and ratings will be. Try it, I think you will like it!

Bill, I feel you pain. I'm pretty new to photography and this site. I want to learn and this site for the most part has been helpful. Yes, there are a lot of cowards that hide behind their anonymous ratings, there are a lot of users on this site that will take the time to offer feedback and not just drop 1s or 2s. Their the ones to focus on. Even though for me it's hard, I have learned to ignor anonymous low raters. Again, focus on users taht will actually offer words and not just numbers and be honest with yourself. You should be able to recognize if your photos deserve a 1 or a 7. My 2 cents.

 

Will

Thanks, everyone, for the comments. I think I should have made my point clearer. It's not low ratings that bother me--there's no reason for me to think that my photos will please everyone--but rather the way the system is set up: I post for viewership, to have the images seen as widely as possible, and when only anonymous ratings determine how those images will be displayed in the critique gallery, inevitably a couple of low-raters will reduce that viewership enormously. Also, in my experience, the mate-rating excuse for imposing the present system is lame at best. Those individuals who direct-rated my latest posting were in all but one instance unfamiliar to me. I'm sure I'm not unique in noticing that tendency. Again, thanks for your observations.

It's really time Brian set up a seperate forum for ratings whinges. When will people get the message that their pictures are being rated by people from a host of different backgrounds with widely varying tastes? For what it's worth ,I'd have rated Jimmy D around 5 but I can easily imagine someone else giving it a 3 or even less.

<p>The bots already do a job preventing lowball ratings from appearing. (But they don't prevent highball ratings.) I tried an experiment on this photo:</p>

<p>

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo.tcl?photo_id=3023151

<p>It had these ratings already:

<p>Aesth Orig Ratings<br>

3 3 1<br>

4 4 4<br>

5 5 2<br>

</p>

<p>Here is what happened when I tried lowball ratings:<br>

1/1 disallowed<br>

2/2 disallowed<br>

2/3 disallowed<br>

3/2 disallowed <br>

3/3 allowed</p>

<p>

And my highball rating:<br>

7/7 allowed<br>

 

</p>

You need to type a message; there is no "Man/woman of Few Words Award" here. --> LOL