I appreciate the efforts of the Renderosity team to help make the Ranking system better. With that said, Im not sure if changing the ranking system from numbers to words really fixes the core flaw in the system.

Currently the system ranks perfect "Excellent" scores above all others without weighing the number of rankings each image has in the Best Rankings list. This means an image with 1 "Excellent" rating is placed higher than an image with, say 100 "Excellent" and 1 "Great" rating. I personally feel this gives too much power to a single vote.

If an image happens to have 50 "Excellent" rankings, they would currently be listed as the #1 image in the All Galleries, Best Rankings list. If I were to decide to give that image a single "Good" rating, it would be immediately bumped down to #19,369 on the list. That kind of a drop is going to discourage me from giving it any kind of rating other than Excellent, as I am not an evil bastard bent on destroying an artists visibility. If I knew my rating wouldnt drop an artists image down too far on the list, I might be inclined to rank it honestly. As it currently stands though, I usually just skip ranking any images unless I feel it really deserves an "Excellent".

Now one could argue that where an image is on that Best Rankings list isnt really all that important. But if an artist feels this way, why would they enable rankings in the first place? Im not sure what other purpose a ranking system would have beyond giving an artist an impression of how their work stands up against other artists.

Sorry for the long rant. I know its impossible to expect a system that can accurately and fairly rank something as subjective as art. I just wanted to pose one possible reason for why everyone seems to be so reluctant to place anything less than a perfect rating on any artwork.