Ah, the ratings system FIXES & SOLUTIONS

[Leonard-just-Leonard]

Ratings... Reinvent the wheel?

 

There are many different methods employed on other websites today

that could "somewhat" fix the ratings system.

 

1. Similar to the 20 second delay for getting another person's email

address on Photo.net, implement the same time-out for

mass ratings. Then you cannot click 100 miles per hour

and spam-rate every photo. The 20 second delay will

also give you time to contemplate the photograph in more detail.

If you still want to give everyone 3/3 fine, but after

10 or 20 etc. of the exact same rating, it should prompt you to

re-enter your password and stop ratings for a 10-15 minute period.

 

2. Bot beaters. Have a shadowed background changing password

come up after every 5, 10, 15 ratings (or whatever number makes the

most sense) that has to be manually typed in if you want to keep

rating pictures. That way a ratings bot could not memorize the p/w

and keep on spamming

 

3. Automatically lock a users account after so many ratings in a

24 hour period. You can only post 4 pictures in a certain time

frame, so why let anyone post hundreds and hundreds of ratings?

You could have an Admin request feature to get more ratings which would surely

allow the truly legit raters to get more access and discourage

the drive by ratings.

 

None of these are perfect...

[yann1]

It could be useful if there was only one "bad rater". I think the 3/3 problem doesn't come from one isolated rater only. Anyway, I don't think Photo.net will do anything, better or worse, about the ratings.

[Barry Thomas]

Why not just drop numerical ratings altogether? They are just a way for people with fragile egos to a) seek approval from strangers in a trite and meaningless points contest and b) hit everyone else's pictures with 3/3 in order to make their own look good.

 

Comments will generally tell you more about what the viewer thinks of your picture and if there are no comments, well then maybe it's just a no-comment kind of picture, which is a message in itself.

 

Get over the ratings. If they didn't exist you would be no worse off for it.

[gordonjb]

Outside of the option of the administrators making legitimate improvements to the site, which I gather from the general consensus around here is not too likely, the most obvious solution is don't ask for ratings if you don't want them. It almost appears as if they were mandatory the way some many people obsess over the issue. This is not intended as a slight against the OP only as an observation on the amount of energy that gets expended on this subject. Improvements would be great and many good ideas have been put forth, in the meantime just avoid asking for ratings if you consider the result meaningless.

[mike dixon]

I think these suggestions would do a fine job of getting rid of 95% percent of the ratings that people don't like. I suspect they'd eliminate about 95% of all the other ratings, too.

[steve_levine]

Photo.net has ratings?

[joshroot]

Unlike many other threads that complain about ratings, Leonard has actually made some excellent suggestions that are remarkable similar to a number of the improvements I am working on getting done.

 

Gordon (and everyone) don't listen to the "general consensus" about much of anything regarding photo.net's plans. Lots of people have opinions or grudges about the photo.net admin staff that were formed years ago. They think they know what "the plans" are, but they have no real idea.

 

Nobody is ever happy about the speed that things are accomplished, and nobody ever wants to consider that their "most crucial to fix" part of the site might not be everyone's favorite. Lots of things need improvements and feature upgrades. We will get to them all as soon as we can. Believe me or not, people are working hard around here.

[Leonard-just-Leonard]

I have spent several years in IT and working in large corporations and understand the seemingly glacial pace at which changes are made. It is FAR better to properly implement change versus knee-jerk reaction to every complaint.

 

Contrary to what others may think or believe, some form of ratings ARE necessary to keep this website and the associated business model running.

 

You cannot (and should not) control contributors honest and free flow of opinions and critiques, be it those 3/3's or whatever. What you do need to control is disregard for a system that seems to have been originally based on trust and good faith of the subscribers.

 

Capping the ability of people to spam this site by limiting mass and random ratings is necessary. It will never address the whining about why did someone give me a low rating without any comments, and it should not.

 

But, once you have stopped (or drastically reduced) automated and/or childish spam-style ratings, the people using the system will regain faith in it's use.

 

I am pleased to hear you folks are well into implementing the BUSINESS end of fixing the ratings system versus just trying to make everyone happy, which of course will never happen.

[Brian]

<P>As an infrequent user of the gallery and photo critique/rating feature, I am surprised at the sophistication of the measures being suggested to prevent unwanted multiple raters. But I am worried as Mike says that any measures to inhibit ratings will affect genuine raters just as much as these shadowy bogus raters.</P><P>When I have one of my occasional forays into the gallery for a bit of critique, I basically critique and rate photos until I'm tired of it. I would like the decision on when to stop to be mine, not the system's. If I found the system was preventing me from leaving ratings, and imposing a time-out, I would be reluctant to go back later.</P>

[nancy s.]

I had photos up for ratings. Seemd Ok to me. Also seemed sort of contrived since a really BAD rating won't go in.

 

Ended up taking all my photos off my gallery. On dial Up at home and such a painful process to put any back up I haven't bothered to.

 

I don't need someone else's opinion to verify what I do anyway.

[zackojones]

Implementing CAPTCHA would kill the bot ratings problem. I also think there should be a requirement if you rate a photo 3/3 that you must leave a comment of at least xx characters. The problem with requiring a comment is someone could enter "XXXXXX" as the comment and as long as it passed validation rules it would be accepted.

 

Instead of working on ratings stuff though I would like to see PN automatically read EXIF information from uploaded images and add that to the image description. I've seen some photos here where I've wondered what aperture and shutter speed were used. Unless the photographer included this information in their description you have no way of getting this information unless you ask.

[gordonjb]

Always glad to hear good news. I personally do not care too much one way or the other, as far as ratings go. As regards my comment on consensus, I am a pragmatist I look to results rather than innuendo. I was only observing what seems to be a trend in comments regarding improvements. I appreciate that large amounts of work go into this site and I for one am grateful to the administration for offering me this service. If the biggest thing people have to gripe about is ratings, you must be doing a good job. Irregardless of whatever improvements you make people will continue to to whine when anyone throws a 3/3 their way. Thanks for taking the time to respond, it's alway fun to have 'new & improved' to look forward to.

[root]

" . . . a system that seems to have been originally based on trust and good faith of the subscribers."

 

To my knowledge, it was never limited to subscribers. Furthermore, the value of the system was based on the access to the system by a greater proportion of experienced photographers. If the revised system still attracts mostly newbies, then the people who are actually able to describe the contents of an image will be drowned out, as they are now. As long as there is no mechanism to attract teachers, rather than students, you will have a system that does no more than tell you what kind of photographs students like.

 

But maybe that's all the rating system was ever intended to to do, despite the forum's name.

 

I think Mike is right that any meaningful changes will drastically reduce the number of rates. Reducing the number of uploads might help to counter that trend, but that introduces other problems, like the ability to more easily find your friends' uploads and rate them anonymously.

 

It's been a year since the changeover, and I can appreciate what people are saying about the pace of IT development. What is less clear is why no one wants to explain exactly what they're trying to accomplish with those countless hours at the keyboard.

 

Not everyone's crucial fix necessarily corresponds to management's priorities. Fair enough. But no one has said they know what the plans are around here, Josh. Quite the contrary.

[joshroot]

Philip listed the lion's share of things we are working in his July <a href="http://www.photo.net/from-the-editor/200706">"letter from the editor"</a> and we have both said multiple times that the ratings system is due for an overhaul.

<P>

People can believe me or not, but things are moving forward, they just take time. Sometimes these things are like pushing a string. If you can't wait, I'm sorry to hear that. But perhaps your photographic needs would be better served elsewhere.

[root]

You're not reading what I wrote.

 

"the ratings system is due for an overhaul" doesn't answer the question of how it will work and more importantly what purpose it will serve.