ratings: new and improved

Ratings calculations have been redone. They are now based on weighted averages and take into account sitewide voting patterns. You can manually recalculate your rating at any time by either voting for yourself or by power-cycling the switch that determines whether or not your gallery is ratable.

Special thanks to OnWingedFeet for the short course in Statistics 101, a class that coincidentally I never took. A hundred bonus points for you, my friend. Don't forget to visit his gallery, Sailor Mercury Cels at http://mercury.rubberslug.com.

Oh, but don't blame him if your scores went down.

I added a little bit of a kick to the formula to make sure that no one takes a nasty dive. I spot-checked a few galleries which have the most ratings (30+) and everything seems to be working as advertised. Let me know if it isn't.

I believe the rating system we have now is fair, except for the ability to leave e-mail comments while rating someone (which will be added at some point due to popular demand). A challenge: find an easy way to screw up the voting system. (i.e. - something that can be done in 15 minutes) If you can find one, please post it here.

Feedback* is appreciated as always. Cheers.


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\\* feedback including "my score is too low" or "ratings are for the impure" are not really as appreciated as constructive feedback. thx. =p\\

fantastic. I took Stats 101 and barely understand it myself. Kudos to OnWingedFeet for chewing on a few formulas for us! *cheers* Hope everything works out better now and that people don't complain quite so much about their gallery ratings. :)

I have one basic suggestion for new gallery owners. I suggest that-IF- you consider ratings an important item, that you wait. Wait?

Wait until you get enough cels on board to be rated. Wait until you put together the very best gallery design that you can or "by proxy? gets done. And then when you are "finally done" crossing your T's and dotting your I's, take a deep breath.. Double-check it, and then, and only then---- turn your ratings on.

As Jason has mentioned so many times,"This is not a contest", I can almost see your disappointed faces and read your disappointing emails coming in to me asking, "Why can't I get higher ratings?? "What am I doing wrong", etc.

This is just my simple suggestion and bias.
I just see some galleries that are just not really ready to be "judged", but that ask for ratings from the relatively strict and selective group of gallery raters. Some people take this rating business seriously.

Suggestion..

Maybe a more narrow spread from 5pts to 10pts could be used, instead of a 1 to 10 point range. It might be more acceptable in balancing beginners aganist musuem quality galleries when it comes to comparative ratings. It would suggest almost all galleries a plus --quite literally.

I suggest that having most ratings "in the black" in a numerically positive sense will also be more a psychologically positive approach to ratings since the meaning of a score might be considered more tolerable and viewer friendly.

If one really feels like the gallery is bad, then perhaps a "not ready to be voted" or "a no-comment worthy of my devine intervention" score category could be considered (*tongue~ in cheek*).

If positive ratings "only appear" it may help to keep the psychological downer scores and blue collectors down to a minimum.

This simple step might improve life for the "rating impaired" =)

We don't want anyone feeling so bad from a rating now do we?

Just my op-op-op-..opinion (DJ E..just had to scratch that last part in.. =)

I have thought so many times to activate ratings but I always change my mind b/c like you said it is not a contest... and also I really do not need another stress :P

Instead of getting rating, I would like to have some constructive feedback so that I can improve my gallery.... (and positive ones are always more than welcome :P)

[quote]
If positive ratings "only appear" it may help to keep the psychological downer scores and blue collectors down to a minimum.
[/quote]

Scores have already been artifically inflated after the realignment to almost definitely ensure that no one's scores went down.

You see, the funny thing here is that there aren't many low scores to toss out. Anything below around a 4 was tossed out. It still wasn't enough. It will never be enough for the terminally passive-agressive.

Most of this site is built to accomodate that. Heck, I just spent 3 hours today working on feature gallery images, something which amounts to a big warm fuzzy.

I can see how everyone on this site rates galleries. I think most people forget that. Most people are pretty fair. What I really wanted to do with the ratings was recognize people who the community thinks do a really outstanding job with their gallery. It seems, though, that some people who are not recognized see this as an insult directed specifically at them. As of now, the rankings aren't really compared against each other -- making them essentially useless from an information filtering perspective.

I see the number one upcoming problem with this site being signal to noise ratio. I want to determine a way to bring the good things forward while not pushing the less-than-stellar things backwards. Making everything the same (site designer is moving away from the common template) is not the right answer, I'm positive of that much. I am open to ideas.

So, to make a long story short, unless there's some glaring error in the mathematics that anyone can uncover... probably going to veto any formula-based changes. Comments do need to be added, but you can already leave comments via the feedback forms. Comments on the voting thing would be another way to go about that. Also need the ability to wipe really old votes. Forgot about that one.

I won't say everyone's a winner, because this is not kindergarten, but I will continue to say that it's not a contest.