Hi Guyz,

I believe the 4 - 5 stars may be quite innocent. I have seen this before when I used ratings:

1. Sometimes when an image has 4 comments its rating can be 4.00 or 4.5 Stars. Then along comes a 5th comment and suddenly the image has a 5. Its a bug. It only happens on the 4th comment however. If you have seen this users image change at any other comment number then discount this option.

2. Maybe one commenter realised they had made a mistake and deleted their comment and resubmitted with a 5 rating. However, this doesn't happen very often.

I personally think the rating system should be changed to a simple commended. At the moment one rating which is not a 5 and your 5 average is gone forever. A commendation system would essentially remove the average score system, and the image is measured by the number of commendations. There has been massive abuse of the ratings system. No one ever admits to giving low ratings and it has caused massive upset on this community regularly. I was a victim of this deliberate abuse. I no longer use the ratings system.

There are certain individuals on this site who regularly abuse the ratings system. I have proof who they are and have complained to them and the admins about their behaviour. They no longer comment on my work at my request (sic. demand LOL!). However there are some artists who genuinely do not understand the consequences of leaving a low rating.