When I was responding to another thread, it made me wonder if there really ought to be negative ratings in the galleries. There is now a critique forum where artists can get advise on works in progress. Negative ratings don't have much meaning because they don't have any lasting value to help browsers avoid seeing garbage. After a few days, all images are buried fairly quickly by newer ones and the galleries are currently structured to only allow browsing back 45 days. The real preference is having a means to highlight the best images so that they aren't lost. Either only allow giving images a great ranking or switch to counting the number of people that add an image to their favorites list as a means of highlighting those with the best rankings.

Allowing negative rankings only provides a means ruffle feathers and troublemakers a means to stir up trouble.

With over a million images in the galleries, it's more important to highlight the best (which is already being done with highest rated, most commented, and most viewed) than provide a means to highlight the worst.

one "no" vote from me on negative ratings. this would have a serious dampening effect on the website, both in regard to sales of marketplace items and gallery/forum participation.

No.  The idea is to encourage people to post their work.  As Miss Nancy said, it would put off a lot of people from showing their work.

Isn't '1 (lowest)' low enough?
How much lower than lowest does one need for a rating system?

Who decides the worst? What you think is bad may be someone elses frigin inspiration. I have seen crap get big ratings because the postie is popular or belongs to that group.

I agree that negative rankings will help provide troublemakers a means to ruffle feathers. It would also give the vain a way to help thier, " most awsome of all art in thier own mind," a helping hand in those ratings. Look what happened in the critique club. Complained about how things were commented and rated and then designed to takeover those ratings, all in the name of the group.

I don't know an answer or if there even is one. It's kind of a chicken or the egg debate that will go on for ever here.

A vote of "NO" here too.

Uh oh, I wasn't clear.

My suggestion is to get rid of the ability for members to rank gallery images from 1-5. That allows people to give somebody a poor negative rating. All it takes is one of those to drag down the overall ratings on an image. If I bother rating an image, I give it a 5. An artist can turn the rankings off when loading an image, but then their image cannot be highly rated.

There's not much point to having the 5 rankings.

Ratings exist in other media to help paying customers decide if it's worth paying for a movie, book, or album. The images here are free and the thumbnails provide a small preview of the image, so there isn't much to be gained by having a 1-5 rating.

Should the existing 1-5 rating system be removed from the galleries?

A negative rating may means I don't like the work, and nothing else. But if I don't like, it does not mean I am ruling the world. Somebody may love what I don't like. So, I think ratings doesn't mean much than personal taste.

People have the option to turn off the ratings and only have comments, or turn it all of if you don't have time to comment on other's work. Prog and others do this. I get a lot of comments because I comment a lot and have been around a long time. There are a few people who give me tips like "she looks like she is floating" which happens if you do not have ground shadows correct. Sometimes I miss poke through. I do also have a few people who give me a low rating to drag me down in the "highest rating" category and I know it is done to be nasty. If people don't like something, they can always give helpful criticism or IM the person in private. Poser is a hobby for me. Ratings are not bringing me any money, LOL! I don't like anime so I don't comment on it. I certainly would not give someone a poor rating because I hated the genre. There is too much jeaousy over nonsense. I know one merchant has had some real nasty stuff said to her and for what reason? My grandmother used to say, "If you can't say something nice (or at least helpful), don't say anything."

Your Grandmother, yes she knows. I like it.

Anyone should have the option of giving an image the thumbs up or a recommend without leaving a comment. Ratings are pointless and counterproductive.

Ratings are stupid and meaningless, or maybe I'm too stupid to ascertain their meaning. Of course my denouncements would be more convincing if I were highly rated. We are snowflakes, ladies and gentlemen: Each unique and beautiful, though quickly buried in a thick white mass.

Quote - it's more important to highlight the best (which is already being done with highest rated, most commented, and most viewed).

If only that were true. There is the occasional gem in the highest rated/most commented section. So much great work goes unnoticed. I recommend people give the galleries a good view one day & see the works of art that never make it to the front page or the art charts.
Another way of finding good stuff without major searching is looking at other peoples favourites.

Just an idea: if you divide the total rating by the number of views, you'd probably get a better indication of quality. 
This would also mean that the most viewed images (typically images of nude women) wouldn't get as highly rated as they are now - a well done landscape in Vue/Bryce, with 60 views and 3 ratings of 5, would get a score of 35/60=0.25, while a pinup with 2000 views and 20 ratings of 5 would only get 205/2000=0.04.
In the current art chart system, the pinup could be present while the landscape would definitely loose out. In this ratio system, the landscape would win out over the pinup.

As far as ranking systems go, for me a simple "thumbs up" would do (rating 0 or rating 1).

The thing you're overlooking is that quite often the highest rated aren't neccesarily the best images. There is still the situation where certain peeps rate each others regardles of how good they actually are! The same thing applies to favouriting an image, friends do it to each others so again it's not always a true indicator of quality!
I saw one recently that had ratings in the 60's but had a glaring error of the wrong brush size used in postwork so had a vertical line of smoke in the image which looked really bad quite frankly!
So highest ratings doesn't always mean "best".

As long as the rating of images is based on viewer input, ratings can and will be skewed by favoritism, cliques, whatever. The only way to get a more or less objective rating is to have a team of independent reputable art critics rate the images - which is just not possible.

The ratio between ratings and views is just as susceptible to favoritism as the current system, so skewed rating WILL occur. But the ratio system might help bring attention to other kinds of images than Poser pinups.

I commented on & left a rating for an image today. It was a 2D piece, done with pencil & it was brilliant, great talent. The thing is, this type of work generally doesn't get enough views & so will have little chance of getting the recognition it deserves.

You've got to keep in mind the nature of the beast that is Poser. The best selling Poser items and figures are females and thsir accessories. Most of the clothing items are sexy attire for the female figures. When I asked for a list of favorite artists a few years ago, most of the recommendations were for artists who primarily did pinups. Look at what the mods pick to highlight works they think are going unnoticed: there are a fair number of pinups. Take a look at DAZ's handpicked galleries--more pinups for the most part. That's what draws a lot of people into trying Poser/DS and it's not going to change.

It's not much of a surprise to me that a lot of pinups make the "highest" ranking lists. Take a look. It's not all that's there. In the current top 100 rated gallery images, there are five landscape photos in the top 18. Rochr has the #2 spot and he's one of my fave digital artists. A ZBrush fantasy male model is #1. There's also a beautiful BlacKeri painting and a toon image in the top 18. And yes, there are a bunch of pinups.

There are a few images that are top rated that I'd kind of question if there were some shenanigans going on. That could just be my particular tastes. For the most part, the stuff getting high ratings is better than what I'm producing and I'd like to think I'm a halfway decent Poser artist. Overall, the images that are rotating through the highest rankings deserve to be there. Cheating can occur, but I don't really see it happening right now.

If we don't like what's going on, it's up to everybody, who wants to see more variety, to do more to help promote the images they think are deserving. Images in the top listings get around 75-180 comments or ratings. With this topic getting a couple hundred views, there are enough people looking that can help make a difference to highlight a worthwhile image. Somebody could open a topic on the best digital landscapes, the best horror, or whatever types of images are of interest to bring some eyes on the works that are here. Keep in mind that the rankings also apply to the various categories. It's possible to look up the landscape genre and see the best rated landscapes. That doesn't mean that there still aren't a lot of great artists going unnoticed. They'll remain unnoticed if somebody doesn't help them get noticed.

There's no perfect system. A lot can be done within the current system to bring more variety to the top rankings.

I have seen a lot of the same names in the mod picks. So I'm not sure that's letting others know of unnotice work.

Many of these works that have so many comments is due to the tit for tat/ you kiss mine and i'll kiss yours or part of a group. I bet you only need a couple of months of oo's and awww's on every image in the gallery to start getting all the comments too.

Being on the top of the charts does not mean it's great, just lots of friends. There are some that are good but not the amount the ranking shows.

You reversed what you meant in your first post to saying that there should not be rankings, that is how I read it and I would agree with that. But, you seem to be deffending it now with this last post. Saying that they all deserve to be where they are. Which is it?

I think having proper critics was a good idea, maybe because I had thought of that before it was posted too. But that won't work here, it would be corrupted in the first day. Yoyu would not be able to trust the critics because they are freinds of the artist of part of a group.

Best solution would be to get rid of the charts for good. That ain't goin to happen. 

So much for my chances in charts with this post, if I ever post something. LOL

No negative rating should be allowed, actually they should get rid of the rating system and mod picks completely. It's all buddy buyddy stuff and it has been for years. When Renderosity was working on the website they promised they would change the rating system to make sure this whole untrue reflection of what is good and isn't would be chnaged. They shouldn't have changed it, they should have gotten rid of it, since the changes made didn't really change anything at all.

Tashar59 and Aeilkema hit the nail on the head.
While there are undoubtedly some good work in the top ratings etc. there are also some that are only there through tit for tat rating and social networking skills.

There have been images in there that have figures on them with no expression work at all which to me look like shop window dummies, how they get in there is beyond me, surely having some expression is a must for a decent image if you're making a Poser based image!!

Quote - You reversed what you meant in your first post to saying that there should not be rankings, that is how I read it and I would agree with that. But, you seem to be deffending it now with this last post. Saying that they all deserve to be where they are. Which is it?

I've never said I'm against providing users a means to tag an image that's great (look at the end of the first paragraph in my first message), just not to provide five levels of rankings. Five levels allows giving an artist a rating of 1. I don't see a reason for that. Of course, providing a means for everybody to highlight their favorites can result in tit-for-tat praises and things that seem to be unfair. The process still allowed highlighting a lot of great images. To me, that makes it worth keeping the ranking system to highlight what's good. I just don't see a need to provide more than "cool" button to do it. There is no purpose to allow bad ratings.

There were 24,000 images posted to the galleries in the last 45 days. It would be hard, if not impossible, to find one person who would want to rate them all on a regular basis. Even if a critic could be found, nobody would entirely trust the impartiality of that judge.

As far as tit-for-tat goes, I'm not entirely sure that there is a nefarious underground knowingly colluding to give one another grand ratings. Feel free to do some detective work to see if the same people keep writing the same comments on the same artist galleries all the time and report them to the moderators if you uncover a conspiracy.

It's important to keep in mind that there are two aspects to becoming a professional artist. One is obviously developing the skills to produce artwork. The other is marketing the artwork. If anybody wants to make a living as an artist, the latter is, in some ways, the more important of the two. The greatest artist in the world is nobody if the artist's works are not seen. 

Try the tit-for-tat approach and see if it's possible to get into the top 100s. Part of the trick to getting high views is to find ways to get more people to look at your gallery. One way to do that is to comment on other galleries. What seems like a grand conspiracy for some may simply be the act of getting more visibility in the galleries and receiving encouraging comments from others that don't exist so much to boost an image to the top as to provide a friendly comment on that artist's work to say thanks for leaving a nice comment on theirs. For anybody that cannot be bothered, then one must accept one of the reasons why some artist galleries get more views than others. The people who work harder to be seen will have more people looking at their galleries and that can result in more good rankings in an entirely honest fashion. The larger the pool of viewers, the larger the number of good rankings and comments.

There's no perfect system to bring good artwork to the front, so most galleries settle on user input to get it because it's less management work. Eliminating any means to highlight good works isn't the solution either. From what I saw in the top 18, there were enough worthwhile images getting to the top that I consider it better than nothing.

I see now, Don't get rid of the ranking but have a single button to highlight your favorite.

I never said it was a tit for tat conspiracy, I said that is how it works. I don't need to try or search for proof because it is all there if you look. After all these years of watching what goes on here, it's not a hard concept to understand. Just read all the threads on this topic or look at the same names in the gallery comments. Besides people admitting it.

You say there is no tit for tat and then you say that is how it works to get known in the next parraragraph. LOL.

This topic is rehashed every few months and nothing ever gets done about it so I don't see why it will now. But it makes for some interesting views.

I like the idea of giving someone negative points for posting an image. It seems so unnaturally cruel and funny at the same time. "No. I'm not going to rank this picture 0, I am going to rank this minus 5! That'l teach you for wasting my time! You'll never render a fae without bursting into tears after this!" It's like being Lex Luthor in renderosity. Okay...Now I soo want this to happen.  If this ever happens, I'm gonna make me an Alias (Lex Peelo) and start giving my own pics negative points and call em crap. (and harrash other people for no reason) Just for the hell of it :D

Peelo - That was so cruel yet so funny, LOL!!  :lol:
Made me laugh on an otherwise dull & dreary morning.

Quote - An artist can turn the rankings off when loading an image, but then their image cannot be highly rated.

At risk of sounding like a prick...

...so what?

If you want the glory, show some guts. The ratings tool isn't some built-in ego masturbatory aid; it's supposed to be a means by which you can gauge how well you do among those who view the image.

About the image...

If it sucks and gets a "1", deal with it. Learn from it. Improve yourself already.

If it sucks and gets a "5", then nobody is helped out, and you're in for one hell of a bigger disappointment if you ever take that image anywhere that can be even remotely connected with The Real World.

If it rocks and gets a "1", then others will happily drown it out.

If it rocks and gets a "5", then job well done - try and push yourself a little more next time anyway, and venture out to see what other communities think. Maybe write some tutorials while you're at it so that the rest of us can suck less when we build something.

The middle-of-the-road images? Well, that's how you're supposed to use this whole thing. A lower score shows that there's something missing in your image that should really be there. A higher but not perfect score means that you're improving, and need only a little something more (compositional tweaks, better lighting, better use of materials, better post-work, whatever) to push it over the top.

Seriously - I suspect that a little too much time and drama is being pitched towards the whole ratings mess anyway.

/P

I shudder to suggest this, but why not a SlashDot "Karma" type rating system. On SlasDot you gain karma based on how others rate your posts. Your ratings are scaled based on your karma. If you're rated highly then your opinion counts more. Could this be adapted to fit this situation?

Quote - If it sucks and gets a "1", deal with it. Learn from it. Improve yourself already.

Anybody who gives a person a "1" is probably a jerk, so there's not much to learn from them. It's better to ignore them. The point of getting rid of the numbers is that they are pointless. They do nothing to highlight the best of the images and they do nothing to hide the worst. When there is no benefit to having a feature, and it can potentially cause dissent, it's something to put on the to-do list next time the site is overhauled.

The value of a negative number is that it will go back in time and stop the artist from posting a crummy image.

Quote - I never said it was a tit for tat conspiracy, I said that is how it works. I don't need to try or search for proof because it is all there if you look.

LOL. If you want somebody to get rid of the wolf, you sometimes have to show a photo to prove that there is a wolf. Until somebody takes the time to prove a conspiracy, that's all it is. It's nothing more than an opinion until then. Since this is supposedly an ongoing conspiracy, it's not that hard to prove. If it is proven, action can be taken to stop the unfairness. Don't expect moderators, who do not see the problem, to want to waste time looking for what isn't there. Don't expect to your theory to be taken seriously when you don't think it's worth doing either.

There's a difference between the kind of conspiracy that you think is going on with well over a hundred artists colluding to rank one another's images higher and people returning the courtesy of a comment. I've occasionally done it when I have time and haven't done it to increase their rankings. I should do it more often because it's a nice thing for a person to take the time to look at an image and say something nice about it. Most of the time, I've found worthwhile images in their galleries that were worthy of a pat on the back. Just because a person gave me a good compliment doesn't mean that I'm going to add them as a favorite or gush over everything they do. The times that I've made unsolicited comments on other member galleries, I cannot recall the artists doing the same on my gallery. That doesn't matter because I wasn't looking for tit-for-tat. To get 100 comments using that technique would probably take 300-600 comments on other member galleries to get the kind of courtesy reciprocal comments needed to bust the "best" lists. My experience has already shown me that there aren't a lot of artists returning comments--but I don't usually have the time to do it either. The amount of effort to do troll for comments is hardly worthwhile to be featured in a gallery that doesn't have a prize. Cheating would take less, but that's a lot of cheating. If that conspiracy exists, the gallery comments show who said what and when. It's simply a matter of creating a paper trail from the available information.

Think of the kind of hero you'd be if you proved cheating was going on. I don't know what Renderosity management would do if it were proven, but the guilty artists would probably be banned from making comments in the galleries and have to languish in relative obscurity for what they did.

Quote - > Quote - If it sucks and gets a "1", deal with it. Learn from it. Improve yourself already.

Anybody who gives a person a "1" is probably a jerk, so there's not much to learn from them.

How so? Once in awhile (more often in amateur art sites like... well like this one) the image really, truly, deeply, madly... sucks a big ol' pile of fly-encrusted goat feces. I bet I can find more than a few in the galleries here (and if I still had some of my old stuff up, quite a few of those would readily count among them).

Don't want the number ratings? Don't use them. Otherwise don't complain. shrug.

/P

That's how you want to see it.

Don't know why you keep calling it a conspiracy, it's not. But for the sake of a quick example. Take the critique club. Everyone puts everyone in the club on thier favorites list, Now all of a sudden, they have control of the top favorite. Then they post an image and all those get emailed to look and comment and you now have the most viewed and comments taken over by these members. then people were joining because it was an easy way to get ratings.Complaining about how one group has control of the ranks and then implement a system that takes over said ranking.

Now for proof of that just read the critique thread on how it got going and read what the aftermath was in the las few pages, beware long thread. Sorry, you will have to search for the thread, I don't think it's a sticky anymore. Sometimes you  need to look if you want to really see.

Now that was a simple example. See, It was not a conspiracy, it was how it was implemented and how it ended up being used. Now there are other social groups you could say the same basic formula is in use with them too. Not a conspiracy, just the way it works.

I doubt we will see eye to eye on this topic, but that keeps things from getting boring.

Oh and just so you all know, I'm not complaining. I'm just giving my opinion on what I see. Don't give a flying F at a rolling donut, at what they do or not do with it. LOL

Quite honestly, a lot of us Poser artists doing fashion-type pictures with the latest products are women. Vicky, I realized one day, is just my grown-up version of Barbie. When I was a kid, all the little girls would beg their mothers to get the latest Barbie clothes and believe me, there was a clique of who has the most and best. My mother did not believe in spending all that money. I guess I am just making up for the past, LOL!!!!!

Quote - Quite honestly, a lot of us Poser artists doing fashion-type pictures with the latest products are women. Vicky, I realized one day, is just my grown-up version of Barbie. When I was a kid, all the little girls would beg their mothers to get the latest Barbie clothes and believe me, there was a clique of who has the most and best. My mother did not believe in spending all that money. I guess I am just making up for the past, LOL!!!!!

I used to play with G.I. joe- action figures when I was a kid (or what was it that they were called), so I guess Im kinda de-evolving into playing with virtual Barbies and Kens now. That's a creepy thought. Allthough even as a child I was somewhat envious of Barbies massive wardrope (and her car). My G.I. joes  had the same clothing allways. Well you could allways give "Dusty" a different gun but that was it.... Hardly satisfying. Okay...Now I wish I still had my G.I. Joe action figures. :S

I remember my G.I.Joes. They were the originals, when they first came out. Worth a few buck now if I had them and didn't melt or blow them up with firecrakers. LOL.

They blew up real good.

All those dolls are worth big bucks now, but only if they are still in the original box and like new. My daughter ripped off all her Barbies heads to get the clothes on them, LOL!

Quote - All those dolls are worth big bucks now, but only if they are still in the original box and like new. My daughter ripped off all her Barbies heads to get the clothes on them, LOL!

She should have simply unchecked the heads visibility!  :tongue2:  And remember: Barbies do not have the Undo!

Giorgio

I used to play with the Star Wars action figures. I had quite a lot of the original series, including some of the vehicles & spaceships. When the new Star Wars movie was released a couple of years back, there suddenly was a lot of demand for the original Star Wars action stuff and people would pay a lot for the items. Since the stuff only stood boxed on the attic, in the end I sold most of it to a collector who paid a lot of money for it. Since quite a number of collectors were interested in my collection I sold it to the higest bidder.

Quote - "All those dolls are worth big bucks now, but only if they are still in the original box and like new. My daughter ripped off all her Barbies heads to get the clothes on them, LOL!"

* 

She should have simply unchecked the heads visibility!    And remember: Barbies do not have the Undo!

Giorgio

*They're still missing that feature after all these years. If you're handy enough you can fix them, but with the newer models that's quite a challenge at times. My youngest daughter has the same habit, so once in a while dad is called upon to fix the beheaded.

Quote - Once in awhile (more often in amateur art sites like... well like this one) the image really, truly, deeply, madly... sucks a big ol' pile of fly-encrusted goat feces.

That is the difference between the internet and real life. In real life, a jerk can walk up to a complete stranger and tell them they suck and risk getting a beating. Since most jerks tend to not like stopping a punch with their face, they learn to keep their negative opinions to themselves or they eventually insult somebody that removes them from the gene pool. The internet lacks the same level of personal consequences, so jerks are bolder and that's why there are moderators in these forums. The mods keep the trolls down.

If you're looking for some filter or system to produce the best images, I would suggest browing other people's Fav Images.  If somebody comments favorably on mine, or if I look at the Favs of artists I like, I always find lots of very high quality images in the styles I like. Amazing coincidence, right? 

Quote - > Quote - Once in awhile (more often in amateur art sites like... well like this one) the image really, truly, deeply, madly... sucks a big ol' pile of fly-encrusted goat feces.

 

That is the difference between the internet and real life. In real life, a jerk can walk up to a complete stranger and tell them they suck and risk getting a beating.

So you would commit violence upon someone who gave your artwork a "1" (or any other sort of low score) in real life? Maybe you need to not enter any contests anytime soon. Incidentally, we're not talking commentary here (that's a whole other mess), we're talking number ratings. Think of it as a polite way of saying something sucks. Sure, it would be hella impolite to comment "Man, that inmage sucks more than a hole punched through the Space Shuttle at orbit! Really - shouldn't you master the challenge of fingerpainting before you tackle Poser!?" OTOH, there are images in here that fit that description very nicely. A "1" allows the expression to come through while showing some tact. Now a very tactful and helpful person would also add the comment "okay, here's why IMHO you got a '1' out of me: The lighting is mushy, the composition needs work, and the character needs some more life put into it. Try this, this, this..." /P

Quote - If you're looking for some filter or system to produce the best images, I would suggest browing other people's Fav Images.  If somebody comments favorably on mine, or if I look at the Favs of artists I like, I always find lots of very high quality images in the styles I like. Amazing coincidence, right? 

Yes, I too noticed that favorites seem to be one of the better indicators of image quality.
Maybe it's because one can favorite an image without having to comment.

I think ratings would be a lot more indicative of quality if a one could rate an image without having to comment.  Then the popularity could be counted by number of votes contirbuting to half of the score, and rating average contributing to the other half of the total score.

I think that what you are all forgetting is that, if someone says, "I like Pushkin99's Terragen image," that means that that user is commenting favourably on Pushkin99's picture, not that the member is attempting to place the image hierarchically within some pointless virtual Pantheon.  

(If there is really a Renderosity member out there called Pushkin99, by the way, please accept my apologies.)

Well folks, I'm not sure how anyone else feels on this subject but I for one wouldn't like to see any sort of negative comments or rating on any artwork.  The only time I think it is acceptable to criticize someone elses work is if they ask for critique, and even then you should keep it positive and constructive.

I've seen more than my share of images here that I truly loved, and more than my share that did absolutely nothing for me.  But what does and does not constitute art is hardly an objective standard.  For me, the ceiling of the Sistine chapel is a masterpiece.  The works of Davinci take my breath away.

Modern art, on the other hand, makes me scratch my head and say, "I don't get it".  To me it all looks like people threw paint at a canvas.  But there are a lot of people who love modern art, and pay big money for that sort of thing.  They seem to be able to differentiate between what is "good" and "bad".  To me it all looks like a painter's drop cloth or the end result of putting a squirrel in a microwave, but who am I to say that it sucks?

Artwork by it's nature convey's an emotion or evokes some form of emotional response.  While modern art does nothing for me personally some people really get knocked over by it, so if it blows there hair back I say more power too them.  If they get that emotional connection, then the artwork doesn't suck, even if I don't get it personally.  

So my thinking is, if I see something submitted by someone here that I think is really terrible, I just click on the next image and move on.  If the artist submits it and asks for opinions or critique, if I don't have something positive or some really good tips to share on how he/she could improve certain elements for a better overall effect, I just keep my mouth shut and move on.

Whatever I might think of their work they have invested some of themselves into it, in an attempt to make an emotional connection with the outside world.  And that, in and of itself, makes there work artistic and wonderful, even if it is just a stick figure or a bunch of blobs of paint on a canvas.

Just my 2 cents worth,
Stepdad

For me I have ranking off, as it isn´t urgent for me to become the "Queen of Renderosity". For me the stars are fun and a game. They say nothing really about an image, as often it´s a question of hard-working in the galleries only (I vote you - you vote me, and as more I vote....No sweet without swet ;-) ) A top ranking is more a question of many friends than an ace image.
There I most see images of my favorite artists only, so I always give 5 stars becourse I like their art.....

Well...If we never get any constructive critique, then how are we to improve? When we don't even know whats wrong?  Little bit of critisism might help us.( "Hey. You need to actually conform the hair figure to your V4 character so she wont look bald...etc") Or else Im just gonna keep on rendering my retarted faes that are posed like, oh hell I dunno...like car crash victims and people are just gonna go :"This is so cool!", because  they are too afraid to tell me what they really think. And what they really think is: "Oh God. Another car crash fae by Peelo. And now I have to think of something good to say about this God awfull render...."
    Now how does that help anyone? Is that the proper mindset? Render anything you wish and people are gonna like it just the same. Is it just me, or does that sound pretty damn stupid?

P.S. this isn't directed at anyone particular. Just needed to get it off my chest.

When I rate a image a 5 it may be for wildly different reasons. Some artists combine poetry or stories with their art. The image alone may not have as much meaning until the poem or story is read that goes with the image. I have rated images highly from beginning artists where one area of a image was done very well. The pose or the lighting etc. I have seen many artists grow in ability from seeing what was complimented as good in their image. (Myself included) Images are not always comparable from from one category to another or even within their same category. Images vary wildly in the amount of post work done to them. Should a image rendered in Poser in 30 seconds but that had a day of post work in Photoshop be rated on the same scale as a image rendered in Poser with no post work done at all? Thousands of images are done where parts of it may have been done in 2 or 3 other formats and then post worked to death and then is put into a Poser category. Are they really even Poser images anymore? With all of those variables I simply rate highly the images I like and describe in my comments why I liked them. I would hate to have critics or a narrowly defined rating system. Lastly, what pleases my eye may not please yours. That does not make my opinion or yours less valid. Many artists have made a fine living from making art that the majority of the world thought was tripe but that some few others thought were beautiful.

Quote - Well...If we never get any constructive critique, then how are we to improve? When we don't even know whats wrong?  Little bit of critisism might help us.( "Hey. You need to actually conform the hair figure to your V4 character so she wont look bald...etc") Or else Im just gonna keep on rendering my retarted faes that are posed like, oh hell I dunno...like car crash victims and people are just gonna go :"This is so cool!", because  they are too afraid to tell me what they really think. And what they really think is: "Oh God. Another car crash fae by Peelo. And now I have to think of something good to say about this God awfull render...."
    Now how does that help anyone? Is that the proper mindset? Render anything you wish and people are gonna like it just the same. Is it just me, or does that sound pretty damn stupid?

P.S. this isn't directed at anyone particular. Just needed to get it off my chest.

Nothing wrong with criticism.. if it's constructive and if it's asked for from the outset.  No point in being critical of someone elses work if it's not going to help them improve,  and it certainly won't help them improve if they are not the sort who can deal with that sort of criticism.

So yes, for me that is the proper mindset.  Helping an artist improve there work is a laudible goal, but when you run the risk inflicting a significant amount of pain and dissapoinment on someone for no good reason then it's only proper to err on the side of caution. 
So if an artist asks for critical feedback I give it when I can, in the most positive and constructive manner possible.  If an artist doesn't make such a request, then I simply move on to the next image, because  I have no idea how the artist in question might receive a criticism of their work.

I have never seen a work of art so terrible that it would be worth inflicting emotional pain on someone, not to me anyway.  If I don't like something and the artist hasn't asked for critique I just move on to the next image.  I don't post something nice just to be posting, nor do I feel it's necessary.

Nope, I just keep looking till I find something I like, or someone that asks for a critique and has an image that I think my critique might be helpful in improving certain areas of there work.

To me that doesn't sound stupid, it sounds more like common courtesy.  I guess I'm just old school that way though.

Well Ok Stepdad , I think I  get what you are saying. And I can't say that I disagree with what you said. I was trying to make a point and I relied on extreme example. There's critique and then there's critique. I allso don't wan't to hurt anyones feelings with a negative comment. But I think we can have both a positive feedback and some constructive critisism at the same time. "I liked this about your render, but I feel that you should pay more attention to this aspect..." etc...