Jafo.........if ratings are simply a filtration system, then maybe you guy really should get tougher on submissions.

are you serious adni? you wonder what Brad says?
I thought you already know, he made things really clear about ratings

Two points about ratings I don't understand:

1) How can the Admins not know who rated what? By this I mean you can only rate a skin once, the server knows not to let you do it twice. The info isn't stored on your cookie. It has to be there somewhere.

2) Why not require a comment when rating. It would be "semi" annonymous, yet require some accountability. People would not be as likely to "tank" someone elses work with a one vote purely for personal reasons.

This is a really interesting thread. Everyone seems to have a slightly different response, yet they are all similiar. Most of the Admins on this site have no use for ratings, so why are they here...

The ratings on here -- and by that, I mean the results of the ratings themselves, and not the system -- has never made much sense to me. Most of my skins with high download numbers have low ratings.

What concerns me is that most of my skins have 1 rating, which as far as I'm aware is put there by the admin that posts the skin. So the casual user that's allegedly sorting stuff by rating to decide what to dl is seeing the opinion of just a handful of people.

Bottom line is I don't think the ratings system gets used enough to make a difference. But if it has to be kept, how about an "average rating given" stat on people's author page. Keeps ratings anonymous, but discourages people from trashing everyone's skins.

as i understand it part of the reason for the raitings is to help limit the bandwidth this site uses.

if you had to pay for the ever increasing bandwidth, then you to might like anything that helped to keep it in check?

So, migellito, you are one of them, hmmmm (j/k)

If you read carefully all my threads, you will find out that I never said anything about removing the system rating, because I know that Brad insist in this, I only said IMPROVE IT!
Also, it has nothing to do with the bandwidth, because almost all the people are downloading "by date" or by "downloads" and very rarely "by rating".

But the most important part about ratings is the folowing:

IF the ratings were only critiques then everything it is OK, but the most of them ARE NOT, jealousy, antagonism, personal antipathies etc, are the causes of most of the ratings! This is the weak part of the existent Rating System. That is why I am trying for the betterment of it.
Please, think about it.

GreenReaper grins in an evil manner

Maybe you should go and rate Brad's stuff down without posting comments and see if the system improves in accountability?

OK...so it's simole.

We must have more ratings per submission to better reflect public attitude/opinion of the piece.

We must police those who are using the rating system to get at other skinners/artists.

How about locking all prieviews to REQUIRE a rating before they can be closed...[is that feasible in the coding?]

Make the Ratings non-anonymous. That will 'force' people to be a bit more responsible....vindictive low scores, as well as fauning high scores 'should' both cease....[at least to some degree].

Maybe the 'peer' part of the rating system could be also coded in specifically....If you have a skin submitted at the site, you are 'made' to post ratings on skin views in the coding, if you do not have skins here, you are not 'required' to rate.

I'm still reminded of the function coded into Litestep.net which gave the themer the option of just who would be allowed to comment and/or 'rate' your themes....fellow themers only, or 'anyone'.
The former was great for genuinely 'constructive' comment, the latter if you really 'wanted' to hear from the 'brat-pack'...the 1337 f1337....

As long as we're still kicking this around, I'd like to clear up a summary of my opinion that was posted. While I did suggest a no-comment-no-rating approach or a vindictive rating watch as potential ways of improving the system, in no way did I feel the system _needed_ changing.

My primary concern is that people download and use my stuff, secondary is comments, so I can improve my work, and last is rating. If I let ratings determine whether I continued skinning, I would have stopped skinning along time ago. Anyone who saw my early efforts in Litestep would probably concur.

Just to add my $0.02, I don't rate things very often but when I do I always try to leave a comment too. Mostly because if it's good enough (sorry, I only rate ones I like not those that I dislike) for me to rate, then I definitely have a couple of things to say about it.

The other reason that I tend not to rate things is that frankly it's kind of cumbersome since the comments/ratings are separated. I have to either bring up the screen twice or remember to click on both submit buttons. I can't tell you how many times I've entered a comment and a rating and then only remembered to click one of the submit buttons. To me at least the interface could be improved slightly. I'd like to be able to submit a rating and a comment in one fell swoop.

Aside from featured skins, ratings are only visible to Apprentice and up level users. You're not missing much by not seeing them..trust me.

I am still wondering, why is it so difficult to improve this System Rating ???

Why we have to go on this argument on and on ?

What is happening?

"Aside from featured skins, ratings are only visible to Apprentice and up level users."

Then what is the big deal? 95%+ of the users are never going to see them or even know about them. If that many people can't see them why bother having them?