ArtWanted.com Website Update

Many people have e-mailed us wanting to know what we have been up to over the last month, because we have not posted any new announcements. This is a quick note to let everyone know that we are alive as ever and have been working on some big projects...

SERVER PERFORMANCE
One of the biggest things we have been working on is improving the speed and performance of our website. It's not bad, but there is always room for improvements. Over the last month we have been going through each page and optimizing the code and database queries to make things faster. We have made some pages up to 10 times faster than before. This is a long tedious process, but it's well worth the time. The only problem is that once it's all done, we don't have any 'cool new feature' to show off. Most people won't even notice what has been done, but to us it's a world of difference.

WHERE ARE THE RATINGS?
This is the question on many peoples minds...when will the ratings be back? We originally wanted to have them back in February, but it has taken longer then expected to create the new system. Not only this, but we are creating some new features, charts and reports that have to be launched at the same time as the ratings. This has pushed back the launch date of the new ratings system, but it should be ready to go sometime this month. We will let everyone know more details when the new system is launched.

RATING SURVEY RESULTS
Many of you participated in a recent survey we had on the ratings system, these are the results of the survey:

1. 94% of our members want an image rating system on ArtWanted.com, so the ratings system will stay. If you don't want your artwork rated, then you can turn off this feature in your members area.
2. 78% of our members prefer that ratings are turned on be default for new members.
3. This was probably the most important question on the survey and unfortuanly, there is no clear winner. The question was if the names of the people that are voting should be known to the artist. The current winner is NO, but it keeps going back and forth between yes & no - split almost 50/50. We don't really care, but either way, it seems like the decision we make will upset half of you. :-) We are undecided on what the final outcome will be for this.
4. Twice as many members felt that a comment should not be required for each vote then those that wanted a comment required.
5. The majority of our members did not want the highest and lowest votes dropped to calculate the average artist/image rating. These results surprised us, but majority rules.
6. 95% of our members wanted to vote for all images on our website, not just images within their area of experience/gallery.
7. 86% of our members are OK with anonymous visitors posting image comments and message board topics. Although we have a problem from time to time with an anonymous posting, 99% of them are positive so they will still be able to participate on our site without a login. However, we will be setting up moderators to police their comments more.
8. 83% of our members did NOT want to answer multiple questions when voting for an image. The majority wants to quickly vote for an image and see the next one.
9. Twice as many members did not want to add a 'sort by rating' option to our image search then those that did want it.

Well, there you have it. The feedback from the active members of our website about the rating system. Some answers surprised us, others were exactly what we expected. We know that we can't please everyone and each person has their own idea how the rating system should work. Our goal is to come up with a system that works for most members and hopefully those that don't agree can at least understand why we have done it the way we have. We are excited about the new system and hope that you are too.

ARTWANTED.COM KARMA
We felt that it's time to reward the most active members of our site, so starting sometime this month, we will be launching a new report for this purpose. We appreciate all those that activly participate on our site, it really helps our site grow. For this, we want to give those members some additional exposure to their portfolio. You will be given 'karma points' each time you view an image, rate an image, post an image comment, post a message board topic, link to ArtWanted.com and other actions. The people with the most points at the end of the day, week & month will be highlighted in a new top 10 report for the most active members on our site. Once this new system launches this month, we will show everyone a chart of each action and the associated point value. Happy clicking.

Well, that's enough to swallow for today. We will be sending another announcement once these programs are officially launched. Thanks for helping grow our website!

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