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I think there should be a concrete metric set by Dakka. For example, as it is now, many people feel different as to where 'tabletop quality' falls on the scale. I personally judge tabletop as a 4. Most (I think) will put tabletop right in the middle with a 5. So, if I vote right behind somebody esle in this way, the vote gets skewed. What if 5 people think the model is brilliant because it's way better than they can do, so they give it 9's or 10's, then somebody who paints to a VERY high standard can see obvious flaws and/or poorly executed techniques that others may not understand and then ranks it a 7? That really skews the vote. I think 9s and 10s shoul be VERY rarely given. Not that many people are Golden Demon winning caliber.





If Dakka would set a concrete metric to judge by, I think the voting could end up being more fair and, more importantly, more consistent. With a 4 being standard tabletop quality, that leaves more room for separating all the good (and better) paint jobs. Plus, with 5 being tabletop, do we really need 4 levels of 'bad' painting? Here's how I judge and rate pics (minis only) in the gallery. I think it could be a good metric to use. :


01 - Dude, start playing Clix quality: Hang up your brushes. This is fugly. Bare metal/plastic showing through paint, huge spots where eyes should be, garish colors.
02 - Poor quality: Very sloppy, not based, incoherent scheme (for squad pics), looks like they didn't try.
03 - Tabletop quality: 3 color minimum (in most cases), maybe a little sloppy paint, not based
04 - Tabletop quality: 3 color minimum (in most cases), no sloppy paint, must be based
05 - Above tabletop quality: attempts at highlights (drybrushing works here), edge lining, conversions score points here, might still have decals
06 - "Oooh" quality: I want to take a closer look at the model. This level has some nice freehand work, maybe some original details like squad insignia, etc.
07 - Contest quality: this is where your average painter and "good" painters split. This model could pass the initial cut or two at a contest. It won't quite take 3rd place, but it would have been considered.
08 - 2nd place contest quality: This model has superb blending, freehand, and/or conversion work, possibly sculpted bits
09 - 1st place contest quality - this is a truly gorgeous model. More often than not, this is a display piece. Major conversion work, sculpting, exquisite painting, precise details, realism.
10 - Slayer Sword candidate quality: this model would get my vote at a Golden Demon competition if I were a judge. this is a Jen Haley, Victoria Lamb, etc. rivaling mini.





Ghidorah

I think you're trying to take subjectivity out of a subjective process.

Flashman wrote:I think you're trying to take subjectivity out of a subjective process.

I would rather say that this is an attempt to give the subjective process some structure, without ever leaving the realm of subjectivity. Just a translation of the ratings into a common language, so to speak.

I think it is a good idea (although perhaps the precise formulations can be argued), fo the reasons stated by the OP.

A mini with technically excellent painting can still score low on my subjective scale.

For high ranking efforts, amongst other things, I don't like to be initially aware of technique 'how do they do that?'. I like a sympathetic pose and paint job to match.

I think it needs to be left alone. Your overthinking it, and possibly giving more importance to the opinion of the internet masses than you need to.

This is the same reason I got out of the car enthusiast world. People were so obsessed with getting as many points and "winning" every show that they didnt build a car for the love of it, they built it to get their name on a gold plated cup.

Bottom line...your taking it too seriously.

Flashman wrote:I think you're trying to take subjectivity out of a subjective process.

Mad4Minis wrote:I think it needs to be left alone. Your overthinking it, and possibly giving more importance to the opinion of the internet masses than you need to...Bottom line...your taking it too seriously.

No. It's not that. Neither of these are correct. I just think that a set scale guideline could help with more accurate voting. If voting meant absolutely nothing, then there's no reason to have the feature, let alone plug it and try to get people to vote. I mean, there's even a vote counter underneath our user names and avatars. Why have any of it if it was pointless? Sure, you don't take it as gospel, but it's still a worthwhile tool to get feedback on your work. When I rate something using my scale of 4 = tabletop, if I comment on the image and peeps see the 4/10 vote, I may look like a douche-bag because somebody else thinks that tabletop is higher (just as an example).

Think about this: With '5 = tabletop quality', that means we have 4 levels for 'bad'. 4 = less than tabletop, 3 = poor, 2 = bad, 1 = really bad.
Is that necessary? I think it's be better to have less levels of 'bad' painting to have more room to accurately reflect the levels of good and above painting. If Dakka would implement a ratings guideline, it could help make more accurate voting and, possibly, actually be a better metric for people to gauge their work. If people followed the scale suggestion, that is.




Ghidorah

TLDR: I'm not 100% sold on Ghidorah's exact rating breakdown, but I am 100% behind the idea.

I think I recall this topic coming up some time ago, with the OP being verbally slapped down, probably with cries of "robot" and "thought police" from those artsy-fartsy types (I'm kidding, here... to a degree). And now, since I haven't ranted in a while, I give you a wall of text:

These would be guidelines, not iron law - a mini you think really "works" as a whole could very reasonably be bumped up a point, should the pose and color choice grant appeal beyond the brush skill evidenced. Giving voters even a rough sense of a scale can't really harm the process, at all.

If there's one thing I've noticed about gallery scores, it's inconsistency. This applies generally in both directions - browsing a group of 7s gives pretty varied results, and looking at different shots of the same model can sometimes give you a 4-point range of scores. The way I see it, voting serves two purposes - to provide useful feedback for painters and to make the best models easier to find and view. The skew, then, creates two issues - mediocre models with few votes and padded scores dilute the quality of the top scoring tiers and a different scale for each voter reduces the effectiveness of the feedback.

There are also specific cases that cause problems with the scale. Perusing P&M threads, as I frequently do, I've noticed a lot of what I might call "newb flocking" - short threads showing off very rudimentary builds and paintjobs (not to belittle their efforts - we all start somewhere), very frequently from young hobbyists. Occasionally, a more experienced voice will crop up offering real criticism and advice, but 4/5 posts are of the generic "gr8 job" or "better than mine" variety, also from new, young users. I've viewed some of these same models in the gallery and the scores are way higher than they should be.

Why? Well, I'd wager that these new users don't have a proper frame of reference, yet - they've seen their models, they've seen studio models, and they know there are differences between them, but they don't yet have a sense of subtle differences between mediocre, good, and great executions of particular techniques. Hell, sometimes the most hamfisted splodgings of paint are praised as a technique they barely even resemble. I'd say there's an element of kinship and empathy skewing things, as well, but that's not as pertinent to the current topic.

Now that I sound like a total curmudgeon, let me make one last grumble. There's more than enough back-patting and hand-holding around. I'm all for playing nice - civility is important to maintain on a forum - but coddling gets in the way of useful feedback. Let people qualify their answers in P&M threads where they're really meant to engage with the painter (I always try to praise the effort while pointing out the shortcomings, even though I don't feel it should be necessary). Giving something a high rating out of misplaced goodwill or general ignorance does more harm than good, if painters ever try and use this site to improve.

Oh, I guess I lied. A few more little grumbles: No matter how sensible I see posting guidelines as being, I know damn well that many users will completely ignore them. There's also the issue of gallery voting frequency - few people bother voting on most images they come across, making each one of the votes for less viewed images weigh all the more heavily. Minimum voting requirements for score listing attempts to tackle this issue, but it can't circumvent the usual causes of skewed voting unless there's truly a wide range of voters.

Enough grumbling for now. I'll go back under my cranky rock. Apologies to anyone who actually read all of this.

One persons tabletop might not be another. 1 may say 3 colors is tabletop. Another might say 5. Another might say X colors and shading/washing is tabletop.

Who is right? Who sets the standard?

A complaint has been "younger" players voting...so a minimum age requirement to vote?
How about a minimum post # to vote...must have 1000 posts to gallery vote, etc.

All a dictated scale is going to do is add something else to argue about.

Hell, if the voting is going to be laid down that strict then lets just appoint a number of Dakka gallery judges and disable voting from all others.

Just one of you be honest...you want the Dakka gallery to become a internet Golden Demon contest. Thats how this whole thing is coming off to me. It doesnt sound like something thats being debated to help the gaming community, but instead another way to segregate it more and effectively discourage people who are new or that dont devote 100% of their time to gaming and modelling.

Do as you all want, but its already killing my desire to add anything farther to the gallery. I thought the gallery was to share your work, to show what and how people are doing things. seems I may have been wrong...

Going to respond point by point to you, Mad4Minis, both to continue the discussion and to touch on some points regarding which I feel I've been addressed and misinterpreted.

Mad4Minis wrote:One persons tabletop might not be another. 1 may say 3 colors is tabletop. Another might say 5. Another might say X colors and shading/washing is tabletop. Who is right? Who sets the standard?

This is the existential cry I jokingly warned about. You're touching on the very issue, here, though - there are so many different standards that the scores are effectively meaningless, at most puffing or deflating someone's ego, a tad. Giving guidelines gives the scores meaning. If you think a particular feature is cool, leave a comment saying so. That's more feedback to the painter than an unexplained score, anyway. Besides, as much ranting and crap-filtering and name-calling as it could potentially take, I think a general consensus could be reached.

A complaint has been "younger" players voting...so a minimum age requirement to vote? How about a minimum post # to vote...must have 1000 posts to gallery vote, etc.

Perhaps my tone (the crotchety tone is primarily in jest, for future reference) is to blame, but taking observations and translating them into unreasonably extreme practices isn't really moving the discussion forward. Can I point you to the following paragraph where I explain why I think many votes coming from this demographic are skewed? I think some rough calibration for voting would be educational.

All a dictated scale is going to do is add something else to argue about.

Welcome to Dakka. Hell, welcome to the internet. People will argue about pretty much anything - ideally, it would be more of a discussion than an argument, assuming the negative connotation of the latter.

Just one of you be honest...you want the Dakka gallery to become a internet Golden Demon contest. Thats how this whole thing is coming off to me. It doesnt sound like something thats being debated to help the gaming community, but instead another way to segregate it more and effectively discourage people who are new or that dont devote 100% of their time to gaming and modelling.

Again with the knee-jerk assumptions. If one of the pro-guidelines camp really does want this, please correct me, but I count 3 people weighing in in favor of scale guidelines and no calls for competition within their posts. I can see, perhaps, misinterpreting Ghidora's mentions of painting competitions as a frame of reference, but that's it. Informal painting competitions already crop up every now and again. Just today I saw that a new Dakkanaut has taken over handling the MotM competition. I know that I, at least, am talking about using gallery voting as a tool, not a competition.

Do as you all want, but its already killing my desire to add anything farther to the gallery. I thought the gallery was to share your work, to show what and how people are doing things. seems I may have been wrong...

WIP and tutorial photos don't need ratings. If you're posting pictures to show what and how you're doing things, disable voting and add the appropriate tags. It really is that simple. Most of my meager gallery offerings are old and range from mediocre to crappy, but I've uploaded a few things, here and there, when my reply in a thread warranted it. They weren't finished models, so I disabled voting and added a the appropriate tags (WIP, scratchbuild, etc.).

I really do hope you're exaggerating in that last bit. If this is keeping you from posting in the gallery - apologies for the condescension, here - you need to grow some thicker skin. Your tone hints at you having taken some personal offense to this thread, already, but I won't pretend to know if there's any truth in that. I will ask, as a final question and in all seriousness, though, if you're so convinced of the subjectivity of scoring and the "show everything" nature of the gallery, why are you even remotely concerned about scoring?

I've looked at the votes for stuff in my gallery, really scratching my head sometimes about how some stuff got the votes it did (when it gets votes at all). But then I think that some pictures may not get good scores because the photo quality doesn't show them off. Some might not get good scores because the majority of people who voted might not agree with what I was trying to achieve. And maybe I just don't have a good handle on the real quality of my figures.

But there are a lot of subjective things that get into the decision of what score a mini gets, and to an extent I like that there isn't a structure defining what exactly each score represents. It feels more honest that way. If we define exactly what each score represents, there is no point in voting- anyone can just look at the scale and see exactly what their miniature should rate on their own.

The way Dakka works now, when I see a miniature of mine gets a lower score than I expected, then I have to think about why. And when a miniature of mine gets a higher score, I get to do the same (though with a bit more of an internal "boo-yeah"). It has forced me to look at the minis in my gallery in a different way from how I look at the minis on my table top. And that's good for me. If we had a strict score guide, then all I'd have to do is check off the techniques I'd used and not learn anything from the process.

I don't think it's really possible to do this subjectively. If a person only plays at their FLGS, which is statistically aberrant and only has really great or really poor painters, and then comes here and sees a average (5) model, they are going to skew accordingly.

The one thing that I am sure of, is that:

Dude, start playing Clix quality: Hang up your brushes. This is fugly.

is never an acceptable answer. If you come across a player with terribad painting, you have 2 choices - say nothing, or give advice as to how to improve.

Ouze wrote:I don't think it's really possible to do this subjectively. If a person only plays at their FLGS, which is statistically aberrant and only has really great or really poor painters, and then comes here and sees a average (5) model, they are going to skew accordingly.

The one thing that I am sure of, is that:

Dude, start playing Clix quality: Hang up your brushes. This is fugly.

is never an acceptable answer. If you come across a player with terribad painting, you have 2 choices - say nothing, or give advice as to how to improve.

I lol'd at the Clix Quality, it's funny because I've seen some heroclix with better paintjobs than actual handpainted miniatures.

Personally, I think 1 should be "don't quit your day job".

Btw, Ghidorah's signature is

I personally think that 5 and 10 should be spelled out, but everything else should be subject to interpretation

You can't get serious or usable results without doing cross grader scoring, and I assume Legoburner has enough other things to do.

All this proposal would do is move from one scale that people can disagree on to another scale that people can disagree on. That's not progress.

I've always thought of the Dakka gallery as a more informal "vote based on opinion" space. If I want something judged on a competition scale, I'll put it on CMON.