Forums/Feature Requests
Modify Voting System
Thailand Photos
posted this on November 02, 2010 06:56
With all the comments about malicious negative voting I'd like to offer up a solution that may put an end to these concerns.
I can think of only three reasons why someone would cast malicious negative votes…
1) There are those trouble makers that sites like Fotopedia are going to attract. They are mean pranksters that take pleasure in trying to sabotage an otherwise well behaved and responsible community. I am confident Fotopedia has systems in place to quickly identify and deal with people like this, as their pattern of conduct gives them away.
2) No doubt there are some here that, for whatever reason, do not like another. Their animosity toward a particular individual results in vindictive behavior, such as malicious negative voting. Again, I think it is very easy for Fotopedia staff to identify these individuals and deal with them privately.
3) Pure competition is the only other motivator I can think of for this type of behavior. It is reasonable to assume there are those that will vote down photos for the purpose of trying to elevate the status of their own. This behavior can be more difficult to detect, because there could be more than one doing the same thing within a given topic. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that two or more individuals might team up to collectively push out another.
A competitive environment tends to bring out the worst in people, even those that would otherwise be thought of as good hearted and fair. Unless the opportunity for such behavior is completely removed the temptation will find its way into some individuals' hearts. The only way I can see to remove such temptation is to eliminate the opportunity.
Thus, I'm suggesting Fotopedia modify the voting system so it prevents anyone from casting a negative vote within a collection they have one or more contributions. An individual would still be able to vote positive and report inappropriate content, but negative voting would not be allowed within that collection.
Asking people to withdraw from participation, when there is a real or perceived potential for bias, is common practice in societies. As much as I would like the freedom to vote either way, I am willing to accept this restriction in the interest of eliminating the seemingly growing concerns on the part of many. If this restriction is implemented I believe it will go a long way toward eliminating the speculation over what is motivating negative voting and greatly enhance the system's credibility.
Comments
I really do agree with Thailand Photos. Negative voting has no sense to me, only positive voting and abuse/defects reporting. A just posted photo does "born" with one vote, that's enough and if the community considers that photo a good one, will vote for it, if not will remain with only its author vote and could be removed automatically after a certain (prudential) time also automatically. I've lots of photos going up and down between top and candidates but nobody reported as "bad ones", so if they reached in some point a top status should remain there and the better ones will push mines if there are better ones, but one single negative vote make them go back to candidates, invalidating the "opinion" of the first four (besides of mine) positives votes.
Good idea, to remove the negative voting at all.
The problem is, if we have no negative voting, and one of my photos has the original 1 vote only for a month, then how am I to know if anyone has even looked at it?
I have found the negative voting system to be useful, because when I take a good look at the photo, I see that there is some problem with it, and either fix it, or delete it, if it cannot be fixed.
If one of your photos gets voted up, and subsequently voted down, you may find that those who voted it up, did not look at it as carefully as those who voted it down. Don't assume that there is some conspiracy taking place.
Hi Dan, I don't talk about conspiracy. A bad vote is a kind of "punishment" for the author, if you have found some problem (technical, not subjective) with an image you can report it, but because of your preference or visuat taste a vote shouldn't override somebody else's vote.
A positive vote is just that, someone voting up for a technically acceptable image. Fotopedia shouldn't be a kind of bidding system, an image (one respecting the quality chart) should be only accepted or not, and by "not" I don't mean to substract a positive vote, just to be "ignored" for whom doesn't like it, like in a museum.
An art object as a photography (IMO) shouldn't be the victim of a poll, rather, it should be voted or ignored, not "disliked".
Best regards,
I am not suggesting the elimination of negative voting completely. I too see value in having the ability to vote down photos. A good example would be a photo that made it in when the collection was new and now is not nearly as good as others that followed. A collection should be allowed to continuously evolve and negative voting plays an important role in that.
Even without negative voting, the end result will be much the same. The gap between the scores for the best photos, and the not so good photos, would grow wider over time, in the same way that it does now.
It's like trying to decide if we should be using a scale of 1 to 100, or 0 to 99. It makes no difference.
Sorry Thailand, I misunderstood you. Anyway,I'm totally positive about to remove the negative voting as I said and justified before.
In my opinion negative voting only reflects a kind of accounting system for an image and I think that's not the method to be used to "judge" a piece of art. In an art contest, the judges (in their minds) only use positive voting (and quality assurance) to evaluate AFAIK.
IMO too, a collection should evolve by its intrinsec quality (the basic quality rules) and by positive votings. In a real world gallery you just ignore the ones you don't like, you can't make anything that can end in the removal of the art piece itself from the gallery. You don't like it, you do ignore it, you don't speak with the gallery owner to suggest a possible removal of that image (to fall down from top to candidates).
When an image in Photopedia reach a "top" status, it should remain there because the opinion of those people who put it there must be respected. If you have a reason to report an image as "bad", you have the tool to make it, and the admins will consider your opinion, but your vote should never void another's vote. This is not maths, is about art.
Regards,
Sandro,
I completely understand and appreciate your point of view, if comparing Fotopedia to an art gallery, but it is not a gallery. Fotopedia is an encyclopedia, and photographers compete to gain acceptance into the the photo documentary. I actually like it that photos move up and down, in and out. It gives the project life, like a living document...ever changing and always featuring something new. But even if we use the art gallery analogy, I would suggest that no piece stays on the wall forever. It is eventually removed and replaced. At least here that decision is made by the collective. :-)
Thanks Thailand!
Fotopedia is a live document, and in certain articles (like "Flowers") the bar was raised to 10 votes for making top, so lot of images can be "removed" because that bar can be raised permanently, but in articles like some I posted (no such populars like "Flowers) there is almost no way to have a photo in "top condition" for much time with this system.
A permanently rising bar managed by the administrators will assure the best images to be on the top and we, the authors, will compete for being able to exceed the required bar.
This approach could result in articles with perhaps a minimum of 30 votes required wich would be great in terms of quality and popularity because the candidates will remain there, even if the bar is raised again, and the voters will be able to move'em up if they deserve that.
There is no sense to have articles with hundreads of images on top without raising the bar, the last ones will remain almost without visits because no much people will browse for hours in order to see them all, but if the bar is raised, a minor number of top images will be present and more candidates will be there to be voted or removed after certain ammount of time, perhaps automatically.
All of this without negative voting :)
I am agree, someone moust come up with a solution from fotopedia soon!
Following quoted my article from another forum;
ZERO points has been assigned by someone I very wonder who he OR she is ??
Because , I could not find what the reason behind of this, Zero points mean they did not where they were supposed to be, they did not deserve any point, in past I faced lots of event like this, most of (I believe) great picture eliminated with no reason ??
IMHO, maybe ,it is better if voter must be forced to put an detail about negative points by fotopedia ,such as "why you think the photo is not suitable for the subject" ,without reasons no one should not assign negative points without an explanation.
Agree with Hakki in the last paragraph, the negative voting or the act of flagging an image must have a mandatory comment attached to the vote in order to give a real feedback to the image author.
Hello all,
In many voting systems, like Fotopedia, negative votes are essential tools to maintain the quality of contents. The relative score of pictures is an important information but it's not enough in an encyclopedia like Fotopedia.
Many people contribute to the encyclopedia. Some members are occasionnal photographers who only take pictures during their holiday and whose pictures do not meet the highly quality standards of Fotopedia. We need scalable ways to reject the content that is not good enough to stay in the encyclopedia.
Remember that Fotopedia is a collaborative photo encyclopedia for humanity, not a social photo sharing site.
That said, we're working on improvements in the voting system that should improve the quality and usefulness of votes, including the negative ones.
That's a good news, Raphie. I'm glad that the voting systems is being revised.
I've written in another thread (http://help.fotopedia.com/entries/253286-votes-positive-and-negative) about the voting system used today in Fotopedia. For me it is not very well representative of the quality of each photography.
Moreover, when we just submitted a photo and it receives a negative vote, it goes to zero (culturally the same of null...). It can be taken a long long time for that photo could retrieve a positive vote, regardless of its quality, because this photo, having zero or negative vote, does not appear on the ribbon in the community front page.