Ratings suggestions

[david j bucknell]

After Coming to P.net, I soon witnessed the ratings war. For all the

ranting and raving,(somewhat justified) concerning revenge ratings,

3/3s with no comment and other variations thereof, I noticed very

few had a suggestion. I even left a couple chastising comments to

perpetual low raters. With no response of course.

I have an Idea.

It will not solve any disputes or put an end to the war, but it may

help decrease some of the battles and injured egos.

The system now has ratings from 1-7, that includes a description of

what each number means. i.e:

7= excellent

6= very good

5=good

4=average/fair

3=below average

2= bad

1=very bad

What if the ratings of 4 and below had the descriptions changed to

something less....offensive for the thin skinned.

My suggestion (and this is open to further suggestion)would be as

follows:

4=take out the average, and just leave "fair"

3=uninterested

2=unappealing

1=displeasing

 

Like I said, this wont make the problem go away, but it may take

away a bit of the sting folks feel when they are rated low, as this

method would imply that it is a personal opinion, and not an attack.

 

Thoughts?

Jamie

[mike dixon]

People who actually care about ratings numbers won't be fooled

by having a different label attached to that number. They'll still be

pissed off when when not everyone thinks as highly of the shot

as they do.

[david j bucknell]

I agree that the extremists will undoubtably continue thier tirades, but this may alleviate some of the problem, even if a few take less offence, it would be a start. How difficult would it be to try anyway?

[marshall]

Any change to the rating system, good or not, must be considered also in context of what it means to previous ratings, so there may be reluctance to change. There are certainly good reasons to consider change, but I'm not sure that this one would make a meaningful difference. Right now, people get pretty upset about 3's, when they really just mean that the picture didn't appeal to someone. [And chastising comments probably won't result in receiving comments, but that's not really the point.]

[david j bucknell]

Thanks for the input. And you are right, chastising comments do no one any good. Luckily I snapped out of it quickly...wish others would. I still think there is merit to the suggestion, despite the fact that you are right that it would have little impact, but little is better than none...right?

[tholte]

Ratings extremists come and go. Ignore them and they will go away.

[spohn]

Having recently recieved my first "1" and my first "7" on the same photo (hopefully uploaded with this message) within seconds of each other, I'm hoping people pay little or no attention to ratings. The shame is that, if I understand things right as a newbie, poor ratings = little to no exposure for more feedback. I have to believe, though, in the grand scheme of things better photos will generally get more attention than poorer ones - I suppose that's the best we can hope for in the absence of personal accountability... which is still slighly less rampant here than on other sites, IMHO.<div></div>

[tomhallphotographycom]

In my opinion anything from 4 to below should be accompanied by a comment. Otherwise what is the use? You don't learn anything from it. At least with an average rating of 5 with at least 10-15 raters you know, when you can also look at their work, if the rating was founded or not? Could keep on ranting about this topic but it wouldn't help. I find people that rate low without commenting are a bit lazy and basically shouldn't rate at all? I usually don't rate a photo when I don't feel that its my peace of cake.

[abhishek]

I have these suggestions to make ratings more realistic:

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1]The upper and bottom 10% ratings should not be taken into account for calculating average A and O. What that means is that if a photograph was rated by 20 people then the highest 2 and lowest 2 ratings should be ignored.Example: If a pic was rated by 20 people on originality as 1 1 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 7 then in present system average rating would be but if we reject top and bototm two ratings then 88/20=4.4 but if we reject top and bottom 2 then rating would become (88-1-1-6-7)/16=4.56 which is more accurate.

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2]The same thing can also be achieved by reporting median and not mean(average) of ratings. Median gives you the middle rating thus is not affected by extreme ratings. Example: if a pic was rated by 13 people on originality as 1 1 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 7 then median would be the 8th (middle) value when ratings are sorted, that is 5 in this case. Average however would have been 4.4 which does not reflect the correct picture bcos it carries the burden of the two 1's.

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3]the third option is to take weighted average of ratings. That is, to take into account the average rating of all photographs of the person who is rating the photograph. Example: Average rating of all pics of A and B by others is 3 and 6 repectively. This would give an idea of their crdeibility. Suppose A and B give rating of 2 and 5 repectively to a pic of C, then average weightage rating of this photograph would be (2X3 + 5X6)/(3+6)=4. This is closer to 5 bcos his rating carry more importance by virtue of him/her having been rated better by others. If we had taken direct average, rating would have been (2=5)/2=3.5 which was unjust.

[jmontgomery]

A software change ... but what if an actual comment would HAVE to be made when rating at the 3 level or below? Otherwise, the software would just reject the input and inform the user how to resolve the problem.

[julie_glover]

How about the photographer had the option of deleting up to two ratings per photograph if he thought were out of line. Just an idea.

[steve w1]

Surely everyone's opinion is valid - beauty is in the eye of the beholder! As for making comment perhaps it is a confidence thing. I know that I sometimes rate low, this is just an objective assessment made by a person with very little experience of photography (me) and should not be taken as any kind of slur on the technical or aesthetic qualities of a photograph. I rate on what I like, sometimes I am able to put my feelings into words and other times not. Usually I choose not to comment as I am very inexperienced and consider that my opinion is relatively worthless. I reiterate that my ratings are purely based on my personal likings. Don't take ratings too seriously however if someone does comment look on it as an aid to improving your skills.