Welcome to Fractal Forums

Hi

I haven't been able to vote for every picture in the compo, but have done what I can, when I can.

I notice that once you rate an image, you can't vote again, which is what I expect so that's ok.

When looking at my own images, it appears that I can vote for my own images.  I wonder what the forum's stance is on this?  I mean, one vote probably won't change the outcome unless it's all pretty tight, and what do other members do in this circumstance? Do you vote for your own images?  If you do vote, do you automatically give yourself a 5* rating, or do you give yourself less?

My own view is that I shouldn't vote on my own competition entries.

What are your thoughts?

the forums software prohibits voting for ones own entry, you should have gotten an error message when doing so

I didn't try.

Thought it was unethical to vote on my own entries, just wondered what other people had done or would have done.

you could have ;) the worst that you can do is not vote!

Your comments made me think it was worth a try.

Doesn't work for Admin either.  And I tried to give my entry One star!

Btw, about the rating system... I didn't vote for every entry, I only voted with 4-5 stars for the entries that are the outstanding ones for me. I don't like the idea of giving 1-2 stars to entries that I really don't like, and also, as I said in the previous compo, we rely on the good faith of the participants, but the truth is that the negative votes could be used with bad intentions.

I used to do it that way too, but when Paul  (Nahee Enterprises) commented that he felt everybody who entered deserved some sort of feedback, I agreed and started using the one and two star votes as well.

My voting system is simple - 5 choices, so I equated it to an Academic System and gave people an "A" (5 stars) to an "F" (One Star) as if I were (qualified to be) an Art Teacher and grading a project.  If I ever felt compelled to give something like a "B Minus" - they got a B, while something I would have given a "C Plus" got rounded up too.  Only exception was a "B Plus" which stayed at a "B" because the 5 Star Rating has to be reserved only for The Best of The Best and only given to any image I think would be worthy of winning the contest.

I'm sure we all have our own systems and reasons - but that was how I rated things.

there are no negative votings, because each vote increases the total rating by +1...+5 and it is the total rating
that counts for the competition, because it as well reflects the overall attention (bring people to interact)
so, each a 1 star is better than not voting

Oh, I thought the final result was an average of the ratings... I mean, two 5-star votes and a 1-star vote = 3.66 stars, and two 5-star votes only = 5 stars. Sorry.

right, it is not the average that counts but the summed amount of ratings, the more ratings the better

Personnaly, i've taken the time to put a vote for all entries (especially still  frame ones), i've given from 1 star to 5 five stars. I understand this is not fun to give a bad notations, but if we are able to give a good mark we can also give bad ones, for me it's important to do not limit our judgement to what we like. I  also learn a lot by analyzing what I don't like in a composition.
And like that,  all pictures are rated in a balanced way according my judgement scale.

When voting for all entries, when i arrived to my own, i tried to put a note to see if this was possible, and  i had an error message. regarding the note i would give myself, it's pretty easy after giving a note to a lot of picture it become mechanical to put a note to ourself ( like if it was not our own work ).

my stats if i remember well, are approximatly:

10 % of  5 stars
20 % of 4 stars
45 % of 3 stars
15 % of 2 stars
10% of 1 stars

And to answer the question, the note i was trying to give me was a 4 stars for the favourite of my own.
Yes, I would have thought  that i would be more harsh with myself, but obviously i've selected some of my favourites pictures in different categories ;).