Posting irrelevant rants on people's folders/photos

[nikos]

Is it just me that finds it annoying when people use the

critique/comments section of some member's portfolio to communicate

their grudges and rants towards this person?

 

I have seen it before on other people's photos.. somewhere amidst the

critiques there is some comment like "Why did you rate my photo 3/3?

i hate your guts and i'll downrate you to oblivion. I posted this

here, just to let you and everyone know." Regardless of the actual

wording of the message, the meaning is invariably the same: I don't

like you, and instead of sending you an email, I'd rather mar your

portfolio with my grudge.

 

Recently I have received some comments on my portfolio by a member

who clearly bears a grudge on me. (she already has had some ill-

willed comments towards me deleted by admins) None of her comments

have anything to do about MY portfolio, but instead about her photos,

her ratings, and how I rated them, and yada-yada. As far as I can

remember, I have a publicly accessible email address here, and people

who have something to say to me but not about my photos, are welcome

to do so by sending me an email. Are we turning our portfolia and

photo presentations into a free-for-all general ranting section? Is

this accepted by the site administration?

 

My questions above are not rhetorical. I really want to know what the

administration believes of this. I was thinking of filing an abuse

notification for this, although clearly the comments were not abusive

in their language. But indeed I believe that, even if such comments

are not abusive per se, they surely constitute misuse of the site's

structure and they degrade the value of the photo exhibition

functions that photo.net offers to us.

 

I'm more than happy to share my photos and see them torn to pieces by

knowledgeable critique. On the other hand, I see no value in hosting

a forum of spiteful retributive exchanges under my work. I'm sure I'm

not completely alone in this, and others would rather get rid of such

behaviours.

[mottershead]

I agree with you, and this problem has become widespread. The moderators cannot look at all the photo threads, but when I see rating-related ugliness in photo and portfolio threads, I delete the comments. Short- circuiting this was one of the main reasons for making it difficult for people to identify the low ratings on a photo.

[pnital]

Brian, I was and is subject to abuse the last 2 months, today I gave proof that it was abuse and 5 new 1/1 ratings in a row that were added to my new and old images was deleted by PN.( asI have reported abuse several times last period identifying the man's name)The result is that any abuser, can now come in to any portfolio and rate 1/1 as much as he wants, and that will be legitimate. I came to PN to share my photos, to get constructive critique, not ugly ones. I didn't join PN to be frustrated, and thats what happaned to me lately.

[afterthoughts]

Pnina, you are really good as a photographer and your work helps add value to PN. Do not let a few bad apples ruin the experience. Take it in stride, as hard as that is to do. The majority of members are honest in their ratings.

[nikos]

Pnina, with all due respect, your post is patently off-topic. The discussion here is not about rating, let alone your specific ratings-related complaints. In fact it is precisely about people raising their ratings grudges where it's not appropriate, for example in other people's photos, or in forum threads that discuss a different topic.

[pnital]

Howard thank you very much, I know that many photographers are honest, but when you are subject to abuse such a long time, and now it will be easier to do it( and my portfolio was a proof). I would not like to spent my time reporting abuse, and it will not be easy any more to identify them.Thank you again Howard for your kind words.

[pnital]

Nikos,Sorry ,but I see it as coming from the same root.

[mottershead]

Pnina, you are off-topic in this thread. If 1/1 ratings have been deleted, it was probably done automatically, because the system noticed someone had a high percentage of 1/1 ratings and deleted them all as troll-ratings. Any remaining 1/1 ratings are non-troll ratings and aren't abusive. Contrary to what you say, people cannot go dancing through the Gallery giving out 1/1 ratings, willy-nilly. That would cause them to be classified as a troll by the software and all the ratings would be deleted. If there are 1/1 ratings left on your photos more than 24 hours or so, that means someone that we consider a legitimate rater thought your photos really suck, and the rating stands. If you can't accept that, you should take your photos down.

 

I don't mean to pick on you, but jumping to the conclusion that other people's ratings are "illegitimate" and "abusive" is the start of the problem that Nikos is talking about. The next step is that people feel justified in sliming the photos or portfolio of the "abusive" person with comments criticizing their ratings, or creating a bogus account to reciprocate. Even if the ratings were abusive, that is not acceptable, and most of the time the ratings are NOT abusive. As I've said before, it has gotten to be that complaints about imagined abuse, and vigilantism by people trying to discipline others for imagined abuse, is the most common form of abuse in the Gallery, much worse a problem than troll-ratings.

[root]

Both examples are blatantly abusive, whether they happen once or a dozen times, or whether they are focused on one person or scattered indiscriminately. Separating numbers from the rater is not a solution. Removing the low rate but leaving the offensive comments, as happened to me recently*, is not the answer either.

 

There are two solutions:

 

1) Remove the ability to rate low.

 

2) Add new comment moderators to the photo critique forum who actually contribute to it.

 

 

* It was on my image that eventually was selected as POW. Mary removed them on day two. Why were they allowed to stay up until then?

[geri]

Nikos, I don't even have photos here, but I consider that practice to be highly disrespectful. From time to time, it has made me chuckle, though, because the person has made him/herself to look like a perfect fool. It is childish at best, rude at worst. Either way, it diminishes their reputations in the eyes of others.

[pnital]

Carl, I agree with you. Brian 2 of the 5 1/1 ratings that were erased today were given to me about 2 weeks ago!

[spohn]

I agree with Carl - torrential numbers of 1/1 ratings are addressable programmatically, but they're only one of the more obvious indications of abuse. I really can't fathom how a 1/1 rating in the absence of a comment, for instance, could be interpreted as anything *but* abuse - despsie the fact that as a relatively isolated instance it fails the PN test of numerical convenience.

 

Moving back towards the thread, I doubt seriously that someone who would leave a 1/1 without a comment, for instance, is going to be responsive to email. I really can't see any point in a rating system other than via a closed loop of individuals, similar to the POW process. All the "just ignore it" comments in the world aren't going to help - people just aren't built that way.

[mottershead]

Our troll filtering program ignores people with a low number of ratings because you can't discern a pattern from a handful of ratings. If someone created a bogus account to give retaliatory ratings, he would get away with the first couple before being noticed. If he persisted, then he would eventually trigger the deletion code.

 

But a few low ratings is more likely to be a bogus retaliation rater than the the "troll pattern". The typical troll account is used for no more than a couple of days, and gives between 10 and 30 ratings, a very high percentage of which are low. It is usually some kid who was not potty-trained properly. This particular pattern will be detected and dealt with in about a day. We have someone coming through like this every three or four days -- out of thousands of people rating photos.

 

Also, any account with only a few ratings will have the ratings deleted automatically after a month or so, no matter how high or low. Accounts which have only given a few ratings are not dealt with right away because it might be a legitimate user who is just getting started and will rate more photos before long.

 

Truly abusive low ratings are comparitively rare and we have a variety of ways to deal with them, both automatically and through appeals to moderators. If somone is so impatient that he cannot wait for the system to work, I would prefer that he quit the site, because he will end up causing too much trouble -- probably quite a bit more than "trolls", etc, who, as I said, are comparatively rare and can be dealt with automatically most of the time.

[mottershead]

Albert, there are thousands of people who have collectively given many thousands of legitimate ratings and who have written many thousands of comments, who have amongst all their ratigs 1/1 ratings without comments. I think your notion that a 1/1 rating without a comment must be abuse is just flat out wrong. There is a distribution of ratings over the 1-7 range, and it is completely to be expected that there will be photos that are thought to merit 1 and 2 ratings by some people, just as there are photos which are thought to merit 6 and 7.

 

Some people have decreed that it is a canon of site etiquette that low ratings must have comments. Those people are more than welcome to write comments with their low ratings. But they shouldn't seek to impose their notions of etiquette on others, or see it as abuse when others don't share their notions of etiquette. There is no rule like that on the site.

[keith_laban]

<i>"Also, any account with only a few ratings will have the ratings deleted automatically after a month or so, no matter how high or low"</i><p>Brian, I've only rated a total of two images in the last 4 years here on photo.net and yet these ratings have not been deleted. This is not a complaint, just wondering why?

[mottershead]

Because you're a subscriber. The point of deleting the ratings on accounts where there are just a few ratings is that these are probably very casual ratings at best, and are likely to be friends, relatives, or enemies of the photographer and biased. There is a good chance they are bogus accounts. Furthermore, since it is only a few ratings per user, there isn't much of a consequence in deleting them. Somebody isn't likely to come screaming "censorship" in the Site Feedback forum because we delete 3 ratings he gave his girlfriend (or himself) 3 months ago from some account with a hotmail email address.

But if you are a subscriber, we value your pathetic two ratings, Keith. Oh yes, we do value those subscriber ratings....

[keith_laban]

Don't mention it Brian, only too pleased to help.

[maxz]

Brian,

 

I think that making it harder to identify low ratings will decrease this phenomenon. But if I may be so bold to suggest another approach to be used in conjunction.

 

One suggestion that might help would be a standardized way to "report" abusive comments. If there was a link where anyone could click, perhaps fill in a short description and submit it would be easier to report this kind of abuse. Also, the system could show the moderators the offending comment and the submitted description and easier allow the moderator to remove the comment.

 

If these comments disappear as soon as someone notices and reports them some would not bother writing them as they do not "taint" the presentations/folders/photos anymore.

 

The drawback would be an increase in false abuse reportings leading to extra workload on moderators/administrators.

 

This feature is found in the forum of another photo related site I use and I find it nice but have no indication on how well it works.

 

As with most of my suggestions this would require some extra coding, which I know you are doing more than your share of. So do not consider this a formal request rather than "something to do if we have nothing better to do"-suggestion. Keep up the good work!

[mottershead]

Max, I think an easier solution would be just to let photographers delete comments on their photos that they don't like. We might keep track of how many comments a photograper had deleted and tell people about to write a comment how many a photographer had deleted. Someone might think twice before writing any comment at all on a photo of a person known to be quick on the trigger finger. This would discourage anything but praise on photographers uploaded by people known to be allergic to criticism.

[sionnac]

What about a recent non-member who registered and then went about rating everyone 7/7 (and then was deleted)? I understand why "he" was removed but the ratings are still there. I guess this is not abuse but the person's idea of ...? a prank I suppose.

[._._z]

Is that a good thing?

[vincetylor]

Brian Mottershead , jul 12, 2004; 07:35 p.m.

"Max, I think an easier solution would be just to let photographers delete comments on their photos that they don't like."

 

Great idea. Obviously you could put the ratings/names back up there. If anybody retaliates with unkindness, you just give the power to remove that comment to the one whose image was just smeared. Surely this idea has been thought of before. It seems too simple. I cannot imagine why anyone would opt to delete a friendly or even not so friendly contructive critique. This change would make the entire site even more user friendly than before! Is there a downside that you know of??

[mike dixon]

<i>I cannot imagine why anyone would opt to delete a friendly or even not so friendly contructive critique.</i><P>

I've received hate mail and been publicly libeled for posting relatively mild, constructive critiques of what were genuinely awful images. The vast number of threads on ratings "abuse" should give you some indication how pathetically insecure a lot of people are about their work.

[spohn]

<i>Re:Some people have decreed that it is a canon of site etiquette that low

ratings must have comments. Those people are more than welcome to write

comments with their low ratings. But they shouldn't seek to impose their

notions of etiquette on others, or see it as abuse when others don't share their

notions of etiquette. There is no rule like that on the site.</i><br>

I wouldn't presume to decree anything, especially as a non-member (soon to

change) newbie. However, methodically neutralizing folks who consistently

give low ratings strikes me as merely another form of mandated etiquette.

One could make the argument that consistently low rating is merely indicative

of a person with consistently brutal standards, whereas the person who deals

out only the occassional uncommmented 1/1 for an otherwise 5+ photo has

an axe to grind. But the solution is anything but straight-forward, and I don't

envy you one bit for making the call one way or the other. Keep up the great

work.

[bernhard]

Brian Mottershead , jul 12, 2004; 07:35 p.m. "Max, I think an easier solution would be just to let photographers delete comments on their photos that they don't like."

 

This is a joke, right? Please tell me it is!

 

Isn't his a site that should (among other things) help us to learn? And don't we all agree, that comments are the most helpful communication to achieve this?

 

Even if pathetically insecure photogs have problems with comments that contain something else than praises and won't learn from them, other people who look at their pics can learn from the comments given. I have learned a lot from comments, but not just those on my own pics, but also from those on other peoples pics.

 

It's discouraging enough that many of my comments disappear because the photog simply takes down his pics and reposts them, but if people here can do this by pushing a button I will think trice before taking the time to comment. Do really want to make photo.net into photo$hit (ah photosig, sorry)?

 

You can do this in the proposed non-ratable/exhibition section for subscribers, but if a pic is posted for ratings and critique, IMHO the photog has to stand the heat and take whatever rating or comment his pic gets.