SummitPost.org

yatsek wrote:Please just do not describe a 5/5 page as "the best ever." I think "almost very good to excellent" would make much more sense.

This is an excellent suggestion.

1: Poor

2: Below average/needs work

3: Fair

4: Good or very good

5: Excellent

To SP members-- I proposed the idea of on-page voting for images (as opposed to opening the pages to view and vote) as a way to encourage more voting on beta images, as I have long felt that image voting here tends to emphasize particular people and to emphasize photos that have little reason for being posted other than to be looked at. Hopefully, this will lead to more exposure and encouragement for those who are putting effort into mountain and route pages and other informative pages, as opposed to the many look-at-me albums.

I really like the current 10-choice voting system, and would prefer to keep it that way. In the five-vote system, a 4/5 would basically be 80%... But wouldn't someone prefer to have 90% (as in the 10-vote system)? I know I would.
(Yes, I understand that the number does not reflect the exact percentage of points towards members... That is a whole other debate for another time.)

If SP changes to a five-vote system for photos, I will likely find myself either only voting 5/5 for a photo or not voting at all. Changing from 10-vote to five-vote will actually discourage me from voting, not the opposite. In example, I can do the math in my head that a 3/5 vote is the equivalent of 60%, so I would be stuck when a person's photo might be more deserving of 70-75% but not good enough for 80%+. I would not want to punish someone with a vote that is definitely too low, nor would I want to reward someone with a vote that was too high for what the photo actually is. I won't bother.

I suspect I am not the only SP member who would vote even more extreme (5/5 or nothing at all) with the five-vote system.
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However, I really like the idea of being able to vote on a photo from a main page rather than opening every single photo. A big reason I have not voted on near as many photos as I would like is because it is too time-consuming for some busy people (like me) to filter through every single photo unless asked to do so.
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OTHER THINGS:
I have no preference regarding checks, dots, or stars for votes.
The half-star/half-dot idea is not worth exploring.
Putting icons (i.e. stars, checks, dots, etc.) instead of numbers is just trying to encourage more voting by covering up the obvious... what each vote is actually worth.
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SUMMARY:
I really like the on-page voting idea.
I really dislike the five-vote/five-star maximum idea.
I will find myself voting more often if the voting scheme remains 10-point voting and if on-page photo voting is allowed.

That's my two cents.

Bob Sihler wrote:4: Good or very good

5: Excellent

4 good

5 very good or excellent

"Excellent" would be sifted out from "very good" by receiving a large number of 5/5 votes, at least in theory.

Redwic wrote:I really like the current 10-choice voting system, and would prefer to keep it that way.

Yeah, but the entire purpose of this thread seems to be "changing" things for the better.

What one member perceives as "better" may not be better for ANOTHER member. I think we should put our "votes" up for a VOTE .....

As for the photos that have little reason for being posted, how about establishing limits on the number of photos submitted depending on power points collected? Something like this:

Power = Photos
0-10 = 100
11-20 = 200
…
91-100 = 1000
>100 = 1000 + 5 per extra power point

Redwic, I appreciate that fact that you made a well thought out post on this issue.

Redwic wrote:I really like the current 10-choice voting system, and would prefer to keep it that way. In the five-vote system, a 4/5 would basically be 80%... But wouldn't someone prefer to have 90% (as in the 10-vote system)? I know I would.

If the people of SummitPost were willing to be more thoughtful with how they voted, I'd actually agree with you on this case. But it is actually human nature to see the votes we now see because it is simply easier to not think about the difference between a 8/10 and a 9/10. The principles of the voting system is not to treat voting like serious grading, it's actual purpose is to sort content and show who appreciates what. Now there is of course room for criticism and opinions of a page needing more work. It's supposed to be thoughtful, but not too thoughtful.

Redwic wrote:I can do the math in my head that a 3/5 vote is the equivalent of 60%, so I would be stuck when a person's photo might be more deserving of 70-75% but not good enough for 80%+. I would not want to punish someone with a vote that is definitely too low, nor would I want to reward someone with a vote that was too high for what the photo actually is.

You bring up a very valid point. It might actually be smarter to round votes down and give them all a "boost". For example a 3/5 could be the same as a 7/10 in terms of score changing. One calculation method would be 6/10= 3/5 + 10%. Keep in mind that while Chad's algorithm significantly helped the situation, it wasn't perfect either. Right now a 6/10 sometimes boosts a score or sometimes lowers it. But if we worked the vote system to display to the user as a 3/5 but behind the scenes did some sort of 7/10 equivalent score boost or tweaked a 3/5 (which right now is a 6/10) to be lightly positive, that could work.

As for naming conventions, I personally like:

1/5: Bad
2/5: Needs Improvement
3/5: Decent
4/5: Good Quality
5/5: Excellent!

Most of the 1-5/10 part of the system is rarely ever used at all. A 1/10 or a 3/10 is not that damaging to the score anyways. We can encourage folks to use those lower votes by making them "not seem as bad" but is bad enough to show that the page needs work. Especially if flagging (needs major update vote) is used in addition to this (which will hence still show to the elves that the page is still in serious need of fixing). If a 3/5 lightly increases the score and is named "decent" it might encourage folks to actually use that vote. Obviously conformity will still rule for a while, but the exceptional might catch on as well as the newer generation of SP folks.

I don't believe anyone should be too concerned with the difference between a 7/10 or a 8/10. While it is a difference, we often list criteria in our heads to calculate whether a photo is bad, okay, good, or great. If one really wants to go beyond those bounds, they really ought to post a comment. Votes are nice and give us a rough idea of quality, commentary is where the heart of precise quality critiquing should come in. Redwic, I respect you wanting your vote to say a lot about a photo, but ease of use is also really important. The check box icon is a great example of showing ease of use. When activated (which is planned to be the default), it only gives you two options. Don't vote or vote 10/10 (or 5/5). While I'm annoyed that it has little flexibility, I am not opposed to it because it easily allows people to show their appreciation towards important photos.

The current system goes from "good" to "great" to "amazing" to "best ever". Some of these are kinda overkill like "best ever". The star system is not intended to be literally translated as a percentage in your head (e.g. this photo deserves a 75%). Instead it's meant to bring out easy conclusions, so if you think a page is decent, vote a 3/5. If you think it's good quality, vote a 4/5. When going to see a movie that has a rating of 3/5, that does not spell out to me that it's a bad movie. It literally speaks out to me as being decent, not great but it certainly ain't bad. If in doubt, vote the higher value if trying to decide between a 3/5 and a 4/5 (as in vote the 4/5). Nothing wrong with voting a good page with that kind of a vote. In this scenario also you don't have to "save your 5/5 for only the best". If SP had a period of nothing but amazing pages coming out, I believe that putting out those 5/5's is perfectly okay (from a guy who takes his voting seriously). Another part of the issue may be you (and others) being accustomed to 8/10 being regarded so highly and a 6/10 being considered low. In the review world that is not so much the case. If the voting system was an average, you would be absolutely right that a 3/5 would be bad. But in the cumulative system with the proper tweak it should help the score. We all know that the score result plays a big role in how one wishes to vote.

One might ask why not skip straight to like/dislike? We still want to give some dynamic range in showing one's appreciation/criticism. Anything that both saves the user time and attempts to be effective is what I believe is in SP's best interest.

yatsek wrote:As for the photos that have little reason for being posted, how about establishing limits on the number of photos submitted depending on power points collected?

Interesting idea. But I would barely not be able to contribute photos. My points are 591, subtracted by 100 which equals 491. This would equal 2,455. Add 1,000 to that value which equals 3,455. I currently have 4,013. Even if the calculation was a little nicer by having 591*5=2,955 and then +1,000 it would equal 3,955. I'd still be 58 photos above the budget. I figure I post good pictures. It would be a shame not to be able to post them. Now if we could apply this using smaller numbers to non attached images, then we'd have a effective system. This would force users who post lots of unattached photos to either attach some to an object or post less photos. This idea of course would still account in that users power points because we know high contributing members might have a few more "non attached images".

The method I mentioned above would call for photos to either be more useful, attached to a bad object, or a bad image attached to a good object. Either way this would better enforce better use of image posting and make bad images to be easier to spot. If a report system was created in addition to this, we would be rocking in terms of the fight to weed out bad photos. My personal recommendation is to create a "SummitPost Recommendation" (SPR) which sets the standards for quality of the site. This some what exists, but on a loosely defined level. While some of quality is indeed subjective, there is for sure certain qualities that all of us would agree would set something as either relevant or irrelevant, useful or inaccurate, and quality vs needing to look else where. The SPR is one of my visions for SummitPost. Much of the stage for it is already visible to some extent but not set in as an actual requirement.

I admit that part of my inspiration for this comes from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which "is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web".

What is the purpose of voting on images? More importantly, what should the purpose be? I believe that there are actually two cross-purposes at work here, and the importance of each varies by individual and by when they are looking at images. That is, there are some individuals who at times look at pictures strictly for their usefulness to help negotiate a route. Beta as it were. And there are some who are mostly interested in the beauty of the scene--the artistic merits of the image, as well as its value in motivating one to go to a particular place.

Yet, the voting system doesn't really emphasize this difference. I propose a radical departure for voting: Instead of a direct point system, a word descriptor with the points being derived from the word descriptor. It would work like this:

ARTISTIC IMAGE
National Geographic Quality--3 points
Postcard Quality--2 points
Snapshot Quality--1 point

BETA IMAGE
Guidebook Quality--3 points
Good Route Info--2 points
Incomplete/Unreliable Route Info--1 point

When a user sees an image he may choose one (and only one) of seven options (the six you see above, plus no vote obviously worth 0 points). When another user is searching for images, he is provided the option to filter based on artistic quality or beta, thus he should expect to see no (or few) pretty pictures of mountains when what he really wants is the various routes up.

Will there be users who will abuse this? I expect so. But the rest of us can chuckle at someone who votes "National Geographic Quality" on an image such as this ...

Josh Lewis wrote:

yatsek wrote:As for the photos that have little reason for being posted, how about establishing limits on the number of photos submitted depending on power points collected?

Interesting idea. But I would barely not be able to contribute photos. My points are 591, subtracted by 100 which equals 491. This would equal 2,455. Add 1,000 to that value which equals 3,455. I currently have 4,013. Even if the calculation was a little nicer by having 591*5=2,955 and then +1,000 it would equal 3,955. I'd still be 58 photos above the budget. I figure I post good pictures. It would be a shame not to be able to post them.

Point taken. Possible solutions:

0-10 power points = 100 pix
>10 power points = 10 pix per 1 p.p.

or the status of Exceptional Photographer awarded by the Elves to exceptional photographers such as Josh L.

Scott wrote:

If the point is to change the voting system so that everything and anything doesn't get a 10/10, just make the voter anonymous

It was already tried. There was way too much revenge voting, fake voting, etc. It was way too much work for the elves. People can't behave themselves.

To me, this points up the obvious flaws in any voting system: Make the voting anonymous and you get the bullshit games; make members accountable and the vast majority will only vote the maximum.

I don't think it makes any difference what we do. I value the voting as an indication of which of my photos are viewed as better than others of mine; I don't need an ego boost from having one of mine voted higher than someone else's. Even as a relative indicator, the system is still flawed: photos on popular mountain pages score higher than ones on less popular pages, which includes canyons. Photos that show climbing routes and other useful information don't score as high as sunsets, etc.

Scoring pages doesn't really do much either. Comments and corrections are more useful, if the page owner actually pays any attention to them.

I recall the old 4-star system from the olden days, then the 10-point system, and now this presumed 5-star system. I don't stay awake nights worrying about the difference between a 9 and a 10, or 4 stars vs 5. It only interests me from the "voting theory", both mathematical and psychological, aspects.

Fact: any voting system imposed relies on subjective criteria, unique to everyone individually. So saying 4 stars should be "Very Good" or 4 stars should be "Good" is cutting hairs. Four or five stars is what you feel it should be at that moment. That being said, the fewer choices (5 stars vs 10 pts) the better, in my opinion.

Fact: any voting system is prone to some abuse. Truthfully, how many people deal with "fake" or "revenge" voting on a regular basis? I say the percentage is small enough to be negligible. Most people here vote generally in the same broadest terms so that it works, although never as finely as we may like.

I put up a few pages on rocky Arizona desert peaks and am lucky to get 10 votes (thank you to those who do), while someone puts up a snowy, pointy Alps summit and boom, 30 votes. So yes, mountaineering favors the snowier, pointier "traditional" peaks. It's just a fact, and I am fine with that. I like good useful information and appreciate it when I see it from someone else who took the time to include it for a peak, and I try to do the same in return. I really don't care if I get x or 2x or x^2 or even x^2 + 2x votes, as long as the info is solid.

So I'll go with whatever system is imposed. If someone has a beef with me and my pages or photos and votes me 1 point or 1 star, so be it. I really don't care, and I just move on to the next task.

Buz Groshong wrote:
I don't think it makes any difference what we do.

You might be outnumbered on this, but does the majority actually rule ?

Buz Groshong wrote:Scoring pages doesn't really do much either.

It doesn't do squat, UNLESS you can get the member's attention. When members sign up, they should understand one of the purposes of SP is to contribute useful information and to respect the audience.

surgent wrote:
I put up a few pages on rocky Arizona desert peaks and am lucky to get 10 votes (thank you to those who do), while someone puts up a snowy, pointy Alps summit and boom, 30 votes.

Arizona is under-rated! Popularity has a way of swaying votes, but that's when I jump in the car and photograph a popular national park in southern Utah .....

surgent wrote:I recall the old 4-star system from the olden days, then the 10-point system, and now this presumed 5-star system. I don't stay awake nights worrying about the difference between a 9 and a 10, or 4 stars vs 5. It only interests me from the "voting theory", both mathematical and psychological, aspects.

Fact: any voting system imposed relies on subjective criteria, unique to everyone individually. So saying 4 stars should be "Very Good" or 4 stars should be "Good" is cutting hairs. Four or five stars is what you feel it should be at that moment. That being said, the fewer choices (5 stars vs 10 pts) the better, in my opinion.

Fact: any voting system is prone to some abuse. Truthfully, how many people deal with "fake" or "revenge" voting on a regular basis? I say the percentage is small enough to be negligible. Most people here vote generally in the same broadest terms so that it works, although never as finely as we may like.

I put up a few pages on rocky Arizona desert peaks and am lucky to get 10 votes (thank you to those who do), while someone puts up a snowy, pointy Alps summit and boom, 30 votes. So yes, mountaineering favors the snowier, pointier "traditional" peaks. It's just a fact, and I am fine with that. I like good useful information and appreciate it when I see it from someone else who took the time to include it for a peak, and I try to do the same in return. I really don't care if I get x or 2x or x^2 or even x^2 + 2x votes, as long as the info is solid.

So I'll go with whatever system is imposed. If someone has a beef with me and my pages or photos and votes me 1 point or 1 star, so be it. I really don't care, and I just move on to the next task.

Excellent comments (and excellent attitude). By the way don't complain about the few votes your AZ peaks get; except for the few exceptional peaks, those here in VA probably get fewer votes than those in AZ.

Here's an idea that might actually help with these voting "problems": Use the number of votes an item gets divided by the number of unique views (or member views) as a factor in determining it's score. That way the non-votes count against it; sort of a way of anonymous down-voting that shouldn't get abused.

Fact: any voting system is prone to some abuse.

True.

Truthfully, how many people deal with "fake" or "revenge" voting on a regular basis? I say the percentage is small enough to be negligible.

When it was anonymous, it was actually a lot. Certainly not negligible. It was enough to drive the previous owners away for a while, or at least to make them ask not to be emailed anymore.

Comments and corrections are more useful, if the page owner actually pays any attention to them.

True. Also, the "Needs Major Updates" button is very important.

Most votes are actually pretty meaningless. With non-anonymous voting, even more so people vote 10/10 on everything including almost completely blank pages and spam photos. Usually it’s the same members doing it over and over again. Perhaps I shouldn’t list them by name though. For the offenders, their vote weight can be manually adjusted, but this presents other ethical issues, such as who gets to decide if a vote is dumb or mindless.

To me, votes shouldn’t be only some kind of “award”, but are truly needed to flag the bad stuff out there. There are a lot of mountain, route, and/or area/range pages seriously either lacking in details or inaccurate. Accuracy is better than pretty pictures.

Make sure to use the “Needs Major Updates” as well as the comments section.

If you see a page that is lacking or inaccurate, please flag it regardless of its score. Also, don't be afraid to use the comments section for constructive criticism.

As for things like photo voting, to me this isn't so important. Page owners can detach whatever photos they find meaningless anyway.

Here's an idea that might actually help with these voting "problems": Use the number of votes an item gets divided by the number of unique views (or member views) as a factor in determining it's score. That way the non-votes count against it; sort of a way of anonymous down-voting that shouldn't get abused.

This has been looked at and discussed. It has its own problems such as with adopted pages, et al, as well as pages that are linked to other sites and used by the news media. For example, if someone gets rescued on so and so mountain and the news story mentions the mountain's name, SP hits typically skyrocket, all the hits from non members. Also, some members have their pages linked to other sites, whether they did so or not. I know the Nepalese Government, for example has links to some SP pages, and UFO sites link one mountain in Nevada (just a few examples). It was and is an interesting idea, but it does present some real problems.