Dear Admins; I have a suggestion concerning the hot 20 and the number rating system. Let me tell you what I saw and some of the things that Ive heard that indicates to me that the current system is in serious need of repair. First, for those that care about being in the hot 20, they go trolling for there friends to vote for it. Some only need a very few votes to get into it. Sometimes under 10 votes. Second the number ratings.... It has become totally useless. I went surfing to see some really great art, but what I found was a chaotic mix of badly thought out page design and useless practice images submitted by some of the members. I spent a couple of hours trying to find the end of all the images rated 10.0 Along the way I saw pictures that had as few as four viewings and two votes at 10. Really bad stuff too! I had to search well over 400 pages of images rated at 10. Ok, so here are my suggestions; please bear with me. Dump the hot 20---eliminate it, youll see why in a second. The rating system, there is nothing inherently wrong with it, but for fairness and usability flush it every month. You should be able to set it up to do it automatically say on the first of each month. Then use this formula to determine what the true ranking is and list the picture accordingly: (total rating/number of ratings)/total viewings Then the lower the resulting number the higher the ranking. This WILL result in a really usable system. The example listed about with 4 viewings and 2 ratings at 10 would give the result that the pictures true rating is 1.25 Another example is: overall rating at 9.6 with 14 people giving ratings 269 viewings (9.6 divided by 14) divided by 269 results in a true rating of 0.0011617 Which is much better then a 1.25. It is a simple matter for your php data base to sort it now by this number by ascending order. The formula can be added to a single line existing of code. Of course, you would still display the rating of 9.6 As I hope you can see, this could create an instant accurate Hot 20 Showcase. Eliminate artificial stacking of the results for both the rating system and the hot twenty showcases. And give you the ability to have a Best of the Year showcase without any one person have to inject there own personal opinion and remove any cries of nepotism. Ken Martin geoegress

I've never bothered to give any real thought to the Hot20 or Artist of the Month for that matter. In the end what counts the most to me is the constructive comments and support of a small number of people who are interested in viewing my art. (I always love good constructive suggestions for improvement. I hate people who only want to insult someone.) Some people have managed to share their inspiration for the past year and a half. Some have come and gone during that time. I look forward to the inevitable comments, and challenges these people place my way. They keep me striving to get better and better. I don't mean any offense by these statements. I just won't bother to see how many comments I have in my gallery, and I have never cared for the numbers either. I don't even visit the Renderosity gallery that much any more. I always avoid giving any numerical ranking. I will give good comments.

Yes Ron- mostly I agree with you. I really pay more attention to viewings and comments myself also. But the rating system is just a sorting process that has some small value as a filter. To remove the practice pic's(I'm being nice about this term,lol) from the masters. Maby more ppl would use the number system and view pic's more if the system had more value to more members. Oh, I didn't have to give this much thought either- I just got off my but and finally wrote this up. :)

I've never been in the Hot20, and don't aspire to it. So if you only go by that "rating," then you likely would never see any of my stuff. But then I'm not a Master, and don't want to be one.

There is a slight problem with your calculation there geo...

The Hot20 used to be based on nothing but number of views. People then used every trick in the book to get people to view their works, including lots of false thumbnails, etc. By adding that back into the calculation, you are opening that whole thing up again, especially if you are offering a prize or accolade at the end of the year. Maybe I don't understand, but this is the way I see your scenario...

For instance:
1.0/1 ratngs/800 views: .001250
9.6/14 ratings/269 views: .002549
1.0/1 ratings/300 views: .003300
10.0/10 ratings/300 views: .003300
9.6/14 ratings/200 views : .003428 <-- highest

So a 1.0 with one ranking as long as it had 300 views would equal 1 that is 10.0 with 10 rankings with the same views. The 9.6 would be higher than the 10.0 because it had less views but more rankings...

Then there are those that don't put ratings on their pictures because they either don't believe in ranking art by numbers or they've been trolled before by people who love to tear down a picture with a low ranking. So in this calculation, they would not even be considered for such a spot.

I hope you know that I mean you no offense and it's noble to want to change a system that is obviously broken, but this is probably not the way to go.

Saying anything about the Hot20 is a gutsy move and it's certainly a hot potato. It's not so much an accolade of who's better than who, it's an advertising venue for two more weeks of exposure and all artists want that. The problem is, while most artists do in fact make it to the Hot20 on their picture's merits, many hot20 spots are given to the artists who are most well known (or dare I say it?) have the most friends. In the latter, it's fairly easy to manipulate the system to get that two weeks if one wanted to and Legume proved that theory very well.

I don't think there is a solution, short of gutting it and putting up something entirely different, like 20 random pictures from 20 different artists that they submit as their best. To me, that would be much more representative and fair, though it wouldn't be as much exposure and then the argument of "My picture is better than that one" would probably come into play.

So...I don't know...

My 2c

Yeah, this is a difficult one to create. Most scenarios can be altered which ever way we go. I am sure there is a way somehow.... we just have to keep brainstorming. thanks tammy