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Well as for me, all the changes seem to be good ones with positive motives.

Original Post: New Ratings/Comments Changes

We are excited to announce that we have just released a new version of the ArtWanted.com rating/comments system. This is the 3rd major revision to our rating system since it began in 2003, and the upgrades are listed in detail below. All of the changes were made because of direct member feedback, so we hope that everyone is happy about the changes.

1) DEDICATED RATING AREA

The biggest change we did was to create a dedicated area/page for rating artwork. If you want to rate artwork, you will have to go to the specific 'rate artwork' page to do this. We have removed the 'rating bar' from the images in everyone's portfolios and just left the comments box. The reason for this change is to eliminate 'lowballing' specific artists or revenge ratings, because you now can't go to a specific portfolio to knock them down.

2) MORE RATING AREA OPTIONS

Per your requests, we have added additional options to select which artwork you want to see and rate. You can now select artwork from a specific gallery, media and/or subject. We hope that this change will encourage everyone to rate more artwork, because you will be able to filter out the artwork you don't want to see or rate.

3) REMOVAL OF HIGHEST & LOWEST VOTES

In order to get a more accurate average rating, we now remove the highest & lowest vote from each image. The more votes your artwork receives, the more votes we skim from the top & bottom to give you a more accurate average. This goes into effect, after you have recevied 5 or more votes. Because of this change, our members don't need to worry about that 'one low vote' they received from someone, because it does not hurt your final score. NOTE: This will not take effect until tomorrow.

4) REMOVAL OF RATINGS ON IMAGE COMMENTS

With this new update, we wanted to place less emphasis on ratings and have everyone quit worring about what ratings they get. One way to do this was to remove the ratings found next to the comments on your images. This way, your ratings are not known to the public anymore. You can still look up your ratings in the members area, but they are no longer on public display.

5) HIDING NAMES OF VOTERS

Ever since we started showing the names of the voters, we have had much more conflict and anger on our site between members. People that would have been friends on our site are torn apart because someone gave someone else a '8'. This contention is getting to be too much of a problem on our site and we need to put an end to it. By hiding the names of the voters, we will be making a big step towards more peace on our site between members. This will also encourage everyone to give more realistic ratings and not feel that they must give a 10 on every image. We will continue to monitor those that want to abuse the rating system, but it will no longer be the job of each member to take the law into their own hands.

6) CHANGE IN THE TOP TEN REPORTS

The top ten reports have been a popular area of our website, but it's also causing a lot of conflict and upset members when they don't make it in, or the are knocked out by another member. We looked at the top ten reports and realized that almost everyone found in the top image & top artist had a perfect score of 10. The second someone got a 9, they would be booted off the top ten reports. Because of this, we have removed the top ten reports that have to do with ratings. Instead, these reports are based on other criteria that is less subjective and more real. We have added a new category for the images with the most comments, which shows the images that inspired the most feedback from our members. There might be a few of you that will not like this change that are always featured on our top ten charts, but everyone else should be happy about this change.

7) MORE COMMENT/RATING PREFERENCES

We have added the option to not allow votes/comments from members without portfolios. You will also be able to specify that you only want votes/comments from Premium members. These new options are found on your MEMBER PREFERENCES page.

8) REPLY TO COMMENTS

Another long awaited feature on our site is the ability to reply to a comment. You can now reply to each comment you are given on every image and your reply is posted next to the original comment on your image.

9) BANNING MEMBERS OPTION

From your requests, we have also added the ability to ban any member on our site. If you ban/block a member, it will make it so that person can not vote/comment on your artwork, send you e-mails or even reply to a message board post that you start. This will also give us a great list of people that are out there just to cause trouble, so that we can disable accounts and/or features for the trouble-makers.

10) UPCOMING FEATURES

Although this is a big group of changes, we have even more coming in the next little while. Some of these new upgrades include an ArtWanted.com chat room, the ability to post general comments on the artists portfolio, the ability to rearrange your image in your portfolio, more sub-gallery options and much more. Every time you make a suggestion, it's getting added to our master 'to do' list and we plan to check off many items this summer.

CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, our goal with these changes is to reduce the number of fights and complaints over ratings. We want people to get back to having fun and creating artwork, instead of being so concerned over the votes they get. We feel we can accomlish this by making the ratings more private and not putting so much focus on who is getting the highest score. We know we won't please everyone with these changes, but we feel it's a big step in the right direction. Please give us your feedback on these new changes and we will continue to shape ArtWanted.com into the worlds best online art community.