[artaud]

Ratings system of MMX board has been discussed and criticized many times.

I personally noted at least two strange things.

1)
Quite often, a material that people likes a little, and got quite high ratings, as soon as - after 10-15 votes - goes on top of the list - suddenly receive a 0 or 1 rating, and of course, throw down to the anonimate.

2)
It appears at least strange that, when the normal rapport between number of downloads and number of votes is something between 40:1 and 90:1 (depending on the time of publishing), there are some material that goes very fast on the top of the list with 25-30 votes, and remains there, but with an unlikely downloads/votes ratio of 10:1.

I am quite old (55), and personally do not care of these childish tricks: but it think that in many cases these ways of adulterating the ratings severely discurages newcomers to publish their materials, damaging in that way all the users.

I solicit any user that want to have a better and wider material collection to make a responsible use of rating system, assigning more votes when downloading materials, to reduce the efficacy of these tricks, to encourage materials uploading, and to isolate people only aimed by pure vanity.

[KurtS]

Hi artaud,
i've seen this aswell, but I think it's almost impossible to avoid.
Congratulations on your Maiolica material (no. 1!) by the way - its great!

[jdp]

how about adding the possibility to put comment and suggestion to improve the materials? Just to clarify what people find wrong in materials...

[ivox3]

Jdp ..... I think that'd be best.

[artaud]

Just about Maiolica material, it is a good example: from a rating of 8.33 with 16 votes, it got another two votes, and "gained" a new rating of 7.50. It means that got two "1" votes. This obviously does not express a suggestion: this means that someone wants to get a better ranking lowering the rate of other materials.
So, even if the suggestion of JDP has a meaning, and I personally agree on it, I still think that the problem is a "mathematical" problem. With few votes, is very easy "to increase" the rating, and even much easier to "destroy" a good material, giving it a rate of 0 or 1. So, if the problem is "to few votes", one possible solution would be to "force" anyone that wants to download a material to express his opinion with a vote. If a material would have 500 downloads (and votes), as normally happens for a material that is in someway useful after a couple of weeks, "extreme" ratings (0-1 ....9-10) would be leveled by the media of the votes. We should not forget that especially newcomers, that make a very big efforth at the beginning to publish a material, could be very frustrated by the actual system. I have seen many users that, after publishing one or two materials (and maybe after they understood the mechanism of the rating), "disappeared", deciding to not publish materials anymore. So, since MXR is a "common" resource, not only for getting new materials, but also to learn and to exchange experiences, I really hope to not loose the enthusiasm of everybody for the stupid vanity of very few people.

[hyltom]

How about egging but not rating?
Means, you download a material that finally you find correct but not as good as what you was looking at. In that case you don't give anything. But supposing that you really find what you was looking for, so at that time, you give an egg (star). So i suppose, the most star or egg you have, the most successful is your material.

[Mihai]

In my opinion an easy way to fix this somewhat is to make the voting public. No need to add comments which would take up space. Next to the material you see a voting list with the vote and member name.

Also, I don't think we should be so obsessed by the voting, it's just an extra feature that's all. There could be no voting at all and for me the mxm site would still be a very valuable resource. Use your own judgement when looking for a material.

[Dexel]

how about adding the possibility to put comment and suggestion to improve the materials? Just to clarify what people find wrong in materials...

Also, I don't think we should be so obsessed by the voting, it's just an extra feature that's all. There could be no voting at all and for me the mxm site would still be a very valuable resource. Use your own judgement when looking for a material.

I vote for no votes, too. It's corruptible, juvenile, misleading. Same with eggs, stars, etc.
My cock [vote] is bigger than yours
But you know: the bigger the knot [vote], the smaller the cock...

I dont care about such competition. What bothers me is that this doesn't stimulate improvement. Recently I saw some mats that had the same, non-tiling, sharp, color image mapped for ref and bump. What to do? Vote a zero? He will learn nothing this way. Maybe he will just get angry and downvote other mats...

Identified comments would be good.

[artaud]

If some (maybe many) people adopt even tricks to "climb the classification", it would mean that a competition exists, and that this competion is in some way important for them.

Perhaps this competion is one of the springs that pushes people in publishing their materials. And well, since having more materials is a benefit for all users (and for the package itself, I personally consider MXM a powerful marketing tool), probably the complete elimination of rating systems is not the best choice.

Of course, my opinion is only the opinion of a "recent" user, but I am working in CG from the very early beginning, and many times happened that these "competitons" where (on different times), both the cause of the success of a produtct, and later the reason of his fall (a good example was Corel Draw and its contest "Corel Art", around 1980).

How to stimulate people, and how to avoid that somebody gets frustrated by a "malicious ratings"? Probaby the staff shoud reflect on this, to boost MXM, for sure one of the key points of Maxwell offer.

[artaud]

Maybe someone of you could find intersting these numbers:

- More than 18000 registred members (18662)....
- Only 295 of them have been published at least one material;
- There are four members that are "Certified users" that never published a material....


Well, how many of the users that never published a material (18637) are really USERS, even including demo version users? How many of them are "virtual users" that exists only to rate?

Just another curiosity: I got 150 votes in fourty days, and gained a good position (5th) in the top members list, with an average rating of 6,09, and a new material at first place. In 15 minutes, I got 15 votes, and the average rating become 5 .74 (40th position in top members list).

I like it. It is a good reason to publish another material.

[artaud]

I just published a new material, Kaisersemmel bread. Maybe nothing special, but looks good, the first rate he got was 10. After 20 minutes, the second rate was 1.

Poor people!!!! I like it!!!

Tomorrow, two new materials....

[mmhnemo]

Me likes the Semmelbrösel!

vote 1, 10 or 100 if you feel like it - the bread still tastes the same ^^

Thanks for sharing these nice materials!

[artaud]

Me too like very much this bread! In my last trip to Austria, I have bought 40 kg of bread to freeze!

[deadalvs]

i remember that christmas competition... horror !

* * *

i guess showing the username after the vote will help a little the anonymity of free votes.

of course, there will still be people not caring for any vote they make, but most people will be held back «ethically» --> 80% correct ratings.

or: either NO rating which will lead to poorer mxm quality

* * *

remembered:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=20639

and the official statement:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=20681

[ricardo]

Just remove voting at all. Log single IP downloads, and we get a "best thumbnail challenge" going on.

To be honest I don't care about ranks, I just search for *The Material* I need and choose the most easily tweakable one.

If we are discussing challenge prizes, just name a jury. Period.

If there where manners of running fair votings over the Internet we would never refrain from voting in an election again. That's not just the case.

Ricardo

Boy, I've been away form the gallery site for a couple of weeks. You really need that Wii, dontcha? May be some praising?