Biases on PN...

[louis1]

titles

[mattvardy]

Good points, Nestor; I totally agree with you.

[mike_morgan1]

I noticed the same thing about turd shots. No matter how well excecuted, it seems photo.net users have a strong bias against turd shots, no matter how well composed and lit.

 

Some people don't like flowers, others don't like turds. Life isn't fair.

[louis1]

PNET is often just a volume driven site. Just the way I am amazed fast food is so popular,

certain types of image will always be popular.

 

Just possibly if the site stopped any new members/guests viewing, then, when existing

members had seen their fill of their current preferred type of image, their tastes might

change/mature to other slightly more challenging styles.

 

The constant turn over of visitors/members keeps the popular genres highly rated.

[mottershead]

When people like Anthony say that people should "stand behind" their ratings, what this usually means is that they think it should be possible to send the person an email demanding an explanation of the rating, and have the person respond. A lot of people were sending mails like this, and the moderators got to see a fair number of them, because the recipients would complain. People also felt entitled to harass raters in the comments threads of raters' photos, or by retaliating with low ratings.

 

You shouldn't have to open your inbox to demanding messages from offended photographers because you expressed your opinion. I don't know how many members we lost entirely, or who at least gave up rating, because of people sending them rude mails and writing harassing comments. Probably the main reason we made the ratings anonymous was not so much the stream of mails that we were getting in the abuse mailbox but the amount of harassment that members were getting from other members. In my opinion, this had developed into a more serious problem for the site than the small number of ratings given in bad faith.

 

So, we changed the system so that people can rate photos with less fear of being harassed. It is harder now to figure out who gave the rating, and you might not be able to figure it out exactly. This unfortunately depersonalizes the rating system, but fewer people misbehave when the ratings are depersonalized than when they aren't. Furthermore misbehaving raters are pretty easy to deal with: they leave distinctive tracks in the database. The same is not true of misbehaving photographers.

[root]

I took Tony's comment at face value. He wants people who low ball images to have the guts to leave a detailed comment for all to see if they really feel that a high rated image deserves a rating that is so far out of line. Many of us believe that most of these low rates with no comments are ill informed rather than malicious. I refer you to your 'poodle' comment in the tutorial.

[jreades]

<p>Without knowing anything about rating gangs, I'd have to guess there's an

interaction between several different issues:</p>

 

<ol>

<li>The average photographer will respond best when they see in another's work that

towards which they are themselves striving -- there are <i>more</i> people wanting to

shoot pretty landscapes than there are wanting to shoot dynamic street scenes. So people

'get' landscapes more easily than they do streetscapes.</li>

<li>Similarly, they will 'get' landscapes that are closer to what they themselves would take

rather than ones that push the envelope, if you will, and are trying to capture

something very different. So 'easy' landscapes up, 'hard' landscapes down.</li>

<li>The old issue of "everyone believes themselves to be above average" -- so I compare

my landscape (to which, of course, I would give a 4/4 or a 5/5 and of which I have three

dozen) with your landscape (which is clearly better) and you have a recipe for 'grade

inflation'. The same does not happen to streetscapes which fewer people shoot and fewer

people have an appreciation of.</li>

<li>It's hard to be mean -- assuming that you are generally trying to be balanced in your

ratings then what's left is how do you tell someone that they suck? It's actually

<i>harder</i> to give someone a <i>3</i> or a <i>2</i> because you feel like they

deserve some additional feedback to explain why you think the photo is not a good one.

There are times that I wanted to give a lower rating but couldn't bring myself to write the

critique that it would require... so I skipped it instead.</li>

</ol>

 

<p>I guess what I'm getting at is that there are a number of psychological explanations

for the rating that we see and none of them require active malice against or bias towards a

particular category or photographer. I'm sure that as I spend more time on the PN site I

will begin to develop dislikes for certain <i>people</i>, but I hope that that won't hinder

my appreciation of their <i>photography</i>. For the time being, I would prefer to have a

photographer whose work I admire offer me specific recommendations for improving my

technique than have 1000 subscribers give it a 4/4.</p>

 

<p>P.S. None of this is to say that my own work is worthy of a high rating (in fact, there's

a definite reason I haven't submitted <i>any</i> of it).</p>

[nomade]

I find a good move to have now a semi-anonymous rating system. It allows people to express their (short) opinions in the form of rates, instead of forcing them to write, wich is not always possible.

 

At least now there's a chance to leave a rate equivalent to a concept like "ouch, this shot sucks!!", w/out having to lose more time in writting a critique to an image that doesn't deserve even a second look.

 

But there will always be people that feel THEY are beeing criticized, when in fact is THE IMAGE they posted. And then they ask for "esplanation" of a low rate, surely thinkin that theirs hurted ego deserve more dedication.

 

How about accepting other opinions in the form they're uninterested and generously offered...?

[ajpn]

I kind of neglected to return to this. I've been busy. But thanks Carl for backing me up.

 

I'm not going to say anything else, because by now I should know that it makes no difference what I think.