marg

Hi all..

I questioned Rachel about the 'highest' ratings problem recently, 'cause the Top 5 for December were definitely skewed. Rachel just told me about the new Forum (yippee !) and suggested I raise my question here.

What I said to Rachel originally was :
"Over the last couple of months, there have been repeated incidents of people going through and rating all the better-scoring pictures as a one.. because there is an IMMEDIATE effect of dropping, not only the picture's rating, but that of the artist, beyond all proportion."

As an example, I then questioned why my 'bear for Baldur' pic (34 votes, done in December) didn't rate as highly as the one I did on NYD (the 'I don't care' one).

Dunno if anyone is still interested in this topic, but thought I'd raise it anyway !

Cheers, all !

marg

Sorry.. Rachel's response was :

We are aware of the problem with the highest rated formula. Perhaps we should have raised the minimum number of votes needed to get into the Top 5. I'm not sure I understand the accumulative formula you suggest above, and have been unable to find a simple formula to fix the problem. Fortunately it does seem that the ratings 'blitz' as you describe it has not started up again since the break over Christmas - New Year.

There is now a forum available to discuss this, and any views or suggestions that you raise there are appreciated and will definitely be considered.

likemee

marg, it is a very difficult thing to find a perfect solution to. due to the nature of the site and people's right to rate pictures as they wish, there will always be users who will give low ratings.

it seems that eventually all perfect rated pictures are given less than 5. the result of this is that most the best pictures on the site average around 4.9 (note that you can see the exact rating by hovering over the stars). and in fact it is still the case that the very best work is found under "most ratings" rather than "highest rated" which is misleading.

as for the top 5, i believe that 'sabotaged' pictures are taken into account. and at the end of the day only five pictures from thousands
can possibly be chosen.

matthew

See my "I do not care" post in the other forum... My eye of the tiger (115 votes)...(4.8 rating) not only has it received a lot of votes, but it must own the honor of the most 1 votes received to date... I do believe that it's low average was over looked durring November because it still received top 5 honors... So I am sure there must be exceptions to the rules... But as I said... See my "I do not care" post...

Luna

One solution would be to just have "vote or no vote". If you like a picture you vote for it, if you don't you just move on. I usually do this anyway; if I like a picture I give it a 5. If I don't, I just don't vote. It would do away with one person being able to drop the ratings on the best pictures.

jmdx3mom

I agree! I do the same thing and never even look at the highest rated pics as I feel it is horribly inaccurate due to malicious intent.

candr

I agree. I only give out 5 stars. There are too many young kids who play on here (like my 8yo), and I'd hate to discourage a budding artist just because he's not to the same standard as some with more honed skills!

Another option might be to require everyone who rates to leave a comment identifying who left what rating. That at least allows for some accountablility in the process. I suppose that could spawn some "revenge" votes, but that's better than what's going on!

Qsilv

Same here... I give 5 or pass. If it hadn't attracted Griefers, a 5 pt scale could've been useful and I'd occasionally use a 4 or 3 (often on my own!).

As it is, our comments help most. They're not easily quantifiable but that's fine for what we're doing here. Kids. Pff *smiles* Make us sign our votes!

Dropping the lowest score seems easiest. Better might be a simple algorithm that factors in number of votes cast... which would effectively de-fang the lowest ones AND temper any euphorically high flyers.

marg

Qsilv.. totally agree.. just make it accumulative (how hard is that ?) and a pic that got 5*+5*+5*+1* would be higher rated than a pic that just got 5*.

Not sure what Thinkdraw think the problem is with this, but it's sure taking a lot of time to get the message across !

kmkagle

I have a question, if I can ask - I see some pictures (I'm not an expert) that to me are OK, but they're given all these comments and a decent rating. Then, I see a picture that is really nice and apparently took alot of time to do and it doesn't even get that many comments or votes. What does the "judging" look for and how do they decide what is good and what merits the higher ratings?

anotherronism

I'm new here but let me take a stab at this:

I think it has a LOT to do with the activity level on the site. When I first joined it was a weekend night and a LOT of stuff was popping into the gallery every time I looked. So a lot of people are seeing stuff on the main gallery page and it's catching their eye.

I've never browsed the gallery beyond fifteen or so pages. So anything that's from "back in the day" won't get rated or commented on unless I stumble on it by browsing a specific user or if it's in a Top 5 group or Most Rated.

Also - when there's nobody around - stuff just sits in the gallery unloved and lonely. Then, in the morning, people come on and start drawing. And the work from the previous night just gets pushed down the conveyor.

I've gotten a lot of votes and comments since I joined here but my personal favorite piece of my own work has been completely overlooked. I think this is due to that I've just described.

Another thought: The piece I'm talking about is a black-and-white drawing from "Faces" called "And Hope Fell Down". It's a graphic about 9-11. But most of my work is full-color and it's possible people just don't even register the black-and-white line drawing tucked in with so much other, color work.

Ron

Baldur

I also think a lot of us get into the habit of chatting with other people that we feel we've gotten to know in the comment area. I might or might not comment on a spectacular drawing by a new member but I will definitely comment on just about anything matthew does, good, bad, or ugly.
This really has nothing to do with the quality of the new work, it's just laziness on my part
I bet I'm not the only one doing this

Qsilv

...what Baldur said (guilty look...) tho I do fairly regularly (couple/three times a week) browse around and comment on anything that intrigues me.

ThinkDraw

Thanks for your comments and suggestions on the ratings.

Marg, sorry it took me so long to understand your accumulative formula.

The only problem with using the total of all the votes is that the order turns out almost exactly the same as 'Most Ratings'. This is already the better way to see the best ever pictures.

For now, the 'Highest Rated' does at least show some of the better newer pictures created. It has been suggested that we add a time filter to the gallery so that you could see pictures from each week, or month. Maybe that would help?

marg

Rachel.. that would be stunning !

I already thought about having a 'best new pics' option, that allowed you to do a mini top 5 for the last week, fortnight or whatever, but I'm never too sure how hard it is for you to change /add things like this.

What people have said about the timing of a pic hitting the gallery is very true ( as evidenced in the December Top 5), so really, anything you can do along these lines would be great.

Thanks, as always, for your interest and involvement !

marg

sorry, I meant a mini-Top 5 based on an accumulative score !

cutegrl289

It would also be helpful to be able to add our favorite artists to our profile or enable a search feature to search for artists.

puzzler

That's a great idea!

cutegrl289

I have to credit Qsilv for the original idea.

Qsilv

(slips a fiver to cutegrl289) ...BUT... I hasten to add, I'd love for that SEARCH feature to work on other terms, not just names.

In another post somewhere (memory? what memory?) I pointed out that it's easy to keep a list of links to people's profile sites. What's not so easy is keeping track of who did what, said what, when.