The Future of ArtWanted.com Ratings

Over the last few months we have been pouring over all of the e-mails and message boards posts about ratings. There is a large mix of opinions both supporting the rating system and against it. There have been a ton of suggestions as well. Some of them are great suggestions and others conflict with each other, so it's not possible to meet all requests. We have also spent a lot of time on the Internet looking at other rating websites (art and non-art sites) to see how they run their systems.

Based off all this information, we would like to announce the future plans we have for our rating system. We are doing this so that everyone knows that we are listening to your concerns and are in the process of changing things. We know that there will never be a 'perfect' ratings system when user opinions are involved, but we hope you are excited about the new plans we have...

1) DEDICATED RATING AREA

The biggest change we are planning is creating a dedicated area/page for rating artwork. If you want to rate artwork, you will have to go to a specific page to do this. We will be removing the 'rating bar' from the images in everyone's portfolios and just leave the comments box. The reason for this change is to eliminate 'lowballing' specific artists or revenge ratings, because you won't be able to go to their portfolio and vote on their images to knock them down. If someone wants to rate artwork, they can go to a specific section and rate random artwork where the name of the artist is not known.

2) MORE RATING AREA OPTIONS

Per your requests, we will be adding additional options to select which artwork you want to see and rate. You will be able to have your random images selected 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 will be removing the highest & lowest vote from each image. This way, if you happen to get one low vote from someone, it will not be calculated in your rating average and not effect your final score.

4) NEW RATING REPORTS IN THE MEMBERS AREA

We are changing the ratings so that your rating score is more private than public. We will have some new reports that show you how your images compare with other members of the site. We will also track if your image on a daily basis if it's moving up or down from yesterdays totals. We think this will be a fun page to look at as you track the rating status of your images compared with the other artwork on our site. We will also be removing the ratings from the comments on your images, so that they are not known to the public.

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. Because of this, we plan to remove the top ten reports that have to do with ratings. Instead, these reports will be based on other criteria that is less subjective and more real. 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 will be adding the ability 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.

8) REPLY TO COMMENTS

Another long awaited feature on our site is the ability to reply to a comment. You will soon have the ability to reply to each comment you are given and have it appear next to the original comment.

9) BANNING MEMBERS OPTION

From your requests, we will also be adding the ability to ban any member on our site. If you ban 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) MONTHLY GIVEAWAYS

In order to encourage more members to rate and comment on the artwork of our artists, we will be holding a monthly giveaway for cash or prizes. Each time you rate someone's artwork, you will be entered into this drawing. Each time you comment on someone's portfolio, you will receive two entries into the drawing. The more your rate/comment, the higher your chances are at winning. At the end of the month, we will select a random member from the votes & comments received during that month. We will announce the winner each month on our message boards.

CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, our goal with these changes is to reduce the number of lowballs 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 will do 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.

We have already started working on these changes, but it's going to take some time. There is a ton of programming required, but we feel it is well worth it. We hope to be able to launch this new system at the first part of May. We hope that you are as excited as we are for these improvements.

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