ZBrushCentral

Anonymous Voting and why its a BAD thing

Community
#1

Ron brought this up in one of his threads. I have never rated an image here at the forum until tonight and after playing with it I am a bit :confused: Its easy for an anonymous person to pop in on different threads and say oh this sux! I will give it a 1 star, vote on the thread and be on my way without having to worry about having to take responsibilty for my rating. This is not mainstream politics, it’s a forum for constructive criticism. There are so many people that come here and post with that in their upper mind. (ie if this doesn’t work what I can do to make it better?) There are people new to both 3d and Z brush that come in here posting for the first time on a regular basis. Almost every day you see someone come in and post their very first head or character model and then someone 1 stars them and no one has replied to the thread at all. Is that fair? Nope. Not a bit. So what happens? The newbie who has just posted never shows up again because some idiot out there has just told him anonymously he sucks without giving the reason why. This isn’t right.

Is there anyway that the administrators of this forum can see their way clear to making a slight change on the voting mechanism? If someone is going to vote on a thread change it so NO ONE can vote unless they actually post to the thread? And If they rate an image it shows up next to their post? That way if someone is malicious enough to 1 star a newbies or anyones work without an explanation we know who they are.

Constructive Criticism is Key. Not only does it help the poster/user , it helps propagate the use of Z brush. Anonymous voting undermines it.

#2

“Constructive Criticism is Key. Not only does it help the poster/user , it helps propagate the use of Z brush. Anonymous voting undermines it”

I second that! :+1: :+1:

#3

Good point Tartan, And as an artist I find myself my worse critic and other artist friends of mine, who’s skills make me envious. Are worse than me when it comes to their own work.

So if you get someone, Bad rating and not giving any constructive Crit, I can see a lot of artists, New and Experienced not coming back.

and your idea that if they vote, they have to leave a comment would simply solve that issue. Great Idea

Sha

#4

If I post something and I get a low rating on it and they don’t say why, I often find myself just giving up on it, since I don’t know what needs improving, and I think to myself “What’s the point in even going on with this?”. :frowning:

Sometimes, I find that there are low-rated threads that have something worthwhile that get overlooked.

#5

This is a good idea and I agree that either there should be some way to verify ratings or the star system should be abandoned. I’ve added five stars to posts just to counteract one-star ratings that I felt would be seriously disheartening to the original poster. That’s not what ZBC is all about, IMHO.

Perhaps only being able to award five stars or not rate the thread at all would be a good alternative.

P.S. Just rated this thread five stars. :slight_smile:

#6

This is an interesting and surprising thread to me as I must say that I do not give a penny for the stars. I only rate 5 stars. And that rarely. I have no clue how I should classify the other 4 ratings. Art is a matter of taste and I give 5 for things which stunn ME. The accumulation of stars does not reflect anything. Take a look at how many actually watch the thread and how many ratings are there. It is likely to find 500 people who have seen a thread and 5-10 votes. Doesn’t tell anything. And if 300 subscribers watched a thread and there is one one-star rating, what does that tell?! One person didn’t like it and 300 lurkers didn’t vote.

My advice is to ignore the stars except you have a firework of 5 stars going on and read the comments. Personally, I am way to lazy to even think about voting. Except for personal eye poppers.

Sometimes you think you have a great thing going and you post it and catch a single star. Check out this sample:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?p=249672#post249672
That got a single star. Did it deserve it? Yes and no! Yes because the lights are off, the thing lacks contrast, doesn’t have the fancy global illumination, final gathering, bla bla bla. So why doesn’t it deserve a 1 star? Because it was made from SCRATCH. It’s not a photo background, it’s real Geometry and textures, and texture projections, Light Poles, Power lines, traffic light, rails, tree, windows, all real geometry. I was just to lazy to spend another couple of hours on it. It was a fun exercise in some sort of Archviz where in the end the Pizza Cutter found a home as well.

Am I frustrated about it? Hell no! Actually, I didn’t know that there WAS a rating till I started to look for a sample for a one star hahahahaha.

So, relax, enjoy the comments, feel honored if you catch a load of 5 Stars and otherwise
 Ignore it
 It has no statistical value which can help you achieve other results.

Cheers, happy ZBrushing and good luck for the 5 Stars!
Lemo

#7

That would be fine having that attitude Lemo if everyone adopted the same mode. Unfortunately not all folks that come to this forum will have it because of the simple fact that we are all individuals and react to different things in different ways. It’s part of what gives us the abilty to even have an opinion.

As for me. I am somewhat like you in that I don’t really care. I will post whether anyone thinks what I do is worth viewing or not. By the Way I viewed your example thread and give it a 5 star :smiley: great job on the city it took a lot of work :+1:

The point is this tho. Just like Marcus said he has voted 5 stars on an image just to counteract the 1 star. This is silly. If a person is going to take the time to 1 star a thread/image/model then he needs to sit there and tell you what he/she thinks is wrong with it and if Possible tell you what you need to do to make it better in his Opinion. This is for those members of the forum who dont share the “Damn the Torpedos! I am gonna post anyway!” attitude :slight_smile:

#8

Honestly, I second Lemmonado on this point. Stars are only a gadget. It don’t mean anything to me; Wheither a thread got stars, or not, won’t make me decide to look this thread or not.
If there’s stars, well, it’s cool for the thread’s creator, but if there’s not, who cares ?

Simply don’t mind it. :wink:

Bye !

#9

First thought was total agreement. We should take the one star
posters out into the lot and kick the crap out of them.
But. had a second thought.
He/ she at least did something.
He didn’t write it sucked ( which probably would have generated
a lynch mob)
It wasn’t just past over.
300 views and no replies at all ,is better?

If a one star review makes you quit. Perhaps you should quit anyway.

Would like to mention the other side of the coin ,if I might.
How about the gushing ones that have nothing to do with the work
and are only advertisements for the author.
You all know the ones I mean. Usually the replies contain nothing about
the work involved but indirect solicitation for jobs and/or advice.

If any of us created an image and wanted to know what others thought.
Suck vs Gush?

Vote for suck.

#10

Just remember, that what is really key here is constructive criticism. If a person is going to take the time to low rate an image, then they should take the time to say whats wrong with it in their Opinion. Say a poster like ummmm TheAragorn. I saw a 2 star on his last post and no one had replied to it until Frenchy. takes a real brave soul to do that huh?:smiley: Anyway I have let my opinion be known. Nuff said on my part.

#11

Hahahaha Bicc39, that made my day! I thought more about it and agree. Hit and run vote’s are uncool. I guess a link of a vote to a message, even if it says only ‘Great’ or ‘Yuck’ would be great. I like the Photoshop contests on fark.com. They also allow votes, but those are linked to an account as well.

Lemo

PS:This thread deserves 5 stars!

#12

There are very good suggestions and thoughts all around. Bear in mind, however, that we are fundamentally limited by the capabilities of the forum system that we’ve licensed. If the forum software doesn’t have a feature in the first place, we can’t enable it.

This is currently the best system that we’ve found short of taking time out of programming new versions of ZBrush to be able to program new versions of ZBC. Given the choice between changing ZBC features and working toward the next version of ZBrush I doubt we even need to take a vote. :wink:

#13

Whilst I understand this and agree that one has to be robust in the art world if you are going to survive, let’s not forget that ZBC is a very wide-ranging community, both in age range and geographic/ethnic range. The general standard of work is very high and it takes courage to post. It would be very sad if we lost members because they felt they weren’t ‘up to standard’ or in anyway not welcome. In my view there’s nearly always something to be learned by helping others, whatever their talent and expertise.

#14

I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve seen really good images garner maybe 2-3 stars and a single post. Fair enough it may not be top row material but it’s still nice to encourage newbies to let them know that they are on the right track. There can be nothing more soul distroying to a newbie whose spent an age learning Zbrush and working his / her / it’s butt off to have their image ignored except for anon voters.

Put yourself in the position of a newbie such as this and think for a second. You’d made something that while may not be perfect, your pretty proud of. Then all you get is no comments or a stream of negative ones. Personally I always try to find at least one thing in any image that I like before critisising. I do agree that anon posting (along with multiple IDs!) should be banned here. I would go further in fact and suggest that anyone who uses a network with more than one user should have their IP ‘registered’ with a mod. Both myself and my other half are memebers here and hence share the same IP. Surely it would be in everyones interest if this was registered or logged, it stops people creating 7 accounts and voting on their own image. (Yeah it does happen and some people ARE that sad).

While things such as stars or ‘top row’ may be nice to have, the main motivation must be the art itself. A piece of art must stand or fall on its own merit not those of stars. However we must also remember that there are those in the 3D community who do seem to have an irrational hatred against Zbrush. I assume this is because they went out and bought an expensive program such as Maya / XSI / 3DS etc and dont like the idea that a program thats a lot cheaper can produce without doubt more detailed / better images. (Although ‘better’ is a subjective term.)

When I see terms on forums such as ‘Zbrush allows too much throw away art’; or ‘I hate all that super detailed Zbrush stuff’. I start to stop and think a little. So maybe not everyone who votes here does so in clear conscience, its worth thinking about certainly.

Wayne


PS another 5 stars for this thread because I can lol. :lol:

#15

Didn’t think Aurick ever read this forum ( or anyone else for that
matter), will have to be more careful:D

One more ps, how many people hate when they
write “nice”.

Rather have sucks

#16

Nice is not a nice word. :slight_smile:

#17

Sorry to disturb the conversation here, but please help a poor French to better himself. Why is the word " nice " not nice to use ?

To get back to the conversation, I once was irritated by the fact that only a few people answered to a thread were you tried to pack the more with good screens, explanations and wip - something to discuss with, to share informations. Now I don’t care, but in the end, I would prefer to have responses and no stars than the opposite. :slight_smile:

Bye !

#18

To a lot of people the one word comment nice=Yawn.
Not good, not bad, better than nothing.
To some it is a polite form of sucks.
To some.

I actually long for a period here not so long ago.
When a new person posted there was usually a "resident " artist who would welcome and try to contribute something to the Newbie, always kindly, always respectfully.
To name them all would be unfair, and no doubt I will leave someone out.
But a lot of the people here benefited from the initial help of such people.
as Frenchy Pilou, Andresloy, Ron Harris, Robotalk,Aminuts etc.
Much more of a communal thing then.
Still happens of course ,but a lot of people got left by the wayside.

Why not me?
Too lazy, don’t know much. Big mouth.

If you cannot get constructive criticism here, where can you?
We basically only have each other. ( discounting dvds, of course.:smiley: )
Have not left Aurick out, saved the best for last.
Would like to thank all those whose criticism helped me out under my
other seven names, (must say I have never thought to vote for myself
seven times)

#19

I look at it this way. Even an anonymous 1 star rating is better than none.

One of my recent learning type projects managed to garner a 2 star rating. I was kind of happy that it attracted any notice at all. It was the first one of mine that I noticed that had received anything in that regard.

I went in and gave it a 1 star rating just to see if it would peg it down, but it stayed at two. :lol:

#20

anybody ever needs 5 stars, I’m for sale.:+1:
(cheap, too)