Post the specific links, G7. If I like them, I'll rate them. If not, I won't hurt. lol.

finally someone who agrees with me on that

Are the ratings so important for everyone ?

You can't leave it all up to 1 person either, as that would be even more unfair.

yes you can't leave it to one person, but if you got a group of say 20 to 30 people who have the responsibilty of rating I think you would have the best results. Just having the admins rate not only puts undue stress on them (because they have the single responsibility of giving correct ratings) you forget that they too might be subject to prejudice if left to their own devices (they have no overseer besides their admin peers who might look the other way). However, if this group was moderated by the admins in case one of the members started to falter in their responsibilty then the group would stay unbiased and should make good decisions as a whole about the ratings.

Think of it like a courtroom. The rating group would be the jury, the judge would be the admins, the defendent would be the author, the defense lawyer and the prosecuter would be represented by the comments. Then you would have a hopefully unbiased decision from a group of individuals picked by the admins, and criticized or praised by the users in the comments. The "raters" would look to the comments for advice and common opinion. The admins would moderate the comments like they always do and would keep an eye on the jury to make sure that they aren't screwing around.

Just my opinion

That would probably work too. But I think that if they did there should be two ratings one from the normal people with the ability to rate and another from the journeypeople

I think so Essencay..

Then WTF do we even have a rating system?

I think some people think they have a right to hurt the efforts of others. I am not like that. Some people even abuse their rating priviledges by giving inappropiate low ratings. I am not like that. I want to encourage others not discourage. I don't go through the skins giving ratings to everything that I don't like and saying this is a "2", you a "3". I am sure there are enough people out there who get a thrill giving low ratings to the efforts of other skinners. I am just not one of them. The last rating that I gave, I believe it was a "8" or "9", and I downloaded it. I even left a comment. I don't have time to critique bad works. And, I won't give a low rating to a fellow artist without trying to give some constructive criticism. And if that isn't enough reason for you, the last time I checked this was still a free world. And, not a world with a bunch of clones all following the ideals of one person.

Chas - take a stroll through my library. only 12 I think!

I agree, it does make me wonder about the whole rate system.
For instance, I submitted an icon and got a "6"
I then submitted the same icon, but a different color and it got a "3" Go figure.
Then I see some members icons submitted that you can clearly tell was a cut/paste and/or a simple basic beginners icon that gets a "7" or higher. Ratings really don't matter to me, especially when I don't know who or where they're coming from, but it is a bit discouraging

I personally rate everything, good or bad, unless its something that isn't the type of art that I'm into. For instance "girly" stuff with lots of flowers and such. I'm also not real big on lanscapes, so I leave that up to the people who are, because its difficult for me to differentiate between a good and bad landscape wall.

PS Thanks ChasUGC

i think rating should just be scraped for te better

None of this discussion is new to people who have been around a while. There have been many, many debates on the rating system, and a general concurrence has never been reached.

Suffice to say, the current rating system IS under serious review, and WILL change in the not too distant future, along with many other changes and improvements to the site.

Stay tuned.......

Yeah....buy stuff from BoXXi........