top photographer rating method

[carlomogavero]

I have a medium rating of 10.1 (a+o) and I do not appear in the top

photographer (2 years). Why?

[peter_daalder]

<i>"I do not appear in the top photographer (2 years)."</i><p>An enjoyable question which clearly draws the attention to the inflation of ratings on this site since 2002 (and before that...).<br>You need to be more specific, Carlo. There is no <i>Top Photographer</i> listing for the last 2 years. If you are so inclined, you can peruse the rankings for the last 5+ years, by choosing Period: All, and discover that the lowest rated images (i.e. 1996-2000) are situated at an average of 10.12 (as of 13 October 2004). In other words, your medium rating of 10.1 is not sufficient to get you into this particular Gallery view.<p>Now let's go back 2 years and look at the <i>Top Photographer</i> for 2002 - choosing Period: 2 Years Ago. Once you hit the Previous button, you'll discover that the photographer's average for the 500th image was 8.22! If you want to take the next step, you'll discover that today's number 500 in the "All" view is a whopping 10.95...<br>This information comes to you from a fellow Pnetter who is (of course) obsessed with his ranking amongst the best of the best on this site. There is absolutely no intention to be sarcastic toward your enquiry, Carlo, but elsewhere in the world, people are still blowing themselves up to make a point and others are still dying of starvation. Photo.net ratings/rankings are about as irrelevant as you can imagine. Please go out with your camera and have fun shooting the world as you see it.<div></div>

[peter_daalder]

BTW, just looking closely at my last attachment, I reckon it is a crime that <b>Jean-Philippe POLI</b> has been relegated to this particular position in the All Time TRP... Just goes to show that it is a lot of BS really.

[mottershead]

There has been inflation in the ratings since August 2001. Prior to that, ratings were completely anonymous. Then in August 2001, they were made public, and they remained so until this summer. During that period there was a steady inflation in the average rating of almost an entire point on each of the scales, two points if you add them as you have done. In October 2002, I tried to normalize the ratings so that the older photos would have a chance to appear in the various long Top Photos views. There was a huge outcry against this in the Site Feedback forum, with people avowing that I was changing the "intrinsic" meaning of their ratings by normalizing them. In a move I now very much regret, I backed down, and reverted to the original ratings. In part because of this episode, I no longer give much attention to protests in the Site Feedback forum about changes that I institute.

 

This summer, I made the ratings more anonymous, but not absolutely. This has caused the average rating to drop a bit, by about a half a point on each scale, but it is creeping up again because mate-rating is on the rise again.

 

As a result of these trends up and down, ratings that are separated in time are not comparable. The ratings on photos from a couple of years ago are not comparable to the current ratings. Only the absolute best of the photos from 2001 and 2002 are ever going to get into the "All" view, and not near the top. If you want to see the best photos from three years ago or more, you need to look at particular year views and decide for yourself which are the best across years, because the ratings won't help you at all.

[peter_daalder]

No worries! I always expected that my ratings argument (over time) was flawed...<br>Thank you, Brian, for maintaining this great resource that is PN and allowing the existence of a Feedback Forum, full stop.

[mg]

Good to see this explanation, Brian. As I see it, you stated clearly (and perhaps for the first time?) 1) that the rating system did not achieve certain goals, and 2) that you regretted not to have normalized the system in 2002; finally, 3) that this episode of 2002 discouraged you about the whole thing.

 

I too regret this silly "huge outcry", but quite a few members were also supportive of what you planned to do back then. What I regret even more, is that it got you discouraged. Perhaps it isn't too late to reconsider doing something about all this... Regards.

[root]

Normalizing ratings would not have worked because many older members were rating images with preinflation guidelines and standards. Although a few still are, many stopped rating, leaving the rating chores to proportionately more mate raters and first time visitors.

 

You are correct in noting that after a brief lull, we're back where we started with several images on the first page all/average uploaded in the last thirty days.

 

The change in culture that demonstrates that normalization could not be achieved can be seen in the large number of comments and rates of images circa 2000 - 2001 when the participation in the gallery seems to have included a much larger proportion of the membership.

[salvatore.mele]

In front of the use of the word normalising, I cannot not mention <a href=http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009fcY> this thread</a>.

<p>

Chiming in with Pete, I also regret all the lost gems of the "masters of past", so to say, in front of the recent inflation. It is a shame to see where some of the "big names" of a few years ago ended up in the "ALL" category.

<p>

However many current gems are getting buried even faster by "gallery pollution" and, worse, mate rating.

<p>

I reckon the entropy of the Universe is pretty insensitive to the average value of the photo.net rating, though.