Quality really improved?

Is quality of pictures on the site really improved? Looking at the

first three or four pages of the TRP the A and O average for each

photo is amazingly high. I can't belive that. I really wonder what is

your opinion on the overall quality of the photos you can find on the

first three or four pages the TRP. I am pretty new to the site... so I

don't know what was the average "average score" of the photos on the

TRP few years ago. I think it could be quite interesting if Brian

would provide such information. Just for curiosity.

ok ok ... I know that rating it is a biased indicator of quality... but that's the way the site ranks pictures so ...

Michele, unfortunately, I think people tend to get a bit carried away with their ratings. For example, if they see a wizened old face they'll give a 7/7 and vote for the subject rather than the quality of the photograph. Or they'll see an interesting picture with some ghastly OTT photoshop work and do the same - I'm sure some people rate from the thumbnail.

Michele, change your search parameter to 1 year, 2 year or 3 year of photographers average and you can see.

 

Top photographer average (average score of all images with over 10 rates) in the TRP.

 

1 year ago 12.53

2 year ago 12.22

3 year ago 11.91

Regardless of ratings, I would say that as there are more and more people posting, it is probable that the quality of the best photos improve. As it is true that the quality of the worst photos decrease. This would be true if we were to consider the way people rate as a constant.

What's happened Michele, is that mate-raters have completely taken over. It is a true embarassment to the site. And to be honest, I do not think it can be fixed. A brand new crop of people are responsible for what you see happening.

I believe the quality of images uploaded to websites has deteriorated over the past few years. Due to the widespread availability of digital cameras, cheaper software, ease of upload, etc. more and more people believe they have a knack for photography and so there's a proliferation of mediocre uploads to sites like PN.<p>

We have some very good images & photographers, but overall I'd say it is misleading to compare the rating today with that of yesteryear : that's rating inflation rather than an improvement in quality.

Over the past few years, the main thing that has happened is that a lot more photos are being submitted, as digital cameras become more popular. When the site started, you more or less had to have a scanner to upload an image. Regarding the quality, there were a lot of very bad photos before. About three years ago, the system was that somone would manually select about 100 photos per day for the "Rate Recent Queue" out of the 700 or so per day that were being uploaded. The person who did that was me, a volunteer at the time. It was usually not hard to come up with 100 photos per day that seemed worth putting in front of raters in the Rate Recent queue, but out of the 100, there were a lot that were just "good", and far from "excellent". And the 600 or so that didn't make it included some really terrible stuff. We generally had about 8 to 10 photos per day that I considered excellent (relative to the standard I was expecting), and maybe another 20 or so that were decent, with the remaining ones that were chosen being acceptable. So the split was perhaps 1% excellent, and about 10% to 15% being good to very good.

 

Nowadays, I think the percentage of excellent photos has gone down a little, in relative terms, and the percentage of good and very good has gone up. In absolute terms, the number of photos that are bad has increased. There is no longer a person filtering these out before anybody sees them in the Rate Recent queue, and too many of the raters won't rate photos low, or (worse) frequenly give higher ratings than are merited; so the bad photos don't disappear quite as expeditiously as they should, at least from the point of view of maximizing the viewer experience in TRP.

 

Anyway, if you look in TRP, you can see the Top Photos from 1, 2, and 3 years ago, as well as during the last year, and for all time. You can decide for yourself which year was the best photo.net vintage, although the further you go back, the more likely it is that old stars have deleted their portfolios.

If it is true (and I would tend to agree with you) that the quality of excellent photos has indeed dropped somewhat over the years, then why are the ratings much higher today?

 

In my opinion, a large number of people that upload images today have found it advantageous to accumulate so called *friends* by rating other photograhpers higher than the images truly warrant. These ones receiving the high ratings in turn go back to the ones rating them and return the favor. It is an effective means to receive greater exposure, garner more ratings, comments and popularity by being on the top few pages consistently. In addition some of this latest group also seems to enjoy shooting down other photographers work that are not part of their group. This aspect of mate-rating is unique to just the recent crop of people.

 

As one who's participated over the years these are the trends that I personally have noticed. And to be honest, I have no remedy here either. Perhaps joining them, might work. But how lame that would be!

Check out the upload date, number of rates, views, comments, and rating average of this image.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/1433784

 

I can give you a list of similar images, but suffice it to say that it would vanish very quickly if I uploaded it tomorrow.

 

The bottom line, as I see it, is that there isn't much to talk about with most of the current crop of TRP images, in part because they keep recycling themselves. We're talking about the increase in digital cameras, but it's the tastes of those uploaders that has the greater effect on the quality of the photo critique forum experience.

I have not looked at the TRP for over three months and I think it has made me a better photographer. I don't want to be influenced by what viewers consider popular and good. I get a real kick out of contributing to the W/NW forum for some reason, maybe because of its short-lived and rate-less nature and I get to see some pretty creative work. I don't know if it is just me, but it seems that way too many people are obsessing about ratings, robots, getting on the TRP etc. This has been and is a great photo site but the nuttiness seems to be increasing at an alarming rate. I hope that a little sanity will prevail.

I think I glance at the TRP twice a year. Then I shudder and wait another six months.

as a newbie user to the site my observation is that the TRP mirrors what is "flavor de favor" elsewhere. as to the one alternative genre image cited, compositional impact notwithstanding, one supposes that the unappreciative must not have had much fun playing parchissi...

I've been hearing a lot about mate-ratings, but never actually seen one at work, but I'm not really interested in finding out anyway.

 

I just hope that my ratings are real, not a "favour" rating, or else I'd be very disappointed with myself and the people who rate it.

What I tend to do is, when I'm more familiar with a person, instead of giving rating, I'd give them feedback instead. That way, the relationship can be healthier and preventing mate-ratings.

 

I'm relatively new to this site, so I dont know how the forum was a few years back.

But I remember, the first time I was interested with this site was because of the amount of quality pictures posted on the forum... it's sort of intimidating to me... :)

 

But I learned not to worry so much and just create your own style and enjoy your photography hobby. That's why I got some low rated pictures in my portfolio but I still keep them because I like them.

As an addition to my previous comment, why do people give 7/7's to a non-photographic artwork created from scratch inside a computer, as witnessed high in the TRP earlier this week? Then, when it's pointed out to them, say it doesn't matter!

Here my 2 cents.

 

<p>If really site administrators and partecipants really see in rating the way to go in order to rank pictures ... then why don't put ratings anonymhous at 100%?</p>

 

<p>Why don't to give the possibility to users to rate comments as well?</p>

 

<p>In such a way: 1) everyone is free to rate the way he really thinks 2) bogus accounts are discouraged, 3) idiots or non-useful comments might also be rated as "unuseful" or "useful" and the picture ranked also by the number of useful comments and, finally, 4) who do not care about rating could find comments and their "usefulness" a nice way to go.

100% rating anonymity? I can see them rubbing their hands together now!

I'm of two minds about anonymity: on one hand it surely alleviates drive-by mate-

rating and revenge-rating and related activities. But it also has cut people off from

visiting the pages (and top photos) of people whose ratings you agree with.

 

Those who are unhappy with low ratings of their photos (deserved or not) can always

upload their photos with the checkbox that the shots cannot be rated. The people who

lobbied most strongly for this ability over the years are, interestingly enough, not

taking advantage of it now that it exists. Why? Because it reduces exposure to their

photos, and they seem to prefer semi-anonymous ratings (even low ones) to losing the

thrill of driving people to see their work.

It might be immposible to create anonimity because either friends go to friends ports and see latest uploads or they would just have to email and say i'm posting a blue donkey watch for it...then theres signatures on frames to deal with.

 

It might be good if names of raters were kept transparent for the 3 day duration of trp. Numbers for a bit too. That could generate more one liners in comments though. But then you could always make a 3 line minimum.

 

Have noticed no matter what image almost, if it gets a 6/6 first rate most follow suit...and works the other way too. Power of suggestion .

 

Imo the quality of trp has improved lots lately and page 1 looks a whole lot better in general than a month ago. Some really good stuff back to 5 even. Competition is fiercer.

Also being a relitive newbie to the site I can tell you that I do not rate TO many people with 1s adn 2s even though the photos are complete crap, BECAUSE I'm worried about revenge.<p>PERSONALLY I have my own spread sheets of my photos and know what is liked and what is not - bots be damned - it's not a contest.<p> As for the TWP. The only one I really look at is VIEWS - Take away the nudes and it's interesting to see what people look at and their ratings. . . ok ok don't take the nudes away :-)<p>

I would think there are the same NUMBER of good photos but more in the middle because of the digital revolution (I'm one after all). I DO wonder what the average rating is these days.

"Imo the quality of trp has improved lots lately and page 1 looks a whole lot better in general than a month ago. Some really good stuff back to 5 even. Competition is fiercer." Paul G.

 

Paul, I have to respectfully disagree with this comment. I took a closer look at page one just a few moments ago. Guess how many photographers listed on that page are not involved in generous mating?? The answer is ONE for sure, and possibly another. Out of twenty photographers, only one or two are not playing the I'll give you 7s, you give me the same game. That is unheard of. All you have to do, is go to those photographers "Photos Rated Highest by this Member" pages and it will be clear for all to see why they are where they are. There is no doubt. In my opinion, the first couple of pages are significantly inferior compared to times past.

 

For the record I too would like to see the names brought back to the raters identity. It is especially nice when somebody goes into your older work to see who thought what. If I post an image here and there, and choose to follow it carefully, I can for the most part see who rated what. This is of course is tedious, time consuming, and not really any fun.

 

Mate-rating off the charts as I see it today, has also lessened the experience here considerably.

Several people have been offering guesses as to why the nonrating option isn't very popular. As usual, people who actually use the option are in a better position to understand its' dynamics than people on the outside.

 

The overall quality of uploads disignated as nonratable is not very good, imho, so the page isn't attractive enough to get those few people who can actually find it to return regularly.

 

Several people upload four at a time, which gives the previous uploads limited exposure . . . about a day at best, as I recall.

 

It hasn't occurred to most who upload there that this option works best if you comment on other images on the page. The only person I saw who practiced what he preached has been deleted. (don't know why, but I can guess.)

 

I stopped using the option because the number of views (and the opportunity to be seen by new members) is very limited, in part because they weren't included in the TRP sort on comments.

 

In short, I'm now willing to put up with silly meaningless rates without comments because I get more comments from people I know (and people I don't) when I allow rates. At the moment, there is no reason to place an image in the RFC queue. It might be more attractive if the 24-hour / photographer's highest was cleaned up to include only RFCs and not allow for multiple images of the same rate by the same individual.

First you have to define "mate rating". Theres one kind where groups gravitate to each other because they are all basicaly talented and a cut above. So they rate each other high because their rating in relation to all the pics, not just "their " group of peers.... If they were to rate against each other and make some pristine standard for a 6 say, well all the other images would pass them. Its rare they release a pic that is less than a 6... its actually kinda boring but the general population also rates them that..so they must be.

 

Your referring to the "other" group... the black velvet Elvis with too much contrast that smudge roller have gone over... with 30 friends throwing a 7/7 and you are a great artist... with geographic similarities.... this is the group i was referring to as being improved somewhat..somewhat, but still a big prob i agree with you.

 

The normal "rate fearin person" looks at 20 phoney rates sitting there and is intimidated to go in and give an honest opinion. And its all about opinion. You have a vote and aren't required to justify that vote either, So if you figure the image is a 4/4 say and its a massive scam in your view...deduct more points cause their cheaters. Whats fair is fair and your the boss of your own vote. Say nothing and rate it. The more people do this the more obvious their scam becomes.

 

Their numbers are a small percentage of the whole but have one big advantage. They are highly organized...organized crime. Just like real life they can only operate in the shadows ... when exposed to the light they run and hide like rats. Their stength is only in numbers. Our numbers are much greater.

 

If an image has 30 7/7 and 30 4/4 theres something seriously amiss here. Their scam becomes defeated because their now exposed. They slide back in the ratings.... so how many times can a group falsely propel themselves to page one only to be kicked in the butt by the real world? Sent packing their presumptious dreams of grandure smashed by the community....and not only that, their cheating has been exposed so add shame to defeat... not too many. Pretty soon they won't want near page 1..they will develop "page #1 anxiety".

 

The key to defeating mate rating is not to fight the phenomina as a whole, find some "formula" or send one guy in to right all wrongs...but to encourage people to shutup with the negetivity and just quiety speak their mind with their number in anonimity.

"They are highly organized...organized crime. Just like real life they can only operate in the shadows ... when exposed to the light they run and hide like rats. Their stength is only in numbers. Our numbers are much greater."

 

The numbers are so great now, they are no longer a mere minority hiding in the shadows. To justify their back slapping, 7/7s, false flattery, TRP dominating activity would be a mistake in my opinion. This is not a case of sour grapes either. I get plenty of activity/attention when I post an image. I've also been an active participant for some time. This is about fairness, that has been thrown out the window for the selfish pursuit of doing whatever it takes to get to the top of the hill. We all saw the exact same thing happen to that one banned member Carl has referred to, and it is happening all of the time now. The degree to which it is happening is what is new in my mind. John Falkenstein's example (since deleted) is just one. There are many.

 

If you or anybody else believes contrary to my opinion, and feel that the TRP is fine and well, no real mate-rating problems, I certainly can respect that ones opinion. In my mind the evidence says otherwise.

"First you have to define "mate rating". Theres one kind where groups gravitate

to each other because they are all basicaly talented and a cut above."

 

When every image posted by these same people receive nothing but 7/7/7/7/7 reagrdless of the quality of that image, one could easily see what's really going on here. I have no problems with friends rating other friends they have met on the site, IF those ratings are sincere. I will usually go to somebody's folder and offer a rating in return. But rest assured, if I recived a 7/7, they will not get one in return unless it is deserving. These people are handing each other nothing but 7s. It has become so obvious it is actually funny... to a degree. There is no shame nowadays since there are so many people doing this very thing!