Ratings on the rise?

[hanna_reitsch]

Sure Nikos, Brian should look at your impeccable taste and use that as a yardstick for ratings. You people are extemely funny, and pompous and should find another hobby. I hope Brian stops reading this nonsense and lets the German Shepards bark amongst each other.

[hanna_reitsch]

I hope you started this thread to complain about your own high ratings or, oh your high ratings are well deserved and everyone else's 6.3 ratings are not. Wow, stick a pin in your head and pop the fat balloon.

[hanna_reitsch]

Last response directed to Dave N.

[nikos]

Hanna, my taste may not be impeccable (a claim that YOU made, not I) but at least it's taste. The TRP is no longer the result of taste. It's a contest.

 

Carl, please observe that in the system I was describing users need not only balance their ratings. They also have a limited amount available. In such a system you would not see people splash a hundred 2's to 'buy' the rights to a hundred 6s. They would still have a handful of ratings. There are a lot of arguments that can be made against it, and sure there are still some ways to misuse it. The key thing to note is that the potential misuse is LIMITED.

 

I'd rather have a system where people misuse a limited rating influence, than the current one when people misuse and unlimited rating influence.

 

You can't force people to be honest and tasteful. What you can do is to make sure that each member has a fair share of power/influence over the community. Currently the amount of influence that one may have only depends on their free time and willingness to create bogus accounts. It the licence-to-print-money thing I referred to above. As soon as anything grows on trees (money or 7 ratings or whatever) it is devalued. The current value of a 7 in photo.net is approaching that of a stone with a 'well done' note attached to it.

 

I had described before the Kharma system that was invented and operated by a well-known and hard-to-manage geek community site for communal forum moderation. (whatever you may say about us geeks, we know something about online communitites) If you google 'kharma' or 'karma' along with my name for photo.net you'll find the post with a better explanation in a long thread of the past. The system not only involves arbitrary limits, but also a means of attributing more or less influence to memebers according to their level of constructive participation. (it's not a democracy, that's why it's called kharma)

 

There are variations on how something like that could be implemented. This is not as important, it's details. The important thing is that if ratings are to have any value whatsoever their allocation to raters should be limited in some way. I'm not talking about tweaking the rating mechanism. I'm talking about fundamentally changing the way it works.

[nikos]

Check this out - old thread but still applicable

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004iMc

[root]

Nikos, I agree with the concept of limiting the number of 'votes', but I reject the idea of the black ball, regardless of how many are available or required. I got a politically motivated down rate from someone yesterday, no doubt as a direct result of this thread. . . and no, Brian, it doesn't require constant monitoring of each rate as it comes in.

[mg]

Nikos, you wrote:

 

"You can't force people to be honest and tasteful. What you can do is to make sure that each member has a fair share of power/influence over the community. Currently the amount of influence that one may have only depends on their free time and willingness to create bogus accounts. It the licence-to-print-money thing I referred to above. As soon as anything grows on trees (money or 7 ratings or whatever) it is devalued."

 

That's exactly the problem.

 

"There are variations on how something like that could be implemented. This is not as important, it's details. The important thing is that if ratings are to have any value whatsoever their allocation to raters should be limited in some way. I'm not talking about tweaking the rating mechanism. I'm talking about fundamentally changing the way it works."

 

Again, agreed.

 

The "unlimited" bank notes machine is the real problem, and there are many ways to address this problem. Unfortunately, the specific ways you propose to address it so far are perhaps not really applicable. Your suggestions make some sense, no doubt, but Brian already stated in the past, if I'm not mistaken, that he wasn't really prepared to force people to rate images they wouldn't want to rate. In short, the way I see it, freedom is necessary for all folks to be motivated to take part in the rating process. Therefore, we should look for changes that will not reduce too drastically the rater's freedom, if we want the site to be able to accept it. Perhaps Brian could clarify whether my understanding is correct.

 

The 2nd issue you seem to have neglected so far, Nikos, is that all the PAST 6/7s and 7/7s are now already in the database, and they are very difficult to remove without annoying many people. And if you start limiting the number of very high and very low ratings from tommorrow onwards, the next uploads will be submitted in conditions that would be too different from the system that was in place so far.

 

As a conclusion, although your proposal would make perfect sense at the start of a new site, the specific suggestions it contains may not be really applicable for the photo.net of today. This is why I suggested to indeed limit the number of highest ratings distributed by a given member, but to do so with the introduction of a new rating ("8, outstanding"): that way, the power of mate-rates on the gallery will be greatly diminished WITHOUT undoing the high rates of the past, nor annoying anyone.

 

We could add a few more drastic measures, but I feel they could create an unwanted earthquake, and that's perhaps something Brian can't afford to risk.

 

Anyhow, I feel there should urgently be a thread to discuss on a very logical basis the various possibilities for a reform, but we should all collaborate to propose something that would make sense and be applicable for the gallery as it exists today. I hope Brian will care this time for such a collective effort, as I feel such action should have been taken already long ago.

[root]

Introducing an '8' would bury the old images on the long term sorts . . not a good idea.

 

What you want is a system that forces you to be selective. If you can't restrict the number of rates offered to one person or in total, at least stop offering TRP sorts that allow for multiples by the same photographer. 'Photographer's Highest' (oldest) should be the default for all time periods as a minimum starting point.

[mg]

Carl,

 

Which long term sorts are you refering to, precisely ? Because as far as I can see, it would make no difference at all for these old images: either they are already burried or they still appear in 1 or 2 or 3 "years ago" etc - average etc -, and it seems to me the 8s wouldn't make any difference for them. Also, nothing would stop you or I to go to a very old upload and give it an 8... So, what am I missing here...?

[root]

"All" seems to be a popular sort.

 

I also have in mind personal favorites pages. Would you be in favor of preventing (or at least not displaying) more than one 7/7, 7/6, 6/7 etc. for any one person on ANY sort?

[cristina_fumi]

I think that generally ratings are higher now I mean after the changes. Before mate ratings would bring you to the front page of course, but with a real rating value. Now we don't know anymore which is the real value of our pics. I personally would like to know about what I should change to take better shots or to improove anyway... Sometimes you get 1/1 ratings from unknowns and your pic disappears from visibility and you'll never know what is wrong or good with it. Mostly you need to go through the pages now to see really good shots that some i...t rated very low, I mean those shots from which you learn something... I am interested in good photography, please Brian make it more visible.

[sammm]

Carl,

 

If you're looking for an approach that forces selectivity, you're talking about a fairly radical shift in photo.net's rating system. Here's one way of doing it: eliminate all rating approaches other than a systematic one, and in that systematic approach, make everyone give comparable ratings -- so, for example, 4 photos show up on the screen and have to be rated 1-4 in each of several categories; then after going through several screens of these, you can have a fifth screen that compares the "best of the best", etc. You might give one point for a 1 or 2 in the first round, 2 points for a one or two in the second round, etc.

 

The upside is that this would directly compare different shots, and would perhaps also let you compare similar shots (e.g., compare portraits against portraits and abstacts against abstracts). It would result in a process that looked more like a "juried" appraisal of the photographs.

 

But the downside is there would be less ability to participate in ratings as you traveled through the site, so I couldn't, for example, look at Dave N's favorites and rate a few that I particularly liked or disliked as I reviewed and commented on them. And I couldn't go into the most highly rated photos and give them my own honest ratings.

 

So, are we looking for ratings as a real judge of the photographs on the site, in which case, will a mass of users of an internet site actually tell us what photos are "good" or just what photos are "popular"? Or are we looking for an ability to allow a very diverse mass of people to meaningfully comment? Or just a series of filters to help us sort through an enormous mass of photographs? Over time, I've come to view ratings as serving the last function only, and while they do so imperfectly, I can't think of a better way. If we're looking for something other than that filter, I'm tempted to think of it as an entirely new feature, and not try to reform ratings to meet those needs.

[marshall]

Wow. I really do have respect for a lot of people in this thread, and appreciate that a lot of thought has gone in to this, but I think we're wasting our time coming up with some of these systems for "forcing" responsible ratings. They are simply too complicated to be welcomed by people who spend less time on the site and who make up the vast majority of users (and they don't spend time in these threads).

<P>

You can't force everyone to rate the same. End of story. If you want to eliminate mate-rating, it requires more tracking time that we have. Any system that limits the high rates could easily result in the rates being even MORE skewed to the mates, because if you the mate-rater now only have a limited number of high #'s to give you, you're going to spend it on your friends and not people you don't know will return the favor. End result: no one else sees anything high, regardless of the quality of work.

<P>

See what I'm saying? If you make the currency scarcer, you still don't change the <I>motivations</I> of the people doling out the points. You can't change people's attitudes just by changing the system.

[jhenry]

Marshall... I'm afraid that you are damn' right!!... the reason why I stopped fighting against the wind ... although I get sometime a bit... nervous... and not because mine are not in the front page... but because I see some injustice to some good photographs and too because I miss many jewels deliberatly buried under mates' ashes thanks to I will never have a chance to reach... <br>am I clear!?<p>:o((

[root]

Sam, the problem is that the rating system is viewed as an invaluable feature designed to generate revenue by encouraging memberships. Not only is it used to select the most popular images, it is also used as a fun activity in and of itself (especially for first timers to the site) and as a cheap form of feedback that some people seem to value (although they learn soon enough that the whole process is not what they hoped it would be.)

 

The system now sustains itself on fear. . . . fear that if you change things, a significant number of people will be disenchanted and hold back on their membership contribution or uploading their wonderful daily images.

 

The currency should be comments, not rates. The notion that people will enter "#$$l%&**%^&^#$%" to satisfy a minimum requirement seems far fetched.