Was there a lot of retribution for 3/3 raters in the old days?

I was just checking out images on PN and noticed that usually anything below 5/5

is pretty much all anonymously rated ... saw some older images a couple of years

old and not sure if it was just the ones I random saw but they had way more 3/3

and 4/4 ratings that were not anonymous. With that in mind, maybe the long time

PN members can chip in (I registered back in 2001 but I actually only became

active in 2006) ... was there a lot of retribution going on and subsequently

people got scared to rate lowly except anonymously? How bad did it get?

From what I remember it wasn't so much retailation for low scores that was annoying rather the system of rewarding a high score with another high score to your mate. Hence the term "Mate-rating". Since the change I haven't seen a difference in the low scores because someone is always trying to inflate their score by lower yours but the higher scores have vanished.

<i>... was there a lot of retribution going on</i><P>

On yeah! In addition to the mate rating that Robert mentions, "hate rating" or revenge rating was rampant. And the offenders were the same juveniles that were mate rating. If you dared to rate one of their precious photographs honestly and give it a 4/4 (or gasp ... a 3/3) they and all their buddies would bomb your portfolio with low ball revenge ratings. Kinda sad ... but then these are kinda sad people who deluded themselves into believing they were the greatest photographer to grace the plant and bless us with their beautiful art since Ansel Adams.

In the real old days there weren't any rating because there weren't any photo uploads. But since they started there have been several rating systems and "conversions" of old ratings to new to the point that who knows what any of the old ratings mean. I certainly haven't kept track, mainly because I've never participated much.

One easy way to stop "mate rating" is to have a 60 day block. A club site I know will not allow you to rate someone's photos if they have rated your photos in the past 60 days. It doesn't stop it completely but it reduces it to a very small level.

 

Alternatively, just remove the anonymous rating, you have to log in to the site, so it should be easy to change the code to show who rated what for any particular picture.

 

I looked back at some of the historic posting (4 or 5 years ago) there were only one or two photographers uploading in certain classes and it was more of a competition to improve and post better and better images, which IMHO, should be the way.

 

Regards

 

Simon

Or, and that's something that should eliminate hate rating and mate rating almost completely, have ALL ratings anonymous and private (so that the rating results aren't visible to anyone except the person receiving the rating).

 

That way there's no incentive to rate others low in order to make your own images (or those of your friends) appear to be higher rated than most because noone would know anyway.

Or, remove ratings entirely and allow only non-anonymous comments.

 

Obviously the rating system is not, and was not working. It is impossible to "control" and any number system becomes meaningless very easily.

I agree with Larry. I believe that ratings should be abolished, and that only non-anonymous comments be permitted.

 

I don't rate, I comment.

 

<Chas>

For me there's not much to be learned from a set of numbers - neither the rater nor the photographer gains. Especially so when the rater is possibly biased, or worse. People seem to be too lazy to really look at an image and give a constructive critique. I rarely rate others or submit my images for rating.

Larry Cooper, Apr 05, 2007; 08:59 a.m. - Or, remove ratings entirely and allow only non-anonymous comments.

 

Charles Webster, Apr 05, 2007; 11:22 a.m. - I believe that ratings should be abolished, and that only non-anonymous comments be permitted.

 

Right - and the comments will read: "I rate this a 3/3."

Thanks everyone for the info and interesting discussion.

I don't think you checked the images very well at all. I assume you checked some in the TRP and never went into the details of the submittals. With the huge number of images submitted to photo.net, it is inevitable that the vast majority of them will simply have to be 4/4 or 3/3 or even less.

Hey John, you're right, my checking wasn't totally thorough, somehow in surfing around I got to looking at some older images being rated and then I just quickly looked at some of the newer ones and just from my own memory of how few non-anonymous 3/3 ratings I had seen. That just got me curious if there was a lot of retribution in the past (before I became active) and caused a lot of folks to only rate 3/3 anonymously nowadays.

Retribution could be a problem but the abuse section at photo.net always took care of it quickly. I would say that the majority of 3/3 and 4/4 ratings are probably quite valid for a number of reasons, be it a cultural gap or social conditioning for certain kinds of imagery. Remember, the folks who look at and post images tend to come from classes with disposable income for expensive photo gear and somewhat isolated cultural outlooks, what some might refer to in the past as the bourgeouisie. Overall the image preference is for somewhat kitschy images, saturated colors and not too much stress or effort in interpretation of the image. Post anything different and you will pay the price.