Enabling Dialogue in an International Community

[bens]

With all this talk about ratings abuse, i am concerned that what i

consider to be the greatest issue for the site, and its greatest

opportunity, could get lost. That is, the international, multi-

lingual community the site is building poses unique opportunities and

challenges for dialogue about photography between participants, which

i've understood from the site management is for the site, not the

members. i've left many messages here about suggestions to encourage

and incentivize constructive text criticism in the past six months

generally beyond the critique forum and won't repeat them now unless

asked by site management. my questions here are 1) is enabling

dialogue among this international community a priority for the site

and, if hopefully it is, what plans does the site have to enable it?

2) is encouraging/incentivizing constructive criticism generally

something the site is working on? i speak only english but would be

glad to help if help is needed.

[bens]

message above got garbled -- i meant to say that i've understood from site management that ratings are for the site not the members. look forward to your thoughts, thanks.

[bobatkins]

If ratings didn't matter to members, they wouldn't bother to give them. Ratings seem to be an obsession with many people, ergo ratings are for members.

 

If critiques and criticism were more important to members than ratings, they would give them more often. They don't, ergo ratings are more important to members than critiques and criticism.

 

While fostering international dialog and encouraging informed criticism of photography are laudible goals, you have to remember that the average viewer of photo.net is far more interested in whether the 28-105 is sharper than the 28-135, what color the next Digital Rebel will be and looking at interesting photographs.

 

Photo.net has to cater to both groups, and tries to do so.

 

Just my own opinions. I do not speak for photo.net.

[bens]

bob, i agree with your comments generally. the ratings matter to the site is something brian has said in the past, and over time i've appreciated its wisdom. i agree that all interests need to be served and, admittedly, mine tends to be wanting feedback as a learning amatuer photographer. that said, i think there are ways, some quite small, within the present system, to emphasize and encourage, not require (or discourage ratings), constructive criticism, and that doing it in an international multi-lingual context is particuarly challenging and interesting. so i'm interested if the site sees this as a priority, has any plans, and would like any assistance. i work, essentially, as a technical writer of sorts and would be glad to help.

[bens]

btw bob, your attention to equipment helped me to decide to buy the tamron 28-75, which led to photos of a holiday party that my in-laws loved. so thanks, i know what you mean!

[akochanowski]

Ben, you sound like a reasonable fellow but IMHO a bit naive about this site. I have been a part-time, sometimes full-time participant here for three years, so I may have a more full perspective than you. If not, forgive me.

 

There are really two groups coexisting under one umbrella on PN. The most visible is the bunch that gets off on ratings and inundates the system with the photos that most often end up on the top rated pages. These folks don't really want comments except the most bland, praise-filled stuff. They are about ratings, first and foremost. Enough has been said about them in countless threads about ratings over the years. I doubt whether fostering critical comments-- the type of toughts that would cause someone to evaluate and perhaps re-evaluate their portfolio-- is of any interest to people who can think no further than sunsets, bugs, cats, and Italian farmlands. This is a broad net of course, and I recognize it sweeps a few truly competent, and sometimes even thoughtful photographers, but on the whole I feel comfortable that anyone who has left thousands of ratings of 6s and 7s on this site has little use for detailed, thoughtful coments, in English or otherwise.

 

The second group consists of many, many good photographers who do not game the system and exchange comments on photographs that do not make their way into the top rated pages. Many can be found by some of the forums, like Leica, Street, Philosophy, and People. Again, just my opinion, but there are probably 10-15 photographers I can think of that I've met this way who are lightyears more talented, and far more likely to create real art, than the folks crowding the ratings game. The common link among these photographers is that they do not rate each ohers' photos numerically, or if they do it is extremely infrequent. Comments in this group are almost never about technical matters but about the thinking behind the photo-- why was it shot? How does it fit into a a series? How does it fit into the larger photographic world? Regardless of their English proficiency, I've found that the good, intelligent photogs have no real trouble communicating.

[bens]

thanks A, been around here about the same amount of time. committed to being niave. a successful enterprise needs leadership; the site's attention seems to be more and more about policing against negative practices. i've been trying to encourage attention to leading in the affirmative because the two must go together for success. if you look at my past forum threads you will see suggestions, many very small, about making known to the membership the value of constructive criticism. i don't mean to change the rate players. but there are many who, introduced to a system, follow the apparent desires of the system. right now, this site deliberately or not emphasizes ratings plenty. more can be done to emphasize constructive criticism, and in this increasingly international community, i think some additional thought needs to be applied to encourage it in a multi-lingual context. just for example, the tutorial found in the link to the "rate recent" page is almost entirely about ratings in english, and english not easy to follow for someone with english as a second language. i've suggested changing "rate recent" to "rate/critique recent" and change the tutorial. having it in other languages would help too. yes, perhaps not dramatically, but that and other small changes add up, and certainly create more of the culture for constructive criticism than now exists. and it can all be done within the present system of ratings.

[keith turrill]

I have tried the "Google Translate Tool" several times and it works well enough with Spanish and Italian to get a basic understanding of many comments.

[bens]

could the site include a reference somewhere to this translate tool?

[bens]

. . . day two of hoping for some indication, even a wink, that the site (and its participants -- where are all the people who complain about ratings abuse because it supposedly deters their photos from being widely viewed and COMMENTED ON) actually cares about encouraging constructive criticism.

[klimax]

I've wondered about this issue myself. I notice that there are significant numbers of people whose first language is not English.

 

Perhaps the simplest and most helpful thing we can do to help

the International Community is to write more directly, and to use fewer cliches and less slang. This helps not only those using machine translation but also those who are not totally fluent in English.

[bens]

george, absolutely, i agree completely, thanks for your comment.