A little irritated by the voting system...

[Adept]

Now, let me preface this by saying I hope this isn\'t an issue that has been raised a hundred times, and I hope this is the right forum for it. My apologies if I\'m unwittingly beating a dead horse here.

I\'m a little bit upset with the way the voting system works. I don\'t mean the mechanics of the scoring system, but the way the next pic you view is \'chosen\'. I\'ve spent a couple of hours over the course of the weekend browsing CMoN, looking for inspiration as I normally do before I start a new project.

What I\'ve noticed is that, out of the 116,000+ pictures here, I\'ve repeatedly seen the same pictures over and over again. There has been two or three that I must have seen more than a dozen times each! This can be quite frustrating. It\'s like the pictures I\'m being shown are being selected from a very narrow pool.

Is this a common complaint? What is the go here?

 

[uberdark]

nope it actually isnt. all you have to do is set the pics you want to view at votes between 9-10.

hope this helps.

 

[War Griffon]

At first I was going to say yes you are flogging a dead horse but then I read on and came to the crunch of your gripe and it is not so much a gripe of the voting system but how the submissions are chosen

This is done completely at random although having said that it has been tweaked so that you will see submissions with less than 50 votes before you start seeing some of the older stuff.

You can narrow down what you see by category (below the voting score buttons) but this can mean that in some categories you may have voted on everything quite quickly compared to others. Also whether you vote logged in or not can also make a difference.

Bare in mind as well though that some people submit more than one photo of their figures so you could well see several photos of the same mini by the same person.

On the whole once you have voted on a submission you shouldn\'t then see that photo again unless you are one of the few that has voted on everything.

 

[Fizl]

I believe it also caches a group of unseen pictures, so if you are quick at voting you would see the prevoted ones again until the cache refreshes

Shaz

 

[Amazon warrior]

I think you can also choose not to see minis from certain companies, but I think you only get that option if you\'re a paid-up member. Or am I wrong? ???

By the way, is there much that can be done for people who submit lots of images of the same mini? I don\'t mind so much if it\'s a big, complex diorama, or whatnot, but it\'s incredibly annoying to be presented with 8 different views of the same night goblin (or whatever). I usually end up marking down any subsequent images, but that also doesn\'t seem fair- after all, it might be quite well-painted. I just wish it was all one image.

 

[Wren]

Originally posted by Adept
I\'ve spent a couple of hours over the course of the weekend browsing CMoN, looking for inspiration as I normally do before I start a new project.

Were you actually voting, or just hitting the > next arrow? If you actually vote on something you should stop seeing it repeatedly. If you don\'t vote on it, the bias of the system to show minis that have less than 50 votes more often will mean you\'ll keep seeing those until they get 50 votes (and then you\'ll repeatedly see the next crop of new minis).

The other common problem that happens is you can end up having stuff selected on the viewing screen without knowing it. Some selections severely limit the pool of submissions that will show up. I find if I\'ve done any Browse for specific stuff (certain person, manufacturer, rating, etc.) my selections get \'stuck\' and I have to reset them.

What I mean is look under the red Vote bar, and you\'ll see four pull-down selections you can make. Category, Manufacturer and Competition should be set to All and But not to None if you want to view from the complete pool of pictures.

If your category gets stuck on Sci Fi and your Manufacturer on a small company you might only be pulling from a dozen or so pictures.

 

[Hinton]

Originally posted by Amazon warrior
By the way, is there much that can be done for people who submit lots of images of the same mini? I don\'t mind so much if it\'s a big, complex diorama, or whatnot, but it\'s incredibly annoying to be presented with 8 different views of the same night goblin (or whatever).

Oh, how I wish there was some way to stop that! Unfortunately, the mods probably see dozens - if not hundreds - of submissions each day, so it\'s probably difficult to remember if they\'ve seen it before or not. Also, one mod may approve a couple images of a mini and then another one approves the rest, so they don\'t know about it.

Now, those that are new can be forgiven since they may not know how to do it; with others though, they\'re either being lazy or they\'re trying to buff their ranking (and yes, I\'ve seen minis that had multiple submissions that were pulling low to high 8\'s. I mean, are people really that desperate to up their ranking that they\'re willing to fudge a little? Are scores really that important? Shouldn\'t the whole point of the scoring system be so that you can use it as a guide to see how you\'ve improved?)

But really, it\'s not that hard to make a single image, people. There are articles here that show how to do it. Almost every photo program out there has some way to make multi-angle single photos. Take the time to create a single photo with multiple angles so we can see the whole mini without clogging the gallery. (And for the love of pants please, PLEASE, give it a name!)

Pardon the tirade and the minor thread-jacking, but this really burns my biscuits.

 

[johnboyjjb]

If I see multiple images I try to always point them towards the new GIMP article in a comment. If you can\'t follow the good step by step instructions in a free article that uses a free program, then you deserve whatever you get.

 

[Amazon warrior]

Originally posted by Hinton
(And for the love of pants please, PLEASE, give it a name!)

Agreed! lol

I know it\'s not that simple, but perhaps if voters let a mod know when there\'s a multi-post, and the mod sends a gentle message about making a single image and avoiding multiple posts? Mind you, I know the mods are busy people so I can see that they wouldn\'t be thrilled with the extra work.

My free image maniplator of choice is Irfanview. It has a really easy-to-use \"Create panorama image\" function, and it automatically scales the pictures so they tile neatly.

 

[No Such Agency]

Originally posted by Hinton
(And for the love of pants please, PLEASE, give it a name!)

I agree. I say from now on, any \"Another mini\" submissions should automatically be renamed \"Steve Soggypants\" and start with a score of 3. I\'m sick of it too.

 

[borg]

I agree. I say from now on, any \"Another mini\" submissions should automatically be renamed \"Steve Soggypants\" and start with a score of 3. I\'m sick of it too.

Most of the time, the mods will fix it if time allows, and again most of the time people don\'t take the time to name their submissions and leave it as \"another mini\" do get punished by receiving low scores.

It does puzzle me somewhat too as this site is all about show and tell, and the nicer you are and more effort to put into the presentation normally gets rewarded with higher scores and more comments. So the people that do the \"another mini\" thing probably does not know or does not care
???

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by Hinton

Oh, how I wish there was some way to stop that! Unfortunately, the mods probably see dozens - if not hundreds - of submissions each day, so it\'s probably difficult to remember if they\'ve seen it before or not. Also, one mod may approve a couple images of a mini and then another one approves the rest, so they don\'t know about it.

I do normally approve MOST images, however duplicates don\'t always come together or sometimes even close together. Most times I can remember a duplicate and will search it out and correct any approvals I\'ve done.
However, when I get 2300(*) images left of the same mini by a newbie I have to be very careful in a not getting trigger happy and deleting any of the wrong ones.
The way the system is set moderators usually find a number of images/comments awaiting approval which we clear to zero. Differing timezones mean that we are rarely in approving at the same time.

Multiple images of the same mini from 360 degrees are normally approved and a PM sent to the poster suggesting that they will get better reception and votes if the combine their miniatures into one image.

There are and have been instances of overkill on submissions of images and I have been very judicious on \"pruning\" to ensure the the poster gets the best result, as have the other moderators.

As regards the \"Another Mini\" or \"Une Autre Image\" and it\'s language variations, I personally regard that as the posters responsibility and will very rarely make any amendments. If they don\'t \"respect\" their own painting enough to name it correctly then why should I put it right?

Very occasionally I have had to amend some of the text submitted with a miniatures photo, mostly when it is obvious that English is not the primary language and he resultant translation is \"Skewed\".

My \"major gripes\"are mostly about people who will not bother to ensure that the images are sized correctly. I see up to 20 a day sometimes and it can take several attempts to resize them to fit often with resultant drop in image quality.


(* Slight Exaggeration )

 

[freakinacage]

Originally posted by No Such Agency

Originally posted by Hinton
(And for the love of pants please, PLEASE, give it a name!)

I agree. I say from now on, any \"Another mini\" submissions should automatically be renamed \"Steve Soggypants\" and start with a score of 3. I\'m sick of it too.

an excellent answer to an annoying problem!!

 

[airhead]

I agree that the multiple submissions can get annoying. I remember one set where I saw the same dragon from every 5 degrees all the way around. Could have made an animated .gif and had the full circle.

The first one or two I voted failly. After that it was -1 for each time I saw the mini. Too bad I could not vote with negative numbers.