I've been a member for around 18 months. I love the site. Although most challenge results end up they way they probably should...I still think the voting tends to be a little schizophrenia (i.e. I think there are often times pictures that get bad scores that probably shouldn't...and visa versa). Is there anything that can be done about that? Nope. That's just human nature and it's not worth complaining about.
However, one thing that would help me, as a photographer, is if I had more statistics at my disposal. Right now, the only thing I have to gauge my performance is an occasional comment and a score at the end of the competition. I work as a professional web designer and I rely heavily on statistical information to decide how to manipulate my sites so they will have greater impact. Photographer should be no different.
Here is my suggestion, to the creators of the site. Instead of having only the following statistics, at the end of the challenge:
1. Avg (all users)
2. Avg (commenters):
3. Avg (camera):
4. Avg (no camera):
I feel there should be more information (along with the existing statistics):
5. Ave female score
6. Ave male score:
7. Ave score from previous ribbon winners:
8. Ave score 13-25 yrs old:
9. Ave score 26-40 yrs old:
etc, etc...
Any ways, you get the idea. Whether someone has a camera or not doesn't mean much to me...there could be professional photographers on here that just like to look at pictures and haven't "registered" their camera. That statistic means nothing to me. It WOULD be nice, however, to know what the male/female breakdown was. I know that everyone likes to be looked at as equal, but let's face it, men and women look at things differently. It would be interesting to know if my lower scores were coming from men or women...how old are people that tend to give me good scores vs. bad scores, etc.?
For this site to be really productive, from a statistical standpoint, I really think there needs to be more indepth information after each challenge. Considering all of the database work has been done on the site, I don't see why that should be very hard to incorporate and I have a feeling most, if not all users, would find the added statistical information very useful...if anything, it would be really interesting to know.
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