New to site, one question please

[ian w]

Hi,

 

I have notice that when I submit a photo for critique, I get a number

of anonymous people rating my photograph. I dont understand this.

Where do thay come from and how are they managing to rate the

photograph without logging in.

Am I missing something here??

[art_haykin]

So let's say you know them. What difference would it make?

[afs760bf]

All ratings obtained through the "rate recent" queue are listed as anonymous ratings. Makes life interesting.

[pmj]

The people who give these ratings are logged in and the ratings are registered as usual, but their names just aren't shown to you. It is a measure against "revenge-rating" where some people would seek out those who gave them low ratings and ehhhm... return the favor. Or against "mate-rating", giving high ratings to those who gave them first.

 

Anyway, it should promote more honest ratings.

[chriss1]

This system is unfair. There are groups of users giving to each other highest possible ratings. Others, like me, return low ratings for photos with comparable quality and etc. How to explain this? What is more annoying, anonymous raters give low ratings much often and there are users who don't upload their own photos. I don't want to take shots only in one way that is appreciated by most users so they would rate me higher. Having good surname is best way to exist here, the qality of photographs is then second thing. The rest of people can only give up.

[pmj]

The rating system is here for the website, to create a starting point when browsing the

gallery. The gallery offers various views, explore them! If you really want to know what

people think of your pictures, don't look at the numbers. Instead, write critiques, ask for

critiques: participate! Perhaps start by visiting the <a href="http://www.photo.net/

bboard/forum?topic_id=1481">Photo Critique Forum<a/>.

[jimg]

a rating is given (high or low) that a user is required to enter some degree of a critique. It's

always nice as a photographer to see that people react to your work and that can be

interpreted from ratings alone, but it doesn't help a person improve their skills or gain

exposure to new/different ideas.

 

The ratings provide people an opportunity to do some weird things (throw other highly

rated images out of whack, revenge rating, etc). It detracts from the overall

experience. Even though the ratings don't matter to me over time you can fall into a mode

of checking them. I'd get more value from the critique. Sadly the few times I've designated

an image as "Critique Only" I've seldom received a critique... unless it was an image I knew

would push peoples buttons.

[pmj]

We could only ask for a critique, not require one. After all "-" or "..." are perfectly valid

pieces of text as far as a computer is concerned. More sophisticated tests could be

written, but then "Abc def ghk." would probably pass those without having any meaning to

the photographer.