SummitPost.org

Since there have been some kind folks rating the stuff that I've been putting into Summitpost, I thought that I would get off my lazy butt and give some back..

I have to admit, after spending almost 20 hours or so on a single trip report (mainly due to moronic computer coding skills on situating photo tables), I've gained much respect for those of you who take the time to give back to summitpost.

Hope that butters up everyone, so they don't pounce on me for giving less than a 10 vote. That being said, I've always had the mindset that even if someone gave me a 1, it would at least be a form of recognition of the work that I put in. However, I just went to vote a 9 on a photo and the current score dropped from something like 71.89 to 69 and some change. Is that correct? I know my vote weight isnt that great, but crap....Am I supposed to take this personal?

Do I have to give a 10 just to increase the present photo rating? If that is the case, I apologize to those of you I've bashed in the privacy of my own home for not giving me a point. I had to get that off my conscience...

SP once had a four-point (actually 5, if you count "off topic") rating system; with SP v2.0 that changed to the current ten-point system. The idea was to allow voters to distinguish between the best-of-the-best and the merely excellent.
In practice, most SP voters either vote 10 or don't vote at all; it's the count of votes (weighted by the power of the voters) that determines rankings. (Most of the time. A page that needs significant work may draw some votes in the 4 to 6 range.) This is probably a result of the fact that voting is no longer anonymous.
But vote your conscience, as long as you're consistent your conscience is clear.

If you see a photo that you think should be photo of the day, but that's still not a 10 on your scale, you might consider waiting until the day is over. (Unless you vote lower on all the other photos that have a shot at beating it.)

Lots of previous threads - see "sick of justifying" for example.

But...... shouldn't an 8 or nine bump it up, instead of dropping it down?

I'ts strange, but when I give someone a 10, the ratings increase approx .12 to .15 on just about anything I vote on, but to drop almost 2.0 when I give it a 9..... Isn't that kind of unusual?

The rating system is trying to determine an "average vote". The photo rating can never rise above 100%, so obviously you can't just increase the score a fixed amount with every vote.

The higher the photo score rises, the more high votes are needed to push it significantly higher.

The actual calculation used is far from perfect. When you vote 9, you change the average vote from 10 to 9.something, while you only increase the number of votes slightly.

There's some code in there to remove "outliers" (if everybody else votes a 10, a 1 will be just about ignored). It's not great either, but you may find that if you want to drag a photo's score down, you can do so more effectively by voting 7 than by voting 1.

But it's easy to supply as many fake votes as you want, anyway...

Don't give up on me yet, Nartreb....

So, let me ask you a question based on what I actually was trying to vote on.....

I went to a photo........ It had 4 votes........The rating/vote total was 71.69 or something like that.........The 4 votes comprised of 2-10's, 1-8 & 1-7..........

I put a vote of 9 on it and it dropped down into 69.31 or something like that..When it did, I deleted my vote.

Doesnt that sound like something is broken or do I just not get it?

I've had smth strange today. I voted for the picture rated above 95 %. Usually at this level my 10/10 vote raises the score by about 0.01 but this time it was + 0.5% (!). So I prefered to delete it

The voting algorithm was designed by AIG.

Echo what Squishy said. Most of us gave up on finding any sense in the scoring system long ago and vote 10 or not at all. The only time I downvote is when there is something really wrong with the submission, especially if the owner has been notified and fails to do anything about it.

So, it sounds like there are hundreds, possibly thousands of nice folks on Summitpost who have looked at my stuff. Wanted to vote about a 9.5, but due to the fact that it would destroy my vote percentage, as well as my ego, they've all decided that instead of hurting my feelings, they dont vote.

I didnt realize all this "behind the scenes" stuff was so involved.

Thank you all for not hurting my feelings. I didnt know you all cared so much about me. In fact, I didnt even know you cared. Wait!! Who the hell are all of you people?

Hey, I just voted on a few of your objects. My only criticism: your instructions are far too good and polished. You should sandbag more, be arrogantly vague, to gain the respect of the hardmen.

squishy wrote:You have just discovered why most of the SP members vote 10 or not at all...the system does seem broken...and if you can't vote 10, you may want to join the rest of us in not voting for it at all...

amen to that

yep 10 or not at all ridiculous as that is

though the system is poorly structured, it seems to have an active following with certain members while many others like this person rarely vote.

results of image voting have a vague inconsistent relationship to image aesthetics.

some truly mediocre images rate high while many superb images are ignored from the time of submission quickly journeying off the front pages only to stagnate at the bottom of dark lost ignored voids

David
http://www.davidsenesac.com

Amazing! I keep hearing (in the threads) that people don't give a damn about votes!

In my view, all voting algorithms were expressly created by the SC - MLC.

Here we go again.

News Flashes:

Lots of people vote on pretty-looking, photoshopped images that have absolutely no informative value. Most POTD and POTW images fall into this category.

A good photo on SP should be good because it provides useful information and might, as a bonus, be pleasing to the eye.

SP is not a photography site.

Some very good photos here would look like crap on a wall but are excellent because they show route details and have good captions to go with them. These photos, of course, get little notice while Photoshop of the Day gets the drooling comments.

If you want to encourage good submissions, vote on mountain and route pages.