matthew robinson

Vuk said: "Matthew, you've brought up some good suggestions"

Thank you -- I shall immediately trawl through your postings desperately searching for something I agree with and lavish it with praise ;-)

"but how do you propose we deal with ratings on pictures already uploaded and rated if switching to a new 5-10 system"

Don�t know -- seems a shame to just throw them away when, by and large, many people have put in the effort and provided an honest opinion. Possibly just batch convert the old ratings to a static comment on each currently rated photo and switch over to a new system (whatever that might be). Otherwise have the higher rated photos converted to equivalent ratings in the new system with some kind of moderation from the powers that be as required.

Tony D. said "I hate to say this, but if the scale is from 5 to 10 then the blitzers will give 5/5s"

Granted the malicious could still bring a picture down a few points, but if a 5 is defined as "above average" or "worthy of note" and this is well known then it�s less open to abuse. If one thinks of 1/1 as the equivalent of someone just shouting �Crap� for no apparent reason then the people given to such behaviour would probably be less inclined to do so if the worst they could shout was �Pretty good actually�.

My point is that ratings are a blunt instrument but do have certain advantages and uses and can be rewarding and fun (lets not forget that). High ratings might actually, as you rightly pointed out earlier, say little more than �Superb� suffer less from the obvious disadvantages and can be of value for various reasons. Low ratings by contrast are at best unhelpful and often, as we have seen, just cause arguments and bad feeling and comments are a far more appropriate vehicle.

BTW If anyone�s interested I run a 1/1 Survivors group that meets on Tuesday�s in the church hall. We have group hugs and burn effigies of DaBomber ;-)

I think its useful to draw a distinction between provding critique and feedback to aid learning and giving ratings to indicate approval, provide encouragement and to help identify worthwhile/interesting photos. I think the former is much better served by comments but for the latter numeric ratings are also very useful if only to allow a search/filter facility for finding the better pictures (assuming that that many come here, at least in part, to look at, enjoy and learn from good photographs and that noone wants a fcaility to search for bad pictures).

Therefore I would like a ratings system where the ratings are either not to leave a rating or to rate on a scale of 5 to 10. This is not to discourage criticism (quite the opposite) but to confine it to comments which would would hopefully make it more helpful and constructive than simple low scores whilst still retaining the advantages of a numeric rating.

Such a scale would also solve a lot of the abuse and acrimony as you can't really give be malicious with a 5 (or at least not as effectively as it is implicitiy some kind of approval). If you disagree with a picture's high rating you can still register disapproval via a comment but have to back it up with your reasons.

I'm also in favour of a requirement that you rate and comment on (say) 10 photographs for each of your own you submit for review. Overall I'd rather have a reduced number of high quality and instructive/encouraging reviews than the current random number of often unreliable numeric ratings. Also submission for rating should be an explicit opt-in to accomodate those don't want any part of the ratings system.

I would keep the "top rated photographers" list but I think its primary benefit is to draw attention to the interesting porfolios and its current incarnation promotes the sort of competetiveness that leads to lot of the problems with the ratings system at present. I would make its entry criteria more stringent, order it alphabetically and not publish the overall scores. It could be a sort of "Highly Commended" section (or two or three sections with increasingly stringent requiements for entry).

Matthew