how come i'm not getting any 1's or 2's?

[jp zorn]

all the 3's i'm getting makes me wonder: why no 1's or 2's? i've got to think

more than a few people wouldn't mind giving me some of those. have 1's and 2's

been banned? if so, why are they still listed as an option? does that mean 3's

are really 1's and 4's 2's?

[michaelging]

The way I understand it , 1's and 2' can be given, but are not posted until a moderator looks at them, and sees if they are justified, or used as retribution.

[mrstubbs]

http://www.photo.net/frequent-questions

[jp zorn]

just odd i haven't received a single 1 or 2. my rating scale begins at 3. maybe people think they'll get in trouble with the admins if they give them out. they're obviously not going have a problem with me since it's all anonymous.

[gib]

there was a recent thread about a modification to the rating system in which the scale was reversed. 1 is the new 7 and 2 is the new 6.

[chris hughes]

In easily the most idiotic move ever made by Photo.net, an otherwise admirable site, the 1s

and 2s have been disabled but the buttons remain. Your question points up exactly why it's

horrible interface design and a confusing, inexplicable and frankly insulting move. I've

pointed this out before and I'll point it out again until Photo.net either makes the scale 1-5 or

returns 1s and 2s to the functioning scale.

[emwalker]

the 1 and 2 ratings are recorded on the server but not used in averages or displayed. The admins got too many complaints, so they effectively made it a five point system where 3 is the lowest rating you can get.

[.th]

good question, i kind of miss mine (and i used to have plenty)

<br><br>

 

i want'em <b>BACK!. ,-)</b>

[chris hughes]

"The admins got too many complaints, so they effectively made it a five point system where 3

is the lowest rating you can get."

 

Right. In order to protect people from themselves. And what's the result? Now people gripe

about the 3/3s. It would be a zero sum gain if it weren't for the fact that it's both confusing

to people and a rank violation of solid user interface design. That Photo.net insists on

treating its users like children causes me to lose all confidence in a site that I used to

consider one of the best on the Web.

[johncrosley]

I used to write abuse@photo.net that the only images that desserved a 1/1 were a black cat in a coal mine at night that was wrongly focused, wrongly framed and had other defects (of course you couldn't see them due to darkness).

 

 

Abuse usually removed the 1/1s.

 

Few photos on Photo.net are horrendous enough to rate a 1/1, and same with 2/2s, though some would warrant them.

 

I note that far fewer 7/7s seem to be given now. A run through a given period of 'rate recent' shows the scores are far lower than on 'averages' a year ago, so raters have adjusted their ratings to accommodate the disablement of the 1/1 and 2/2 ratings, effectively compressing the ratings between 3/3 and 6/6, which gives a rating of 4.75 or so a new legitimacy -- before if a photo did not score a 5 or above it might not have been worthy. That no longer is the case, I think.

 

Rating behavior definitely has changed, and for the better, generally, in my opinion.

 

Community aspects of rating, however, have changed, both for the better, (suppressed mate-rating, revenge rating, etc.) and for the worse (harm to community due to anonymous ratings), but we're sure that Brian probably has slept better because complaints (which often were uncivil) have largely slacked off.

 

Although the 1/1s and 2/2s are not posted or built into the scores, they could be re-instated since it appears they're saved, however it is doubtful they will be reinstated.

 

However, there seems to be new management, and anything is possible.

 

Be careful what you wish for.

 

John (Crosley)

[justpete]

You've read the answers on the why, and the history, but the mentality that rates irrationally can't be eradicated.

 

Recently I posted three marginal images and got instant 3/3s on two and a 3/4 on one, fair I thought. After a couple of days, suddenly all three got a 7/7 rating over what had to be a short period of time. Cracked me up.

 

The ratings on all three images were annotated that some number of ratings, it was different for each, were being held for evaluation as they were given by recently enrolled members of the site. Eventually, inexplicably, they were made permanent.

 

Eliminating all 7/7 ratings now appears to be mandatory as means to return fairness to the ratings. I say eliminate 'em all except 4, that'd be fair, eh? And still people would complain they get 4/4 ratings as soon as they post.

 

So here's another voice asking for 1s and 2s to be returned to active status. Otherwise the system is definitively absurd.

 

Oh yeah, and as I got the feedback on the images I was looking for, after throwing out the fliers in the data and without a single critique mind you, I took them down. Not because of the numbers, per se, but because they really didn't merit wasting server space, as a few others that came down with them didn't either. The feedback, limited and skewed as it is, helped prompt me to further evaluation.

 

It ain't much but it's all we've got; still, I wish we all had access to the full scale.

 

FWIW,

Pete

[mg]

Here's another voice asking for the returns of 1s and 2s.

 

Why ? Firstly, because "1" means "very bad" (to John Crosley: not only black shots of black cats are very bad). So when one rates and finds a picture "very bad", what is he supposed to do ? Convert his "1" into a "3" ?!? But then, it would mean that he thinks a "very bad" picture is just "below average". Is that the same thing, in your opinion ? Certainly not ! So, if we see a picture that we feel deserves a 1, we are in fact asked to either change our opinion and to find it below average only, or to accept to rate the picture a 1 knowing that this rating will not count in any calculation. I think this situation is ridiculous.

[mg]

Or better still.... Get rid of ALL ratings on this site, and let"s start TALKING about photographs again !

[._._z]

Chris Hughes has got it right.

 

Brian says that people were inundating photo.net with email complaints about ones and twos, and that with this change they get far fewer email complaints. Unfortunately it's merely served to save a lot fo thin-skinned people from getting their feelings hurt, it's skewed the rating system (a three is now really a one, a two or a three), and it's annoyed people who gave and wanted to receive honest ratings.

[mottershead]

It wasn't only to eliminate complaints.

 

The main reason was that there were exceedingly few 1's and 2's already. This meant that it was pretty much just bad luck whether a photo received one, even assuming it deserved it. To make matters worse, 1's and 2's weren't highly correlated with the average of the ratings that were not 1's and 2's. One would expect a photo with a high average (excluding the 1's and 2's) to have fewer 1's and 2's than a photo with a low average. There was a slight correlation, but not what one would expect. The few 1's and 2's were being sprayed around the Gallery pretty much at random, with high-rated photos almost as likely to get them as low-rated photos. This told me that 1's and 2's were being given for idiosyncratic, or possibly dishonest, reasons. All in all, they were just noise. It could and should have been otherwise, but it wasn't. Once I knew this, it was hard to continue defending the 1's and 2's as legitimate opinion.

 

Given that we didn't need to know which photos were the worst on the site, that they caused unending complaints (even more than the complaints about 3's), and that many of them were probably given for suspect reasons, it was pretty easy to decide that they were more trouble than they were worth.

 

The current scale with 1 and 2 as "virtual" ratings and 3 as the lowest rating that counts doesn't have the problems that the former scale had. Of course, one could argue that 3 could go the same way. as the 1's and 2's, and become a rare and idiosyncratic rating of no use to anybody. Except that it hasn't, and 3 is still a very real rating, more so even than it was.

[chris hughes]

See? That's an explanation from a person who's clearly focused on statistics and not on good

interface design. Removing the 1s and 2s may make sense to a mathematician but to an

interface designer it's a horrible, ill-conceived mistake. From a user perspective, the more

reasonable change would be to change the scale so that "below average" was a 1 and

"excellent" was a 5. Taking 1s and 2s out of the loop but leaving the buttons for them on the

site is absurd. It's confusing and misguided. We're not statisticians. We're human beings.

Interface design should not be determined by formulas. It should be determined by the logic

of how a person interacts with and thinks about the scale. Sorry, Brian but in the opinion of

many of us, the decision to remove 1s and 2s is bad and should be reversed.

[pmj]

"Sorry, Brian but in the opinion of many of us, the decision to remove 1s and 2s is bad and

should be reversed."

 

See? That's an explanation from a person who's clearly focused on interface design and not

on good statistics. There are posts in this form complaining about ratings, but I doubt it's

valid to conclude that the number of people posting here actually are "many" when compared

to the entire active photo.net membership.

[yann_r.]

Brian,

<p align="justify">Could the solution be to only showing the average of the ratings the photo has received and hiding the detail of the ratings themselves? (I'd like to see 1s and 2s back cause something crappy photos don't deserve to receive the same rating than a below average one).<br>

Direct ratings would show the name of the rater, would change the average but numbers would still be hidden too.<br>

Complains should be very less important.<br>

Does it sound good?</p>

[yann_r.]

I meant "sometimes" not "something" (sorry for my terrible English)

[pmj]

Yann, that suggestion <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?

msg_id=00Hntf">sounds familiar</a>.

[yann_r.]

Familiar indeed : ) (I hadn't read the end of this thread)<br>

I think that could be a very good solution. I personnally don't care a lot that Peter, Paul or Jack gives me 3/3 or 6/6. If the average of my photo is A:3.5/O:3 or A:5/O:5.5, I understand well their meaning.

[._._z]

Brian, you may be concluding with knowledge of the overall statistics for the site, but I can tell you that I was always quite careful with my own ones and twos, and they were given rarely, fairly and based on deliberate guidelines.

 

If there's no effective one or two any more, then just turn the three into a 'thumbs down' as we've seen on other sites. It's more valid than the current system, where people now give threes that would otherwise be ones or twos.

 

It seems that the ratings rationalization a couple of years back when we went from a 10-point scale to a 7-point scale has been for naught. You might as well re-rationalize the ratings to a 5-point scale -- it'll piss off a lot of people but it would at least be more realistic.

[chris hughes]

"...but I doubt it's valid to conclude that the number of people posting here actually are

"many" when compared to the entire active photo.net membership."

 

Cute post, Patrick. Problem with it is that this thread isn't the only one where people have

complained about the loss of the 1s and 2s. There are in fact very many of us who want

them returned to the rating system. That's a fact.

 

And I agree with the post above this one. Rather than continuing this stubborn "we know

best how you should use the site" pogrom, it would be better to recognize the reality both

of how people DO use the site and of how to build a good interface. Reboot the ratings

system as 1 - 5, hide the individual ratings and only show averages or dumb it all the way

down to either thumb up or thumb down. Any of those solutions are FAR more respectful

of the user-base than the way it's set up right now. This whole site suffers from interface

issues that make it seem like code heads, not designers, built it. Since this is a place

where creatives gather, wouldn't it make sense to build the site with aesthetics and

usability foremost in mind, not the whims of engineers and software developers?

[root]

I have an upload sitting comfortably at 699/704 on the 24-hour sort. I suspect it's because the majority can't get beyond the fact that orange and pink don't go well together. Maybe there are other reasons.

 

Actually, it's a good shot. How do I know? Because one person (so far) has written a complimentary and thoughtful paragraph discussing the contents. I'm not saying all the 3/3s should leave comments routinely, but I expect that if they did, the reasons would likely reflect their personal tastes and have little to do with the attributes of the photograph.

 

I realize many of you will take the tone of this post as an open invitation to write a paragraph explaining why this image deserves the lowest possible rate the site will recognize. Go ahead. Frankly I wouldn't mind having this serve as a sort of anti-POW. Be my guest.

[studio iv]

How about if the top rating and the bottom 2 ratings were thrown out, kind of like they do in some sporting events (they only throw out the bottom rating, not the bottom 2). That would eliminate some of the childish low ratings that people post 'cause they need help, and minimize the effect of "aunt Millie's" 7/7 rating regardless of the quality of the image.

 

Just a thought, Mike