Stars ... ? :/

[thirdeye]

Sorry to start this all over again but I've searched the forum and I've found no answer from any of the mods about the stars rating. Discussion in the Skechbooks ended without conclusion. They were gone then they appeared back but without the possibility of casting new votes (which is ridiculous by the way). Today I visited the Challenge Arena, and while reading Evildisco's thread a "Rate Thread" menu cought my eye. So I checked the rest of the forum and there's no such menu in other parts of it. And my question is - WTF ? Is it gone or is it not ?

[evildisco]

Yeah apparently its gone... :dead:

[DavidCousens]

My sketchbook thread had 4 stars, then I turned around and they were gone! How come some peoples stars disappeared and some remained?

[NoUseFrAName]

pretty sure there's a minimum of like 10 votes before they show. If you had less than 10 votes, then your stars don't show up. Now that there's no voting option, it would seem that we with fewer than 10 are screwwwweeed! haha,
oh well, they're just freakin' stars.

-Rob ****!

[Pontemonti]

The "rate thread" option was turned off. To avoid confusion, I have now set the number of required votes to show a thread's rating to something ridiculously high, which means that no one will see threads with ratings.

[thirdeye]

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=44547 :) probably just an oversight ?

[one2hit]

hrmm will we ever have the stars feature in the future? (or a similar rating system). Not that it really makes a difference, but I thought it was a good thing to have around, what's wrong with a little recognition? (not that great artists don't get that, it's just a tiny extra thing).

[Orcatraz]

yeah, I'm flying blind without the stars. I can't check every sketchbook, but I know I'm missing out on some amazing work.

[talmir]

I have never had stars and I see the traffic is three times more for sketchbooks with one star. I like not having stars so the traffic kinda distributes evenly.

[Orcatraz]

just because the traffic is higher doesn't mean more people are enjoying the thread. when I check the sketchbooks 90% of the time I end up slamming my finger down on the backspace button before most of the images are even finished loading. The view counter counts my view even though I didn't really look at the thread. And I then I feel dirty and used because I didn't know what I was getting into. If only there was a way to know the quality of the thread before you open it. :thinking: hmmmmm.... I know! :star: :star: :star:

[S.C. Watson]

What's the point of turning off stars? to keep a few poeple who complain that they get low or no stars ratings happy?

I'd prefer to have the stars ratings. It helps me find the people I should be learning from.

If they're good, give credit where credit is due. The argument that we want to keep this equal is nonsense. Some artists are stronger than other other artists. It's nothing to apologize for. Yeah you get a lot of fanboydom, but so what? If they're that good they deserve a few asspats form those inclined to give 'em. At least you know who's good and who's working on getting better without having to troll through hundreds of threads you have no interest in.

~S

[dfacto]

I'd prefer to have the stars ratings. It helps me find the people I should be learning from.

Exactly.

Edit: Also, think about it like this. If the mods are moving deficient artworks out of the finished section and into others, then it isn't as if CA could even pose as a "pat everyone on the ass" site. Why get rid of the star rating system? You don't help anyone, and you are already putting people in their place, so it isn't as if an honest evaluation of a person's skills by the community should hurt anyone's feelings. If it does, then fuck them, the people have spoken, and they need to improve.

[tensai]

i think a lot of people use stars to keep track of a thread, more than anything else. you could of course subscribe to a thread and recieve e mail, but it might be a really cool function if we could just see some 'track this thread for me' function. i think if viewers could add a little icon or click a checkbox to know this is a thread you would want to check out later, that would be very useful..

tensai

[Orcatraz]

yeah, we need stars. let the babies cry about not having any. the site needs to be easy to navigate. I've just stopped looking at the sketchbooks all together because I don't have time to blindly sift through thousands of them. I remember reading the thread that led to this, why did you cave? If the policy is to cater to those who bitch the loudest then let me be the first to say :blahblah: "bitch, bitch, bitch". :blahblah:

[Pontemonti]

I'm not the one who made the decision, and I don't know why, but here's a guess...these stars only serve to show which sketchbooks are "cool"...the idea with the sketchbook forum might not be to showcase the best sketchbooks, but rather to give everyone a chance to receive crits on their sketches.

A bit off-topic:
When it comes to keeping track of what certain people do on the forums, we might be able to add something for that...there is already the buddy list feature in vBulletin, but they don't really use it a lot. Perhaps we can find a way to make it easier...add an icon next to a thread started by one of your buddies, or change the background color for that row a bit...I don't know.

[tensai]

When it comes to keeping track of what certain people do on the forums, we might be able to add something for that...there is already the buddy list feature in vBulletin, but they don't really use it a lot. Perhaps we can find a way to make it easier...add an icon next to a thread started by one of your buddies, or change the background color for that row a bit...I don't know.

thats what i mean and i think it would be great if something like that would be implemented. for the rest i dont care much for stars anyway...

tensai

[Orcatraz]

but how does one find these diamonds in the rough in the fist place. I do subscribe to a lot of sketchbooks, but I found them though the stars.

[S.C. Watson]

I'm not the one who made the decision, and I don't know why, but here's a guess...these stars only serve to show which sketchbooks are "cool"...the idea with the sketchbook forum might not be to showcase the best sketchbooks, but rather to give everyone a chance to receive crits on their sketches.

A bit off-topic:
When it comes to keeping track of what certain people do on the forums, we might be able to add something for that...there is already the buddy list feature in vBulletin, but they don't really use it a lot. Perhaps we can find a way to make it easier...add an icon next to a thread started by one of your buddies, or change the background color for that row a bit...I don't know.

To be honest, I never noticed a problem with sketchbooks not being crited for lack of stars. That, in my opinion (and we all know what that's worth...) is absurd. When I first started in SB forum, I recieved a ton of crits from all sorts of people and made a lot of friends because of it. The star system was firmly in place at the time.

But I also found that if you want to get good crits, GO CRIT SOMEONE ELSE. This is EXACTLY what Insane Visions did - my god he was all over the place commenting and critting peoples work *and* working on his own stuff. What happened? people went to find out who this guy was and were blown away. But he kept it real by critting in other peoples books and not bitching and bellyaching because he didn't have stars. He earned them.

As for finding another system to keep track of threads - why? That's what the stars do. Don't reinvent the wheel, because someone will come along and complain about that too and then it will be removed.

The star system works when implemented properly - it got too easy to get stars and we had people handing them out like popcorn, and then we had people going around taking them away. It's been stellar schizophrenia ever since because nobody seems to be able to make up their mind.

If the stars can be controled by number of votes, just make it a sliding scale and use *all* of the stars from 1 to 5. Make 5 stars very hard to get to. 1 star should be something like 25 to 50 votes, 2 stars should be 50 to 150 etc. with *one vote per member per thread* - no exceptions.

I'm not elitist, but I fully recognize that there are artists that are better than me - I'd like to be able to find them with a simple system that is already in place without having to worry about someone's snit because they aren't as popular as they'd like to be.

[corky13]

Agreed...don`t put the stars away...


btw.:anyone who rants because his sb has no stars is just childish...

[thirdeye]

To be honest, I never noticed a problem with sketchbooks not being crited for lack of stars. That, in my opinion (and we all know what that's worth...) is absurd. When I first started in SB forum, I recieved a ton of crits from all sorts of people and made a lot of friends because of it. The star system was firmly in place at the time.

Exactly, actually I often feel like it's the other way round - more stars - less valuable crits but a lot of OOOHs and AAHs, not that I'm saying that they're not nice but sometimes I could give'em all for one good crit. People giving crits like to think that they can help with them - what's the use in giving a pro crit.

As for finding another system to keep track of threads - why? That's what the stars do. The star system works when implemented properly - it got too easy to get stars and we had people handing them out like popcorn, and then we had people going around taking them away.

Once again I agree - the only other idea proposed that made sense IMO was the one with flags. One step system - if you like a thread and you want to reward it in some way than you give it a "flag" (vote) after - lets say - 100 maybe more people give a thread a flag - vote it gets an icon next to the title nad that's it. It will be reconized as a must-see and there would be no competition like - i got four stars and you have only three.

That's one of the things i liked about the star system - once I got to a thread that pleased my eye etc. I wanted to "reward" it with something more than a subscription :)

[Orcatraz]

If the stars can be controled by number of votes, just make it a sliding scale and use *all* of the stars from 1 to 5. Make 5 stars very hard to get to. 1 star should be something like 25 to 50 votes, 2 stars should be 50 to 150 etc. with *one vote per member per thread* - no exceptions. I agree with Oregano, this is the system we should use. The problem before was people could obtain five stars if two of their friends gave them five stars, then when people thought they didn't deserve it they could just vote one star and make it drop. The whole system was meaningless because there were only a few voters involved. Oregano's system would get rid of all the shenanigans surrounding stars. They should be very hard to get but impossible to take away. that would be a more accurate poll of the community.

[John]

Yes, if everyone was voting. I'd say just gimme back the stars rating, i remember once or twice watching a thread and looking for a way to throw in a couple of stars. Alas, to no avail. :zzz:
Anyway, can we get the emo smiley from eatpoo? The black haired guy cutting his wrist? We can trade it in for this :blah: one, whenever i see it i want to smack it in it's tiny yellow face. Alas. To no avail. RAAAAAHAAHAAHAH! :upset:

I'll just take my pills and sulk in the corner.

[Bojee]

Just throwing my 2 cents worth in but I'd really appreciate it if there was some way to flag the hot threads, if not stars than something else. I haven't been able to post for a while and since I've been back I've wasted a lot more time trying to find the good work. These are the people we're going to be inspired by and learn from.