 Posted 7/23/2007 3:50:33 PM
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hahn23 (7/23/2007)
We have a transparent system.
And this is the main problem IMHO. We don't need to discard any votes. We also don't need to know what each other are voting. We don't need to know each other's voting distribution. Many things are available here and done in such a way as to encourage narrowing the voting range. Since Eric and many members who post in the forums support these means and methods, it doesn't look like a change is in the future. The one thing I've learned on another site that I frequent is that the voter is always right, as long as deliberate cheating is not involved. The more we treat the voter as an unknown quantity, that is a resource with which to hone our skills, the better. I certainly agree with Richard that it's truly a shame to see this valuable resource squandered.
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Posted 7/23/2007 6:04:35 PM
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Firebird (7/23/2007)
...The one thing I've learned on another site that I frequent is that the voter is always right, as long as deliberate cheating is not involved. ...
Agreed! Very true!
With regards to photo contest websites, I do enjoy a choice in systems. We wouldn't want DA to be just like any other website, otherwise what would be the reason to exist. DA is unique and special!
Images that appear in my voting window are anonymous. Votes on my images are anonymous, unless the voter has a unique weight, or is voting unmasked. But, I can ask for feedback from those who, imho, can help me pierce the veil of my blindness to the flaws in my own work.
When compared to a contest site like DPChallenge, I'd love to know how some of the leading photographers there rank my images... and, I'd love to be able to request critiques on images from specific individuals... but that feedback loop does not exist, per se. DPC is a cutthroat contest place. Different from here. Not necessarily better or worse.... just different.
It's good to have a choice.
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Posted 7/24/2007 1:53:29 AM
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| Just a thought here- Lets give credit where it's due, to those who do not target vote . There is a vast number of voters on this site and in all probability there are many who have no idea how to judge a good photo from a mediocre one... and probably as many who wont take the time to vote fairly. There has been much debate on how we vote, what scale we use.. who targets whom , friend or foe. Isnt a large part of the problem just people voting to get their votes in without much thought as to what they are viewing? If this is true, and I think it is, is it fair to the photographer to have their image lowered ( or raised ) because no thought is going into the vote? Sure their opinions count.. but if you have 15 votes of 7-8 and then recieve a lower vote from a high ranking member who refuses to comment or answer a request ..or several lower votes from new members-- exactly what IS the value of their opinion when they refuse to reply to a request? Perhaps the vote should be cast out if the voter refuses to reply? The lack of input is discouraging to say the least. If you have an 8.5 average and a high ranking member votes a 6 with no comment..is it a good image or not? I had an image die on this site.. yet it got 5 awards in 24 hours on another site.. Im sooooo confused.
 Great photography begins with the lens cap off
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Posted 7/24/2007 4:30:49 AM
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2703 (7/24/2007)
I had an image die on this site.. yet it got 5 awards in 24 hours on
another site.. Im sooooo confused.
Don't feel to bad...I've had images published on front covers of a catalog and then gotten lots of 5's on them here and couldn't even manage a category award.
I think a lot of images don't translate well here on DA.Sometimes I'll upload an image here and on another site at the same time and on the other site it looks amazing, but here it looks terrible.I know a lot of people here who've said the same thing.
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Posted 7/24/2007 6:47:05 AM
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2703 (7/24/2007)
Just a thought here-
Lets give credit where it's due, to those who do not target
vote . There is a vast number of voters on this site and in all
probability there are many who have no idea how to judge a good photo from a mediocre one... and probably as many who wont take the time to vote fairly.
There has been much debate on how we vote, what scale we use..
who targets whom , friend or foe. Isnt a large part of the problem
just people voting to get their votes in without much thought as
to what they are viewing? If this is true, and I think it is, is it fair
to the photographer to have their image lowered ( or raised )
because no thought is going into the vote? Sure their opinions count.. but if you have 15 votes of 7-8 and then recieve
a lower vote from a high ranking member who refuses to comment
or answer a request ..or several lower votes from new members-- exactly what IS the value of their opinion when they refuse to
reply to a request?
Perhaps the vote should be cast out if the voter refuses to reply?
The lack of input is discouraging to say the least. If you have
an 8.5 average and a high ranking member votes a 6 with no comment..is it a good image or not?
I had an image die on this site.. yet it got 5 awards in 24 hours on
another site.. Im sooooo confused.
I have read the above post several times. I do not know who made it. I think that it pushes to the forefront one of the fundamental problems here at DA, specifically - that people do not understand the difference between a vote and a critique. This lack of understanding, IMHO, is at the root of our inability to find consensus on the many issues that arise surrounding the voting system. Lacking that separation, we continually try to squeeze a critique out of the voter, and in so doing degrade both the scoring standards, (as the OP complains of) and the process of criticism.
The numbered poster quoted speaks of people not voting fairly, and about people voting too quickly. But there is no rule or guideline that make a quick vote unfair or objectionable in any way. The only things that this site says about votes are "Keep in mind aspects such as originality, aesthetics, difficulty, etc. when voting." and "Reminder: Consistently low votes could cause your account to be deleted." There is nothing said about how much time one should spend in deciding what score to give an image. And there is no requirement that a person have any knowledge of, or training in, criticism of photography in order to vote here. Votes are needed to make the system of competitions work, the more the better, so we need to encourage and accept voting by the "unwashed masses" without regard to their qualifications. Would you give as much credence to the same group when it comes to constructive critcism? I think not. You would want some greater level of expertise for advice toward improving your skill in photography.
With regard to the problem that spurred the OP to start this thread, the long term solution is to eliminate all the incentives that drive people to score images higher than they deserve so that the honest low votes do not appear as unreasonable outliers. The biggest of the many such incentives is the one that the OP, and many others, refuse to acknowledge - the excessive transparency brought about by the voting stats and unmasked voting.
I don't think we have yet reached the point where we can afford to get rid of the automatic vote discarding all together. We still need to protect against truly malicious voters. That need is strengthened by the transparency, as is the need to protect against friend and foe voting.
The short term fix for the issue of honest low votes being cast out is to raise the threshold from 15 to 30 in Standard voting; and as soon as reasonably possible, to raise the threshold for both Standard and Signature voting to an even higher level. This would help in at least two ways - 1) the established average would be lower before votes start to be thrown out so that an outlying vote would need to be even lower yet to be discarded; and 2) some votes that would have been thrown out will remain, and be counted in forming the established average.
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Posted 7/24/2007 7:45:52 AM
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hahn23 (7/23/2007)
..... When compared to a contest site like DPChallenge, I'd love to know how some of the leading photographers there rank my images... and, I'd love to be able to request critiques on images from specific individuals... but that feedback loop does not exist, per se. DPC is a cutthroat contest place. Different from here. Not necessarily better or worse.... just different. .....
I don't know why but every time you post something about dpchallenge.com I get the impression that you are misrepresenting that site.
The two items that you said you would "love" to get over there are easily available to you. But you just don't have such a simple device for getting them as we do here with our RfC feature and vote stats. You would need to send a PM or post a request in the forums. That's a little harder to do than sending out a RfC but you have the benefit of more carefully selecting who you get the response from as it will never be directed to an anonymous voter. And the liklihood of getting an answer is probably higher because the recipient would know that you really wanted to know their opinion, and were not merely fishing for justification of a vote by simply clicking on a button. Not that hard to do if you really would "love" to have them. However, I suggest that the biggest difference between those two things here and at dpchallenge.com is that we can couple them to a vote and they can't. And I suggest that this difference is the real reason why people don't avail themselves of those two things at dpchallenge.com as much as they do here.
Why do you think that dpchallenge.com is more "cutthroat" than DA? I think the opposite is true. At dpchallenge.com, reading the forums will tell you that people are more accepting of the voting overall, and trust the mechanisms in place, both automatic and human, to protect against the nasty voters. Voting at dpchallenge.com is not a constant source of animosity as it is here. The feedback there is better, and there's more of it. And there is a lot more helpful give and take about technique, events, equipment, etc. in the dpchallenge.com forums than there is here, both on the general level, and about specific images when desired.
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Posted 7/24/2007 7:59:51 AM
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WillPat,
LOL! You are always the court jester. I understand your attempts at humor now. Sorry I took your earlier comments, over the past many months, seriously. It's clear to me now!
I didn't misrepresent anything. I like DPChallenge, but it's a completely different experience. And, one had better have a thick skin, because there is a lot of rude and crude behavior in the voting and in the comments and in the forums. It's definitely not a nurturing place for beginning photographers. It's a challenge contest.... sink or swim. Very good for expanding one's range and stimulating creativity. I highly value the difference between there and here. I'm glad to have the option to participate in both. I would not want to see variation between the two distinct market niches vanish.
btw, I don't think they allow multiple entries of the same image there! 
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Posted 7/24/2007 9:09:11 AM
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hahn23 (7/24/2007)
..... It's definitely not a nurturing place for beginning photographers. It's a challenge contest.... sink or swim. .....
I think that DPChallenge.com is a much more nurturing (to rip your term) environment than DA. They have a much wider variety of "teachers" willing to help all levels of learners.
There are no "cruel hoax(es)" going on over there. No one complains about their votes being cast out because no one knows when it happens. Get the connection? It's a form of anonymity.
The simple fact that DA hands out so many more awards than DPChallenge.com does makes this site more oriented around competition. However, over there the way the competitions are so much more clearly defined makes them more challenging, more of an apples against apples type of competition, with hardly any of the undesirable consequences that come so frequently here when a photographer's work in recognized by their "style".
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Posted 7/24/2007 9:21:18 AM
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