Ratings: Six Months Later

Oooooh, an Omni-gallery...

Anyway, it's so hard to rate, because the whole premise behind it is that you want an "unbiased" opinion, and without any checks, that simply may not be the case. Truthfully, I have no idea why anyone would be vindictive and give anyone 1s. I mean, what's the point? I have only given out 10s, because my mentality is, if I like a gallery, I'll let them know...if not, I'll just leave it unmarked until one day I do like it, and then rate it good. See, it's all good.

Also, about the galleries dynamic and thus, ratings shouldn't be static: I've notice that my ratings have fluxuated a bit in the past week, even though my total number of voters has not, so someone is doing their homework (if was for the better, by the by) which is always good.

Couple of quick notes before I go back to my box of french fries:

- Omni-gallery? Hmmm, have you been reading my not-so-top-secret e-mail discussions I had a few months ago about planning this very thing? This is already somewhere on the road map. The idea is to bring Rubberslug closer to a teaching museum than a free web host. Hold that thought.

- I think I realized now why no one finds it unusual that I'm not competitive concerning ratings. You see, in the rest of my life, I am notorious for being the opposite particularily with multiplayer games. Not as a criticism to anyone, but this is probably the one thing I honestly have no desire to be "better" than anyone at. I watch a lot of anime, but I don't hold it against anyone who hasn't wasted that much time in front of a TV yet. I've been a web developer for maybe 8-10 years, but I don't hold that against anyone who asks a graphics or HTML question. In fact, I *like* that.

So, there's the divide, I guess. I get it now, I think. It'll be competitive to some degree no matter what the initial intent is. Agreed? And many people -- like myself -- just have ratings on because they're silly. Fun, even. Where did the fun go?

It's like the zen thing. I pulled those numbers literally out of thin air. I don't even have the highest total *on my own website*. I stress again, this is *all make-believe*. The system is far from final and weightings might change. For now, ratings and forum posts are the only truly interactive things we have -- but I want more of these interactive things and less of the "scan, post, and leave" things.

So HERE is the question: Given the context of both easy-going and/or modest people and a minority of competitive people, how do we design a system that recognizes galleries on a variety of things ranging from design ability to collection focus?

I want to make this work! Keep developing these ideas, they're good ideas and I am listening.

- Stagnant ratings: How about ratings that decay after, say, 6 months? Or at least, a one-time reminder that shows up on the account of the person who rated you that it's time for a second look? Galleries are not movies. They change. You shouldn't be saddled with reviews of a gallery from 2 years ago.

- Feedback is always better, but you don't want to force people or else you'll get 99% crap feedback. I'll add a strong suggestion on the rating page and a feedback link to the target gallery that e-mail feedback is preferred to numbers. No awards for that either. I'll try to have that in by tomorrow.

- Every one of you is a special, unique snowflake. I'm trying not to ignore anyone but if you have a particularly good idea you swear I must have ignored, e-mail me! I like talking to people one-on-one. I've been slow lately though... apologies.

I like all of you equally. Really. (Okay, well I like the mods a little more because they squash evildoers.)


ps - 667. Evil... no more.

well i think that the major flaw is not the ratings system but people taking a biased look at galleries. someone mentioned whether you collect for yourself or you collect for others? well when i rate a gallery i don't think about what cels they have from the series that i like, i rate them as to what i can see of their collection that they have of the shows that *they* like. they don't give a crap whether they have shows that i like or not, the gallery is there to show off that person's favorites, not mine, so it would be wrong of me to rate their gallery according to my anime preferences. if they have a nice collection and it looks like they're happy with it, then i give them a good rating.

i think that text accompanying a cel scan also motivates me to rate people's galleries higher. that might be a little biased towards people who don't have the time to type something for their cels, but if you have so many cels that you couldn't possibly type something for all of them then i probably rated you high anyways ;).

i started another thread on the forum here about having our account notify us when the people's galleries who we've rated have been updated again, i think that's a really good idea. i can't imagine why someone's ratings would go down with an update, unless the person who rated you liked a particular cel that you happened to have sold or was hoping you'd updated a different series then the one you did or something to that effect.

LOL! Thankies, Jason, no more evil! ^_^

I dunno...the omni-gallery (Though I like Master Gallery better as a term for some reason) just seems like the natural growth of the gallery feature tool on the homepage and the next evolutionary step toward the interaction that Rubberslug seems to be moving toward.

So...is there any way I can help? I think it would be amazing to have a universal gallery here!

[ooooohhhh droolies, an omni gallery. but as I laugh at myself what would I choose? It took me almost a year and a half before I decided on a featured gallery submission.] What I think I would like to see is a section on each home page, "These galleries are really cool" That way you can follow links to galleries that are within your interest, or at least interesting to those who's collections you admire. Perhaps it could be three categories "the gallery I'm most in awe of", the coolest specialized gallery" and "a great new gallery" or some other descriptors.