Rating Criteria. A simple suggestion

[tomaso nigris]

Most of people in PN are serious and they put a lot of passion in

photography. Few members, sometime, with no reason, give low

rating, damaging PN system. Very often the very low rate is coming

from members that do not have any photo in portfolio. How can they

rate the other photographer if they aren't a photographer?. To

improve the system I suggest that a member can rate the pictures if

they have in portfolio at least 3 photos. I also suggest to obliged

people that give rate from 1 to 4 to give a comment, to critique why

they give such low rate. PN is a very well done Photo Gallery

system with good rules and efficient system able to give a lot of

possibility to exchange information and to appreciate a lot of

beautiful pictures and wonderful strongly photos lovers, sometime

few people can damage such nice work.

[root]

This is why raters names should not be listed.

[mike dixon]

As has been explained dozens of times before (including within the past 48 hours), requiring comments results in lots of pointless comments such as, "Great!" "awesome," "sucks," "boring," "1/1," "7/7," "..," etc.<P>

<i>How can they rate the other photographer if they aren't a photographer?</i><P>

I can tell people whether I liked a movie and what I thought its strengths and weaknesses are even though I've never made a movie. Have you ever recorded and produced an album? Do you know what CDs you like?

[dave_nitsche]

Mike, I have struggled with your statement for a long time now...

 

"I can tell people whether I liked a movie and what I thought its strengths and weaknesses are even though I've never made a movie. Have you ever recorded and produced an album? Do you know what CDs you like?"

 

Who's opinion is more important to the film maker? Yours or Zeffireli's? As far as music, yours or Mutt Langs? It's an important distinction to many people.

[__piotr_e_recht]

{Who's opinion is more important to the film maker? }

 

The one who buys a ticket on opening weekend.

[mike dixon]

Many of the best critics are not movie/music/image makers themselves. The skills needed to give an insightful critique aren't all the same as those needed to produce an excellent image.

[root]

The person buying the ticket tells you what's popular, not what's good. This applies to movies, novels, music, and yes, photography. If your goal is to appeal to as many people as possible, then your claim is valid. Thankfully, there are talented folks out there who pursue their art with a different goal in mind.

 

So I share Dave's view on this, even though I recognize it's not PC. The last time I asked for examples to support the view that lousy photographers can still make good critics, someone named one person who was on the site a few years ago (and had no gallery to support his claim.)

 

What good does your rate or comment do, if you don't have the analytical abilities to support your views? I expect my input to be judged by its' content and only secondarily by my shots of a similar image for comparison. However, if your similar shots show no awareness of any reasonable way that the genre should be approached, I will assume you don't know unless your comment somehow demonstrates otherwise.

[dave_nitsche]

Mike, agreed, but the opinions that matter the most to those 'in the biz' they are in are from those who are respected in that genre. I can only talk for the music business being involved in it for a lot of years. There are a lot of 'marketing' reasons why the general public will like a movie, album, whatever. There are personalities that get involved with critics.

 

To directors of films, or producers of albums, the comments of their pier groups are weighted heavier than others because that core group understands the overall process better.

 

I think that also means a lot to photographers here. Like I said, I have struggled with this thought for a while. I didn't mean you asking it in particular, just the overall thought.

 

Now conversely, having had a show or two now, the opinions of the non-photographer public are radically different than that of the photographer. The 'stuff's' that matter to the photographer are non-existant in the general public. Blown highlight? They couldn't care. Not falling on a third? They couldn't care. All they know is if they like it or not.

 

So my struggle. Both opinions are valid but for varying reasons. IMO it is important to know who is telling you what about an image. It helps interpret the thoughts they are giving and how they can be used.

[mdanger]

I don't get it. In your own biography you say, "Rating is not so important." You also have no rates below a 4 in your portfolio. I'd also like to know when 4 became a low number? I have never complained about the 1's,2's,& 3's in my portfolio because I believe they reflect more about the rater than about my photography. If people don't have photos in their portfolio, maybe they haven't mastered the ability to upload their photos yet...it took me months since I was new to the computer. Relax. Why do you care what other people think? Mary

[jreades]

Actually, there *is* an original take on the ratings game in there -- tieing rating ability to

portfolio. You could go further and say that people with more pictures in their portfolio

get a greater ability to rate, but I think that that values quantity over quality.

 

*But* what's interesting to me is this: to what extent do the bots and fake accounts post

their own photos before hitting the queues?

 

Obviously, making this an explicit rule (You must post at least five photos before you can

start rating) would invite the bots to post exactly five photos before they started rating,

but if we play Calvinball it's a good rule to add to the game since it's easy to verify within

the database automagically.

 

Also, I'm always a bit bemused by the fact that in the photo.net suggestion bucket it's only

'low' (where 1 < low < 5) ratings that require explanation... Ah, how quickly I've become

jaded.

[mike dixon]

It's a trivial matter to copy some photos from the web and upload them to a photo.net portfolio. I don't know why people think that the way to deal with people who have no respect for playing by the rules is to simply impose more rules.

[tomaso nigris]

I was misunderstood. I said that majority of people in PN is great including members without pictures but few members like to rate low only to boost themselves and spoil the game.So my proposal was laso to defend the honest member A lot of members without pictures have very low average rating. How is it possible with some many beatiful pictures that I see every day. There are also very bad pictures but you can skip rating or you try to explain how to improve. We are not at school, people put passion , time and effort in the pictures and rating is a sort of gratification. At the beginning I made the same mistake and I gave low rating than I understood the lesson and when I don like or I skip or I try to give suggestion. May be when I said "rating is not important " I was lying to myself. When I receive a good rating I appreciate. I also received low rate 2\2 3\3, I decided to delete the picture and reload, sometime after modification according suggestion, sometime just as it was. The majority of photographer are in PN to show their works , to improve the skilness to face each other. The majority of us are not professionals Photographers so the comparison with movie and music have no sense also because when we listen music or we see a movie we don't give any rate to anybody.

[root]

There are rules that rely on ethics, there are unspoken rules (one recent development is that we learned how many mate raters had no idea that what they were doing was something Brian and many others thought warranted deletion), and rules that are imposed by the computer (rating only from a queue, for example).

 

While nothing is foolproof, there are obvious improvements that can be made, and it appears that we're starting to make them, slowly but surely.

 

Replace 'rules' with 'limits'.

[beepy]

Let's all admit something here... these constant postings regarding ratings are sharpening

and distilliing the responses to such postings. This is one of the more pithy and

condensed ratings thread I've seen.

<p>

Everyone back in the pool.

[ksa2fl]

I'm sure its all been gone over a million times, but dont let bad ratings get to you. 4's aren't low at all. Everyone will approach the system differently, I'm sure some people may not be so happy about how I rate photos sometimes. There are so many photos on this site that if we gave every well exposed photo a 7/7 then the system would only work as an ego booster. Already I think the system is too inflated with people handing out 6's and 7's for everything. Also few people provide much in the way of helpful critiques, and I'm responsible of this also. If you give someone what you think is a really low score, you could tell them why, what they could do to improve it. If you give someone a really high score let them know what about their photo worked so well. Once you put your photo on this site though you have to accept that people can judge it however they see fit. Of course the system could work better but if people don't like it the way it is then they can wait till it works closer to their likings before uploading pictures.

[keith turrill]

There are several photography websites that have user galleries. PN has the equivalent of "AC Nielsen" viewer ratings and is a quick test of popularity in a numerical sense. One of the other websites is primarily objective critcisim.

 

The yearly user fees for these sites are generally $25.00 USD per year which is a tiny fraction of the cost of a lens or a camera body. As to ratings no single photography website is perfect and never will be. It is probably best not to worry too much about rating systems.

[tomaso nigris]

The thread is becoming too long and boring. My concern was for this beautiful site not for me specifically, I had good rating from many people and I thank everybody for generosity, I was just impressed by some member with rating average 2.03\2.03 or people that give rate and disappear or some that have many registration ( I saw in an other 3d) . I agreed that there is exaggeration also from the other side , some easy high rate may be hoping to have the same back , that?s life that?s people.

I promised to myself to say only few words and you see the result I am so boring. Promised this my last. Good work and good pictures to everybody.

[hanna_reitsch]

Dave if this bothers you so much, join a site with for pros only, then you won't have to worry about the everyday chump rating your self proclaimed masterpieces.

[howard_foto]

<p><b>I agree,

<p>'tis calvin-ball

<p>to a tee.</b>

 

<p>okay, okay, I don't expect to be called the poet-laureate of PN any time soon. (-:

[rayfraser]

Based on my personal experience Brian-ball is neither rules nor limits; but rather haphazard undeclared counter attacks against those he feels are foes. Not a poet - just one of those foes.

[bens]

ratings are more about ego, constructive comments are about communication. we are (me included, i'm afraid) longer on the first than the second. where is everybody when there are discussions in this forum about encouraging constructive comments?

[root]

Howard, limits are the antithesis of Calvinball - explained, predictable, and computer imposed. Calvinball is the various unpredictable ways the resulting data can be processed.

 

Ben, what you mean 'we'? I'm proud of my rate / comment ratio.

 

Besides, comments is a 1:1 fishing expedition, really. I've pretty much given up promoting the 'N' words qualitative measurement idea (although I think it would work :-)).

[dave_nitsche]

Hanna, that's not what I said. Let me say it again (and I quote)...

 

"Both opinions are valid but for varying reasons. IMO it is important to know who is telling you what about an image. It helps interpret the thoughts they are giving and how they can be used."

[dave_nitsche]

If you read the conversation we were talking about the comments by people who have images posted and those that don't. It wasn't about Pro v. Amature, it was more about photographer v. non-photographer.

[Alex_Es]

Agreed: One need not be a photographer to be a critic of photographers. Some of the best critics of the arts were either not artists themselves or bad artists.

 

This website requires special consideration, however, because it is made by and for photographers and not critics. Photo.net is more like a big workshop than anything else. All of the "featured critics" here are practicing photographers, though at least one that I know of does not display his work here (except with his bio blurb). I know of no professional photography critics publishing here. I myself have been a freelance book reviewer. But my critical writings here have been informal, not the of the sort you put into a CV. Because of the focus of this website and because of its informality one would hope (though not require) that the people critiquing your work are fellow photographers. This should be of particular concern because an open community like this one is unfortunately vulnerable to so-called trolls, that is people who write in only to cause disruption. When people in this catagory get hold of something like the numberical rating system, which is particularly vulnerable to annonymous abuse, the results can be very unpleasant.

 

Now to Tomaso's suggestions. In spirit I agree with him. People who give numerical ratings ought to be accountable in some way. But I think they should be accountable whether they give good, bad or in-between reviews. Once you could know who rated you and how. This is no longer the case. That is too bad because it allows for more mindlessness and more abuse.

 

The idea of having each reviewer post three or four pictures is a good one in principle. This would assure you that the person critiquing you is someone involved in photography. But it should not be the only rule for allowing critiues. There are photographers on this website who do not know how to upload photographs (I was one of those until two years ago). A person not posting photographs might be required to write a short critique, even a few words ("The contast sucks;" "Photos of Rabbits with pancakes on their heads belong in MOMA," etc.). This should not be hard.

 

Having said this, I anticipate a problem that we could have with the three or four photographs rule. Any troll could post a few crummy photos and then go to it.

 

There is no perfect solution to the problems endemic to a numberical rating system as used here. This is why it is very important for the moderators to be especially sensitive to complaints about systematic rating abuse.

 

To conclude: Participation in photo.net is not like going to the theatre or visiting a gallery. This is a workshop-style website where honest exchange of ideas and opinions is paramount. It is also a community as opposed to the wide open world. It is an open community but still a community of peers. As in workshops, the exchange can easily become sour and counterproductive if malise or stupidity are also to gain the upper hand. This is why the rules of engagement are so important to mull over and fine-tune.