There is also, always, the problem arising of people just not being able to take a really good photo of a mini, or not having photoshop to make it more presentable with layers and all, or like me, a combination of the two.
I\'m a horrible photographer.
I can\'t figure photoshop out (even with those tutorials in our own forums).
It hates me.
Granted, I don\'t post my work very often.
I know, for example, that people that look at my early post, the Reaper Fire Demon, have generally said \'7\', or \'6-7\', and it\'s sitting at.. last time I looked, 5.1 or so.
My photography bites. It counts against me, because you can only rate what you can actually see.
Similarly, some of StarFyre\'s stuff, having seen it up close and personal, and compared to the pictures here, I would say are under-rated (No, Sanjay, I\'m not giving examples - you already know which ones I\'m talking about)
Now, there\'s another issue here. Making people aware of sniping is one thing. But, similarly, using the opposite end of the spectrum to raise said awareness is just the wrong way to go about it.
Yes, there are many threads about sniping. But dig a little deeper in the forums, and read some of those threads, and there are a like number of complaints about \'padding\' votes.
Worst of all, IMHO, is the addressing it as if \'we\', the folk of CMON are doing the sniping, as a broad generalization. There may be some CMONers that snipe. I don\'t know.
Personally, if I give a rating of 4 or lower, I comment. And as ever, one has to bear in mind that what \'I\' (meaning the painter in question) consider to be \'tabletop\' does not mean that everyone has the same opinion of what makes it \'tabletop\'.
Go a step further, and we come to what I\'ve come to think of as \'The NSA factor\'....
It\'s cool mini or NOT. The painting isn\'t always the only thing being judged. If the mini\'s just stupid-looking, that\'s going to take away from its score in some folk\'s eyes. If you\'ve converted something, and the viewers don\'t think the conversion works, they\'re going to reflect that in their score.
If you\'ve tried a horrible colour scheme, but done it well (neon green and hot pink, just as an example), it\'s going to hurt our eyes, and that\'ll be reflected in the scoring.
Anonymous voting, whether it be for padding or sniping, happens. We can\'t point fingers either way, save at people who make a concerted effort to affect \'the system\', one way or another.
It isn\'t perfect, but it\'s what we\'ve got. CMON is a service provided to us by people who love miniatures, who take the time out of their lives to keep this wonderful site up and running for us.
They don\'t demand payment from us to help them out. They ask it of us, and I, for one, am happy to help in supporting it, even if I don\'t post a lot of my work here.
Attempts to illustrate a point, I think, by mucking the system, is insulting to our hosts. It\'s like walking into someone\'s house in dog poo covered boots and making a point of walking on the new carpets, because you didn\'t like the colour the owner chose.
I\'m a horrible photographer.
I can\'t figure photoshop out (even with those tutorials in our own forums).
It hates me.
Granted, I don\'t post my work very often.
I know, for example, that people that look at my early post, the Reaper Fire Demon, have generally said \'7\', or \'6-7\', and it\'s sitting at.. last time I looked, 5.1 or so.
My photography bites. It counts against me, because you can only rate what you can actually see.
Similarly, some of StarFyre\'s stuff, having seen it up close and personal, and compared to the pictures here, I would say are under-rated (No, Sanjay, I\'m not giving examples - you already know which ones I\'m talking about)
Now, there\'s another issue here. Making people aware of sniping is one thing. But, similarly, using the opposite end of the spectrum to raise said awareness is just the wrong way to go about it.
Yes, there are many threads about sniping. But dig a little deeper in the forums, and read some of those threads, and there are a like number of complaints about \'padding\' votes.
Worst of all, IMHO, is the addressing it as if \'we\', the folk of CMON are doing the sniping, as a broad generalization. There may be some CMONers that snipe. I don\'t know.
Personally, if I give a rating of 4 or lower, I comment. And as ever, one has to bear in mind that what \'I\' (meaning the painter in question) consider to be \'tabletop\' does not mean that everyone has the same opinion of what makes it \'tabletop\'.
Go a step further, and we come to what I\'ve come to think of as \'The NSA factor\'....
It\'s cool mini or NOT. The painting isn\'t always the only thing being judged. If the mini\'s just stupid-looking, that\'s going to take away from its score in some folk\'s eyes. If you\'ve converted something, and the viewers don\'t think the conversion works, they\'re going to reflect that in their score.
If you\'ve tried a horrible colour scheme, but done it well (neon green and hot pink, just as an example), it\'s going to hurt our eyes, and that\'ll be reflected in the scoring.
Anonymous voting, whether it be for padding or sniping, happens. We can\'t point fingers either way, save at people who make a concerted effort to affect \'the system\', one way or another.
It isn\'t perfect, but it\'s what we\'ve got. CMON is a service provided to us by people who love miniatures, who take the time out of their lives to keep this wonderful site up and running for us.
They don\'t demand payment from us to help them out. They ask it of us, and I, for one, am happy to help in supporting it, even if I don\'t post a lot of my work here.
Attempts to illustrate a point, I think, by mucking the system, is insulting to our hosts. It\'s like walking into someone\'s house in dog poo covered boots and making a point of walking on the new carpets, because you didn\'t like the colour the owner chose.
