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Yikes. You start ranting about how someone shouldn't care about the vote system, how people "gather their painting/converting net worth" via the voting... but seriously? How can you argue that getting voted something that is nowhere near a correct summary of your painting level not a bad thing? You might not care about the voting system, but it exists for some reason, and giving false votes is not helpful, not good, and worthy of at least some negative attention. Sure, maybe someone's "painting scale" really does start with "bad through tabletop quality" at 1, and go up from there, but odds are it does not.
And you helped me make my point about you blowing things way out of proportion pretty well. Nobody is determining their self-worth or basing all their hopes and dreams around a voting system as you suggest people might be doing, but that doesn't make voting a useless feature.

ph34r wrote:How can you argue that getting voted something that is nowhere near a correct summary of your painting level not a bad thing? You might not care about the voting system, but it exists for some reason, and giving false votes is not helpful, not good..

See, this is all being taken the wrong way. I suppose that should be my fault, I guess. First of all, the latter half of this quote is 100%, spot on truth. I couldn't possibly agree with you more. As for the first half, well, in retrospect, I suppose the debate did sort of degenerate into your assessment above. However, my original point wasn't whether it was or wasn't a "bad thing." My original point was, "So what? Take the 1 with a grain of salt. It doesn't matter, especially if YOU know that its a misrepresentation of your perceived paint skills." To mention it at the start of a thread looks like you're placing far too much stock in a highly subjective and un-governed system.

Take Rhona Mitra, for example. I think she is one of the hottest women on the planet. You may think she is one step above iguana puke. If we post that on some anonymous poll, does it make one iota of difference to her, should she see it ? I seriously doubt it would. This was what I was trying to say, albeit considerably more colorful.

ph34r wrote:Sure, maybe someone's "painting scale" really does start with "bad through tabletop quality" at 1, and go up from there, but odds are it does not.

Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Point is, we don't know for certain. That, in and of itself, should render any thoughts of taking the gallery voting seriously as moot, don't you think? If we don't have a CLEAR definition of what the numbers we give mean and we don't all adhere to the same ideals in voting, HOW can you take it as a serious form of critique? This is the age-old debate about art and the same type of debate that spawned several good cliches; "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," "one man's trash is another man's treasure," and so on.

Some people like Mapplethorp's photos. Personally, I think a close-up photo of a pinky stuck up a man's urethra to the first knuckle is not art. I find it gross. But therein lies the beauty of such a subjective catch-all term like "'art'. How do you get thousands of people to use the same grading guidelines in such a situation? You can't. Ergo, how can you use such a method as a vehicle for an accurate representation of your selected medium? You shouldn't.

ph34r wrote:And you helped me make my point about you blowing things way out of proportion pretty well. Nobody is determining their self-worth or basing all their hopes and dreams around a voting system as you suggest people might be doing, but that doesn't make voting a useless feature.

Ok. There is a difference between blowing things out of proportion and using exaggerated words, analogies, and inflection to make a point. Were we speaking in person, 'excitable' is more likely the term you would have used. But we're not, so I'll give you a pass on this one.

The gallery voting feature is not a useless one. Nor did I infer that it was. What is useless, however, is placing any sort of serious merit in the results as a measure of your talent/skill. Even more useless is posting a thread about it, no matter if it was a straight "waaahhhh... I got a 1 rating" post or a starting point for a totally different discussion (as this OP was). If anything, the gallery voting and the tallying of it in your posts is a cute novelty feature. A fun little way of getting the community more involved in the website. Its no different in function than a "shout box" on the front page a website.

All I'm saying is that it should be treated as such because, given anonymity, people will almost ALWAYS choose to be a douchebag. Not all people, obviously, but enough of them will. That's why people use aimbots and other hacks in FPS online games. Most people would NEVER go out of their way to blatantly cheat in a game of 40k against you because you are standing right in front of them and they can be held responsible for their actions. Put them behind the sight of an M82 Barret in America's Army and give them the anonymity of a monitor, an aimbot, and wall hack and watch them giddily one-shot people through walls from across the map until they get kicked from the server. Watch them laugh at all the people in chat who are screaming and yelling at the cheater.




Ghidorah

Again--just to help you figure it out, Ghidorah--the point of this post wasn't "waaaahh, I got a 1," it was "I got a 1. I wonder what a 1 means to people. What does a 10 mean, for that matter?" It was an attempt to understand the psychology of peoples' voting. Are they being jerks? Are do they have a real thought process going on?

Rhona Mitra=hot. No question.
Zach Galifinakis=funny.

@ Ghidorah - If you HAD read the OPs post in its entirety you would have understood what he meant, which was rehashed in his last post. Maybe this is a lesson that reading the WHOLE post would save you and others many efforts in re-explanation. (EDIT: and keeps you from looking like an ass - which you stated you don't care about)

@ Phonate - I understood the intent of your post (as I read the whole thing).

I typically start at 5 as the medium (or tabletop quality). I find any vote of 1 or 0 to be that poster doesn't understand how to vote. (EDIT: or at least the common standard of voting)

Harkainos wrote:@ Ghidorah - If you HAD read the OPs post in its entirety you would have understood what he meant...

Oh the irony.
If you HAD read my last reply in its entirety, you would have seen that I had, in fact read the OPs post in its entirety and understood exactly what he meant. Let me give you the Cliff's Notes really fast (it's obvious you can't find it yourself):

Ghidorah wrote:Even more useless is posting a thread about it, no matter if it was a straight "waaahhhh... I got a 1 rating" post or a starting point for a totally different discussion (as this OP was).

So, yeah. How's that crow?

After my initial response to this thread, I read the whole thing. I knew what he was saying. I knew what he was trying to do. I got his point (still not hilarious, by the way ). I referenced the rest of the replies in my entire argument since my initial reply to the OP. Anyway, it's been fun, but I think it's time to let this thread meander back to its original purpose. That or quietly retire to the nether regions of this forum to be resurrected in 4-5 months or re-hashed (yet again) the next time somebody gets a 1 or a 0 rating...




Ghidorah
who suggests not bringing a knife to a gunfight.

And yet... you still spent 2 pages clarifying. My response was to your first post (that was read in its entirety), then I posted my response to the OP, as people should do in a thread.

Trying to call me Kettle for not reading all of your 'clarification' posts is asinine and this doesn't change the fact that your original post made you look like an ass.

That is all for now. As you said it is off topic (kinda)


--EDIT-- changed the word 'what' to the word 'that'

Well, at least it didn't make me look like a BIG ass or, worse, make my ass look big...



Ghidorah

LOL - that made me smile

Literally, Laughed out Loud.

Good Game

What bothers me most about the voting system is that most people don't even bother to vote. It's kind of annoying to see a piece get 300 views but only 5 votes. It's a little tough to judge anything by just a few people's opinions. I've found that you don't really get a good idea about what other people really think about your piece until it's racked up several votes. Once you do get a lot of votes then everything tends to average out nicely and you can get a good feel for what people think of your work.

Oh WOW! I just signed up and now I find that we get graded! Heck, I just do it for the fun of it and the satisfaction of making something from nothing or a bunch of plastic arms, legs and what-nots. Hey! enjoy yourself, life is too short.

Strength and Honor
Silveroxide

I think the votes are interesting, and I think it's interesting that one vote is for the whole paintjob, and the other is for something as ephemeral as 'coolness', but nonetheless, over at Deviantart.com there are no votes, but the truly excellent pieces of work have the highest numbers of views. The 'general gallery' gets constantly flooded with new art from different people all the time.
I think it might be a pretty good indication of how good the model and paintjob are merely by the number of views.
I know I dont even want to look at something if the thumbnail plainly shows that the paintjob is lousy, let alone vote on it.

artyboy wrote:What bothers me most about the voting system is that most people don't even bother to vote. It's kind of annoying to see a piece get 300 views but only 5 votes. It's a little tough to judge anything by just a few people's opinions. I've found that you don't really get a good idea about what other people really think about your piece until it's racked up several votes. Once you do get a lot of votes then everything tends to average out nicely and you can get a good feel for what people think of your work.

It's not too bad - on average we get one vote for every 18 views.

mr. mxlflck wrote:
I think the votes are interesting, and I think it's interesting that one vote is for the whole paintjob, and the other is for something as ephemeral as 'coolness', but nonetheless, over at Deviantart.com there are no votes, but the truly excellent pieces of work have the highest numbers of views. The 'general gallery' gets constantly flooded with new art from different people all the time.
I think it might be a pretty good indication of how good the model and paintjob are merely by the number of views.
I know I dont even want to look at something if the thumbnail plainly shows that the paintjob is lousy, let alone vote on it.

You can sort all images, tags, people's galleries, etc. by number views and number of votes instead of the actual scores too which allows this to happen. The reason that is not used as default is because when you have a few similar pictures of the same model, they can have the view count diluted so it would rank much lower compared to having a high score on one angle, a medium score on another and so on.

Be honest to yourself when handing out judgements.

Don't believe that everybody who judges you is being honest.

My judgement scale:

10: GD winner caliber
8-9: Above average. These figs may be display only or very well painted minis actually used on the table top.
6-7: table top quality with everything painted, staying 'in the lines', more than one base color for everything.
4-5: base colors applied while staying 'in the lines'.
2-3: Paint is applied on wrong parts.
1: atrocious color choice, paint too thick, mold lines showing.

In general most models I've rated for painting are in the 6-7 range. I rarely give out 1s or 10s. I've also given many n/as as the models simply weren't done.

The rating system needs to go altogether.

It is meaningless data with no reporting standard. Why do pics need to be rated at all? The answer is they don't.

It is the tool of F*cktards who enjoy being d*cks because they have anonymity.

Let's be nice now.... Remember the critics downplayed Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, The Passion and other movies and they became blockbusters to the chagrin of the critics.

Case in point..... Art is in the eyes of the beholder, the public chooses in spite of the knowledgeable ones. In this case, the tally of viewer or downloaders is the gauge of acceptance.

I agree that simply rating something w/out any 'standard' is meaninless - as who knows how to vote.

A standard could be easily established (like CMON - which is still flakey) in which we have the intent of the poster.

It isn't that hard to have dakka devs put up a 'standard' that we can use - we are all cattle anyway.