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Image Share rating overhaul
As part of the changes "ratings" as they were (1 - 10 subjective ratings) have been completely done away with. In their place is a "Thumbs up" endorsement system similar in kin to the kudos system for members. The idea is that instead of subjectively rating an image from 1 - 10 you merely choose to register that you "like" the image. That gives it a thumbs up. If you don't like the image you can't rate the image.
In the interest of fairness all past ratings to images are still present and any ratings that were registered as a 7 or higher have been converted into a single thumbs up for that image. All ratings below 7 have been removed from the system and are not counted positively or negatively towards any image.
If you don't think an image deserves your endorsement but would like to offer constructive criticism to the author on what he can do to improve, in your opinion, then you can still leave comments without endorsing the image. However uploaders now have the ability to block their new images from being rated or commented on in the same kin as the file database.
With the rating overhaul comes an overhaul in the top image lists as well. The top lists no longer work on a bayesian estimate but on a much simpler system of "the most thumbs up in the past two weeks". Only people who have registered that they like an image in the past two weeks will be counted on the top lists. Hopefully this will generate a much more dynamic and fresh top 25/10 that is constantly changing so that the same images aren't always at the top of the list.
It's important to note that the image top 25 is different to the file database's "file of the month" system in that the system does not clear itself every 2 weeks. The date variable used to calculate the 2 weeks is real-time. If you register a thumbs up on an image on Monday at 1pm then the top 25 system will no longer count your vote at 1.01pm on the Monday two weeks from that date.
Once again in the interest of fairness (and to fill up the top 25!) all past ratings have been post-dated to today to give them their time in the sun. So count the next two weeks as the top 25 for the past year! If you're a top 25 junkie (ugh) who is desperate for their image to be in the top 25 you might want to hold back on uploading your image until two weeks from now, else you'll be fighting against images that have a one year headstart on yours.
There's still a few things that need doing in the image share section, like making use of the categories, but I consider these latest changes to be a large part of the overhaul promised for the image share section. Have fun!
Constructive feedback and feature requests are welcome.
13 comments
In my experience, many if not the majority of people will vote a straight 10 for a file they like. That in turn leads to the problem where you really like an authors project, but you did have something you disliked in it. Voting the file 9 or even 9.5 would *reduce* the files average rating making it look like disapproval, even when you're trying to approve of it really - worse that file then may lose out in the voting rat race to some other lower quality file which was blindly voted 10 by all.
Conversely, when you genuinely want to vote a file as "bad", voting anything under 5 feels like trolling. A thumbs up/down system would lead to a lot less ambiguity about a file.
At least with this system if those people don't like something they have no reason to do or say anything at all.
Dynamic top 25 is also a good idea. The same old images every single day is rather stale after a while. Though previous top 25 images will they also be back up there at some stage or will the images always be something different and we never/rarely see the same ones twice?
However, I think that with the current "thumb's up" system maybe a constant top 25 would be cool as well. I mean - if multiple accounts of one IP have already been banned, and there is no low rating, maybe the sheer amout of thumbs could also be counted? And the pics that are in the constant top 25 would then not be featured on the dynamic one. That way we could posibly have the best of the best on the constant, and the dynamic which gives a good chance for new pics to get on the constant top 25.
Or would that just cause extra problems anyway?
You deserve many Kudos!
Absolutely. The Image Share section isn't there for competition, it's there as a feature and I know people use it for more than just showing off their character poses. The top 25 is a by-product of the system, mainly for the people who like browsing the image share section rather than the uploaders so they can quickly get their fill of nice Oblivion piccies. If it becomes too much of an issue I will simply remove the top 25 entirely.
That kind of sucks for all the people who have entire collections of images posted here. It would be a good idea if the only purpose of the image share section were to compete for the top spot, but that's not the case.
Another way to perhaps make this system work is for images to have a shelf life of only 2 weeks as well. After the 2 weeks are tabulated, only the top 25 are kept, in a sort of remembrance and can't be posted again for competition. The rest are deleted(thus saving some room on the site) and the ones who didn't get in the top 25 but want to try again, will have to be reposted.