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I have been very lucky in that the two P&M blogs that I've run on Dakka have netted me some wonderful advice, new friends, a chance to share my ideas with others and a chance to benefit from others experience and expertise. I get great advice, and people seem to like what I've been working on & have been very supportive... even though there is a long way to go & a lot of room for improvement.

That being said, very few of the images that I've uploaded onto the dakka gallery have registered enough votes to get a ranking, and of the 6 that are what I consider my "best work", only one has reached the mythical 5 vote level to register a score. Now, this post is NOT an appeal for people to go and vote on my stuff, after all... I may not like the result! *grin*

My point then, is that I'm kind of torn about this... My intellect tells me that the gallery votes don't matter at all, and I'm getting far better, more valuable and more carefully considered advice on my P&M blogs than I ever could from a couple of numbers attached to a picture. My HUBRIS though... natters away in the back of my brain... whining about the fact that my "best" work isn't even good enough to warrant 5 votes. I'm sure my experiences are not unique, and are probably mirrored by many of you who are at my kind of middling stage of modeling and painting... so I was wondering, how do you sort this stuff out for your own work? Are the gallery votes really just a glorified p*ssing contest, or do they have some value to you? The contributions to a P&M blog are unquestioningly worthwhile... but how do the gallery votes fit in if at all?

Lastly, it seems looking at my photos, that I need about 200-300 views to get 5 votes. I was wondering if there were any dakka stats out there on this? I assume that the better your painting, the fewer views are needed (who doesn't love to vote on a beautiful figure?).

Just curious... hoping for some enlightenment from the Dakka hive-mind...

Considering the ammount of people on dakkadakka who show as no gallery votes on this site, I would say it would be wrong to put so much weight on gallery votes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also think this may have been more suited to the discussions section, at lest I think you would get a better response.

"My point then, is that I'm kind of torn about this... My intellect tells me that the gallery votes don't matter at all, and I'm getting far better, more valuable and more carefully considered advice on my P&M blogs than I ever could from a couple of numbers attached to a picture."

this is the most important part...
the fact that presenting your work in the P&M blog has pushed you to paint better is what it's all about...

personally, i see Dakka as a kinder, gentler, place for people to present their work than a place like CMON...
the stress here is not on the mini's score, but on the feedback...
it's much more personal, which is a good thing...

i don't normally vote, here or on CMON, because i don't want to give someone a low rating just because i have a higher standard for my opinion of what makes for a good paintjob...

if a guy has done his best, and it's a 5 out of 10 in my opinion, i'm not gonna vote...
i'd rather keep quiet than crush someone's dreams...

it's the same with commenting on people's work...
i see a lot of minis that get a load of "that's awesome" responses for paintjobs that are not very good in my opinion...
instead of disagreeing with all the people that like the mini, i'll just keep my mouth shut, and get on with improving my own painting...

as for the gallery votes just being a "glorified pissing contest", the answer is yes for some, no for others...
i see a lot of sniping as well as vote padding on CMON...
it's really sad that someone would target better painters by voting a 1 for a nice paintjob out of jealousy...
it's just as sad to see people voting high multiple times on their own mini just to have a high score and climb up the ranking...

as whatwhat said, it's better to not put a whole lot of importance on the scores, as they are out of your control...
much better to take the feedback from the forums, and improve your skills...

cheers
jah

I am also curious about the large disproportion of views to votes in the gallery.

I'd like to hear from a '0 gallery votes' Dakka member about why they choose to ignore the voting function.

Edit:

The user above me is such a member, and outlined some excellent and rational reasons to not vote.

Any other users care to share?

@jah: The "glorified p*ssing contest" comment was ill worded... mea culpa. What I meant was that for we rank-and-file who are still "learning the trade", our actual scores have relatively small value when compared with what we learn from our P&M blogs... as you suggest. Very well put by-the-way.

@Iboshi2: I know I turn off the gallery function on a lot of my images... battle reports, WIP shots, photos of things people asked to see that might have been mentioned in passing but aren't my best work. I just leave the voting on things that I feel are "finished", to whatever level I'm capable of at the time. For me, I think... the vote is kind of a barometer of how I'm doing over all, with a random selection of people rather than those who've been following my blog and helping me along... because they're biased (in a good way). I realize that with so few votes, you're still getting a pretty skewed result... but it's anonymous feedback. While that doesn't make me paint any better... it does give me a little objectivity and a bit of a reality check. At the moment, that's where I stand on the topic... but I'm hardly rock-solid on the issue... thus I asked the question above.

I log on to Dakka to read the forums, not vote on pictures.

Why do voters vote?
Why do you care why we don't use the vote function?

Gitsplitta wrote:@jah: The "glorified p*ssing contest" comment was ill worded... mea culpa. What I meant was that for we rank-and-file who are still "learning the trade", our actual scores have relatively small value when compared with what we learn from our P&M blogs... as you suggest. Very well put by-the-way.

@Iboshi2: I know I turn off the gallery function on a lot of my images... battle reports, WIP shots, photos of things people asked to see that might have been mentioned in passing but aren't my best work. I just leave the voting on things that I feel are "finished", to whatever level I'm capable of at the time. For me, I think... the vote is kind of a barometer of how I'm doing over all, with a random selection of people rather than those who've been following my blog and helping me along... because they're biased (in a good way). I realize that with so few votes, you're still getting a pretty skewed result... but it's anonymous feedback. While that doesn't make me paint any better... it does give me a little objectivity and a bit of a reality check. At the moment, that's where I stand on the topic... but I'm hardly rock-solid on the issue... thus I asked the question above.

I find the best way to really improve is to see who comments on your blog or thread. If you don't know who any of them are, you didn't try hard enough, and you need to improve your converting/painting skills. If you've seen and admire their work, then you've hit that special place where you can give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done.

The reason that I don't vote more often is that as soon as you vote, you're taken to some other random image. Maybe there's a setting that I need to find or an option that I missed, but this functionality is the issue for me...it makes it hard to check out someone's album AND vote.

if i'm in a starbucks with my laptop sippin' coffe, i just click on the random image and search for new conversion ideas. somehow, alot of people don't want to be troubled to click twice to vote. i personally don't leave tags anymore because, no matter what i do or change the settings to, windows always warns me that the site is asking for tags and it takes 5-6 clicks/confirmations for each picture to do so.

I appologize in advance, but I have seen a lot of good work in the galleries, but I have never voted. I usually only surf the galleries, and thats when I am waiting for new posts to threads I am interested in. There are probably a lot more like me out there. Especially if 300 viewed and only five voted.

CHEERS

I feel very much the same as jah-joshua.

I don't think I'm qualified in any way to pass judgement on someone else's paintjobs by voting,especially because I haven't posted any of my own work yet. I do however pass on advice I've read here or on other forums if someone is asking for it or if I feel it's worthwhile. If I don't leave a comment it's usually because I have nothing worthwhile or constructive to say, which doesn't mean I don't like the paintjob or conversion. I would say that P&M comments when you ask for constructive feedback are far more valuable than votes.