Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Sorry if this should actually be in Nuts and Bolts, it wasent really a site issue so I figured to post it here.

Ive been inactive for about 6 months due to rl issues decimating my painting muse. I loved the gallery system here as it was a great way to get feedback from painters whos skill I really admire, and spend a lot of time at work browsing random images and voting for peoples images.

I've come back to find the gallery votes system seems to be being used far far less then it was when I joined, images with 200+ views and 3 votes? Great artists with 30 + gallery images, 200+ posts, and 1 gallery vote on their profile?

Has something happened since I took hiatus or are we just meant to be using the "Rate this" threads instead of the gallery, which I personally dislike as it always feels like showing off when you specifically ask for a fig to be rated, instead of having it being done by random folks who are interested :(

I am confus.

I've been wondering the same thing. I used to have another profile on Dakka, which I forgot the password to due to my taking a break from the hobby for a few years, and I came back and noticed the same thing. Those pictures of units had been up there for at least 2 years, and had like 50 gallery votes?

I think perhaps some of the problem, after perusing the gallery myself for a time is that there are so many sub-par images posted. Generally speaking, the gallery here is a gallery of mediocrity, and I do NOT place my own images outside of this classification. Just take a look, and you'll see what I mean; I'm not the worlds best painter by any stretch of the imagination!

Perhaps the images need moderation, like they do on boardgame geek. You have to WORK to get photos posted there. Cell phone images, images without context, or game peices with workbench backgrounds are generally not accepted. You need to put some effort into photographing your submissions, laying the peices out nicely, preferably using a lightbox (which can be made from an old box and tissue paper!) etc.

After a short while of doing gallery votes here on Dakka, even I lose interest quickly due to the average "wow" image being less than say 1 in 20. Just look at all the images of grey plastic conversions you see here!

Lord Manimal wrote: After a short while of doing gallery votes here on Dakka, even I lose interest quickly due to the average "wow" image being less than say 1 in 20. Just look at all the images of grey plastic conversions you see here!

In fairness a lot of WIP pictures are uploaded to dakka for P&M blogs, sorting the images into the categories you are most interested in is also a good start.

Sadly the only way to get in and do this is for people to start voting. I try to do it from time to time. Just a couple of images here and there. It's just about everyone chipping in a voting once or twice each time they log in and we would be golden.... eventually...

Perhaps a in progress category that would not pop up when hitting random images?

I personally just hit n/a n/a for any WIPs but I can see why it turns people off voting.

Ifalna wrote:Perhaps a in progress category that would not pop up when hitting random images?

Hmm sounds like an Idea. Random Images should probably be painted I guess...

Ifalna wrote:I personally just hit n/a n/a for any WIPs but I can see why it turns people off voting.

I think WIPs can have a certain amount of coolness to them, obviously it depends from image to image.



This being one amazing example by CavPathfinder.

Maybe a Gallery Mod could be created and they could filter through all the images. Sorting them through a range of categories while slowing going insane.

Haha, I think asking a mod to do it would be slightly soul crushing.

Maybe just a WIP tick box for images being uploaded, I mean in general, you wont get a proper reaction to a model untill it is finished, as its the final result that really matters to the overall piece, so WIP's really dont need to be in with all the final pieces for rating.

Especially since as they are being uploaded for blogs that means they will already be in a thread, not just in the gallery, and can be reached easily to be rated if wanted.

Your idea of using WIP tick boxes is completely logical and a much better solution than torturing a mod.

Fire it off into Nuts & Bolts, couldn't hurt.

The theory behind the gallery is that the bad images will attract low or no votes and naturally drift down into the still at the bottom of the heap.

That said, my arguably best image has attracted over 1,300 views and only 12 votes despite having a "Paint" rating of 8 (originally 9 but drifting downwards).

Sadly I think it is a fact of life that most users cannot be arsed to take the few seconds to vote on images they look at.

I have no ideas as to how to induce them to bother.

There is no real way to make people do it, if you give a reward, people will spam inaccurate votes.

Making it mandatory before moving to the next image is a no for the same reason.

It is already an epeen number above post count, so thats out as a suggestion too.

The only suggestions I have are firstly the one that Lord Manimal raised, which is that if you do go to rate some you can quickly get annoyed with seeing unpainted half assembled models pop up every second image.

Having Wip ticked images not go into the random image generator on the gallery could well help.

The second suggestion is what if images in the normal gallery did not have a rate system at all, but there was a second gallery available only to pics that had a " Please rate me" box ticked during uploading, meaning you could hit random image in that gallery and every picture would be one that the owner wanted feedback on, as opposed to having thousands of pictures in the gallery now that are either wip, or in which the owner does not really care about feedback wise.

Not that many people are voting, so why not make the pool of images they can vote through a lot smaller? It means the pics that WANT ratings have a better chance of actually getting some.

I'm in work and pulling these ideas out of my bottom honestly, so keep that in mind, hah.

Did you ever post these ideas in nutz and boltz because I think these suggestions are total win. I thought of this thread today, as yet again I got frustrated trying to vote, and it was just tons and tons of WIP's. Some of those WIP photos are years old! If a site mods needs inspiration for a system that works though, look no further than boardgamegeek.com ; it's absolutely brilliant!

Yeah Ive gone through another 100 images today, and I swear about 50 of them were models on sprues, pieces of unpainted un converted models, or grey unprimed un converted models :(

The other 50 were pretty much 10 seperate models with multiple views.

I will move the ideas to Nuts and bolts now then

I go through spurts of voting - have to say that a lot of the stuff I look at on the random shuffle feature I don't vote on because they are partly/really badly painted/out of focus/WIP/etc shots.

I like the idea of a "rate me" button and a "WIP" button. This then gives you potentially several levels of filter on the images - you can go through and rate everything that people want you to rate, you can go through and rate "everything but WIP's", rate only WIP's, etc.

Just click on the types of images you want to see in your random search and away you go.

Aye thats another good option for sure, added that to the N&B thread

As a fairly new person to this site there are a few things I observed.

There did not seem to be an obvious organization like with the forums. Just trying to keep track or find threads of interest is hard enough never mind pictures.

I like to do conversions so the bare plastic pictures are needed to better show how the conversion was done, you can hide a lot under paint.

I tried to do my part and go through some pictures and rate them, it was painful.

We reallly, really, need images to be filed under categories to better see what is of interest.

I would be happy to go through everything I have put up to ensure it is filed properly (some of the information process is a little bit irritating).

A simple checkbox that is labelled "rate me" would be perfect as discussed, ensure people "opt-in" not default to that.

Talizvar wrote:We reallly, really, need images to be filed under categories to better see what is of interest.

I don't know if you are aware, but you can use the search function to search all the tagged images for, for example, "space marine"; everything that users have tagged with "space marine" will show up - you can then order the results based on date added, number of votes, etc.

Though sadly users often don't add tags to their images. But when you have become a "trusted member" (think it is when you have voted a certain number of images? Not sure though) you can add tags to other peoples images.

I've responded to a lot of these comments in the nuts and bolts thread here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/302708.page#1707688

Biggest reason I tend not to vote is so much crud pops up when I'm browsing random images. When the 3rd or 4th randomly posed sculpting doll or very early WIP pops up, I lose interest. For some reason they tend to cluster too. If I go through 50 images at random, I can expect to see clusters of 4 or 5 pictures of more or less the same thing from a slightly different angle. If I want random, I want random!

Also, it'd be nice having some sort of guideline when it comes to what the different scale on voting means.

If you give people a pointless title for voting, much like posting, then you'd get plenty of more votes on images. It's silly, but very true. People love a reward, even one with absolutely no value save the one they themselves assign to it.

It's probably me. I absolutely never vote.