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Too many qualifying TRP images


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Matt, more observations and fewer posts, please.

 

Since only three rates are required, you can get there immediately and often stay there for the three day period. When ten rates were required, or when visibility was determined by number of rates, it took longer.

 

Faith, email notification has been around a long time, as you know. And no I don't understand why non-RFC images qualify, Jacques.

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Jerry:

When you have been on this site as long as Carl and Faith and posted as many good images (or more than 7 mediocre images) and have paid to be a subscriber, then you can make the kind of absurd criticism you have made.

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No, Carl: I don't think it's in the site's best interest at all. But that's just my opinion... and since this sort of things has been happening for about 2 years regularly on photo.net, we may assume that probably the site doesn't care much about this sort of things OR likes this sort of things... Perhaps the game attracts more gamers and therefore brings cash in...

 

Perhaps you could have added as well, that no matter which average-based TRP you visit, you keep on finding the same authors all over the place. In the case of the photographer I think you are refering to, I'd at least say that he has quite a number of really great photos, but unfortunately, it is fairly clear that around 50% of all TRPs now belong to a few high-raters who mostly exhibit poorly done flashy and over-manipulated images.

 

Well, that's photo.net nowadays, it seems...

 

And Jacques's question - "how come a photo which didnt request for critique appears on TRP?" - is pretty interesting as well... It seems to me that no matter what gets some folks on page 1 of the TRP, they will "just do it". And we'll have to live with the results...:-)

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Used to you could pay extra if you wanted a larger portfolio. Part of the policy now is to delete portfolios of nonmembers after a period of time . . . unless they're high rated! Isn't it great!?

 

You're right, Matt. Things change. We're up to eight at the moment.

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Carl is correct. I self-deleted my portfolio after an appropriate time (and probably to Jerry's frustration).

 

OT note to "Jerry": So where's your sister account "Hanna"? And why haven't you "two" opened accounts for "Tom" and "Barbera", since your posts are nothing more than cartoonish cat-and-mouse affairs with Carl and moi?

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Carl,

 

If all 7 pics by the same guy are stunning and belong there, NO. But maybe you are implying another meaning and just wording it nice.

 

Its very curious to see a mediocure image go up and within a couple of hours see 15- 7/7's reaped upon it....Then to check a few names and look at their highest rated given. Why we seem to find a definite pattern here.

 

Its odd Marc should mention money when one of the parties is not even a subscriber here...yet he has 600 images up and owns an F5 and D100. He must be between checks.... Well all that could be swallowed by the ever generous PN, but add stacking the deck to that seems a bit outrageous.

 

One has to really wonder about the motivations here. After all, getting to page 1 only signifies you have an excellent photo, you gain nothing from being at the top of the heap other than self pride... well maybe more.

 

Stacking the deck, or "mate rating" to this extreme, to get to top TRP on a week in week out basis could only have two possible motivations.... Either you are lacking self esteem to an insane degree or a business oriented reason.. Only speculation BUT...

 

Consider, if you had 10,000 7's to your credit and countless people telling you "you are the God of photography"...would you still need more?... And when you look at theses people's comments do you see them actively involved in the learning/teacher process of others here?...no, .you see 4000 comments aimed solely at inciting more mate rating and reinforcing the circle...hardly a peep about critquing photography.

 

If you had a little print reproduction business going...what better venue could you ask for than to refer potential customers to your sparkling PN folder? Maybe add to this...its is one of the worlds biggest,best site yadi yadi...and let these people see all the praise in comments and your high ranking pics......wow what a selling point, they would be just tearing that moolay outta their pockets to buy your prints. And best of all no overhead for yourself.

 

Is this far fetched, and i'm on a tangent?..Well maybe you haven't noticed that these same people live realitivly in the same geography? And they are shooting pretty well the same subject? Or their stuff comes in waves?... Take the name tags off those images and you would be hard pressed to identify the photographers at times..

 

No Carl..Marc...Its not in the sites best interest and the site is capable of fixing it but not doing so for whatever their reasoning. But you can....just as people can mate rate you can go against your own objectivity principles and lay a 4/4 on mate raters no matter how good their picture is. It may be a fine photo but taken in the context of artificial ratings cheapens it a lot in my view. Its really no different than what takes place when someone posts a morally questionable image. Lots respond with low ratings although the image itself may be high quality and collectivly nobody gets out of joint about that fact.

 

Rather than endlessly appealing to the management to solve the problem why not just fix it ourselves? Mate rating has no purpose at all if it doesn't accomplish its goal.

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Paul, you wrote: "Its not in the sites best interest and the site is capable of fixing it but not doing so for whatever their reasoning. But you can....just as people can mate rate you can go against your own objectivity principles and lay a 4/4 on mate raters no matter how good their picture is."

 

5 reasons for not doing so:

 

1. It would be fighting abusive behaviors with abusive behavior, and I'm certainly not prepared to do that.

 

2. If the site isn't bothered by all this, why should I waste my time rating crappy images ? I wouldn't even support the site in doing so, since the site itself lets it happen.

 

3. Rating battles are silly: there is nothing to win anyway. Been there, done that. I've expressed my opinions all over the site for ages, and have critiqued all sorts of crappy top-rated images. So did Carl, so did Doug Burgess, so did Bob Hixon, Scott Bulger and a couple of others - on a fairly regular basis. At the end of the day, we were called "the balance brigade", and what did we achieve ? Nothing, except for accumulating retaliations on our uploads, and insulting replies to our comments. And nowadays, how often do you still hear from Doug, Bob, Scott or I...? Ever wondered why...? Mate-raters are now too large a group and they'll be on top of the TRP no matter what you do to try to stop them. So, why bother with all this nonsense ?

 

4. There are web sites where all the mate-rating habits you see here exist as well, but where you can opt out of the rating system, or where ratings are kept reasonable. Even on photo.net, there's now a "critiques-only" gallery. So why bother repeating the obvious in PN's feedback forum, when there are already better areas here, and better sites elsewhere, to upload our photos ? On another site, I have at this point 270 images posted, received in average about 5 to 10 interesting critiques per shot posted and have already suscribed twice. On photo.net, I have 7 pictures left and can't get more than 1 or 2 interesting comments on newly uploaded photos, before I get kicked out of the TRP manu militari with 1/1s and such.

 

5. Life's too short. :-)

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Hey David, You too qualify for a free box of tissue paper to wipe your tears. Why don't you have a problem with Faith not being a paying member.You said Faith has been around longer. Well let's see I have been around longer than Faith, my images are mediocre, I post them, she does not. You really don't know what you talking about. Carl has good photos but he talks down to other members so someone has to remind him. Your photos are mediocre plus, so bravo you must be proud.
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<p>While finding the preponderance of a single person on TRP rather insultingly obvious -- I mean, I do think Yuri has some nice photos (far better than anything I'm *ever* likely to produce), but eight of the top 20-odd? Come on.</p>

 

<p>However, I'd like to respond to everyone complaining about photo.net's "lack of interest" in resolving the problem of mate rating. You have to look at the history of photo.net -- the underlying system has been in use for well over seven years (as far as I can tell) and uses a hodge-podge of rather unusual systems (AOL Server, TCL) because that's what the original site was written in (TCL also has some good image manipulation routines -- that's what saves you from having to upload your own thumbnails for your full-sized photos).</p>

 

<p>All of this is maintained by, again this is as far as I can tell, three or four people working on a volunteer basis (because not enough people subscribe).</p>

 

<p>Add to this the fact that photo.net is relied upon by literally thousands of users who access the site on a daily basis and you have a very good recipe for 'leaving things as they are' until you have a very, very good reason for changing them. What would be your response to photo.net going down for, say, three or four days because of unforeseen problem in upgrading the photo ratings tables to control for mate rating? I thought so.</p>

 

<p>I've tried downloading the source code for the components of photo.net so that I can do my bit, and I'm having trouble even getting it to compile, let alone run smoothly. Oh, and I seem to need at least 10-20GB of free space to deploy the components of the test system without even having a lot of images in it. If someone would like to donate an external hard drive I'd be happy to get moving.</p>

 

<p>So, speaking from experience as a developer, I can tell you that all issues with a web site basically fall in to four categories:</p>

 

<ol start="1">

<li>Things that are high-priority and easy to fix

<li>Things that are high-priority and hard to fix

<li>Things that are low-priority and easy to fix

<li>Things that are low-priority and hard to fix

</ol>

 

<p>Depending on how much time you have, the order in which things will get done is 1 to 4. Mate rating is highly irritating, but it's a '4' from the standpoint of keeping the site going because it's not so widespread as to render the site unusable <i>and</i> fixing it will be really, really hard -- what algorithm do you use to automatically identify a pool of mate raters and distinguish them from a new user who simply happens to find a photographer's work fascinating and gives them all 7/7 out of enthusiasm?</p>

 

<p>I'm not out to say that PN is perfect, nor am I saying that your concerns are invalid, what I <i>am</i> saying is that the work of managing this site is extremely hard and that the level of effort put in by the volunteers shouldn't be discounted as "PN administrators don't care".</p>

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"Those who can, do. Those who can't, critic."

 

Jon, that's your "biography" on this site. Much too simplistic, and it tells me you've never been recognized and/or paid as a teacher. The site philosophy is that everyone is a critic and that everyone is here to welcome criticism of their images. It's an ideal worth striving for, but such policies as the TRP sort completely undermine that goal.

 

There is a very easy, if not perfect, fix - change the sort criteria - so there's something else going on.

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Jerry, you say that Yuri's photos are good, as if there was no disputing your claim. What you really mean is that you like them, but I doubt that you could write a paragraph explaining what makes them work, in your opinion, in such a way that others could learn something.
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Well, I'm in agreement with this post, and have echoed the sentiment before: I started on this site two years ago, and learned a hell of a lot before the rating change. Comments were always welcome and appreciated, and while I still suck, I don't suck as much as a result of a lot of good advice. These days, though, there's not a lot said on my posts. No one answers my questions about crop, color, etc. when I post a pic for review. And just for the record Mr. S. Bulger and Ms./Mr. F. Cohen have on many occaisions come through and rated my pics very low with no critique whatsoever. Two years ago, those low rates would come with pretty solid advice on how to do better. Stinks that I've lost the ability here to get such feedback.
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Just want to throw a curve into the discussion. In the photo's we are talking about look very nice on the screen. But these photos and a lot of others on the TRP seem to be designed for computer viewing only. The brilliant over saturated colors to the degree often seen here usually don't look real when printed in person. Unless they are adjusted for printing and viewing in person the photos tend to have a fake unreal unpleasant look to them. I know this from seeing the translation from screen to in person on my and other peoples prints.
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Paul Greenwood: ..." and lay a 4/4 on mate raters NO MATTER HOW GOOD their picture is..." (emphasis added). What you advocate, Paul, is straight-out-and-out abuse! Is it your philosophy that two wrongs make a right? It is exactly this kind of retributive attitude that is deteriorating this site. Regards.
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There's also the issue of ratingOthers/receivingRating ratio or the

<br>

scratchYourBack/scratchMyBack ratio. :-)

<br><br>

For those who are not receiving enough comments/ratings, may be you should spend more time commenting/rating other's works.

<br><br>

Just take a look at the Yuri's ratio and compare it to yours.

<br><br>

Truthfully, for a site like this one, I really do not consider ratings/comments from the general population as something I take too seriously (except for a few) because it is clearly a popularity contest, not skills. When PN started, the visitors/members were more serious about critiques but things got worse when there was cross-pollination with members from other photo web sites --- the "genetic pollutants", so to speak. :-)

<br><br>

On the whole, PN is not as bad as some other sites I know of in this aspect. It hasn't reach a level where I consider it "disgusting" ... yet.

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