Thumbs up or thumbs down

[markcas]

You know what would be a cool feature is if there was a thumbs up or thumbs down vote available for every picture in ones gallery that only users could see the results of. That would b an excellent learning tool and help me with composition which is what I think I struggle most with.

Mark

[akmc_in_au]

You know what would be a cool feature is if there was a thumbs up or thumbs down vote available for every picture in ones gallery that only users could see the results of. That would b an excellent learning tool and help me with composition which is what I think I struggle most with.

I'm afraid I'd have to give that idea a thumbs down.

This idea in one form or other has been raised before, but it still has the same problem now as it did then; specifically, you'd have no idea of WHY someone was giving a particular image a thumbs up or down. For example, you may end up with a thumbs down which you assume to be because of the composition, but in reality the voter just didn't like the colours, or the subject, or even in extreme cases just didn't care for something that you said in the Forum.

Comments are far better, although the issue of constructive criticism (and whether it ever happens or not) is a whole 'nother thread or ten. That's why the "[+ and -] Get your pictures reviewed here...." thread in the Show & Tell forum is so useful and such a brilliant idea; it required both a positive and negative comment, so there was no danger of noses getting out of joint. (Though the poor guy who commented on mine was ripped off since the person who posted after him didn't put either a positive OR negative comment! )

The same problem occurs with ratings systems. Maybe, MAAYYYBE a ratings system which had 4 or 5 categories (say, composition, subject, colour, depth of field etc) could overcome this, but I still think that free-form comments where a person says what they liked or didn't like about an image (better still, both) is the way to go, notwithstanding the general (and to a large extent understandable) reluctance to put "didn't like" comments.