Rating

[tomaso nigris]

I know that rating, may be, is not the main issue of photo.net but

it's an important aspect so I would like to give a new porposal.

Just for example: I have a picture that 11 NOT anonymus gave 6.27

6.00 and 10 anonymous raters who rated for the same photo with an

average score of 5.20 for Aesthetics, and 4.90 for Originality.

Total rate is 5.76 and 5.48 , yestarday the same picture had the

totale rate of 6.18 and 5.76 because some anonymus rate on new

member was blocked, member that gave 3\3. I do not understand why

now the rate has been accepted again. In some other my picture some

high rate 6\6 6\7 has been blocked for the same reason .Why we do

not eliminate the rate higher or lower more than 30% from average,

after 10 rating? another solution could be to eliminate the 2

highest and 2 lowest rating. Everybody knows that NOT anonymus rate

can bring some anomalous and forced rating but also anonymus can

bring the same. Rate recent mode sometimes push the memeber to rate

without dedicating much time to look the picture, if you are obliged

to leave a comment, without name, for sure you spend more time on

the picture to give the right value. These are only proposal hoping

to improve the system even if everybody knows that it doesn't exist

a perfect rating

[._._z]

Precisely.

[afs760bf]

It has been my experience, on the admittedly mediocre photos that I post, that I will receive everything from 3/3 to 7/7 - yesterday I actually managed to post one that got exactly one of each combination (there should be an award for that). Sometimes a 2, but those are rare. So if you drop the two highest and two lowest, your average will be about the same. People who like your stuff, mark you as interesting, and visit your photo directly when posted, will tend to leave higher ratings. Oh, and most of the 2/2, 3/3 ratings will come within the first ten. That's when the "new members" seem to visit.

[jhenry]

In simple words: u've got the [anonymous or not] ratings that u've got to get! so forget it or not... my impression here is that comments and exchange (meanings that u've got to wet your shirt a bit in giving too) are more important... but if/when you accept those ratings then ... welcome on ground Sir!

[skiphunt]

I hesitate to even post anything in the forum related to ratings. I recently got fed up with it

and deleted my portfolio. I decided to start over again with new images, but it seems like

since I made a noise about it, a few have "locked onto me" and consistently give me low

ratings... even before submit for critique etc. One low rater doesn't even vary much. I

upload and image, and he/she gives me the same mediocre rating on every single image.

 

Now, I've just accepted the fact that this is the way it is here and there's not a dang thing I

can do about it. Some people seem to get little or no attacks at all even though their work

is basically just average or slightly above. I'm not so sure I can write it off as "bots" since

not everyone seems to be affected. Seems more like whether or not you get "accepted" in

some inner circle.... but, I digress.

 

I'm over it and just accept it. There are a few here who like my work and I like some of the

work here as well... so I just try to forget about the rating stuff. However, I'm really very

curious of what possesses someone to spend their time low-rating people just for the

heck of it? Or, unleashing "bots"? I mean, why waste time with something like that? Do

these people get jollies from that? Or, are these otherwise powerless individuals in their

own lives and they get off on the rush of attempting to crush another human being's

psyche? I guess I just don't understand why some might waste so much time being mean. I

can almost understand how they might do it occassionally to sort of vent.. but some of

these folks seem really committed to disheartening people.

 

Not complaining at all though, just curious what the typical mindset of a "low-rater" is..

and why they'd devote so much time to it. :-)

 

Now watch... I'll pick up a few new regular low raters just from posting in this ratings

thread. ;-)

 

 

 

Skip

[mottershead]

Probably your average ratings will decline, and it won't actually make sense to compare ratings from before and after the system was changed, even though we are doing that in the long views of the Top Rated Photos.

 

The last time the ratings were anonymous was prior to August 2001. At that time, all ratings were anonymous, unlike the current system where some ratings are anonymous and others are not. When the ratings became public in August 2001, there was a long period in which the ratings steadily increased. After a year, average ratings had alrady increased by a full point on each scale, and the inflation continued through 2003.

 

Anonymous ratings are lower than public ratings, it is quite clear. I think the main reason for this is that people feel more at liberty to be honest when they are anonymous. Furthermore, there is no social payoff to a high rating when people don't know you gave it. This is why you see people advertising their ratings in the comments, trying to make their high ratings not anonymous. It is true that with anonymous ratings there is a risk that some malicious people will rate dishonestly low in order to wind everybody up or to gain an advantage on their "competition", but I don't think this is a big factor.

 

In addition to having anonymous ratings, the new system gives more emphasis to the ratings given in the Rate Recent queue. These ratings were a full point lower on each dimension compared to ratings made directly on the photo pages. This was so even when the Rate Recent ratings were not anonymous. It is why many photographers refused to submit photos to be rated in the Photo Critique forum, preferring to gain their ratings from people who had marked them as "Interesting".

 

So, the combination of anonymous ratings and the increased percentage of ratings being made through the RR queue will almost certainly result in the average rating going down, the reverse of the process that happened since August 2001. Since the average rating was approaching 6 on both dimensions, I see this as a good thing.

 

Ideally, I should normalize the ratings so that photos can be compared over time despite inflation and deflation. After a long period of inflation, in October 2003, I did in fact do such a normalization. This was met by almost unanimous outrage. People thought that it was unacceptable that their ratings were being changed by a normalization algorithm. I backed down and undid the normalization. I now think that I shouldn't have backed down, but I have to admit that I am not enthusiastic about trying it again.

[byronlawrence]

well once people get used to the anonymous average ratings, then implement the normalization algorithm stuff.