spaghetti_western

well to me that one is a 'just plain bad' quality recording shot. but okay, you saw different and your rating was honest. so why not accord similar benefit of doubt to others with whose photo critic visual judgment you dont agree?

"...start honestly evaluating and critiquing the quality of the images that you see..."

 

your own highest rateds page view certainly doesnt demonstrate a discernment of quality that you exhort now from others, especially the uncommented 6/6 for a ghastly image of a cow crossing a road (guess it didnt get runneth over), but i suppose its an honest rate that says something about your view of 'quality'

and the tie in to carl was entirely an homage to his insight that unless fundamental changes occur to the ratings system which drives such behavior, that the names will change (last week rashid and paul, next week william and sabrina?) but the same crap will recur in perhaps another forum thread

jayme - the 'finnegan begin again' reference was to the satirical 'the never ending song' (thus, 'begin again') of contemporary childrens music, and by extension, was paradoxically and unknowingly predictive of sir greenwoods banning, probably due to his being repeatedly warned about not beginning still another cycle of personal scoring to settle as had been his habitual wont since joining this site

"...any rates not done from the queue are biased..."

 

theres a gulf of difference between bias and abuse, and my question had to do with equating a rating habit or rating pattern with abuse and not merely some bias

 

"...a bot can determine if the volume of rates from A to B are disproportionately high in volume..."

 

and a bot (and an administrator) can determine the temporal occurrence of said rates. if theyre spread over time then theres no abuse though possibly bias but if theyre done in one sitting then that indicates bias of some sort and possibly abuse

"...A bot that doesn't look at a rating pattern of rater A on photographer B is missing THE primary source of abuse..."

 

so carl, how would a third party (or a bot) know for sure if a 'rating pattern' is the result of behavior aimed at a photographer and not the result of some other non-abusing pattern of legitimate rating behavior? after all, a correlation does not have to indicate direct cause-and-effect, except perhaps in the fantasy world of thisisspinaltap :-)

a whole lot of prejudice and ignorance displayed in this thread, and a lot stems from the mistaken reading of my question

 

i did not propose to alter the ratings scale, which everyone believes is 1-7. in fact, it is 2-14. check out the TRP rankings to verify this. the only difference is that the system would simply not count the 1/1, 2/1, and 1/2 combinations. mean spirited raters could levy 1/1s to their heart's content, but those rating combos simply wont get counted, and those raters wont dare to complain. see? clean and easy change. no fuss, no muss. and fewer complaints to the abuse dept. even brian admitted that most of those ratings get purged by his bot. my proposal would simply put brian's bot out of biz, and i suppose he'd balk at that :-)

"...hey brian... be a leader..."

 

forget it ben. neither brian nor the 'spinal tap' crew of wallnuts (sic) is prepared to even comprehend the easiest of adaptions to implement that could improve the site. no need to bother with explanations cuz they wont comprehend

the proposal is simple and plain as day for brian to read it, thus its site feedback purpose fulfilled, so i need say no more

how can '2 turn into 1' if 1 stays? try again

you misunderstand. the '1' rating (either for aesthetics, OR originality) would stay. but the 1/1 combo rating would go (just NOT both)

since the 1/1 rating of a photo serves no constructive or informative

purpose and causes nothing but grief for the recipient and much

investigative work for the abuse department then why not eliminate

it?

 

perhaps eliminate also the 1/2 and 2/1 combination for the same

reason. set the practical floor at 2/2, 3/1, and 1/3, which would

require the low rater to 'think' a moment or make added effort to do

so after having the system reject a 1/1

 

and, it would really be a nice holiday time bonus too to purge all

prior 1/1 scores from the entire system! how about it

carl's were the only posts i understood perfectly. like a well-conceived-and-done-photo-without-words they spoke volumes to me. brevity is the soul of wit. keep it simple and pointed. yes, carl, you are talking to the wall but maybe soon some mortar will crack and... of course, as we all should know by now, soon the cycle will 'begin again begin again, mister finnegan'

"...My question is this: Assuming a normal aspect ratio, if I were to crop the 8MP picture down to 5MP, what would the effective focal length of that image be?..."

 

illka is correct. think in terms of the square root of the ratio differential. from 8mp down to 2mp is 4.0 ratio diff. whose square root is 2.0 which multiplied by 200mm is 400mm. from 8mp down to 4mp is 2.0 whose s.r. is 1.414 which multiplied by 200mm is 283mm. from 8mp down to 5mp is 1.60 whose s.r. is 1.265 which multiplied by 200mm is 253mm

the 'critique-only' section would dovetail nicely with my 'IMAGE THIS' ideas (see the two recent threads started by marc g). but as marshall goff indicated (in one of those threads), our ideas are up against the 'priortization' values of the site which are ratings-driven. however 'image this' would require nothing from the site to get it started as it would begin as completely member-driven by the common consent of but a handful to get it going

"...I think people find value in their images getting 50,000 views vs. 800..."

 

if the purpose of critique-only is to get feedback in the form of purposeful comments that are meaningful to the photographer then who cares how many views of the image's thumbnail (which in fact what the PN views really are) get tabulated. and wouldnt you rather have 800 purposeful views then 49,900 meaningless ones?

 

"...the same 20 people keep using it but it isn't growing..."

 

if thats a problem then imagine if a lot more upload their images there and then each photo's 'time in the sun' or visible forum time there grows even briefer?

 

"...I am still blown away by all the people who asked for it but don't use it..."

 

perhaps, but they're far outnumbered by all the people who didnt ask for it and use it quite well, or so it seems that way to me

theres now a sortable browse facility in the gallery (by number of ratings, including zero, and by category, including all) located on the 'newest critiques request' page under 'critique requests' and next to 'recent' and its called '(browse)' which links directly to <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/pc-thumbs" >browse recent critique request thumbs</a>. if you set the sort to "no ratings" you'll get all the recent uploads for "critique-only"

<p>then if you have decent windows pc or mac skills and are reasonably adept at 'right clicking' then you can create separate windows from the TRP thumbnails off their root page, and click 'contribute a critique' and comment on these in succession on their full sized photo pages while still holding your place on the sortable critique-only thumbs page to continue selecting from these

oh and

 

6 - if this 'free form' idea takes hold, then it could form the germinating basis and provide a solid foundation to evolve a more sophisticated and mainstream structure given a regular participation following by interested members. otherwise if we start something like marc g suggests with some elite structure it may quickly end with a house of fallen cards

well, whatever it could be called, my idea was to start something rather "free form" without an a priori structure put into place. It would be open to everyone, but in practice only those interested would be motivated to participate. Here is how it would work...

 

1 - a commonly accepted BUZZ PHRASE be it "hear ye, look at this photo" or "image this", or whatever, would be something any member would quickly learn and could announce albeit followed with a strictly defined PN photo-link html string and 1-sentence rationale (so that others know it can be taken seriously). at first it could be done as sequentially visible threads in the site-feedback forum, but then administration could channel these into its own forum (just like "words/no words" has its own)

 

2 - since this idea eschews using mainstream PN space (eg, the POW with its prominence on the home page) to cater to those especially interested in giving critique and discussing interesting or controversial images, then only interested members would be motivated to participate. that should keep the unintended nonsense to a minimum since there would really be no incentive to create mayhem since few are paying attention

 

3 - even if theres a plethora of notices (some properly done) pointing to rather uninteresting or non-controversial images, so what? since no one will give those images a serious critique, then really there be no harm or foul. only those images that participants come to 'agree' meet the "interesting or controversial" image test would end up with discussions materializing on their own photo page

 

4 - if a forum is given this by PN, then interested members could volunteer perhaps on rotating basis to monitor and highlight which images appear to be having currently significant discussions going on, so that others who are interested to participate can know precisely where to click to get there and participate too

 

5 - the elves are welcome to test their nominating mettle sans their POW imprimatur - SW :-)))

btw, if you have decent windows pc or mac skills and are reasonably adept at 'right clicking' then you can resolve marc's 'troublesome bulks' dilemma to some extent by creating separate windows from the TRP thumbnails off their root page, and simply rate these in succession on their full sized photo pages

<p>"...Yet, more ratings and comments would be a very good thing in order to have better TRP pages..."

<p>theres now a sortable (by number of ratings, including zero, and by category, including all) browse facility for new critique requests... <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/pc-thumbs" >browse recent critique request thumbs</a>... so if YOU wish to have an impact on the TRPs BEFORE the mate-raters establish THEIRS or mates works as the standard bearers then all you have to do is browse the new requests and pick YOUR 'expert' bests. otherwise your votes will just rejuggle which photos make the top TRP pages

not sure i understand what youre saying. do you mean to have something like the 'rate recent' and 'rate folder' feature whereby an entire TRP page of photos can be set up in a queue for rates and comments?

"...It would be nice for beginners to look on those user's photographs before going to buy them..."

 

really? and what would you expect to learn? if the photographer is very good or not do you think its because of the particular camera or lens she uses? or is it because of their mastery (or not) of pre-capture technique and post-process skills? if the latter then the brand or particular model of equipment used should only be relevant upon examining the photos of those photographers whose topical work most matches your own interests to get a sense of which tools may be best for your purposes. but in that case you ought to focus on the types of photos you like to do and then note what equipment those photographers use to create them. and that type of search is now facilitated in PN by a browse recent photos search facility

<p>dont know if anyone has noticed this, but now in the gallery

view, to the right, under "Critique Requests", next to "Recent

(Rate) (List)" is a new option called "(Browse)"

 

<p>click on (Browse) and you get a whole new entry into the gallery

thumbnails, with dual option to sort by "group" and by "category"

 

<p>the group sort is by ranges of number of ratings, including "all"

and "no ratings", and ranges 1-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, and 20 or more

 

<p>this new gallery sorting option is under recent critique requests

and the link is

 

<p><a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/pc-thumbs" >browse recent

critique thumbs</a>

 

<p>also of interest is that this gallery view includes recent photos

requested as critique-only

thank you, marc. using the ad hoc method i suggested, i seriously doubt you would get even 20 photos nominated per day, of which not more than 5 or 6 would agreeably attract meaningful discussion by concerned participants. still that be maybe 35-40 per week. not bad. i believe that only members truly interested would even bother about this. in any event there would be nothing to set up just to try it out perhaps to start december 1st - all we need to do is come up with minimal guidelines (for example, the nomination link must be in a specific hyperlink format to be taken seriously as legit, or else it be considered bogus) to separate the truly earnests from the lazy spammers - then work out the kinks or re-evolve it from there