If you want to skip my intro and physiological opinion on this then just skip to the 3rd section under "WHAT I PROPOSE"

Ok, so it's a fact that many artists and posters gets discouraged when their pictures get rated down, actually I have seen pictures that have had as many as 17 down ratings and the picture was in good detail but people just didn't like the theme. People will down-rate a picture because they...

Hate the "theme" of the picture such as a specific genre, fetish, style or tag (something they would blacklist but still appeared) or they simply dislike the poster themselves.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND THE DOWN-RATE BUTTON

Having studied human physiology for many years here's what I conclude. If people see a picture that was rated down 8, 12, 17 or even 21 times...

(1) They first wonder why so many people disliked the picture, something is only worth what a person is willing to give for it, so by many people giving a picture a bad rating, the picture much hence be worth that rating.

(2) They get a since of worthlessness, so many people have rated this picture down, my 1 single good rating won't show, won't influence the picture, won't be noticed hence, they will not even rate the picture up if they like it.

(3) They WANT to contribute to the snowball, they will rate the picture down as to be apart of the down-rating popularity, it already has 17, if I rate it down then it will have 18, lets see if it will reach 20 by the end of this year.

These are all common human antics that applies to 7/10 humans, based off of a similar study about how a large group doing something can influence a persons behavior in the exact same situation if they were alone.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT I PROPOSE

(1) Remove the down rating and only keep the uprating, this will allow artists to only see the positive side of their work.

(2) Separate all up and down ratings into two separate numbers, this will allow viewers to see how many liked it and how many disliked it.

Currently 100 people could vote, but if 41 people voted up and 59 people voted down, all you will see is a rating of -9

2) isn't unreasonable, but mostly I think artists need to realize that there are a dozen reasons for a downvote, not all of which are directly related to the quality of the art, but often because a particular voter doesn't like the content. Some people like some things, some people don't.

1) No. A person is allowed to have a negative opinion of a work, and that person is allowed to express that opinion. That opinion is no less valid or valuable than a positive one.

2) That's a fine idea.

What the hell does the study of seaweed have to do with our rating system?

I expected your proposal to be more along the lines of "don't show the rating to people who haven't voted yet".

Test-Subject_217601 said:
I expected your proposal to be more along the lines of "don't show the rating to people who haven't voted yet".

THIS is a good idea...

You've typed phycology, psychology, and physiology
Perhaps it would be best if you studied etymology

Question: what percentage of users actually use the rating system since it was implemented? I would assume it's a rather small amount.

does it really matter? .-.

Podikinus said:
You've typed phycology, psychology, and physiology
Perhaps it would be best if you studied etymology

I know, I had some stupid auto spell on so it kept using different variations of the word depending on how I was typing or what I was typing next.

hg3300 said:
Question: what percentage of users actually use the rating system since it was implemented? I would assume it's a rather small amount.

Are you kidding?

I, for one, pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to the vote score of an image.

hg3300 said:
Question: what percentage of users actually use the rating system since it was implemented? I would assume it's a rather small amount.

FYI, there have been, over the last 24 hours, around 3500 votes.

null0010 said:
I, for one, pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to the vote score of an image.

There are some artists who do though.

Granted this is not dA or FA or what-have-you (thank goodness), where there are positive comments and good cheer almost everywhere you look, but he does raise a good point about there being a definite bias towards certain themes of pictures as opposed to others.

(This is neither an agreement nor a disagreement,just an observation)

Test-Subject_217601 said:
I expected your proposal to be more along the lines of "don't show the rating to people who haven't voted yet".

Would that interfere with the queries that take into consideration score?
If not,that's a pretty interesting idea

Kald said:
FYI, there have been, over the last 24 hours, around 3500 votes.

well whatever. at any rate, there appears to be a crusade of anti-TF on the site for some reason, perhaps why the submissions I upload get few votes one way or the other.

Life involves seeing things you don't like. We don't have a right to freedom from opposition. Sometimes, bad things happen.

Learning to deal with it is part of growing up, and artists who can't develop a thick skin to handle criticism are never going to get anywhere.

I think we should be nice to one another in the comments section, but the ability to express a negative opinion by vote has been a long-standing part of this site. I vote Down to the idea of changing that.

What does a vote down or up really add to the discussion or community as a whole? It means virtually nothing either way. All I can tell from it is some random guy from Nowheresville either likes or dislikes an image. There is no way to know if they're an art critic or if they just hate dicks or something.

hg3300 said:
well whatever. at any rate, there appears to be a crusade of anti-TF on the site for some reason, perhaps why the submissions I upload get few votes one way or the other.

Perhaps instead of a conspiracy, the majority of people who look at TF just dislike the ones you have been uploading. While I don't think I've voted on any of the ones you've posted one way or the other, they're definitely not the style I would upvote.

null0010 said:
What does a vote down or up really add to the discussion or community as a whole? It means virtually nothing either way. All I can tell from it is some random guy from Nowheresville either likes or dislikes an image. There is no way to know if they're an art critic or if they just hate dicks or something.

^this

And I think it is TF in general...because these are popular artists I'm uploading.

I don't really care either way, it's just the principle of the matter.

What I find funny is that people bitched to bring the rating system back after it was removed for exactly this reason. Then it's wanted that it vanish again. If you're going to have a drama-filled bitchfit about something at least be consistent with it.

If you don't like a rating, simply don't look at it. It isn't like it's a huge thing in the middle of the screen blaring at you with alarms and bells and flashing lights. It's a tiny little thing way down in the corner, completely out of the way. I didn't even notice it until I went looking for it. Also, it isn't the site's problem that an artist happens to look at a little score that means absolutely nothing. Artists are not deities, we are not here to worship them. If they decide to have a problem with such a tiny, completely inconsequential facet of the site it is not the administration's, coder's, or user's responsibility to bend over backwards for them.

This isn't trolling, just common sense. If you don't like the opinion someone has, either grow mature enough to deal with it like an adult or leave the kitchen.

null0010 said:
What does a vote down or up really add to the discussion or community as a whole? It means virtually nothing either way.

Well tell THAT to all the people who ask for their pictures to be taken down because of bad ratings or all the people who admit in the comments and forums that bad ratings discourages them

I'm not saying to take it away all together, I gave 2 proposals
(1) Only have a like button or rate-up button
(2) Have 2 separate ones so regardless of how many bad ratings there are, the artists can still look at the good ratings

Like I said before which is a very good point

xXxSnowLeopardxXx Said:
Currently 100 people could vote, but if 41 people voted up and 59 people voted down, all you will see is a rating of -9

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
Well tell THAT to all the people who ask for their pictures to be taken down because of bad ratings or all the people who admit in the comments and forums that bad ratings discourages them

And then you realize that ANY negative rating EVER would trigger that reaction. No, keeping things the way it is is the only solution here. Your first 'solution' is too prone to "you may only have an opinion if it is positive", which only leads to hugbox syndrome. And two is just utterly pointless.

Mechaniatrix said:
What I find funny is that people bitched to bring the rating system back after it was removed for exactly this reason. Then it's wanted that it vanish again. If you're going to have a drama-filled bitchfit about something at least be consistent with it.

1st of all, Join Date Oct 15, 1858, how the hell have you been a member from before the internet was even made in the 1960's and only became widely public in the 1990's

2nd of all, I agree with this

Mechaniatrix said:
And then you realize that ANY negative rating EVER would trigger that reaction. Your first 'solution' is too prone to "you may only have an opinion if it is positive", which only leads to hugbox syndrome.

But...

Mechaniatrix said:
And two is just utterly pointless.

NO. What's the point of a rating system if you can only see how many more people agreed with one side instead of seeing all results. If 2 people voted up, 5 people voted down and then 3 people voted up again, your score would stay at 0. That's not the most productive way the scoring system could be run. Instead of seeing 0 you would see

Score: 5/5 and they would be in green/red
Doesn't that seem more practical than Score: 0

Mechaniatrix said:
And then you realize that ANY negative rating EVER would trigger that reaction. No, keeping things the way it is is the only solution here. Your first 'solution' is too prone to "you may only have an opinion if it is positive", which only leads to hugbox syndrome. And two is just utterly pointless.

I agree. I mean, if we separate the ups from the downs, the numbers are still going to mean the same thing. Some artist comes on here and sees their picture has a score of 2 Up, 15 Down, and they start with the same complaints they have now.

Again, there is no inherent right to never hear criticism.

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
1st of all, Join Date Oct 15, 1858, how the hell have you been a member from before the internet was even made in the 1960's and only became widely public in the 1990's

Fnord.

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
NO. What's the point of a rating system if you can only see how many more people agreed with one side instead of seeing all results. If 2 people voted up, 5 people voted down and then 3 people voted up again, your score would stay at 0. That's not the most productive way the scoring system could be run. Instead of seeing 0 you would see

Score: 5/5 and they would be in green/red
Doesn't that seem more practical than Score: 0

But you're missing the point completely of what I was saying. Implied before was that artists hate even having a negative score, so having +5/-1 would trigger the OMG ERRYONE HAETS MAI ART reaction that you seem to be attempting to avoid. I agree, the voting system is not overly intuitive, but the thing is that it means absolutely nothing. Why are you putting more work on the coders who are already adding more content to the site instead of just dealing with it and moving on?

TL;DR: I see your point, but why does this matter so much to you?

I really like the second idea, but I'd also want to combine it with the total.

titaniachkt said: FA where there are positive comments and good cheer almost everywhere you look

Fuck FA

Look, I think you misread my original post. I was saying that if you ONLY see -8 then that's kind of discouraging, maybe it wasn't always -8, it could have been +20/-28 and then that gives a since of ok, even though 28 people disliked it, there are still 20 people who I will draw for. Yes, it could happen where you see +0/-8 and oh well.

I wasn't trying to ERASE all bad feelings, I was just saying that it would be nice to see some good reports instead of only seeing the bad when the bad dominates. Why do I cafe so much, here's why.

Most people need to feel a since of acceptance to some degree, they draw FOR us and post FOR us, if they only see a continuously climbing "-" number then they might stop drawing or posting all together, by adding a + and - rating separately, they can still feel they are appreciated even when the majority dislikes the picture. And if they get only bad reviews then there is nothing we can do at that point.

*IMPORTANT - MUST READ* I also believe that by adding a + and - rating, people will feel more comfortable and will post more pictures more often, they will focus on the positive ratings and can ignore the bad ratings much easier... come to think of it, the most popular website on the planet "Youtube.com" has adapted a similar rating system where they have a separate like and dislike bar.

Everything I say is based off of years of studying human psychology.

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
quoting whole post takes up too much pagespace

It sure seemed like you were trying to do that, I apologize. See, what I'm saying is that you're never going to make anyone happy, no matter how much you study. Call me bitter, but I've seen this feature disappear and reappear and disappear and reappear; someone always has some whine or gripe about the site. There's a point where people just have to stop caring. Sure, if two or three artists get a bug in their ass about a (fairly) minor thing, then they can go back to FA/Inkbunny/SoFurry's hugbox.

The furry group tends to have a massive worship fetish for artists, and this seems to have gone to most of their heads. If they want to pull their art because some people don't like it, good riddance is what I think. You cannot please everyone, and comparing the website to Youtube is like comparing a Red Delicious to a Valencia.

Long story short, it isn't the site's fault people put too much stock into what is in essence a useless vestigial feature. My only qualm is that if something is done it should be wholesale removing the feature and never putting it back. It causes too much whining, too much bitching, and too much blatant stupidity to allow to live.

So here's my suggestion: Nuke the vote feature. Put a little note up saying that this feature is now gone because of whining and will never return. The problem is solved.

Mechaniatrix said:
So here's my suggestion: Nuke the vote feature. Put a little note up saying that this feature is now gone because of whining and will never return. The problem is solved.

Hell no, you will NEVER stop people from bitching, so I don't care about that. What I'm saying is to keep the bad scores but people ad-least have the right to see how many good scores they got also. Do you agree with that? If you know 22 people disliked your drawing, don't you think you are entitled to see how many people liked it?

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
Hell no, you will NEVER stop people from bitching, so I don't care about that. What I'm saying is to keep the bad scores but people ad-least have the right to see how many good scores they got also. Do you agree with that? If you know 22 people disliked your drawing, don't you think you are entitled to see how many people liked it?

Personally I wouldn't give a rat's ass, but I digress. Yes, I think one would be...'entitled', but in the whole does it even matter? People tend to look only at the big red -22, and would likely ignore the +20 because of persecution complexes.

RedOctober said:
2) isn't unreasonable

KloH0und said:
1) No. A person is allowed to have a negative opinion of a work, and that person is allowed to express that opinion. That opinion is no less valid or valuable than a positive one.

2) That's a fine idea.

hg3300 said:
THIS is a good idea...

hg3300 said:
Question: what percentage of users actually use the rating system since it was implemented? I would assume it's a rather small amount.

Kald said:
FYI, there have been, over the last 24 hours, around 3500 votes.

null0010 said:
I, for one, pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to the vote score of an image.

titaniachkt said:
There are some artists who do though.

Aurali said:
I really like the second idea

This is but a mere incalculable fraction of the total members here on e621.net. I'm sure that many people would find adding a Score: 0/0 would be an improvement to this site. Why not see both the good and the bad instead of only seeing which side outweighs the other?

Mechaniatrix said:
Yes, I think one would be...'entitled'

Thank You.

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
This is but a mere incalculable fraction of the total members here on e621.net. I'm sure that many people would find adding a Score: 0/0 would be an improvement to this site. Why not see both the good and the bad instead of only seeing which side outweighs the other?

This isn't a debate, I already told you I agree.

Mechaniatrix said:
This isn't a debate, I already told you I agree.

That was a recap for everyone else lol.

I don't think the word "entitled" carried the connotation you might have been hoping for, SnowLeopard.

DobiesHot said:
I don't think the word "entitled" carried the connotation you might have been hoping for, SnowLeopard.

... huh? I don't even care what that means, the fact is HE an admin, privileged and regular members agree with this. I simply made my point, obviously not everyone will agree but I was here to state my opinion.

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
... huh? I don't even care what that means, the fact is HE an admin, privileged and regular members agree with this. I simply made my point, obviously not everyone will agree but I was here to state my opinion.

Wait, who's an admin?

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
... huh? I don't even care what that means, the fact is HE an admin, privileged and regular members agree with this. I simply made my point, obviously not everyone will agree but I was here to state my opinion.

I can live with that. :-) Your logic actually isn't bad, and I do see the value in giving people positive feedback. I guess we'll see what comes of it!

Aurali said:
I really like the second idea, but I'd also want to combine it with the total.
Fuck FA

= Admin

xXxSnowLeopardxXx said:
= Admin

Oh yeah you're right then. I was like 'Oh, people actually think I'm an admin oh I'm so flattered ^///^' but then I was sad.

DobiesHot said:
I can live with that. :-) Your logic actually isn't bad, and I do see the value in giving people positive feedback. I guess we'll see what comes of it!

:) Me likely too! lolz!

Anyone who is interested in the rating system needs to learn to use the order:score and order:score_asc search terms. That's what the ratings do. They let you sort out what the community likes best (with order:score) or else frontload the really bad art (with order:score_asc).

I recommend that if anyone wants to white knight the bad art (picking out undeservedly bad ratings and helping them out), try out order:score_asc and see if there's anything that doesn't deserve its rating. I sometimes upvote things that I dislike simply because while they're not great, they don't deserve to be THAT badly scored.

Another thing that the ratings can do is help identify subcommunities on the site, and occasionally even mistagged art. I have several times seen images that were badly tagged have rather bad ratings. Then I retagged them, so that the actual fans of the depicted themes would be able to find the image, and the rating soared!

Ratings are valuable, but many users of the site do not understand how to make use of them.

31h253 said:

That pretty much sums up the major aspects of the score system

I am not a he.

Mechaniatrix said:
What I find funny is that people bitched to bring the rating system back after it was removed for exactly this reason. Then it's wanted that it vanish again. If you're going to have a drama-filled bitchfit about something at least be consistent with it.

You're saying that like it's the same people in each bitchfest.

Snowy said:
You're saying that like it's the same people in each bitchfest.

No, it was more of a 'general' you rather than a specific you.

Aurali said:
I am not a he.

If you are talking to ME, when I said "HE" I was referring to the last person who was talking, I was talking about HIM (Mechaniatrix), an admin (you) and so on. (Which is why when I said admin, he thought I was talking about HIM lol... though he's not one)

xxxFurryFanxxx said:
If you are talking to ME, when I said "HE" I was referring to the last person who was talking, I was talking about HIM (Mechaniatrix), an admin (you) and so on. (Which is why when I said admin, he thought I was talking about HIM lol... though he's not one)

She, again. 0/2, c'mon.

o_0; i think i started this thing with the votes...
but yeah, the (+#)/(-#) is what i was thinking too... mainly because i have the issue over the votes (while not a BIG issue, still impacts overall view of what ive posted) Not saying remove it, maybe just tweak it a bit.. ive gotton more comments on here.....then i get for 5 of my pictures on FA, IB, and SF. Weather positive, confused or negative comments, it shows ways i can improve....the voting dosnt lol.

Esme_Belles said:
Maybe make it so you have to comment to vote? just a lil idea *shrugs*

Only if you want to drag the average quality of comments on this site way down.

I just want to note that if I had to vote to see the vote score of an image, curiosity would motivate me to vote (even?) more frivolously than I currently do.

Also, going through the low scoring images and picking out things that aren't really as bad as they're rated is half funny, half disgusting. Digging through the entire database on order:score_asc is a good way to learn how complete your blacklist is.

As another possible choice, the rating system could be changed to a sort of 5 star range or a score out of 10.

One benefit of this system, for an artist's standpoint, is that it shows the average score of the image itself. The scale would provide users to grade art in different degrees, which leads to another benefit: there is no totally bad or totally good score, it's an average. Therefore, we could avoid artists that may become upset from the scores of their images. If we really wanted to go in-depth, we could provide different categories for evaluation and scoring, although I highly doubt users or admins would really approve of this.

The drawbacks are that, like the current system, the ratings can be inaccurate of the general opinion and some may find the system unfavorable. Many users would choose to rate an image as a complete 1 or a complete 5 or 10, causing an imbalance to the score. Others might find that just having a vote up/down system is simpler and easier to understand.

Just my take of things. We could try it out for a short time if the admins are up to it. Or we could disregard this. I wouldn't be offended.

Aurali said:

Fuck FA

Be nice, Aurali. We all know why you hate FA but you needn't drag your feelings into this thread.

#2 gives you more info. You can have the total and then breakdown like with user records. I just don't see the problem in the first place. So is the problem that

(a) Artists are being offended by negative feedback?

(b) The rating system is too arbitrary?

Negative feedback isn't censored even when the artist is outright insulted for apparent lack of talent, so I don't see why we would remove something like ratings if they are useful. I mean the artist is going to be hurt more by comments than a negative integer. But are the ratings useful or just arbitrary? While they won't always give you an accurate picture of whether the image is good or not (I think they generally do), what is the rating actually measuring? It's measuring the overall community reaction to the image. If this means that some scat/gore theme images get downvoted, or some mlp images get down or upvoted more than usual, you have to remember that it's measuring the response of the community or the voting portion of it anyway. Publishing the breakdown gives you the magnitude of the response since -1 score could mean 1 or 100 people voted. You could guess that knowing that there's more votes would mean you have a more accurate assessment of the image.

tldr Don't remove it, add more info if you want, keep in mind what it means.

Oh and if you want to start a bigger shitstorm make all the votes public! Don't some level like privileged get to see who voted up and down? Or since you can use the votedup: and voteddown: search operators to look at user votes maybe you could tally it yourself manually or with a program.

post #198995 - I guess you found your use for the voting system, xXxSnowLeopardxXx.
http://e621.net/post?tags=voteddown%3AEsme_Belles&commit=Search
http://e621.net/post?tags=voteddown%3AAdrian_Blazevic&commit=Search - Full disclosure.

Vote to see score: good idea. I thought since you can already use order:score it could be broken, but I doubt many will care to use that "work around".

Star rating system: I think it could give a more useful score and I think you could find actual research on this kind of thing out there, but the site seems committed, and it adds a level of complexity that is probably unnecessary. If there are egregious flaws, someone will probably point them out eventually. Just add more users.

Esme_Belles said:
o_0; i think i started this thing with the votes...

Maybe make it so you have to comment to vote? just a lil idea *shrugs*

What do you mean you think you started the votes thing? Are you saying you suggested the scoring system in the first place hence it's here now or that I was influenced by something you had posted?

(1) I couldn't find one post you did regarding voting at all, was it on another account

(2) No, I thought of this myself

(3) I like your little blacked out comment thing that you did where you have to put the mouse over to read, but no, having to comment to vote seems like a bad idea considering people will be flooded with bad comments and/or the comment limit. Nope, Nope, Nope.

Esme_Belles started this topic 2 days ago: http://e621.net/forum/show/31741

Adrian_Blazevic said:
Esme_Belles started this topic 2 days ago: http://e621.net/forum/show/31741

Here's my output on this whole thing in-case someone needs an update.

I DISAGREE with only having a vote up button, though it was 1 of 2 suggestions, I realize that people were extremely unhappy with the idea, I agree though, a persons opinion on what they dislike shouldn't be more valid than a persons opinion on what they like. However, people tend to abuse the down-rate button and not so much the up-rate one.

I DISAGREE with the 5 star rating or the "out of 10" rating because it's only a less advanced version of this current scoring system. If 100 people voted. 40 up / 60 down, this is what you would see.

Score: -20 (looks bad)
Stars: ★★☆☆☆ (looks bad)
Out Of 10: 2/10 (looks bad)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I AGREE with, instead of changing the entire scoring system all together which seems like a pain in the butt. It appears that they have kept track of how many votes total were in each picture, so it would be very easy to simply ADD the positive reviews, again I am proposing any of these two options.

Score: 40/60 (See, looks so much better)

Score: 40/60 = -20 (Still isn't as bad as the other 3 above)

When it comes to the human brain, everything is based on perception. If you only see the bad reviews, it's hard to imagine there were any good ones at all.

Podikinus said:
You've typed phycology, psychology, and physiology
Perhaps it would be best if you studied etymology

this made me laugh so much

Aurali said:
Fuck FA

D:

fa said:
D:

lol, ouch...
pretty sure She means Furaffinity

A simple vote up/down system is actually one of the more objective ones you can have. Asking people to rate their works from 1-5 might seem like an improvement but it really doesn't let you see how people as a whole liked the work. It's actually less objective than a simple up/down system.

Downvotes are definitely a good idea, and provide useful information. The issue you're probably having is summing the scores together, which might not be the best idea, it doesn't show very useful information (one downvote is less meaningful than 10 downvotes and 9 upvotes, though they're displayed the same). Instead some normalized score like Youtube uses is probably better:

Positive_votes = (upvotes) / min(upvotes+downvotes , 1)

or

Normalized_score = (upvotes - downvotes) / min(upvotes+downvotes , 20) where 20 is some number that maximizes the impact of a single vote, and so we don't divide by zero

or

Normalized_score = (upvotes - downvotes) / (1 + exp(-k * (upvotes+downvotes))) where k is some constant that would maximize the deviation of scores (not so low that they're all zero or so high that they're all 1 or -1)

The best system you can have is one like http://kittenwar.com/ where you're presented with two, random alternatives and you choose among the one you like better. This eliminates selection bias and gaming the vote (most people vote 1/5 stars or 5/5 stars anyways).

Even better, if you want to find out other works you might like (think Netflix), you do a search for people who historically voted similarly to you. This might be interesting to implement as a seperate section of the site but I don't see it replacing a vote-on-whatever-you-choose system.