Rating System Back Online

The long wait is over, the much anticipated...highly controversial...fun for everyone...ArtWanted.com rating system is back.

For those of you that are new, the rating system allows other ArtWanted.com members to view your artwork and rate each image on a scale from 1-10. From these ratings you can see how well you are doing compared to other artists on the site. For those that are really good, you will be placed on our 'top artists/images' charts for the whole world to marvel at your talent. We hope that as you vote for images, you will also place a positive comment towards the piece that the artist can read.

The rating system is 100% optional and can be turned off in your member preferences area if you desire. It should also be noted that you must be a logged in member of ArtWanted.com to rate images, anonymous visitors will not be able to vote.

The rating system was turned off in January due to several people that were abusing the system. We have some new programs in place to greatly reduce these type of attacks. Because a 'rating' system is based off user opinions, there will always be people that get votes they feel that are undeserved. We have some ways of dealing with this issues that we will explain a bit later, but hope that it will be minimal.

We have some great new 'top artist/image' reports that have been built, but we need to gather at least a weeks worth of votes for the reports to be displayed. Other top reports will show the most active members of our site, most visited portfolios, most popular artists and some other fun stuff.

The biggest question on many of your minds is whether we will show the names of the artists that voted for your images. From the survey we held, the opinion was split 50/50 to show or hide the artist name. Since the opinions are divided, we have come up with our own solution. We know that decision will not make everyone happy, but we hope the majority of our members will be happy with our approach.

We have decided to show the name of the artist with it's corresponding rating, but only for those that are very active members on our website. So, if you really want to see the names of the voters, you will need to rate a large number of images (say 500). With this method, all voters will be conscious of the fact that their name could be known, so they will put more thought into the ratings they give. At the same time, this privileged information will be reserved for those that really use the rating system.

As with the launch of any new system, there might be a few bugs initially, but just let us know about them and we will stamp them out as quick as possible.

We want everyone to know that we have spent a great deal of time researching the best way for the ArtWanted.com rating system. There are many ways and methods that have been suggested for our rating system and we have read and thought about each one of them. After reviewing everything, we have decided to head down the path we have designed. We hope that everyone can respect this decision and keep the fights on the message board to a minimum. If you have a comment or suggestion about the rating system, we ask that you sent it to us via e-mail and not post it on the message board where it's sure to stir conflicting opinions.

When rating other artists, remember that you are rating on the curve with other ArtWanted.com members, not comparing them to the masters. Ratings should reflect a comination of the subject matter, colors used, composition, media usage and overall talent of the artist. 10's should be rare, just as the lower numbers of the scale should also be few. If you prefer not to rate the image, just click the SKIP button on the ratings page. Here is the current rating scale:

RATING SCALE:

1-2 3-4 5 6-7 8 9 10

Start Over Needs Work Average Good Very Good Excellent Perfect

To begin, just go to the following URL or click on the rating scale below any large image found on our site....

http://www.artwanted.com/imagevote3.cfm

Have fun!

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