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01/14/2009 11:00:18 AM · #1 |
I've gotta be honest. And with the most honorable of intentions, and with great humbleness, and respect for all photographers, no matter their skill levels. I myself am merely an amateur. But I was going over the results, blue ribbon to brown, of which I commented and voted on every one. Without singling a single image out, there were several images that were either shoehorned, or just technically not good looking in any way that some people voted 8, 9, or 10 on when 95% of the other people voting on the same image deemed it 2,3,4, or 5 even.
My point is, what the heck are people thinking? Let me also say that I had no submission in the specific challenge I'm referring to, "Lucky"
I just find it disturbing.
Maybe it doesn't make a big deal in the grand scheme, seeing how we're talking about the bottom half, or third of the challenge submissions, score-wise. But it's odd, nonetheless.
Rant over ;)
Message edited by author 2009-01-14 11:10:58. |
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01/14/2009 11:03:04 AM · #2 |
| I defer to the wondrous statement, "There's no accounting for taste." I am sure there are those who voted some of those "bottom half" and are wondering what the majority were thinking when they voted it low. |
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01/14/2009 11:04:20 AM · #3 |
They are called "outlier" votes and every statistical distribution in the real world has them. They aren't worth worrying about. Incidentally, *some* very high votes on real "stinker" images can be explained by people trying to keep the photographer from capturing the mythical brown ribbon. For some reason, a lot of people feel that if youa re TRYING to get the lowest possible score it's not "fair" that you get a brown. Go figure...
R.
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01/14/2009 11:06:37 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by Mike_Adams:
I defer to the wondrous statement, "There's no accounting for taste." I am sure there are those who voted some of those "bottom half" and are wondering what the majority were thinking when they voted it low. |
I agree with that statement, Mike. And to be honest, I mean no harm by posting this question. Not trying to be incendiary in any way. But I'm talking about images that are just technically BAD. I mean, not experimantal, or cutting edge, but the blurry overexposed, uncomposed stuff that people enter.
It's just mind boggling to me, and if nothing else, it's another post on these forums to prevent people from doing anything at work, like me... |
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01/14/2009 11:06:42 AM · #5 |
Originally posted by Schnitzer17:
Rant over ;) |
That wasn't a rant. IMO a rant would start like this: What is wrong with you people?!?!?!?!?!?! Why, why would you..... That would be more a rant. Yours was well thought out and didn't call out anyone in particular, not a rant.
Some challenges seem to just really pull out the shoehorns. Lucky and Unlucky seemed to do that. Which kind of surprised me, the last 6 or 7 challenges I had voted on seemed to have only a few shoehorns. I wish that trend had continued. |
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01/14/2009 11:09:09 AM · #6 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
They are called "outlier" votes and every statistical distribution in the real world has them. They aren't worth worrying about. Incidentally, *some* very high votes on real "stinker" images can be explained by people trying to keep the photographer from capturing the mythical brown ribbon. For some reason, a lot of people feel that if youa re TRYING to get the lowest possible score it's not "fair" that you get a brown. Go figure...
R. |
That makes some sense to me,  Bear_music
I have seen a smattering of brown ribbon talk in the current challenge I've entered. Who knows for sure though, right? |
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01/14/2009 11:15:45 AM · #7 |
I thought about this thread a few days ago and didn`t have the courage! My english isn't really good either, and i can sound rude sometimes.
But i agree with you Schnitzer17. I didn`t understand the good scores at some images, and low scores at other ones.
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01/14/2009 11:23:58 AM · #8 |
Just out of curiosity, I looked over the low scoring end of that challenge and found I had voted a 6 on an image that ended up with a mid to high 4. My opinion had been that it was sharp, reasonably well lit, with good detail and color. Technically a decent shot, but it probably had little to interest most voters. Perhaps that explains at least one take on a shot that was toward the bottom of the pile.
I also gave a 7 to an entry that came in a bit under a 5. I thought it was pretty good and visually interesting, but I see the majority felt is was "Meh" material. |
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01/14/2009 12:52:35 PM · #9 |
I'm not sure, but the bottom third of a challenge probably gets about the same average score from me as the top third. Are you worried that not everybody is conforming enough?
Bear, there's an interesting book called The Black Swan that talks quite a bit about how statistical distributions simply don't apply to most things in the real world, and that would include DPC votes. I highly recommend it. Fascinating. |
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01/14/2009 01:05:05 PM · #10 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
I'm not sure, but the bottom third of a challenge probably gets about the same average score from me as the top third. Are you worried that not everybody is conforming enough?
Bear, there's an interesting book called The Black Swan that talks quite a bit about how statistical distributions simply don't apply to most things in the real world, and that would include DPC votes. I highly recommend it. Fascinating. |
I read it as well and thought of it when I read Bear's post. Great book, although I found it to be a little repetitive, which I guess is necessary given how little faith the author puts in reader to internalize a non-intuitive concept. |
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01/14/2009 01:16:53 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
Bear, there's an interesting book called The Black Swan that talks quite a bit about how statistical distributions simply don't apply to most things in the real world, and that would include DPC votes. I highly recommend it. Fascinating. |
In general statistics are tricky! I love this example of how you can make a perfectly useless statistical conclusion
List of soviet and russian leaders, in chronological order, and whether they had hair or were bald(balding)
Lenin - bald
Stalin - hair
Krushchev - bald
Breshnev - hair
Andropov - bald
cherneko - hair
Gorbachev - bald
Yeltsin - Hair
Chernomyrdin - Bald
Yeltsin - Hair
Putin - Bald
Medvedev - Hair
So..statistically the next leader of Rusia will be bald, which makes no sense at all
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01/14/2009 01:41:51 PM · #12 |
Originally posted by kolasi:
Originally posted by posthumous:
Bear, there's an interesting book called The Black Swan that talks quite a bit about how statistical distributions simply don't apply to most things in the real world, and that would include DPC votes. I highly recommend it. Fascinating. |
In general statistics are tricky! I love this example of how you can make a perfectly useless statistical conclusion
List of soviet and russian leaders, in chronological order, and whether they had hair or were bald(balding)
Lenin - bald
Stalin - hair
Krushchev - bald
Breshnev - hair
Andropov - bald
cherneko - hair
Gorbachev - bald
Yeltsin - Hair
Chernomyrdin - Bald
Yeltsin - Hair
Putin - Bald
Medvedev - Hair
So..statistically the next leader of Rusia will be bald, which makes no sense at all |
*Art begins his campaign to be the next leader of Russia* |
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01/14/2009 02:14:05 PM · #13 |
Originally posted by Art Roflmao:
Originally posted by kolasi:
Originally posted by posthumous:
Bear, there's an interesting book called The Black Swan that talks quite a bit about how statistical distributions simply don't apply to most things in the real world, and that would include DPC votes. I highly recommend it. Fascinating. |
In general statistics are tricky! I love this example of how you can make a perfectly useless statistical conclusion
List of soviet and russian leaders, in chronological order, and whether they had hair or were bald(balding)
Lenin - bald
Stalin - hair
Krushchev - bald
Breshnev - hair
Andropov - bald
cherneko - hair
Gorbachev - bald
Yeltsin - Hair
Chernomyrdin - Bald
Yeltsin - Hair
Putin - Bald
Medvedev - Hair
So..statistically the next leader of Rusia will be bald, which makes no sense at all |
*Art begins his campaign to be the next leader of Russia* |
Hahahahahahah! Every russian with his woody. |
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01/14/2009 03:06:12 PM · #14 |
Originally posted by Art Roflmao:
*Art begins his campaign to be the next leader of Russia* |
That should be an easy campaign. Russian Art is well known and popular. |
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01/14/2009 03:35:29 PM · #15 |
| Godspeed comrade art, Godspeed. |
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01/14/2009 03:47:43 PM · #16 |
Originally posted by yospiff:
I also gave a 7 to an entry that came in a bit under a 5. I thought it was pretty good and visually interesting, but I see the majority felt is was "Meh" material. |
Sounds like my entry. Even if it isn't, Schnitzer17 left me a few glowing comments and suggested that I was robbed (!). Maybe, maybe not, though I love and appreciate the compliment! I thought it would do better than it did, but I agree it probably fell short thematically. I also think a larger version might have helped, but probably not much.
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01/14/2009 08:50:03 PM · #17 |
Originally posted by bvy:
Originally posted by yospiff:
I also gave a 7 to an entry that came in a bit under a 5. I thought it was pretty good and visually interesting, but I see the majority felt is was "Meh" material. |
Sounds like my entry. Even if it isn't, Schnitzer17 left me a few glowing comments and suggested that I was robbed (!). Maybe, maybe not, though I love and appreciate the compliment! I thought it would do better than it did, but I agree it probably fell short thematically. I also think a larger version might have helped, but probably not much.
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You know, it's funny. Just to use you as an example(thanks for volunteering;)) When you look at the statistical distribution of your votes, 75 people voted 4 or less on your image. That's 35%. I've seen other threads inquiring about other folks' scoring methods or scale, and the majority start at 5 and work from there, myself included. I understand when people score 1's for images that aren't thematically justifed, and I personally dip below 5 for images that are not technically sound, or visually pleasing, but your image IS technically sound, and even if you could make an argument that it was shoehorned into the challenge, of which I personally don't feel is true, is it not better than a 5?
Taking it one step further, The "ribbon range" I have generally seen in my short time here is somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 or so, give or take a couple tenths, depending. And looking at the challenge history, out of 970 challenges, only 38 people won with scores of 8 or better. Now I'm not sure that anyone can make the argument that out of 970 blues, and 2910 ribbons total if you count reds and yellows, one of those images didn't deserve a 9 or 10 avg. score.
But I can answer my own query here because that's the beast. The Statistical distribution. It's a nasty monster, and it changes the scale into what IT wants to, not the voters.
Now I'm going into some sort of Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass existentialism thing, and that might weird some folks out.
Plus, I could talk about this stuff all day long. I love to make useless conversation...
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01/14/2009 08:56:54 PM · #18 |
i've always wondered who gave me a 10 for this shoe-horned, DNMC, crappy technical photo:
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01/14/2009 09:12:02 PM · #19 |
Ah: "just not technically good looking in any way." And I didn't even enter the challenge! Is that lucky or what?
Message edited by author 2009-01-14 21:12:51. |
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01/14/2009 09:14:14 PM · #20 |
Originally posted by crayon:
i've always wondered who gave me a 10 for this shoe-horned, DNMC, crappy technical photo:
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Hahah, i'm scared with the comment "you suck. your ten sucks. and your handwriting sucks, too."
Newb question...What is DNMC? |
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01/14/2009 09:22:00 PM · #21 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
I'm not sure, but the bottom third of a challenge probably gets about the same average score from me as the top third. Are you worried that not everybody is conforming enough?
Bear, there's an interesting book called The Black Swan that talks quite a bit about how statistical distributions simply don't apply to most things in the real world, and that would include DPC votes. I highly recommend it. Fascinating. |
It's not that I'm not *aware* of these things, folks; I'm just operating on a much simpler plane in these discussions. In the context of the nominal distribution, the votes *are* "outliers", and there *is* no point in getting worked up about them. That's all I'm saying. I'm aware that statistics is much more complex than that, I've made something of a study of these issues, and I'm familiar with "The Black Swan"... Just so y'all know...
R.
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01/14/2009 09:43:17 PM · #22 |
| DNMC= Does not meet challenge |
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01/14/2009 09:49:54 PM · #23 |
Originally posted by katiemcg:
DNMC= Does not meet challenge |
thanks! |
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01/14/2009 10:05:18 PM · #24 |
Originally posted by bvy:
Originally posted by yospiff:
I also gave a 7 to an entry that came in a bit under a 5. I thought it was pretty good and visually interesting, but I see the majority felt is was "Meh" material. |
Sounds like my entry. |
No, it wasn't. Yours didn't come up in my voting selection, but I think it's pretty good and It certainly fits the challenge, IMO. I would have probably given it a 6 or 7. I was referring to this one, which I think was way underrated.
"Lucky" was a low scoring challenge all around however. I was totally surprised to come in 4th place with a sub-6 average. I also noticed that 17 votes on mine got scrubbed in rollover, moving me up over .1 from where I was before rollover.
Message edited by author 2009-01-14 22:07:48. |
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01/14/2009 10:58:44 PM · #25 |
Originally posted by pedrobop:
Originally posted by crayon:
i've always wondered who gave me a 10 for this shoe-horned, DNMC, crappy technical photo:
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Hahah, i'm scared with the comment "you suck. your ten sucks. and your handwriting sucks, too."
Newb question...What is DNMC? |
ah, i see you've read the comment left on that photo by the famous  mk.
she is known for her brutally honest, non-filtered comments. it's always good to get comments like that ;)
DNMC means Does Not Meet Challenge (topic). that's what you get when you shoe horn something into a challenge! |
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