mottershead Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 There are other heuristics being used to disqualify ratings from being used in the overall average score (which is what drives TRP). I haven't described all of them. The high-number-of-exchanged-sevens heuristic is only one of them, and that one would partly depend on the photographer's behaviour. But there are others. For example, if I find an account where too high a percentage of the ratings have been given to one person, those ratings are disqualified as a too likely to be a sock-puppet account or a friend/relative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark lucas Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Brian, while we're on the subjects of deletion, two prominent members of this site, along with a whole host of what I in the past had reported as bogus accounts, were deleted. I always knew the two were related. Without naming names (obviously, as if you would!), out of curiosity and perhaps as a warning to others, why were they deleted? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_nitsche Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Brian, is the script done running on old images? I have lost 3 or 4 ratings total I think. Just wondering if this will be going on for the next few days or if all the old 'legacy' rates have been dealt with? Pretty neat idea actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Mark, if it is the two of whom I am thinking, they were banned because of the large number of bogus accounts which they had created. I don't automatically ban people who have created bogus accounts: I'll just delete the bogus accounts and their ratings, and hopefully people will take the hint when they discover they can no longer log in under their sock-puppet accounts. But if it is really egregious, or if the bogus accounts have been used to slime other photographers' work in addition to pumping up the perpetrator's ratings, then the person will be banned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark lucas Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Thanks for responding Brian. I thought that was the case. I reckon that between them they had at least 30 bogus accounts (am I right?). They even went to the trouble of uploading a couple of photos into some of them for added "realism" and some of the names were unintentionally hilarious. Good riddance I say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilsontsoi Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Brian, thanks for sharing the info as I've been wondering about it myself the past month. Hopefully this will deter other potential abusers. Vincent, wow, the links and the numbers you mentioned are pretty telltale. I hope however that this thread doesn't get deleted (copy and paste to save as we speak.) Good read! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Actually, Mark, in that particular case it was over 130 different accounts on different IP addresses. However, they made certain mistakes that tipped off which IP addresses to look at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilsontsoi Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 How the heck were they able to manage 130 accounts! Seriously nuts-o! I agree with Laurie that I'd rather have an image on TRP, or anywhere at all, based entirely on its own merit. Loosing a rate here and there is no sweat. BTW, Brian, about Dave N.'s question above, I'd also like to know if this is going to continue for couple more days, or indefinitely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_nitsche Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 130??????? Holy cow. That is pretty sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Wilson, I can't tell you how long it will go on. Or, I could tell you and then change my mind. It's Calvinball. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilsontsoi Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Brian, of course, silly me. Whatever you call it, I think you're doing a good job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark lucas Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 In response to someone who criticised me when I first tried to bring managements attention to the above issue - yes, I will have some more cheese with my whine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_nitsche Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 My question wasn't how long it would go on. I hope forever. I was wondering if all the legacy ratings have been gone through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akochanowski Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 can you stop deleting 1/1s? I have a recent photo that may have the lowest legitimate average ever posted, and you knocked out one of the 2 1/1's it got. Cut it out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidmccracken Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 I thought I understood what was going on here. Basically if there is evidence of 'mate rating' then the number of ratings reported will be less than the number actually shown. Then I looked at <b><a href=http://www.photo.net/photo/3089854>this wonderful picture</a></b> which has 320 ratings reported yet on the TRP for the last month only 308 are stated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_nitsche Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Dave, yeah, I have had a bunch of ratings removed also and I don't think I would fall into the mate rating catagory with 1150 images rated after 3 years. Not sure about this, I guess that's the way Brian wants it though. How a person who has rated no images could be considered a mate rater is beyond me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 As I said above, if you exchange enough sevens with someone the exchanged sevens are disqualified. It doesn't necessarily mean you are a mate-rater. If two excellent photographers who merit sevens on their work rate a lot of each others' photos, they might overstep the limit and their mutual seven's would not be counted. On the presumption that they are indeed excellent photographers, it shouldn't matter much, because there will be plenty of other people to rate their photos who they haven't exchanged sevens with, and their overall ranking will be the same. (Or higher because they won't be competing against mater raters.) Of course, all mate-raters will claim they are in this category. But for them excluding the mutual sevens has a big impact on the overall score, since the sevens from people with whom they are exchanging sevens represent a big component of their average score, without which the average score is much lower. I experimented with an algorithm that only disqualified mutual sevens when they had a big positive impact on the score. But this is quite complicated and time-consuming to calculate, and I discovered that the method I'm using, which is much simpler, produces more or less the same results. By the way, the exchange-of-sevens heuristic is not the only one that causes ratings to be disqualified. For example, if there is an account which is excessively concentrating its ratings on one photographer, all the ratings of that account are being disqualified. Those ratings aren't reliable. They might not be from a sock-puppet. But they are apt to be the ratings of a friend, or someone who was requested to rate one folder or portfolio by its owner. Even if you are not the beneficiary of those concentrated ratings, you might have received ratings from a rater whose ratings have been disqualified. Indeed, disqualifying them might cause the photo's average to go up, since this heuristic might remove the lower "window-dressing" ratings that a sock-puppet was trying to use to disguise his/her dishonest ratings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Brian, thank you. <p> Glad to see you did not fall asleep and actually prepared back home - and probably for quite some time already - the nicest possible joke ever played here against mate-raters... <p> I'll soon have to admit you are a genius, just give me some time to verify it...:-) <p> Anyway, and more seriously, I'm really glad you are doing something about all this. I can't really see the results yet in the TRP, but I assume you know what you are doing... <p> Smartest thing of all being... not to tell us the rules of the game...:-) Keep it that way - be it just for your own peace...:-) Thanks again for that bit of refreshing humor... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 By the way, your last paragraph in this last post of yours made me wonder whether for example my many high ratings to Tony Dummett, Ian McEachern and Emil Schildt (who never rated my work, and who surely couldn't care less about all this) would have disappeared... <p> If so, well, be it... no problem, just curious... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_nitsche Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Marc, I am figuring yes as I think that is why I have lost rates both given and gotten also, and agree, so be it. This would explain the example David M. gave too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Landrum Kelly Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 I have noticed that I have lost several photos in the count of "highest rated photos" (those being rated 11 or more times). Two of those occurred today. Is this a result of these actions? I never mate rate deliberately. If it should turn out to be the case that my honest evaluation results in someone's inference that I have been doing that, then I think that someone is out of control. Is there any remedy for THAT problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincetylor Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Some professionals will have a natural fan base simply because people appreciate the consistent quality of their work. Marc and Emil for instance. Plenty like Dave, some myself and quite a few others, even plenty of non-professionals. It would make sense if the program you are using could be smart enough to recognize this and not penalize professionals, well for being just that. The mate-rater crowd is unlikely to have that type of unbiased fan base so to speak. So then, those having several people interested in their work could be penalized in such ways that would not be necessarily fair, or in harmony with the purpose of the mate-busting system here. Just a thought. I for one would not mind losing a measure of honest ratings IF it meant the site as a whole really benefits from the cleansing process. Just might be more effective if it had some codes built in considering some of these other factors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Lannie, you cannot read an accusation against you into the fact that ratings on your photos are being disqualified. It is possible that you have received ratings that were disqualfied and that the result is that some of your photos have fallen below the 11 threshold. But the fact that there are disqualified ratings on your photos does not imply anything about your behaviour. You merely benefitted slightly from the behaviour of someone else who has since been determined either to have been misbehaving, or at least, to have given ratings that are not worth considering. The only case where your own behaviour could trigger any effect on your photos is if you gave someone a lot of sevens and the other person gave you a lot of sevens. If that happened, all those sevens, both your seven ratings of Mr X, and his of you, would have been disqualified from being included in the photo averages, although not deleted. I don't know if this case applies to you, but if it did, then on the presumption that you and Mr X's many exchanged sevens were honest, then it shouldn't make much difference since your photo would have received high ratings, including sevens, from others with whom you did not exchange numerous sevens. The only way it could really make a difference is if for some reason you had photos that were rated with sevens by people you happened to be rating with sevens, and for some reason these photos did not attract sevens to the same degree from other photographers with whom you were not exchanging sevens. My analysis of the data shows that there is no difference in the overall preferences of high-rated photographers versus less-high-rated photographers, once you factor out reciprocal ratings. So that scenario is unlikely, and it is much simpler from a programming point of view to ignore it. Of course, it is also more than possible that you benefitted from the dishonest behaviour of someone else without being dishonest yourself. Someone might have given your photos a lot of sevens without enough regard to their merit in order to get you to reciprocate. If you did then reciprocate with seven ratings, it may have been because you honestly thought that the other person's photos merited them. The other ratings you received on your photos from people who weren't fishing for high ratings might not have been so high. For example, many people honestly thought that AP 's photos were excellent, and objected to being characterized as mate-raters when they gave her high ratings. But it is also pretty clear that she benefitted a lot from being very generous with high ratings. (Although to be fair, she didn't do this as much as some people accused of her doing, and not as much as some other people.) Her ratings have actually long ago been deleted, but if they hadn't been, the new "Calvinball rules" would have removed her over-generous seven ratings on anyone who reciprocated her generosity by giving her photos sevens, even if the latter were honest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
root Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 It appears that overly enthusiastic fans are being reined in as well, even if their frequent high rates are reciprocated. I agree with this. Nobody learns a thing when you say, in effect, oh, I just love ALL your images. What this process doesn't seem to address is the short term benefits that mate rating has on images. Once mates put the image on page one and provide the halo effect, their job is done, and deleting those rates will not change the overall visibility of the image. So what exactly is the purpose of "Calvinball"? I would hope it would be to achieve a broader distribution of image views (and photographers). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted February 11, 2005 Share Posted February 11, 2005 Vincent, it shouldn't make any difference. If your photos are better, then they will be rated high by everyone, not just by the people with whom you are exchanging sevens. The only people who will see an impact are those who have photos which are given sevens proportionately more by those who are receiving sevens from them than everyone else. That sounds like a reasonable definition of mate-rating to me. For example, lets say I have a photo which has been rated by people with whom I have exchanged sevens, as well as by other people. Call the first group A, and the second group B. If I haven't been mate-rating, then both groups should have the same average rating. If the "A" group (the one with which I've been exchanging a lot of sevens) has a significantly higher average than the "B" group, then that is mate-rating, and disqualifying the seven ratings from the A group is going to make the average of the photo go down, AS IT SHOULD. If the two groups have the same average ratings, then disqualifying the A ratings on the photo will have no effect on the overall average. Perhaps you are saying that only other professionals are able to fully appreciate a professional photo and that professionals exchanging a large number of sevens *isn't* mate-rating, even when it happens that the rest of the world doesn't turn out to appreciate the professional photos as much as the other professionals do. If you are saying that, I don't agree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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