Ratings Limitations for 7's

Every now and then I get in the mood to look at what others are doing and I

rate a lot of photographs on Photo Net in one sitting. The new ratings

limitation seems to limit the number of photos to a fixed number irrespective

of the number of photos a person rates. If the software is limiting the number

of 7's or low numbers to a fixed number irrespective of the number of photo's

rated by a person, I think this will discourage raters such as myself who rate

in occasional spurts. It would be better to normalize the number to the total

number of photo's rated. Also there should be some accomodation for folks who

are searching through top photos and therefore their ratings will be skewed to

the high side.

 

Last night I probably rated a good 150 photos anomously. As it turned out some

of the best photographer's posted their work. I also happened to check out the

top rated photos and rated several that I really liked. This coupled with the

large quantity of photos that rated anomously caused me to go over my quota of

7's.

 

I tend to rate whatever comes up and rarely skip photos unless I get too tired

to leave text explanations for lower ratings. The distribution of my ratings

is close to a bell shaped curve. I try to never rate a 3 or 4 without leaving

someone a suggestion as how they could improve their shot and also praising

them on the good points.

 

I think a better way to get around folks who are trying to ruin the ratings

systems by giving out indiscrimate 3's, 4's or 7's is to compare their ratings

against others ratings for the same photo. If they are consistently more than 3

standard deviations off of the mean for a photo, the ratings should not be

counted in the top photo calculations. Calculating this might take more

time, but from what I can tell it looks like the systems stores sufficient data

to do this. Using such a system requires that the person's rating for a

particular photo be compared to the distribution of ratings for a particular

photo. It can not be done by calculating the standard deviation for a person's

ratings. Some folks will only rate photos they like a lot and they would be

prevented from having their ratings count.

 

Another good way to force folks who wish to give ratings below 3 or 7's to

leave text descriptions as why they rated it will also reduce the number of

indiscrimante ratings. These folks will either leave a nice explanation of what

was or was not working or elect not to rate the photo.

 

I'd also recommend putting up a more detailed guideline for ratings to help

maintain consistancy and avoid ratings creep as more inexperienced

photographers come on board.

 

PS...the software for this site is awesome! Thanks for all the effort. It

continues to get better and better!

What does that mean "anomously"?

Hi Therese. Well, I disagree. The restrictions that you refer to were not created on a haphazard whim. There were (and still are) significant problems with ratings abuse that, in some cases, have been ameliorated by restriciting the number of extreme ratings that one can place in a given period.<p>

Let me ask you, what do you think of this person's rating distribution?<p>

 

<center> <b>Ratings Given</b><p>

1 2 3 4 5 6 7<p>

<i>O</i> 0 0 0 0 0 0 <b>42</b><p>

 

<i>A</i> 0 0 0 0 0 0 <b>42</b><p>

</center>

Or this one:<p>

<center>

<b>Ratings Given</b><p>

1 2 3 4 5 6 7<p>

<i>O</i> 0 0 0 0 2 15 <b>118</b><p>

 

<i>A</i> 0 0 0 0 1 14 <b>120</b><p>

</center><p>

 

About 95% of those ratings were given <b>to the same photographer</b>! These are only two examples of what is obviously high ratings abuse. Similar cases exist at the low end as well. There has to be some type of restriction placed on abusive behavior else the TRP will become totally meaningless.<p>

 

A statitiscally analyzed rating scheme might be a good idea. But what do you do for the cases where an unscrupulous member uploads and posts a <i>snapshot</i> for critique and then emails five or six of his or her online buddies asking them to 7/7 him? This is a BIG fault of the Rate Recent interface. The most recently requested critique is placed at the head of the queue and its position is predicatble. So much so that it is easy to manipulate the ratings on a recently requested critique. This happens; I was contacted myself more than once by email to participate in this behavior. Under your proposed plan what you would end up with is a highly rated "snapshot" that deserves a low rating but would not accrue them.<p>

 

The requirement of leaving an explanatory comment contingent upon an extreme given rating was indeed policy on this site a few years ago, but it did not work. The comments that were given under that policy were "wow", "nice", "+++", and "q6&vch", if you see my point. Not really much help to the photog and certainly a lot of work for the forum moderator to police. <p>

 

I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with you about making the ratings guidlines, as found in the PhotoNet FAQ, required reading when you become a member. An occaisional reminder to visit the Philosophy of Photography Forum would not hurt either.<p>

 

In conclusion, I hope that you do not misunderstand me, Therese. I sympathize with you regarding the inadequacies of this rating system, but an easy solution never seems to be at hand. It is an old subject with hundreds of Forum threads to its discredit. Maybe it will be better when the new software is loaded. We can at least have some hope. Regards.

What Walter States is unfortunately true. I too, in the past have been the subject of "invites," always by the same parties, who carefully depart when they realize that no response is forthcoming. Personally, I wouldn't rate so many images in one setting, that's a good way to burn out and you just really don't have enough time to look properly at the images.

Walter..my ideas were more brainstorms...I am not attached to them. It sounds like they have been tried before and found not to work. I just wish that there could be some way of accommodating someone like myself who has a pretty good distribution of ratings because I do try to rate everything and provide helpful critiques and

praise when I think it might be of interest to the photographer.

 

One of my degrees is in writing and one of the most helpful things was to hear how others perceived what I wrote. That is the true beauty of this site: to get feedback from people from all over the world or to view and comment on the work of photographers from all over the world. Even with the gamesplayers, I still think photonet has something special. Let's hope people of good will can learn to ignore the games playing cheaters and enjoy what is good: honest crtiques and feedback like what you just gave me on my post!

I really enjoy photography so, I don't get burned out when I rate a lot of photos. I just usually don't have the time to do it. I find that my ratings tend to be close to the mean or average for most shots so I think my ratings are generally good. I do try to maintain strict standards especially regarding 6's and 7's. Both have to be printable and publishable as is. The 7's are the one's I'd remember after a week or so. An "Afghan Girl" if you will :-)

"An "Afghan Girl" if you will :-)"

 

(Rolls eyes)