kinell

Alan, I was thinking of a script which gives default 4/4 without analyzing the picture. This could be written by any kid. It doesn't have to be a system admin.

In any case, there is probably no such script. As written before, I jumped to conclusions.

You are right though, if it was a normal rating, I should be happy someone took the time to rate it.

I am very happy that I got many serious replies to a thread with a substantial flaming potential! Yet another proof of the high standards of this community. Encouraging.

Michael:

> This is often perception and not reality

You might have a point here, I guess I rushed into conclusions too early... :-/

Still, I like the idea of having a rating for critiques :-)

Mike: by the way, to further proove my point:

I would be honoured to receive some constructive negative comments on my pictures by you :-). Please feel free to focus on the bad parts only, since that is what helps me most.

Ratings sure are a delicate issue.

You are probably right, low ratings would tend to get low critique ratings. I did consider this. However, my hope is that this leads to people "defending" their low rating with a valuable comment.

A key concept would be, that _everybody_ should be able to rate the critiquers, not just the ones who got a rating. Unfortunately, this came not out clearly in my first post.

Since you want me to consider my own case.

I actually have received ratings far worse than 4/4.

As you can see below, I have a photo with an average (!) of 3.11. Yet, I was really thankful to the one person who wrote a negative comment.

http://www.photo.net/photo/6317304

It's funny, I didn't remember this,but I actually gave this guy a "critique rating" of 7/7 for his negative comment and that was nearly a year ago!

No, low ratings are fine. I just was puzzled by the _instant_ and _constant_ ratings of 4/4. Naturally without expaining comments.

Thanks for your replies.

As for the first ratings given: I can't see what rating was given first (or can I?). It's just that many times a rating seems to be given almost instantly and always 4/4. I have noticed that not just with my own photos.

Could be a bored person just clicking through all new photos rating them with a default 4/4 or a script...

In any case, I have come to notice the whole rating system (and abuse) is a big issue here. I would therefore like to propose my own solution:

- Allow non-anonymous ratings only

- Let the rating scale be 1-7 (not 3-7)

- Introduce a critiquer rating system

- Weight a photo rating by the critiquers rating

Let me elaborate the last two points:

A photographer receiving a rating/critique should be able to give the critiquer a "critique rating". This way, people giving honest and helpful critiques would sooner or later obtain high critique ratings while people who rate low out of revenge or other unjustified reasons would get very low critique ratings after a while.

By weighting a rating with the critiquers "critique rating", the ones coming from well respected critiquers automatically weight more than those coming from a non-respected rater.

A simple way would be multiplication:

Well respected person A has a critique rating of 7 and gives a photo a 6.

"Revenge Guy" B has a critique rating of 2 and gives the photo a 3.

The calculated rating would then be 7/9 * 6 + 2/9 * 3 = 5.3 instead of the normal average of 4.5.

A person who hasn't got a "critique rating" yet could default to 4.

I noticed that several of my critique requests get an almost instant 4/4 rating. Now,

I have read similar posts about instant 3/3 and 4/3 ratings. I just wonder what this

is about.

Here are two examples:

http://www.photo.net/photo/7369691

http://www.photo.net/photo/7346077

Both photos took me a good amount of time to shoot. And although I'm only a

fairly new amateur, I constantly try to improve my preparation and composition. I

would rate those two above 4/4 myself and I seem to be confirmed by the non-

anonymous raters. Therefore, the instant ratings leave my slightly puzzled.

The fact that the 4/4 appears almost instantly every time smells like an automated

default rating, maybe someone wrote a script.

What are your opinions? (Not about the general usefulness of ratings how one

should deal with it, we had that plenty of times already...)

Hi all, what are your thoughts regarding the Velbon Sherpa Pro line?

In Particular, I am interested in opinions about the Sherpa Pro CF-730.

(I'm 6'4")

Thanks,

Andreas