I reckon its simple as going back to the old and removing the Anonymous aspect.
There would be less votes and finger pointing sure, but we would be able to see peoples true colors, and THEN the votes do mean something to the artist. If a person they respect votes them 5* they can personally judge that as a sweet result, or if someone they think is a crap artist votes them 1* then they can better ignore it.
I think that one problem may be that people use the rating system for different purposes. I created a poll thread here about what you use voting for.
One thing about comments, it is a lot more work to write a thoughtful comment than it is to give a simple rating. If I had to write comments for everything it would be a lot more work, and I probably would not visit the site as much.
It is also a lot more simple to quantify stars than comments. If someone is working on something with commercial purposes, the star rating might be much more important than the individual comments.
Another thing to consider is that writing a reply might be a huge amount of work for someone who is not comfortable with English.
I am afraid it would not be that simple. On one hand, removing the Anonymous aspect would give the voters more responsibility. This is good. It would be harder for people to give one star to somebody’s work just because they disagree with the overall rating of it.
On the other hand, some artists on the forum are friends to each other. If someone is very respectable in the community, people might want to give his/her work a better mark just for the sake of a good relationship. We all are humans afterwords 
I guess, the Anonymous aspect is essential for an independent thought.
My wip thread shows 4 stars on my user panel but inside the wip forums no stars at all are displayed. Could this have something to do with the new system too?
Changing the old system is the right way i think, as this 1 star troll thing was quite common. There isn´t of course a perfect voting system that everybody will love and that´ll give a 100% save rating, as ratings themselves will always be subjective.
I don´t know if this was mentioned before, what about a 3 to 5 star voting system?
This way a 5 star work can´t be voted down too easy and you still have some liberty inside your rating.
Though i don´t know if art really can or should be judged, the rating provides a guideline and also lets you give props to artwork you enjoy, what is a good thing i think. :bounce:
It is not serious to pretend you can as easily post a reply than give stars. This new system comes even more than before into the way where there are only good comments, and never crits for anything.
I won’t ever comment on something worth one star, because I don’t want to be rude, and I’m not alone. What annoys me the most is that those terrible poser pictures will keep getting their stupid good comments and no one will tell them that it sucks.
I have seen work worth 3, 2 or 1 stars with only (and a lot of) good comments, where there were obvious flaws, and nobody has the nuts or the willing to give bad crits, especially when the work is done by a well-known member.
There is just no critique here anymore.
I completely agree with that! I think the old system must be restored. Maybe it would be useful to leave only three marking choices instead of five but we definitely need some variety. Not just simple “I love it!” And it would be awesome to be able to see how many people actually voted. This is one story if you have a certain mark because five friends gave it to you, and it is a totally different matter if two thousand people gave you the same mark.
Please, restore the old system!! i was watching the 3d stills section, and saw this thread with 5 stars… http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=132&t=759687
With all my respect, typically, this score doesn 't mean anything for me if i consider numbers of stills without stars… which deserve a very good score.
Im just curious here. In this new Love it voting system, there are two vote values, 5 and 4 (star).
Initially, I thought that the first Love it vote might always have a value of 4-stars (down-vote?) to create a grading range (from 4.95 to approaching 5.0) based on the subsequent number of 5-star Love it votes. I soon noticed, in the 3d showcase gallery, there are 2 images with no 4-star rated votes (as of this post) and some images that have two and three 4-point down-votes. One entry, e.g. Joel Mongeons Bust Gallery, had one down-vote at 33 votes and later went to two 4-star down-votes at 47 votes. Again, some entries have 3 down-votes.
What is the determining factor for the 4-star down-vote value, or the zero down-vote value for some images?
Excuse me, I don’t follow. What are you talking about? You are saying: “In this new Love it voting system, there are two vote values, 5 and 4 (star).” As far as I can see, there is only one vote value - “I love it!” button. (Please, see the attachment)
You are saying: “One entry, e.g. Joel Mongeons Bust Gallery, had one down-vote at 33 votes and later went to two 4-star down-votes at 47 votes”. I am looking at this very page and I see fave stars rating. Where did you get information about 33 votes and 47 votes, please? What is zero down-vote value, please?
Click on Rating in the 2d or 3d showcase forum. This will show you a hierarchical list of the highest to lowest rated images. Hover the curser over the stars to get the vote count and rate average. If all the votes were the same value, all of the rate averages would represent the star value. They should all be 5.0000 if the vote value is 5, regardless of the vote count. Also, one (or several) 4-point votes wont change 5 stars to 4, considering you need at least 20 votes to register a star string–*as far as I see it currently.
Read this thread before commenting, please. It’s already been explained why there are some with less than 5 star ratings in the gallery.
I think you may have misinterpreted the comment that you quoted. Though I see where that quoted comment may confuse readers who may be looking at older (non-Love-it system) works without checking the thread creation dates. I am not talking about old system bleed (mingled system votes) or old system art with 4 or fewer stars showing. I am talking about recent new system entries with 5 stars showing.
Though I am subscribed to this thread and have read every post, I will admit that your post #15, slipped through the memory cracks. 
So, even though your quote and comment dont seem to point at this as a reason for your reprimand, Ill heed it as such and double check the posts next time before commenting. 
Post# 15:
It seems to have to adjust the vote value down is indicative of the gross over valuation problem that, to me, is just as, or worse than the under valuation problem with the 1-star voting. It seems down voting is as necessary in the new system as it was in the old one.
Yea, I am going to change my earlier hopeful statements about the new system and add my vote to the group begging for the old system to be re-instated. This new thing just isn’t working out at all and I can’t see how tweaking it or time will help it.
I also agree, the old system had its faults but it was still useful and often a pretty good gauge of the quality of a piece. I’d cast my vote for simply reinstating the old system, it gives an artist a sense of pride to get a higher rated thread and gives the majority an easier way to browse. Besides, are we supposed to be sparing someones feelings with some new systems or lack thereof? And in that case… were artists I’m sure the majority of us could do with a little ego whacking criticism.
It seems that all the new system implementations are doing are preventing criticism; youd think this would be one of the last places to become so censored
Here we go :rolleyes:
Firstly this is not censorship. Its tweaking a flawed system to try and make it work better for everyone. Is the new system perfect ? No. But we’re working on ways to improve it.
Secondly, the best criticism you can give is a helpful comment. A high or low star vote gives no indication to the artist what should be improved, or what you really loved. A polite, honest comment is worth far more than an arbitrary star rating. I’ve seen people complain that they “dont have time” to post comments. Frankly that saddens me, that we’ve all become so wrapped up in our own lives that we cant take a minute or two to tell a fellow artist that we love their work, or that we think certain aspects can be improved. If you are too busy for that, then perhaps you should close the browser and get some work done 
flush away the bloody rating system, make thumbnails larger (about 120 x 120) so people will know if the “Artwork” worth seeing or not…
else {
Get back the old rating system!
}
Ah sorry about that, I was under the assumption that you were just leaving out a rating system because of all the trouble they’ve been giving you guys. But really, Getting rid of a previous ability that let the community express themselves in a more communic way isn’t exactly liberating… Although I agree, “censorships” usage in this case is a bit overly dramatic.
As for your second point I completely agree that a group behavior working in the manner you suggest would be ideal and beneficial to the artist. However… I still don’t see how you can justify the change based on what people “should” be doing, and probably wont do no matter how many changes to the system you make. People aren’t going to see the lack of a rating system or one they no longer have a equal say in and then just decide to comment instead, they’ll just go onto another web page, which I think would be a shame. And I’m on dial up so it takes a very long time to load a thread or even a reply screen, fixed time that I have set asside for such activities. By pressing that reply button, I’m making a commitment of about a half a hour, or longer on a image intensive page. The old rating system let me choose a bit easier which pages to load if I wanted to look at some top notch art instead of looking at a thumbnail that in most cases is MUCH more misleading, and If I think a piece is really that good, I comment :love:. You simply aren’t going to change someone behaviors so easily with a new system especially one that diminishes the influence of one user over the other, and so far the new systems you guys have tried have been horrible at letting an artist know peoples opinions of his or her work (pracically every thread had a 5 star rating with that last fiasco ).
I am curious to see how a new system would be implemented though, there is such little room for change in most rating systems that I would be concerned that CGsociety would be moving towards a less expressive yay or nay system or one that was influenced by one user more than another… It seems to me that an equal opportunity 5 star rating system would be a necessary choice, if not simply to avoid the others. Anyway, good luck in whatever you guys decide, but now that the cat is out of the bag I doubt people will ever stop complaining no matter what system you use.:rolleyes:
Maybe you could set it up so that after a a certain number of rates it goes to 3 stars and then if it gets another 10 it goes to 4 stars and after another 20 it goes to 5 star thread? Just an idea to get an accurate rating system in without all threads being 5 stars?
Nick
