Quality of Top Rated?

[n_p]

Just had a look through the highest rated images @ 05:00pm Eastern.

Searched the old fashioned way by checking out the highest average

ratings and was somewhat puzzled by the questionable quality of the

first page. Is it just me, or has the overall quality dropped

somewhat in the last month?

[dennisdixson]

One man's Sh1t is another man's shine-ola.

 

I had the same thought last night when browsing the recent uploads.

[root]

Did you mean HIGHEST rated or MOST rated?

 

I think most of us are confused about the purose of the "TOP PAGES".

Is it to present the best of the recent uploads or is it to provide a

variety of reasonably good images for the purposes of discussion? I

would argue that you can't do the former even if you wanted to because

of the 'social currency' that we all recognize.

 

The other point is that I fear some of the changes that affect how

images are rated, while worthwhile, may be too little too late for

some of the better contribuors of the past who have given up.

 

If you think the current images fall short, you could always add a

comment. If you're not willing to do that, then Brian needs to hear

why. . . .

[mg]

Good one ! :-) Of course it has dropped. It has never stopped to drop in the last 3 to 6 months to say the least, if you ask me. And it won't stop to drop either, unless something is done about it.

<p>

But if you ask photo.net, what you will hear is that the first hundred top-rated shots are still better than the next hundred. I seriously doubt that it is the case, but well, what ever will be will be.

<p>

The situation is imo quite simple to understand: a group of 30 to 40 active raters love each others' works and rate each other 6s and 7s day in day out. Anything new to you ? :-) Not so surprisingly some of these folks tend to dislike consistently all the pictures uploaded by those who are not in love with their masterpieces. And not so surprisingly either, there are new members on photo.net who seem to agree with them all the way, and who are in charge of trashing entire folders of *unpleasant citizens*. End of the day, the only ones who dare to criticize images uploaded by the grand vizirs realize that it is no point at all to do so, and they stop. And you end up with crappy shots all over the top-rated, simply because the only people rating these shots are the members of the *pleasant citizen society*.

<p>

I even know some unpleasant citizens who have now stopped critiquing and posting pictures, because the nonsense level has reached its peak. But then don't worry, there will be a higher peak soon anyway... The sky's the limit ! :-)

<p>

Interestingly enough, there are some folks here whose latest uploads are very often their highest rated and even some of the site's highest-rated pictures ever, if you noticed... I wish I could improve that fast, but instead, I regress: my last upload was in fact my worst ever ! What a sad coincidence ! :-)

[dougityb]

I just checked the page, too, and have posted a pdf screen capture of how it looks right now. As I was doing this, my wife came up behind me and looked over my shoulder. When I explained that these were the 21 very best images among the hundreds of thousands of images in the Photo.net database she was astonished. She's not very sophisticated in terms of art and aesthetics, not to mention photography, but she noticed that many of these 21 images were 'fake' and/or 'not very good' When she saw that several names were on present 2 or three times she realized it was a friends club and not a true reflection of quality photography.

 

All in all, she had a good laugh about it and that made me feel pretty good, that the TRP has some entertainment value, if nothing else.

[dougityb]

in case anyone can't open the pdf attachment, above, here in jpg format are the first nine images on the TRP under search criteria All/Average rating. Out of over 1.6 million images loaded onto photonet over the years, these are the top 9 and it might be interesting to notice that 6 of these 9 super excellent photographs were posted in the past 3 weeks. The .pdf file will indicate that 18 of the top 21 were posted in the last 3 months.

 

Whenever my wife is feeling depressed, I'll just bring her over here for a quick laugh.<div></div>

[neild]

You mean to tell me that all my constant striving to get on the top pages is destined to fail unless I find myself some <i>mates</i>???

<p><br><br><br>

...Anyone need a friend..? ;-)

[dougityb]

Thanks anyway Neil, but I'm cool with my current associates, who fortunately have genuine brains and don't sling 7's and 6's around like dimestore candy. Their opinions actually matter to me, and keep me challenged. But there are plenty here that would be more than willing to form mate rating partnerships with you, whether or not your work is any good is not important.

 

There is another requirement: Your photos have have a large degree of fakery. Well, they don't have to have this, but it seems to increase the odds in your favor.

[n_p]

Well thank you all, I thought it wasn't just me!<br>Carl, I did refer to the default format that the TRP used to have last year, by Average Rating. However, in trying to discourage ratings inflation, it was successfully knocked on the head by Brian for a little while. Until the next level of inflation kicked in, through the Number of Ratings filter. Marc would therefore be correct in making the observation that the sky is the limit, for whatever next phase of vacuity that might take over the TRP.<br>Doug, I understand your amusement but would have thought that there are still some ways to bring up interesting results, like filtering All and Number of Comments.<br><b>That</b> does bring some interesting older images to the front!<br>But what can be done about it? As it is, I'm totally convinced that the ratings system is here to stay and will continue to act as the imperfect kind of filter for the many thousands of images that are uploaded every month.<br>In the light of recent limits on RFCs for patrons and non-patrons, why couldn't the next step be implemented and put a limit on the number of daily uploads. One per day is more than enough for non-patrons like myself. Allow those who pay to post more images. The thought behind paying members being that they are serious about their photography and serious about supporting this site. Now <b>before</b> anyone jumps on that last statement, let me add that I am fully aware about the Paypal troubles that many have written about in other threads. So, this is not an argument against non-patrons (which includes Marc and involves Paypal). Without wanting to sound repetitive, I wonder if some other way of becoming a patron might attract more serious members who are willing to share good quality work (again, I fully realize the danger of choosing this wording, but I hope all serious non-subscribers will understand).<br>It was argued in a recent thread that virtually no photonetter can claim to have drummed up any business from posting their work in this place (apart from Vincent Tylor), so what gives?

[n_p]

Peter, it is not your imagination.<br>But first allow me to sneak in a sort of disclaimer at this stage in the thread, that we are <b>generalizing</b> here. My original question above was meant to be a sweeping statement. I wouldn't like to be interpreted as saying that <b>all</b> top 100 are questionable, or the next 100. Just that some are sneaking through in the default TRP view, on the lower average scores that you correctly have identified. However, my original question relates to the front pages as they appear according to the Average Ratings score, thus eliminating the ones you've just pointed out.

[keith_laban]

As Brian Mottershead is constantly reminding us �ratings are for the site and comments are for the photographers�. In other words we as photographers should not trouble ourselves over the ratings we receive and the ratings system in general.<p> Trouble is we all have to suffer being rated and any shortcomings of the ratings system if we want our work to be visible to as many contributors as possible. As for comments, it�s almost a case of <b>what comments?</b>.

[h._p.]

"and comments are for the photographers"

 

Talk about coincidences. Here's this thread and I just happened to look at the pictures in my folder just a few minutes ago. I was amused to find negative comments against some of my pictures, which is fine by me, *I* don't think they're all that great. I uploaded most of them to use in threads before I realised that I didn't need to have the image on photo.net in order to use it in a post.

 

What's really funny, though, is that a lot of these comments are from people whose pictures I've said I didn't like and where, to be fair to myself, I tried to suggest improvements. This is, I suppose, the opposite of 'mate rating' and could be called 'critic commenting'. I can't say it worries me that much but it throws an interesting light on how some people's minds work.<div></div>

[root]

Constructive criticism is often ignored by the photographer and

attacked by fans, while frequent high rates are responded to in

kind. When this site figures out a way to reverse that trend, then

it will attract more of the kind of input that it says it wants.

 

Current policy allows non RFC images to appear on the top

pages, allows far too many RFC for patrons, and worst of all,

allows people to rate too high too often. How many people do

you really think will set up false accounts if you put reasonable

limits on rating?

[jonathancharlesphoto]

As one of the many serious members who have completely

given up rating photos or caring about my own ratings I believe

that the qualitative feedback from comments + a little quantitative

element from [no. of views] are far more helpful and interesting. I

agree with MarcG that the ruling clique is impregnable and

there's no point the rest od us worying about it.

 

I'm more concerned about how the photos are selected by the

"random" "critique photos" system. Obviously, if your photo isn't

selected often it won't get critiqued. Despite being a paid-up

member it's clear my photos don't show up nearly as often as

last year (when I wasn't) - maybe it's just a function of the

number of photos submitted.

 

It's a pity the critique circles idea seems to have been dropped

as this, with some modification to allow people to join the circle

they wanted to, would have generated more personal interest.

[dougityb]

Here's a suggestion that has worked pretty well for myself and several others.

 

Find 6 to 15 members on photonet whose opinions make a difference to you. On the first day of the month the first person sends everyone else in the group a link to one of the scillions of photos in the database. For the next couple of days everyone else in the group drops by and offers an opinion, contributes to the thread, etc. On the 3rd day the second person does the same thing: emails a link to a photo somewhere on photonet, everyone else drops by for two days and makes comments. On the 6th day the third person repeats this process, and so on.

 

This repeats itself indefinitely according to how many people are in the group. It could be that each member offers an image for review once per month, or twice per month, or whatever, but the selected images are discussed for two or three days, then the focus of the group moves to the next selection.

 

Because images from outside the group are selected there is no question of mate rating, or back stroking and personal egos are not involved. Disagreements as to the quality of an image are discussed with civility and there is no fear that what I have to say will upset anyone else in my group. Rating is optional and is practiced very infrequently, actually, because the intent is this novel idea of discussing photography, not promoting (or not promoting)an image to the TRP. Because images are being offered so frequently, if someone misses his turn or if someone doesn't feel like making a comment on any particular selection, it's no problem because they simply catch the next one.

 

I've been doing this for about 6 months with a wonderful bunch of members, the best critiquor's on the site, in my opinion, and it's been great because there is a concentrated focus on one image, I'm sharing opinions on photographs that are of interest either directly to myself, or to people whose photographic opinions I value highly. Some of us have been photographing for a long while, and some of us for only a couple of years but there is not one member whose opinion is not important to me. Using ratings as an example, ten 7/7's from outside the group are not as valuable as one 4/4 from within.

 

Mate raters are unconvinced that their actions are harmful, or unwilling to change their behavior for the good of the site. Unfortunately, Photo.net has no other means of identifying popular photography, so I expect the situation to worsen, not improve in the months to come, probably to the point where we will see on the TRP some of the best birthday party point and shoot snapshots the mate raters can produce. The idea that each of us are curators is a nice one, but tends to spoil the Photo.net experience, I've found, converting critics into cops and fostering an atmosphere of hostility.

 

I've come to the conclusion that the TRP's are Photo.net's problem, not mine, and I've abdicated my curatorial powers until and unless I'm granted different ones. Efforts aimed at restoring balance to the rating system will forever fail as few people can long withstand the reactions of those who are unable to tolerate or understand the non-universal appeal of their images. I didn't join Photo.net to fight, I get enough of that at home, so I guess what I'm saying is that I encourage those of us who are disgusted with the TRP to consider it non-functioning and leave it alone. As it slides down the scale from it current position of Embarrassing to the very soon to be reached Ridiculous, maybe something will be done, but in the meantime, I suggest finding other ways to enjoy the site.

[h._p.]

Actually, there's a very simple solution to the mate rating nonsense if photo.net wants to implement it. Simply ban people from rating pictures belonging to anyone who's rated their pictures. A simple bit of scripting could enforce this without too great a performance hit and the problem would disappear.

 

Then the curatorial system could get back to doing its proper job.

[erin_____grasshopper__rice]

What's up with the goat?

[robert_fleming]

Sorry Nude.... my fault... I went on holidays... but I promise that when I come back mid-august... I ll keep on my rating-mania!!! Till then hang on please! AZ~help us!! <p> :^)))

[jonathancharlesphoto]

Doug, that's a great idea which I'll try - except that I think it's

interesting also to critique photos of group members as the

photographer's aims and technique can then be discussed.

Maybe as per your suggestion but each member chooses one

outside & one own photo when it's his/her turn.

[dougityb]

Jonathan, I suppose that would work but we found it happens anyway, sort of by virtue of becoming acquainted with one another. Most of us place an asterisk next to our names during the first 24 hours of loading a new image so the rest of us will know a new one has been posted, since we're all on each other's IP list. by that we can visit if we have time, comment if we feel moved, or ignore it if we are too busy with other things, maybe coming back to it later.

 

The downside to presenting one's own image for consideration as part of the discussion model is that there is pressure to stroke your colleague's ego, or to perhaps dance around with words when you don't want to say you don't like it and also don't want to hurt the buddy's feelings. The idea that grounds the group is objectivity, which you can't have if we're all looking at my photo one day and yours the next, because after all, I might remember that yesterday you didn't like my photo and so today I might not like yours. But, if we are looking at a third party image the ideas can be exchanged without personal feelings getting in the way. I've heard that this is/was a problem in the critique circles.

 

This is not to say that it won't work in the absolute sense. Maybe it will with the right mix of people. The group I'm in formed out of a desire to expose, pardon the pun, the structure and meaning behind photographs in general, and not so much to dissect our own work. It just seems to work better because personal egos are removed from the equation.

[RobertChura]

Sorry, but I feel the need to ask. Does the "nude photographer" photograph nudes (haven't seen any of him that are identified as him or his subjects) or is he just cold and uninhibited?

 

 

 

O.K. back to a more serious topic. ;)

[n_p]

Thanks for taking an interest, Robert.<br>Actually adopted this identity after a friend suggested that I should get into nude photography. However, instead of shooting nudes, he told me that I should go around with my camera in the nude! Haven't adopted that part of his suggestion. The local climate is not exactly conducive for this.