Ratings: Six Months Later

I'd like for people to leave feedback, but I have no real way of checking if that feedback is useful in any way. I'd bet dollars to donuts it would end up being a bunch of nearly blank spam e-mails with the same ratings. That's why I didn't bother putting that in the first time.

Weighted averages is something I have to work out. I've been too lazy to vaporize the accounts that give straight 1's to everyone else and give 10s to themselves. The problem is, who gets weighted heavier? Older accounts? People with more points?

I'd like to stress again that it is specifically designed *not* to be a game, as there are no prizes nor will there ever be. I guess I'm just not competitive about these things. It's a silly thing, really. If I recall, I think I gave myself straight ones. I have this eerie feeling that one or more of you are just trying to be nice to me though.

The goal is to have a high signal-to-noise ratio. Imagine that we have 7,500 galleries instead of 750. Instead of 20 updates in a 24-hour cycle, you have 200. Great galleries get lost in the shuffle. What alternative user-driven editorial system can we implement to bring the galleries that interest you forward?

Now that the site is chalking up around a hundred new cels a day, I'd like to focus on our ability to stay relevant and interesting instead of just devolving into the dump that is Tripod or Geocities. Not that we're within three orders of magnitude of those sites, but the vast majority of websites they host are now just porn, scams, or dead links.

Use your imagination. I'm pretty flexible with my programming ability. =)

Sample wacky idea: Have everyone list a) their favorite shows to collect and b) their favorite galleries. We can make a weak correlation between "people who like x" and "galleries that those people like".

I could always just make it so that it shows you a 9.5+ rating when you're visiting your own site. That way, no one would ever be upset again. Har har.

E's idea is neat, but I think I'm unclear of the concept and wouldn't mind if someone thought up of a good way to do this. (Just tell me what I have to program.)

[quote]...there are so many galleries here it might be practical to break up galleries by some criteria or rule before getting started. Maybe the moderators could have "teams" and members could joing a team of collectors by signing up, etc. etc.. [/quote]

*insert your idea here*

E's idea got me to thinking, (which is probably a bad thing) - Some people talk about anime sometimes as to genre; comic, humor, horror, shoujo, shounen, angst, mecha, drama, coming of age, magical girl... and how many other single words or short phrases to sum up what a particular title is all about?

Why not have it so each curator could pick, say three (or whatever makes the most sense) of those genres as a way to sort their galleries in a gallery search? That way if someone really likes angsty bishounen they can find those galleries that classify themselves as 'angst' or 'shounen' all in one place. If this idea makes any sense, I'm thinking that just coming up with the classifications (and general consensus as to the meanings of those classifications) is going to be a job in and of itself!

And, here's an idea I've been kicking around mentally for a while: You know that expression that a whole is always greater than the sum of it's parts?

How about a Rubberslug Master Gallery? Bear with me, please, the idea's still really nebulous, but I'm envisioning a single master gallery where each curator could submit one cel. The Master Gallery (or Omnigallery, Unigallery, whatever title makes the most sense) would be arranged as all the galleries are and function exactly the same way, except that clicking on the cel image on the individual cel pages would take you to that particular gallery. I'd think that along with describing the cel posted to the master gallery, each person might want to write a few sentences about their galleries and their cels, almost like an advertisement, to entice people to visit their gallery. It's kind of like the 'featured cel' feature from the front page with a massive superiority complex!

If you really wanted to strut your stuff, Jason, you'd make it so each curator could change their submission to the master gallery without having to bother you to do it! (I'm evil, I know!)

Just my random thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

^_~

Erm this is short, and probably rather stupid. I personaly turned my ratings on to get a idea of others tastes. Not to catter to them, but just to see what the tastes are.

A good chunk, almost half, my collection, is of series Ive not even seen, but the art, or the character design just totaly caught my eye. Though granted, almost all of em are women. Any male characters I like, I dont see cels of, or its a CG show. But to me, I collect for beauty, though we all have a various ideas of what beauty is, and with the rating system, its nice to know others share the same ideas as I do. Though I cant prove thats why the person voted, but, I can wish!

I had my rating turned on when they first appeared and I was fairly pleased with the numbers considering my ameturish scans and "design". However because of another thread at another board posing the question " who do you collect for, yourself or to impress others?" I thought "me!" and that I was being hypocritical asking for approval so I turned them off. Besides the numbers were pretty much stagnant.
Also, I didn't know we could rate ourselves.:P

I had it on for a while, then discovered that whenever I had an update, the ratings pretty consistently dropped. In other words, whenever I tried to improve the gallery, the ratings went down. I didn't find this helpful, so I turned it off.

Overall, I've gotten much better suggestions on how to improve my gallery by reading discussions at Animanga. Not only do I get a sense there of what most collectors find important about displays, but when I see posts by someone who obviously cares deeply about cels, I visit his or her gallery and try to get good ideas from how s/he displays images.

I learn much more by reading what people have to say, for good or bad, than by trying to figure out what numbers (significant to three digits) are trying to tell me.

(And the same comment also goes for "Zen.")