PETITION: Go back to a comments before ratings system

[wakeforce]

QUOTE

Néstor Botta , feb 20, 2004; 07:37 a.m.

I agree with Stephane, about people complaining all the time about the site´s performance and design, and whatever... More or less, that's what I said before about Jean-Philippe, that he is going through the normal phases for most of the newcomers. He (and others posters here that in every thread are always saying that this or that should be changed according to their unique but egocentric ideas), should accept things like they're, try to participate in other ways, and understand the "backstage" work, wich is not easy.

 

I would invite (like I do most of the time I participate in these kind of threads) all of them to spent theirs time in a more constructively way. And forget about trying to control whatever's around you, it's not healthy.

 

 

Something that I will do after writting this lines... ciao!!

__________________________________________________________________

 

I must say this is one of the most conservative answers I have ever read. I'm not complaining, nor trying to change the world, I'm only trying to point out what could be better and what is already good. Just as I do with photo comments. I don't say, this is great or this is trash, I pointy out the forces and weknesses of it. What I'm doing right now is simply doing the same, but for a website. But it looks like some don't like to be critiqued, and only want good points pointed to them, with now bad ones.

 

You can bring the horse to the fountain, but you can't force it to drink.

[._._z]

A moment of self analysis. Ask yourself

 

Why do I just restate my opinions again and again?

[wakeforce]

If you look closely, I didn't restate my opinions once, in each post I just brought new points.

 

But if topics on what should be improved on this site always go on the brink of flame wars liek this, I understand why nothing changes o_0

[louis1]

Thanks

Ato Z I love it.

Louis

[mg]

I've just read this entire thread, and I'm honestly not quite sure whether I should air my views anymore. I find this thread to be the greatest monolog I've seen on photo.net so far - and I've seen many.

<p>

There are 2 sides: reformists and the management - the management being supported by a few people who say basically "shut up or go elsewhere".

<p>

I find this simply sad and plain silly. Why is Photo.net so opposed to have a REAL AND LOGICAL DIALOG about these issues...? Bob Atkins compares himself to Ginger, and that says a lot to me... If when we talk, what he hears is "Ratings blah Comments blah blah", I've got to agree with him that it's probably not a very good sign.

<p>

I have once offered to Brian via e-mail to tell him exactly what I thought (via e-mail as well) about all this. Not so surprisingly, I never got a reply, and I am not prepared to post here what I really think, but I'll just say this:

<p>

Generally speaking, a dialog leads somewhere only if both sides are

listening to eachother and trying to understand eachother - good and bad points alike. If there is a substantial disagreement, as I see it here, the only possible approach is for both sides to try to remain as logical and analytical as possible, and to try to respond to eachother's points one by one, with method. PROOVE me wrong, and I'd be truly glad to say that you are right - I mean it. I've studied chess in the past under the training of Garry Kasparov's coach Iosif Dorfmann, and here's a lesson I've learned from him.

<p>

We were once commenting a game played by grand-masters, and he was pleading for a patient strategy, explaining to us why a wild attack may not work. One of my team-mates, who was a fairly skilled attack player said a couple of tomes that he was very tempted to do exactly the opposite. Iosif explained a few times the same thing, but apparently, my team-mate would not really give up on his own idea that a wild attack may pay off.

<p>

At some point, the former coach of Garry Kasparove told him: "Ok, let's see... You shall attack the way you suggest, and I'll defend."

<p>

Of course, my team-mate played 5 or 6 moves and resigned. Iosif Dorfmann is one of the best 5 defence players in the world. :-)

<p>

Why this analogy...? Well, because that day, only ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME resulted in a conclusion that both sides agreed with: Dorfmann was right.

<p>

In these endless threads on PNet, each and everyone will voice his opinion, and each person from both sides will SEEM to be entirely right in what he's saying. Yet, both sides are exactly opposed and disagree on about every single thing. But the reason why it never ends is because we never get into what Socrates or Dorfmann would call a real dialog. Each one can scream to the moon as much as he wants, a real dialog obeys to rules, and to each move played, there must be a DIRECT AND TO-THE-POINT RESPONSE. No point repeating for ever the same point on your side and saying that the other party "DOESN'T GET IT". The tree hides the forest, and the most comfortable thing to do may indeed be to avoid the real confrontation.

<p>

It's very easy to comment on a game, it's very difficult top play the game and win it. It's very easy not to play the game at all.

<p>

In the case of PNet, the game is to be analyzed at TWO levels. 1) The logic behind the complaints. 2) The internal logistics of running a site like this.

<p>

If Photo.net's management allows it, rather than telling people to quit complaining, here's my suggestion: accept to play the game once and for all, and winner takes all. I believe I can demonstrate what's wrong with how the gallery is being managed, but I would only be sure of that if I can convince the management about it. And I can't convince the management if they are already certain that I'm wrong before I start and refuse to hear anything. I am willing to be proven wrong as well. But my belief is that photo.net has for a long time willingly avoided to step to deep in such discussions - for some reason. Hypothesis: because Brian and Bob have perhaps heard more than their patience could take - that happens, we are huiman after all.

<p>

It's easier to dismiss complaints with 3 words than to examine them precisely. If you are willing to spend some time in a LOGICAL discussion, Brian, no matter what's the outcome, I'm sure it will benefit to Photo.net a lot more than these threads which head in 100 directions at a time. All you have to do is to actually play the game of a serious discussion just like you'd play a chess game. Just say "ok", and we could get into the heart of the matter once and for all...

[mg]

And let me add 1) that everyone in this thread only means well for the site...

<p>

... and 2) that if you don't say "ok" this time, Brian, you lose by forfeit and win de facto as the Editor of the site...:-) Cheers.

[bacsa]

<i>"[...]the ratings are for the site and the comments are for the photographers. "</i>-B.Mottershead

<p>

That's exactly the point, Brian. So when you are loaded with ratings, that's for the site, so you have nuthin. And there come hardly any comments, so you end up with nothing:)

<br>But i do understand, there's not much to do(from the photo.net's side, i mean). Much more from our side.

<br>So don't take these posts personal, and keep up the good work with the site. The true value of the site is in the forums. Now THERE one DOES get a lots of "comments", whatever dumb question he/she posts.

<p>

Cheers.

<p>

PS: what I'd suggest, is two (in fact,one) things:

<br>- put an obvious link to the "tutorial" page over ratings, on the main photo.net page, or even on every page, and, more important:

<br>-put a kind of "disclaimer" on the above mentioned tutorial page that says something like 'one should consider the diversity of the people giving ratings and should not take it too seriously or personal if here and there bad marks are given onto his/her wonderful photography'.

<p>

Thanks fy patience.

[wakeforce]

Marc G. : Amen to that

[mottershead]

Marc, the gist of your anecdote is that the only way to resolve whether suggestions are valid is to try them. The problem with this is that there is no consequence if a suggestion doesn't work out for the person who made it, whereas the consequence for me and photo.net of experimenting with misguided suggestions is, at the very least, lost time, and at worst, a significant reduction in the appeal of the site to many people and possibly the demise of the site.

 

Or, to be less long-winded, talk is cheap.

[mottershead]

Regarding Anthony Petersen's question as to why he sometimes sees photos with 11 ratings near the top of the photocritique queue. Answer: because the queue isn't reshuffled in real time, but only every 10 minutes (as I recall). So a photo can get a little extra lease on its spot near the top of the list than "the rules" strictly provide.

[mg]

"Marc, the gist of your anecdote is that the only way to resolve whether suggestions are valid is to try them."

<p>

NO.

<p>

That's not at all what I was saying.

<p>

Not sure whether you read too quickly or whether my English is lacking, but what I was saying is this:

<p>

TRY HAVING A REAL, LOGICAL, POINT BY POINT DISCUSSION, instead of repeating that people don't get it. That's what I mean by "playing the game" - the game of a proper discussion.

<p>

You are not hearing the logical reasons that demonstrate what's wrong with the system, and you are simply avoiding the real LOGICAL dialog, because you are sure that you are right and that others are wrong from the start. All I and others have been asking for, for so long, is to have a logical conversation where you reply to the questions asked directly and logically, not by repeating endlessly what most of us disagree with from day 1. Some regular posters in these threads may have a bit more brain cells that you would credit them for.

<p>

What Iosif Dorfman demonstrated in this anecdote is that 2 partis disagreeing on something will find out who's wrong if and only if they reply to eachother's moves - the rest is talking to the wind, since nobody will be convinced of anything new in the end.

<p>

Thread like this are non-games; where you keep on repeating that talk is cheap, that people don't get it, and that things are fine, without demonstrating anything in a formal manner while ignoring what other people are trying to demonstrate more or less logically to you.

<p>

Accept if you are prepared to have this discussion, or just say "I refuse" and be done with it if you are not. That was my point. But accepting means that you need to take the time it takes, and that the method shall be "logic" + point-by-point answers.

<p>

Your decision.

[marshall]

Wading in, tentatively.

 

The rating system doesn't work perfectly. No rating system will. Hopefully we can all agree that there will always be something to complain about. In fact, with the number of images posted and the number of ratings given, against a normal distribution of ratings and comments, there will always be a significant number of images that receive too little attention (according to their makers). Further, there will always be people who complain about low raters, whether they have images posted or not (I consider this argument a complete miss - one doesn't need even to take pictures to be a good commenter, one just needs to be thoughtful, and we have thoughtless commenters with and without images posted).

 

My fear really is that the system would need to be blown up, not tweaked, and that's the root of the problem: it would be a LOT of work for Brian, and there would be little way to guarantee that it would be an improvement without a lot of fairly expensive testing. I used to help run an interactive site with 2 million users, and we did a lot of testing. I wish Brian had the kinds of resources that large corporation did. Of course, that doesn't mean that, at some point, we shouldn't try blowing the system up. But it's going to be as Brian figures it out, and the more we are willing to work with him, and the more we are willing to do it WHEN he needs us to, the better for him. He rightly recognizes (I believe) that some of the complaints are difficult to implement systematically, and that there's only so much moderator time for the critique forums.

 

As for the complaint that this is popphoto.net, well, that's a reasonable observation. With 270k members, it's going to reflect the mass market, at least as much as can any group of photographer/net addicts. Unless/until there are specialized critique forums, some types of work will be marginalized. Given limited resources, it may not be feasable for photo.net to serve all of those sub-communities right now, though I would hate to see them go elsewhere and cost this site some of its diversity. [This argument both supports and fails to support immediate change.]

 

Also, the steps to reduce the total number of photo posts may be very important. The About Us page says we get 40k new photo posts here and 210k new ratings. Those are awesome numbers, but they translate into an average of just more than 5 ratings per image. Even more telling, we get 40k new comments per month, or just 1 per image. Recognizing that many comments are made by photographers on their own images (responding to commenters), we see that the site gets far fewer than 1 comment per submitted image. Even assuming that the number of comments remained the same (a ridiculous but simplifying assumption), cutting the number of images should help, and any other solution is shouting at the rain until that one happens.

 

One change I would like to see is critique requests as pages of more/smaller thumbnails, making it easier to review new images quickly to see things that interest me. It would, at least, give images more visibility in a way. One small thought.

 

I will continue to think on the rating system, as it is clearly one of the great problems of our time. If I come up with anything compelling, I'll share it here.

[wakeforce]

Well, I just noticed something. This site gets a HUGE amount of traffic. Ok so now we know that. I don,t know if I already talked about this, but I know of a site, called deviantart, that is made to share artwork between users. There are NOP ratings on this website, and the only way they use to get recognition for images is that they show them on the front page when they get submitted. They normally don,t stay for more than a minute, but I still got about 4 comments in under 5 minutes with the same picture that got me one comment here. (Not talking about the picture I whined about on the beginning of this topic, but of another one)

 

I had my main gallery here, but I am starting to think about stopping to contribute my pictures here. The only thing I will be missing is that this is a photography only website, but if I get no comments, who cares if a pro photographer looks at my images or just an average joe that likes good looking artwork?

 

So please, pretty please, just stop saying that the system is working. I think there is much to learn by looking at what others have accomplished, whether that be in photography or web designing.