Adding Transparency to Voting: Making Invisible Visible

[pacificspirit]

How many times have you wondered about the number of votes for your images? We suggest a new way to display votes for every image on this site - by adding stars next to it. This way everyone would be able to see the real popularity rankings by users and guests.

Take a look at his photo sharing website where this system has proven very effective:
voted 51 times http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/yaroslav-pavlovich/view/53455/
voted 5 times http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/sevastopol-foto/view/43228/
voted 327 times http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/svkulw/view/22480/

Any thoughts?

[akmc_in_au]

How many times have you wondered about the number of votes for your images? We suggest a new way to display votes for every image on this site - by adding stars next to it. This way everyone would be able to see the real popularity rankings by users and guests.

Take a look at his photo sharing website where this system has proven very effective:
voted 51 times http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/yaroslav-pavlovich/view/53455/
voted 5 times http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/sevastopol-foto/view/43228/
voted 327 times http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/svkulw/view/22480/

Any thoughts?

First thought; I can't read Russian.

Second thought; I'm not sure what significance the stars serve since the one with 5 votes has 5 stars, just like the one with a few hundred votes.

Third thought; I'm not sure that this idea will be overwhelmingly popular, because there's every chance of some members forming cliques for the purpose of vote-swapping. That would defeat the purpose of the exercise, since you wouldn't necessarily have the best images with the highest number of votes.

I'm of two minds; on the one hand, I really would like to know which of my images are being voted for just to see which ones appeal to people, and on the other... the fact that you can't really know puts more emphasis on the photos than on the stats. When I vote for an image sometimes I mention it in a comment, sometimes I don't... and sometimes I just vote without leaving a comment at all. (Usually if others have said all there is to be said.)

As I've mentioned previously I DEFINITELY want to see PBase provide a screen listing the images that you've voted FOR (or commented on) just so that you'd have an extra way of finding those images again.

But revealing the photos of our own that OTHER people have voted for, and how many votes our own images have? I'm not convinced that the likely anti-social / ego-padding behaviour that would accompany such a change would be worth the gain. But I'm open to persuasion, so if anyone thinks differently it'd be great to hear their thoughts on it.

[pacificspirit]

You don't need to know a foreign language to see a difference between a crappy photo and a beautiful one. That's obvious.

As to "anti-social / ego-padding behaviour" and "forming cliques for the purpose of vote-swapping" - I would doubt it simply because most of us here don't personally know one another. It's an international meeting place, that's why such visible votes would testify to the photographers' real abilities. (As well, on that Russian site you can only vote once, just like on PBase.)

Anyway, posting photos after photos without seeing which ones are top-ranking is becoming kind of boring, don't you agree? And if you were able to see your highest and lowest-ranking images, you could use that feedback and possibly make improvements to your techniques or subjects.