Voting issues

[Bailey03]

It does seem odd that changing the number of votes needed for ranking is that difficult... but I imagine the issue is more how it affects all of the previously submitted work and rankings. It's a shame that 50 votes is so hard to get these days. As mentioned, submitting into the discuss submissions thread will probably help. Posting a WIP thread and links there helps too... but I've been running of those for almost two years now and doubt I've got 50 people who read it, much less read it regularly. My stuff often hovers around 35-40 votes and tends to break 50 only if it's been lucky enough to get into the 'Top Last 7 Days.' The worst is when a figure sits at 48 or 49 votes for days.

But I think even P&P has voting issues. If your work doesn't show up in the 'popular projects' section I'm guessing you may have trouble hitting their limit for it to count. One of my earliest pieces on there is still sitting at 9 votes, so no actual score posted. Plus, if you don't have many votes the score won't be that high, even if they are all gold votes. To actually get a gold score I think you need around 50 votes or more. Most of my work has received 15-25 votes. It's just a different system with it's own positive features and negative ones. Of course you can't really snipe there, at least not effectively, so a lot of people prefer it. I do like P&P, but I also really like the forum aspect of CMON. So I'll continue to post to both sites.

I understand the frustration with the voting here, but with so many figures to look through I tend to focus on the higher scoring ones. I'm not going to spend hours sorting through low scoring figures, it's just not worth it to me. Of course if someone at that level posts a WIP thread I'm much more likely to chime in with advice and feedback. At least there you can get more of a discussion going. That's generally been my advice whenever I talk to newer people about CMON. The gallery is fine for what it is, but don't focus on the score and if you want to improve the forum is a much better place for feedback.

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

And that's about the best, most balanced answer I have heard concerning voting on this and other sites. I agree, I used to vote on random submissions, but I got frustrated with those users who post fifteen pics of the same thing and I have to vote on all of them to move on. Now if I click on it, I vote on it. It's really frustrating when you have 1000 views but 20 votes. It's like, come on CMON, you're looking at it, now vote take the additional .5 seconds and vote for it.

With P&P, I can't even vote yet. You need so many gallery submissions first. But I like that...how many people here on CMON vote low on great work and don't even have the balls to put anything up themselves.

But as David says, it's really about the forums. There are about two dozen of us regular posters and I enjoy all of your comments and beautiful works of art.

 

[AndyG]

And now it's on 10 votes David

 

[chaos spawn]

I just had a look at P&P. One thing that meets the eye is that every submission is top notch, very impressing and inspiring. Too bad you can only sign up when you are invited (could anybody invite me, please ;D).

@voting issues: Many of my pictures have less than 50 votes, but I dont really care about my ranking here (who cares if I am #5000 of 9000 or #4000?). The thing that bothers me is that so little people vote at all. I would like to see more votes and more comments. How can we get more people to leave comments? (Including myself )

 

[Ritual]

I think the site is too big for people to bother voting and commenting on stuff other than amazing things or friends' work. Back in the days this site used to be small enough that it was doable to keep track on all the stuff that was added. Quite a lot of users spent an hour or so regularly (often daily) going through all the new stuff, voting on everything and writing comments on some. There were regulars here who had voted on every submission and quite a lot that had voted for a very large percentage. It simply isn't doable any more. Thus, I think a lot of people simply won't bother at all.

 

[Avelorn]

What's your blog Avelorn? I'll add you to my Blog roll P&P is great, but my god does it take some time get get invites to give out. I've had one to give out the whole time I've belonged so far and a list of people I want to hand them out to as long as my arm!

www.svenjonsson.net. It's far from strictly miniatures though and much is in Swedish... and hasn't been updated much recently.

There. Nailed that salespitch...

 

[Century]

So, I clearly don't post here very much, though I've been using CMoN in some capacity for many years. However, this thread caught my eye and I wanted to chime in.

As some people mentioned, it's really the number and quality of the submissions that's the problem. How many minis are posted a day, maybe 50 - 100, voting on them all is difficult. Coupled with this is just how bad many of the pictures are. I'm not referring to the painting, but the actual picture. Out of focus, bad backgrounds, horrible lighting, awkward angles, it's exhausting to look at. My hope for years has been that CMoN would institute some form of quality control with the pics. You don't need to be a professional photographer, or even have specialized equipment, to take a good picture, and there are plenty of tutorials online that will show you how to do it. It shows respect for your audience (the voters) to not just dash off a quick cell phone pic and post it. Many people can and do take great pics of their models, but these are buried under a mountain of sloppy pics.

I know the philosophy is to be as inclusive as possible, but there should be some restrictions and standards. My recommendations would be:

1) Allow no more than two photos per model, and only if one is really too restricting. A single mini can be well presented in a 3-4 picture montage, we don't need separate submissions for each angle. Dioramas may need more, so they can use an extra submission. Making a montage is really not that difficult and there are free programs to help you do it. I hate coming across a random rear shot of a model as separate pictures are in no way linked, except through the artist. If five pictures of the same model are posted only the front angle should be kept and the rest discarded.

2) No more than 3 submissions a day. While you may want to show off each member of that space marine squad you just painted, I don't really want to look at 10 blood angels in a row painted by the same painter. I've seen some painters drop dozens of photos on the site in a single day (usually a commission painter after finishing an army). Again, it's exhausting to wade through, and I'd rather be looking at many artists than a single one for 20 pictures in a row.

3) Quality control on the pictures. Again, I'm not referring to the painting, but the photo itself. If people aren't going to take the time to at least crop their photo down to reasonable proportions, why should people take the time to vote? It takes away from those who did take the time to properly set up and process their photos. Some minimum standards (lighting, focus, background, cropping) are not unreasonable and would go a long way to helping.

While these suggestions, together or individually, will not fix the problem they may help make voting feel like less of a chore.

 

[Webmonkey]

I hadn't really checked on my number of voters, but since you guys mentioned it,. I went and had a look. It seems all of mine are at 48 or 49 votes. They've been up for a while, so I'm guessing that I've exhausted the regular crowd and waiting for newbies to come across them.

Dragonsreach was actually the first person here to vote and/or comment on my stuff,. which was cool of him to do for a newbie to the site. He also pointed over here to the forums. The people have all turned out to be nice enough, and even encouraging (which helps those of us that view ourselves as crap-tastic painters)

So anyways,. I just wanted to say "thanks" to all you guys, for bringing me in and making me feel welcome. (not all forums are this,.. warm,.. if that makes sense)

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

Century...yes....YES..... YEEESSSSS!!!!

i especially agree with not wanting to see every member of you space marine squad. In fact, today there were like 30 submissions from the same guy. All of like 4-5 point quality. Made me stop voting.

 

[AndyG]

I hadn't really checked on my number of voters, but since you guys mentioned it,. I went and had a look. It seems all of mine are at 48 or 49 votes. They've been up for a while, so I'm guessing that I've exhausted the regular crowd and waiting for newbies to come across them.

Dragonsreach was actually the first person here to vote and/or comment on my stuff,. which was cool of him to do for a newbie to the site. He also pointed over here to the forums. The people have all turned out to be nice enough, and even encouraging (which helps those of us that view ourselves as crap-tastic painters)

So anyways,. I just wanted to say "thanks" to all you guys, for bringing me in and making me feel welcome. (not all forums are this,.. warm,.. if that makes sense)

Votes on your stuff now should be up to fifty with some of them nice work by the way:good:

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

Lol..all of Webmonkey's submissions are at exactly 50 votes now. Good work.

 

[Jike Ichi]

Why not simply freeze the score at 50 votes? You get a final score and that's that. This way new minis would get some more feedback.
Of course if people don't like you or the mini they can lower your score easily even if it's high quality painting. Still, this would solve the "problem" of having to vote for everything. Whats the point of another 10 for a great mini from 2003? Freeze the scores, leave the comment section open.

Having said that, I really like the gallery. It get's me in a creative mood to paint my pile of minis too! Most of the time I use the search button to see ideas for special miniatures. f.e "Carnifex". I don't care very much about my votes. I don't even know how many votes are on them already? Guess I'm way under 50. I really care about comments though. I think that there used to be more willingness to put on some critic or idea in the comments when I joined here. Even some bad painted minis like my old Eldar posts got comments. For which I'm thankful and got me to do better. I have a higher score now with my latest minis, but no comments. Focus should be on comments in my opinion.

If you don't like a photo or that someone posts 20 pics of the same. LEAVE A COMMENT ABOUT IT!

 

[nels0nmac]

There seems to be some good suggestions on here for improving the system. With regard to the quality and quantity of images, there are currently no guidelines in the FAQ section about what is acceptable other than image size. That would be the ideal place to point people towards the free image manipulation software that allows cropping or montages. Restricting the number of submissions per day could also help, with those paying the subscription allowed more than those who are not.

Freezing the score at 50 votes ??? Hmmm not sure - that could allow vote padders to reach a high score with no chance of anybody being able to redress the situation. A better way would be to chance the voting algorithm to show fewer of the older submissions.

 

[Jike Ichi]

A better way would be to chance the voting algorithm to show fewer of the older submissions.

Yeah, maybe a better option. Close voting after 2 years for example!?

 

[Ritual]

I think the current algorithm already favours submissions with less than 50 votes.

Also, I wouldn't hold my breath for any changes to be made of the voting system. The voting system has been debated by forum users constantly for as long as I've been a member here, and not much have changed. Most of the suggestions raised in this thread have been made several times in the past. The creators of CMoN simply don't want to change the site from what the original idea was.

 

[Bailey03]

If changing the scoring from needing 50 votes down to 30 votes would require a rewriting of the whole system, I can only imagine stopping voting after a certain number or time limit would be an equally large rewrite.

As for quality control, there was a thread maybe a year ago about that. I agree with a lot of the idea behind it but unfortunately any implementation of it makes this site more elitist and less inclusive. The best solution I have is to just ignore those photos. Multiple posting of the same figure instead of a montage, if it's really good I'll vote on just one otherwise I skip it. Out of focus pictures, no cropping, or unfinished work... well, if picture implies that the poster doesn't care about the subject then why should I? But to actually have the moderators reject images is going to turn a lot of young artists off from this site. Hopefully as they improve they'll start to get the hang of how to make quality posts.

I fully agree that it is still frustrating to see. You can put together a nice photo setup for $10-15 and get decent photos with even a cheap point and shoot camera. There are plenty of tutorials out there, MassiveVoodoo has some nice ones and I posted a description of my cheap-o setup on my WIP page. Good pictures are always helpful, but especially so if you want those top scores.

 

[Webmonkey]

Thanks for the votes guys!!!

 

[Stewsayer]

Unfortunately an unwillingness to change, improve and innovate points to an eventual slide into obscurity. It seems many are already deserting CMON for other sites like P&P. I'm over the voting system and the scores are no bother to me at all. I prefer the direct feedback and help I get in the WIP forums.

Also I suck at taking pics of my stuff. And that's regardless of the tutorials I've read and seen. I had been considering paying a photographer to take pics of my best pieces but I'm pretty sure its not worth it just for the score and the votes.

 

[KruleBear]

Some excellent ideas here. And as was mentioned there are so many submissions i find it overwhelming at times to give a proper score/critique. I make a note of scoring minis being worked on in a wip (especially if a link to the submission is provide) and usually a couple more during that time. But i do not go out of my way to score a bunch of minis for several reasons you guys have mentioned.

What would an ideal scoring system look like in your minds? In particular i would like to see votes limited to one member vote per mini---with the ability to edit your vote. And maybe an opportunity to submit in a couple different categories....say newbie, experienced, or competition level.

And WebMonkey...voted on your gallery

 

[Webmonkey]

Thanks KB!!!