Quote - I think you would have to anally watch your comments.  So if 4 ppl comment and you get 4 ratings and you are sitting at a rating of 5 - (everyone gave you fives) then someone comes along and gives you a 1 - your rating would go down.  But like I said you would have to be anally watching it to see when that happened I think.

Either way I suck big time in math area - it hurts my brain right now just to try to figure out what that averages to.

just to say, unless you're really popular, no it wouldn't take being anal about comments.  all it would take is being notified you got a rating and comment and seeing your rating drop.  unless you're not checking your email or you get lots and lots of comments, it will be pretty obvious.  that's one of the reasons i feel a single recommend or don't would be better.  then nobody would be afraid of giving low ratings.  though this case just sounds malicious.

FYI:

3 5's and a 1: 4
4 5's and a 1: 4.2
5 5's and a 1: 4.33
6 5's and a 1: 4.42
10 5's and a 1: 4.64
20 5's and a 1: 4.81

What I'm saying is unless you get lots of these guys doing these, who cares? Any image where my grade is above 4, I figure I did a good job. If I didn't then I'd be getting 3's and 4's right? Oh wait - everybody's voting 5 or not voting. Hmmm. Then I know nothing.

I really think a "recommend' button would work better. If 73 out of 100 viewers recommend, you got a much more realistic score (73) than if you count the votes, which require commenting, and as a result you get a tiny statistical sampling.

I agree with BB. The actual rating system is not good.

When you are watching someone else picture, it would be easier to decide to recommend it or not, than to choice between 5 rates. I mean, when someone is rating, why would he give 3? or 4? It would really be easier with a "recommend" button. Only 2 choices!

I agree.

Only improvement I've suggested to staff is to include negative 1 through 5 as well. "We've been thinking about that," was the reply.

As you say, they're more likely to entertain a wider scale than a narrower one, to cater to the competers more.

For me, you like something or you don't. No need of degrees in your liking of it.

whatever scale is used people always tend to group to one end it's like ice skating with all those 9.9, 9.9, 9.8 ....... etc, if you had -numbers it'll make no difference except to give trolls more ammo, I would prefer 3 levels, good, bad, don't care with don't care as the default.....

*Only improvement I've suggested to staff is to include negative 1 through 5 as well. "We've been thinking about that," was the reply.
*I can't really see how that helps, if the problem is with people who gush in the comments and then leave a single gold star.  How does giving them the chance to award one to five Black Holes improve matters?  

The comments are the main things, but some people consider even the best-intentioned criticism to be a personal affront.   I've known artists to respond to perfectly polite comments by disabling comments on subsequent contributions, but that banishes the favourable observations just as surely as the critical ones, which are, in any case, just as valid.   Others get incredibly defensive about their friends' pictures, even though the actual artists are perfectly relaxed about criticism, as long as it is sincere.

It must also be said that a lot of Renderosity members seem to have undergone triple humour-bypass procedures with a 120% success-rate.

Quote - (Thankfully the HOT 10 is gone !)

 
Actually it was the HOT 20, but yes...thank goodness it was banished and replaced by the wonderful HOT Most Commented and the HOT Top Rated which has nothing to do with popularity or cliques.  :tt2:

I don't see how a single "recommended" star would help the situation at all. The majority of people who comment are going to "recommend," just as they now give you a 5 rating. 

If somebody wants to game the system, they could still give you a gushing comment but decline to recommend you.
 
And if you're not required to comment before recommending, then it opens the system up to other kinds of gaming.

It is for these reasons I finally disabled ratings on my pix. People are free to comment, critique, and say anything they want, good, bad or ugly. But the ratings just don't mean anything, and I doubt any system could be devised to make them meaningful.

"The majority of people who comment are going to "recommend," just as they now give you a 5 rating. "

Sure, but that's not the issue.

Look, I have some gallery images with over a thousand views. Getting over a thousand people to look at your image is really hard. I bet a lot of them would like to give a "thumbs up" as they go by and I'd move up the rankings in terms of total thumbs up. But right now, you can't even vote unless you're willing to make a comment. I don't want comments like "nice job", "beautiful image"and most people (excluding the sycophants) dont' want to leave comments like that. It takes too much time, and they have 100's of images to get through every day. But they'd have no problem with a "Close with thumbs up" button. 

I can't tell you how many times I'd like to do that as I skim the gallery, trying to get through 10 pagse of new postings. I pick and choose which to open based on the thumbnail. So I get counted as a "view". Then sometimes I see flaws in the full size, like missing refraction in water, or person floating over water instead of immersed, and somebody has already pointed this out and I just close, without a comment. I'd like to rate it a 3, but I'm not going to add a comment just for the right to rate it. So the 11 people who commented are the only ones contributing to the overall assessment.

But if I see an artistically nice image and I see no technical flaws, I want to give it a thumbs up.

Similarly, I'm curious about my own images. When 1000 people looked, how many liked it (thumbs up)? I certainly expect that it's close to 1000, but i have no idea, and I sure don't want 1000 comments just to get an accurate assessment.

bb - no, it's not hard.  look at the top people.  you'll notice the same ones commenting on each other's stuff, and even (probably) on yours.  i know  i have.  they leave one liners that praise your work, and they do it on a mammoth number of images.  then those people turn around and give them comments.  more than just gaming, it's the polite thing to do if someone has taken the time to  comment on your image.  if you do that on a massive scale, you get popular.   some people do it because they want to game, and some do it because they just like being part of the big warm fuzzy (this is a community site).

linkdink - i personally wasn't suggesting it to stop gaming.  stopping gaming would be easy:  get rid of ratings, get rid of most commented, get rid of highest rated, get rid of most viewed, and get rid of art charts.  if anything, do it like JPG magazine and count votes or ratings but don't show the score and only use it to inform a selection of images chosen by staff.

i don't see them making those changes.  if they wanted to stop the gaming they wouldn't have banned doc legume for making it obvious how easy it was to game the hot 20.  i certainly don't feel fit to determine whether it's healthy or unhealthy for the community to reward the behavior that generates popularity, but if the ptb thought it was bad, they would have eliminated it a long time ago.

the one star method is to make the whole thing simpler.  and give a more realistic count.  i think the comments part is unnecessary, because it just makes people post comments redundant to their rating like "great image!" or "love it!"  that don't say any more than the rating. they just take up space for no reason.  and those of us who don't like leaving an impersonal comment but don't have the time can't rate some of the things we like.

To make a rating system little more fair then it seems to be right now, it seems to me it would have to be made anonymous (and as a few people said - no comment required).
Also, it would need to allow for several categories... for example, things like technical excellence, likeability, most improved, coiloring, composition, character development...  (I'm just tossing things in that come to mind, the list would have to be refined and more thought put into it)
Now, how to make things perfectly fair and honest and get people to not play favorites and keep everyone happy... Well, look at the society at large - noone has figured out how to do that just yet.

Quote - If like me , you have been the victim of "i love your picture" but then get 1 out of 5 rating from that member then you know what I'm not happy about.
We should scrap this rating system for a simple "recommendation star" which the viewer could give or not, anonymously. No comments needed which in this multi-lingual site would be easy and helpful.
Then we could see how many of the members who viewed the image actually liked it.
Any ideas?

I think being able to leave a quick recommend or thumbs up or whatever without having to write out a comment would be great. Rating art 1-5 or whatever sucks the life out of it, but a way of acknowledging good work is always a good thing.

I'm with BB on this.  I'm at a point where I don't even want to add people to my favs anymore because I don['t have the time to leave comments.  I would really like to be able to give a thumbs up and get on with my day.

I'm not against comments and I don't think there is anything wrong with people froming little groups of friends either.  It really feels like there are two camps here.  The Forum friends and the Gallery friends.  And like any organization that has two camps, there is this 'us vs them' attitude.

Let the Gallery people make friends and comment on each other's work.  The idea behind things like this is to interact with people and build relationships.  More then art, technical skills or anything else, we as humans are interactive relationship building creatures.  Everything that we do we do to build relationships (well, or eat and have sex, but I digress).

Still, I will cry out that the ratings system is a joke.  The numbers mean nothing.  A 5 becuase you are my friend or a 3 because it isn't as good as Rembrandt hardly means anything.  It is vague and misleading.

Oh, and I know I've had a few 'drive-by' 1 stars plus gushy comments.  But I don't know who and I don't really care.

I really think a nice little "thumbs up" system would be vastly more useful and harder to exploit.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go comment on some of my gallery friends' pictures! LOL.

Interesting topic!

My personal opinion is remove 1-4! Then if the image is really to your taste it gets a 5 or a comendation, otherwise no comment. What annoys me about the ratings system is when someone leaves a 4 or less, there is no supporting reason in the comments... so how do I assess how to improve? I know of one individual who always leaves a 4, normally when I am in the top 9 ratings, and never supports his rating in the comments.

Well, in general I leave a 4 unless a piece is truly outstanding, top 5 or 10 percent of work in my opinion, in that area I'm also liekly to add to favourites...