dont you hate overrated minis?
- Thread starter skarekrow
- Start date
Sand Rat
New member
@ shadazar - You keep throwing out the membership of the site at 5k+ - last time I checked that was the number of ranked painters - ie painters with a minimum of 5 scored miniatures with 50 or more votes. I just crunched some numbers - there are 603 pages to the members list, averaging 44 names per page (although the last has only 25 on it so far) giving a rough total of 26513 members to CMON world wide. Now even if 13k of those are inactive members thats still more than twice the number of members to ranked painters - and since I saw at least 70 new members as of the ninth, I can\'t really say that the site has a minimal growth rate.
There are also as of this post 105616 miniatures posted on the website - which in a way explains the slow growth of the number of ranked painters on the site - unless you \"pimp\" your minis you\'re not going to go anywhere for a long long time.
There are also as of this post 105616 miniatures posted on the website - which in a way explains the slow growth of the number of ranked painters on the site - unless you \"pimp\" your minis you\'re not going to go anywhere for a long long time.
I hate to be argumentative but that isn\'t the reality Anders.
I see comments left by \'great\' artists alot that are incredibly tough--unfair and overly harsh. Not just in comment, but in tone as well.
AND...in fact, I let one pass onto Shadzars mini just recently. I thought it was very over the top, but I left it on there. Upon retrospect, I probably should have squashed it, so it\'s my fault ultimately. AND I APOLOGIZE TO YOU SHADZAR. I had figured there was enough in that comment to justify it staying. But as I see it now, it is not. Forgive me, as I am human and sometimes I don\'t see the intended malice. (and after a few folks have a look at it, I AM going to squash it)
I do see this happen alot, and believe me I squash a large percentage of them. I feel folks have a right to vote a mini low, and say it looks bad, but this comment is OTT.
Take a gander at the comments on this:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/181354
Avelorn
Sven Jonsson
There is no rule against jumping queues and still most people don\'t. Would you remove the norm because some people do jump queues? Most people shut off their phones in cell-free zones in a hospitals...
From what I can tell on this site people are in general trying to be fairminded when judging other people\'s work. With official guidelines many will be helped in voting and as such improve the voting system. Still it is of course open for abuse etc. But actually saying that it is abusing means putting your foot down. It\'s not about creating a cell-free zone it\'s about telling people it is and inform them how to shut off their phone.
About voting guidelines,
When I got to this site at first I was very careful with voting, and tried to find some kind of guidelines to help me.. especially with sculpting that I had no idea how to judge. So I tended not to vote on greens and similar. Now I do as I have over time created my own guidelines.
Still some vote very low on greens because it\'s \"not painted\". Some vote on the manufacturer because choosing the right subject is a part of creating a cool mini... should that matter or not? How subjective can you be? What part of a mini is objectively good or bad? Is technique, neatness objective criterias while style and \"coolness\" are subjective?
I don\'t say there is a set answer and if we can\'t come up with one it should be there in the guidelines, do you follow me? Even if we come up with that there are no rules it should be there.
philologus
Subgenius
I voted for him because his NMM was spot on.
We\'re not talking about removing norms here, we\'re talking about imposing new norms on a system that (for the most part) works pretty well. Yes, sometimes stuff is overrated and sometimes is underrated, but we don\'t see stellar paintjobs scoring below tabletop, or even just above tabletop. Likewise, we don\'t see unfinished minis (except in extreme, and by most people considered legit, cases) in the top 10.
And to further develop your example... There are no written guidelines how to queue, but people work it out anyway. Then there are some jerks who don\'t follow the norm, but most people do, so it\'s not seen as a general problem.
@supervike
Well, I stand corrected... But, I don\'t see the comment in question as an outright \"attack\". It is harsh and un-constructive, but not malicious (IMO). That said, I wouldn\'t post a comment like that, though, so I can see your point.
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Shadzar
Guest
therein lies the point. not that it is the soul fault of the moderators (to err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.); but the comments themselves. the commentor gives his opinon with the rating/voting, the comments should be constructive and not demeaning.
this is part of the debate i had with friends while i had not painted and posted any gallery images here for a while. was the moderation and/or community itself civil enough to be worth my time.
i came back to post more images even though many comments have been a bit un-constructive (to use your better terminology over \"destructive\") and pointless.
along with the lines of voting maybe a standard for comments should be made as well as each gallery member being automatically signed up for the forums, and vice versa. no reason a databse couldn\'t handle it if the coder see fit to incorporate it. then there would be no excuse for people not adhere to new policies as they would be listed in the forums, and a \"popup\" (i use the term lightly) or some sort of banner or announcement could tell members that new guidelines have been set up if they initially refuse to view the TOA/TOS, EULA, COC, etc for making posts like happens on so many forums and such.
granted a single person moderating both forums, and gallery images, AND comments can get overwhelmed. maybe some of those older users with the masive post counts or those painters with great skill could help take part of the work if they are qualified and willing to do so.
no i don\'t want to or i would turn on my own server and enable my forums, i have had enough of forums administration and moderation for a while. but i would be more than willing to code mundane stuff if some help was needed in working out some bugs if i know they language. i do NOT want to help moderate anything myself.
there are plenty of members with short spurts of time they could help around here is the number of users is so high that current management can\'t handle it due to the human factor. pull from that pool if help is needed.
and supervike, like with painting/sculpting don\'t moderate when you are tired. though you may not lose a fingertip to a craft knife when moderating, you could easily make other mistakes...after all other than borg we are all human.
no i don\'t know who borg is, but after being assimilated i don\'t consider them human anymore. ack i just showed i was a trekkie! ~runs and hides~
I am not sure whether this thread need any additions but I will throw in two, just to preserve decent signal-to-noise ratio.
About scoring system
Guys, I am doing scoring system for a living. I am not professional statistician but I have to deal with number crunching all my reasonably long professional life. Anyway. Lesson #1 I learned is that perfect scoring system is impossible, and is impractical.
It is impossible because there is always question of fringes and the linearity of scoring.
In the case of common believe me or not but any difference below 3 and above 8.8 are statistically meaningless – in these ranges subjectivity plays the major role because there is no criteria for comparison left.
A mini got 3, in all frankness it is horrible, another mini got 2; it is horrible as well. Umm. more horrible then the one that got 3? Then what the most horrible mini that should get 1 supposed to look like? You find the same situation with minies above 8.8. The closer you get to fringes the worse score distribution you get. What I am driving at is that when you see mini at 9.5 and you feel that it should be say 8.8 in reality you assign it the same score – \"high\". Extending the range to say 100 (instead of 10) will not help much, you just move fringes away and increase linearity for a higher percentage of scored minies.
Manipulation of scoring system is always possible. If anybody cares I can give you at least 5 different ways to manipulate Comon scoring system. Some of them were demonstrated experimentally by Gareth at some point. There are ways to counter manipulations and by the way this scoring system operates here I thinks some of these algorithms were implemented. Vike mentioned the situation when a bunch of people give you ones and this moves your average score to 7, while it had to be say 9. Situation like this is easy to counter the question is WHY? This is not electoral pole, marketing research or clinical trial. Yes, it is possible to mount several protective layers that will decrease score manipulation, yes it will tax the system considerably, because you have to perform score distribution analysis for each mini posted but in the end it will not change your scores. Works in a linear range between 4 and 8.8 will remain where they are now and may be you weed out a small percentage of underscored and overscored minies.
Cost-benefit analysis: do we want to write tons of code (which will never be 100% manipulation free) and decrease the performance of the site in order to \"correct\" the scores of 0.1% of posted minies?
About contribution.
This, actually bothers me more – people on the forum that believe that contribution is measured by the number of posts… I hate to say this but there is also such thing as signal-to-noise ration. I suggest to people who are immensely proud of cranking up X thousands posts to measure it as some point. This is a miniature-related site after all and while I don’t mind discussing boobies or climate change I am not sure how much it would improve my or others painting skills (boobies might).
About scoring system
Guys, I am doing scoring system for a living. I am not professional statistician but I have to deal with number crunching all my reasonably long professional life. Anyway. Lesson #1 I learned is that perfect scoring system is impossible, and is impractical.
It is impossible because there is always question of fringes and the linearity of scoring.
In the case of common believe me or not but any difference below 3 and above 8.8 are statistically meaningless – in these ranges subjectivity plays the major role because there is no criteria for comparison left.
A mini got 3, in all frankness it is horrible, another mini got 2; it is horrible as well. Umm. more horrible then the one that got 3? Then what the most horrible mini that should get 1 supposed to look like? You find the same situation with minies above 8.8. The closer you get to fringes the worse score distribution you get. What I am driving at is that when you see mini at 9.5 and you feel that it should be say 8.8 in reality you assign it the same score – \"high\". Extending the range to say 100 (instead of 10) will not help much, you just move fringes away and increase linearity for a higher percentage of scored minies.
Manipulation of scoring system is always possible. If anybody cares I can give you at least 5 different ways to manipulate Comon scoring system. Some of them were demonstrated experimentally by Gareth at some point. There are ways to counter manipulations and by the way this scoring system operates here I thinks some of these algorithms were implemented. Vike mentioned the situation when a bunch of people give you ones and this moves your average score to 7, while it had to be say 9. Situation like this is easy to counter the question is WHY? This is not electoral pole, marketing research or clinical trial. Yes, it is possible to mount several protective layers that will decrease score manipulation, yes it will tax the system considerably, because you have to perform score distribution analysis for each mini posted but in the end it will not change your scores. Works in a linear range between 4 and 8.8 will remain where they are now and may be you weed out a small percentage of underscored and overscored minies.
Cost-benefit analysis: do we want to write tons of code (which will never be 100% manipulation free) and decrease the performance of the site in order to \"correct\" the scores of 0.1% of posted minies?
About contribution.
This, actually bothers me more – people on the forum that believe that contribution is measured by the number of posts… I hate to say this but there is also such thing as signal-to-noise ration. I suggest to people who are immensely proud of cranking up X thousands posts to measure it as some point. This is a miniature-related site after all and while I don’t mind discussing boobies or climate change I am not sure how much it would improve my or others painting skills (boobies might
).Well, I see your point Shadzar, but I see three problems.
1.) The moderators are human, and AFAIK have lives other than CMoN (except for maybe Supervike)and are not doing this as a job but out of love of the hobby. As such, giving them more to do or moderate is really taking advantage of them.
2.)Don\'t you think you\'re being a little bit overcritical of a free site? I mean sure it has it\'s flaws, but so many that it needs to be reworked?
3.)No, matter who the mods are, no matter where you go, no matter what you are doing, there will be assholes. It\'s a fact of life.
1.) The moderators are human, and AFAIK have lives other than CMoN (except for maybe Supervike)and are not doing this as a job but out of love of the hobby. As such, giving them more to do or moderate is really taking advantage of them.
2.)Don\'t you think you\'re being a little bit overcritical of a free site? I mean sure it has it\'s flaws, but so many that it needs to be reworked?
3.)No, matter who the mods are, no matter where you go, no matter what you are doing, there will be assholes. It\'s a fact of life.
airhead
Coffin Dodger / Keymaster
But if Mike or WP or many of the old-timers here said \"Send me a $100 and I\'ll send you a complete sets of VMC.\" I\'d have a check in the mail.Originally posted by skeeve
This, actually bothers me more – people on the forum that believe that contribution is measured by the number of posts… I hate to say this but there is also such thing as signal-to-noise ration. I suggest to people who are immensely proud of cranking up X thousands posts to measure it as some point. This is a miniature-related site after all and while I don’t mind discussing boobies or climate change I am not sure how much it would improve my or others painting skills (boobies might
If some guy posts that as his first post, I\'d be a bit skeptical.
It is not about post count, it is about being a part of this community. Some people do not choose to come to the forums and discuss, only post minis (Goatman for a wonderful example - great minis, no posts)
Others post tons and join in on discussions with few or no minis (me, Finn, etc.)
A select few post tons and post minis (Vike).
I\'m sure there are lots of people that only read in the help forums, trying to learn. Are they afraid to post their stuff on the WIP forums? I cannot answer that. Seeing so many wonderfully painted minis here can be intimidating.
Originally posted by skeeve
About contribution.
This, actually bothers me more � people on the forum that believe that contribution is measured by the number of posts� I hate to say this but there is also such thing as signal-to-noise ration. I suggest to people who are immensely proud of cranking up X thousands posts to measure it as some point. This is a miniature-related site after all and while I don�t mind discussing boobies or climate change I am not sure how much it would improve my or others painting skills (boobies might
This too is entirely subjective. While you may use this site as a means to paint better, others use it for gaming, merely to show what they painted and simple camaraderie with others who share similar hobbies.
Including sharing trials and tribulations among the community and looking for advise outside the mini-related realm.
People make the community, people contribute in many different ways.
The low post phenomenon, is something that many of us who have been here for a while have seen. Someone comes in with very low posts, complains about sniping, whatnot, throws a temper tantrum, threatens to leave and often does. The comment made was in reference to this common phenomenon. As the OP showed us by threatening to delete his account.
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Shadzar
Guest
Originally posted by skeeve
Works in a linear range between 4 and 8.8 will remain where they are now and may be you weed out a small percentage of underscored and overscored minies.
~~~
About contribution.
This, actually bothers me more – people on the forum that believe that contribution is measured by the number of posts… I hate to say this but there is also such thing as signal-to-noise ration. I suggest to people who are immensely proud of cranking up X thousands posts to measure it as some point. This is a miniature-related site after all and while I don’t mind discussing boobies or climate change I am not sure how much it would improve my or others painting skills (boobies might
i snipped the excess to just show your relative range. i want to address it in regards to voting standards or guidelines. while you cannot force people to adhere to the guidelines it would be helpful to see what those who created the scoring system consider those guidelines to be withing the voting pages themselves.
as it is now it says
well i, and i am sure others have never been a GD judge or met one let alone entered a GD contest. so how do you defein what fits in the lowest of the ranges?
5-tabletop quality is the lowest guide range given but in no way does it tell what to look for to indentify tabeltop quality.
what are the criteria? even if GD judges just go based on person feelings then can the voting system work if that is what everyone else does here? i mean we are voting on images of mini, not the minis themselves. some people have much better photography skills, so a 10 in person may get a 1 based on blurry or exteremely dark picture that loses all the detail. granted you can\'t have the site fix all images to make them the same, but you can give guidelines to tell what the voting guide means to the people that created it.
i don\'t expect to ever have a 8 or above mini. i paint my minis for play, not for display. so i do simple things that can be quickly and easily repaired. i am quite surprice my Tau \'chia\' suit, something i hate to this day because of the mini melting under bad spray paint, have nearly a 7. but it does because people saw it as a novel thing, and i figured by now the novelty would have worn off and the score to have been dropped to around 3 or so. but then you have the whole voting guide based on GD standards or the assumption you are a GD judge.
while i don\'t know the rules for a Golden Demon entry i do know the rules of a RTT and it includes 3 prizes.
Sportsmanship
Tournament winner
Painting
to even enter a tournament you need a fully painted army with each mini consisting or at LEAST 3 colors. this prevents people from bringing just glued together or primed minis to play sicne people enjoy painting as well as playing GW games.
while my chia suit is only painted (visibly) in two colors (vomit brown armor and blazing orange eye), the third is their by the static grass covering giving him his camoflague. so i jsut painted based on those standards for playing a RTT.
so are just having 3 colors enough to make something tabletop quality? if so the voting is flawed as it stands because there are many minis with 3 colors that are lower than 5.
so many the voting guide is flawed or people don\'t understand it.
i actually think i gave a black and grey mini a 9 recently because it looked real good. this shadow/shade/whatever caused me to violate my own concept of what tabletop quality means for minis and voting.
again i speak of a baseline for voting. not everyone knows what the GW standards are, and many around here could care less about the \"GW fanboys\". so many the voting guide needs to be change or at least identified as to what it means by tabletop quality.
for the last bit it may help you paint those topless female minis by getting more views of the \"apendages\" in question so you can approximate them better in the painted form?
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Shadzar
Guest
1) i never said give them more work, i just detailed what i think their current workload is since almost everything posted requires moderation before publically visible, save for the forums themselves. all images, and comments are already moderated, but rather than the few that currently do it the workload could be spread out and delegated to others that are capable of doing it for a little bit each day.
2) oh i have ideas for reworking the entire site. i coudl offer them here to better the existing community or i could get a could of people together for initial financial backing and start a site of my own. i don\'t really care for the work myself as it would generate enough income for the time i have to deal with it and i love \"fixing\" my website with new tools and features nearly 24/7. i would rather then try to make the existing and known community better than trying to start one of my own as their are at least 10 painting communities that i know of, and tons more blogs and yahoo/msn groups dedicated to it. so i would prefer not to add another, but try furthering something that can join all the other communites and TAKE OVER THE INTERNET WITH MINI PAINTING! :twisted: mwahahaha
3) so you know G0 from the Gleemax forums? ok maybe not, but the stink around their these days is really high so i know what you mean, and that place has lost ALL of its paid moderators for volunteers that need a road map to find their :moon: when it comes to forums operations. and i mean just moderation and how the forums work theirself, let alone being able to understand the intracacies of interacting with users from the level of moderator rather than normal user. which means biting your tounge rather than speaking a lot of times.
so i agree mainly with 1 and 3, but think 2 in part could be done to better the community. heck with all the crazy added features since i began their could be something done form a general HTML editing that gives a more clear understanding of the voting guide and how it was created. probably takes less time to code a new guide then we have spent on any single post in this thread. or at least i would hope so in the case of the voting script itself being written that the same person would know how to rewrite the voting guide in the code to display correctly. and i am pretty sure that person can do it quickly and easily.
see what i mean? not an entire rewrite, but just a more detailed quide, or at least a better defined one.
@shadzar
As Dave said, some people are assholes and that is something you will have to deal with in all situations in life. This site (or others) are no exception. And, many people like the fact that you will hear some uncomfortable truths when you post here. I visit plenty of mini-related forums and some places are almost useless if you want to improve your painting as you will basically get a lot of \"great work\" whatever you do and people only mention stuff they like about what you do. Here you will get to know what is good and what is bad, but it takes a bit of thick skin. Some can live with that and some can\'t. I don\'t mean this in a \"if you don\'t like it, there\'s the door\" kind of way, only that this situation is actually something that a lot of people find helpful in the long run.
About voting standards, how hard can it be? You can rate something from 1 to 10, 5 being in the middle. There isn\'t that much to think about, is it? And it\'s hardly rocket science... I don\'t understand why some people make such a big deal about what different scores \"mean\".
As Dave said, some people are assholes and that is something you will have to deal with in all situations in life. This site (or others) are no exception. And, many people like the fact that you will hear some uncomfortable truths when you post here. I visit plenty of mini-related forums and some places are almost useless if you want to improve your painting as you will basically get a lot of \"great work\" whatever you do and people only mention stuff they like about what you do. Here you will get to know what is good and what is bad, but it takes a bit of thick skin. Some can live with that and some can\'t. I don\'t mean this in a \"if you don\'t like it, there\'s the door\" kind of way, only that this situation is actually something that a lot of people find helpful in the long run.
About voting standards, how hard can it be? You can rate something from 1 to 10, 5 being in the middle. There isn\'t that much to think about, is it? And it\'s hardly rocket science... I don\'t understand why some people make such a big deal about what different scores \"mean\".
How about a radical idea.. there should not be any voting guidelines. Just a range, from 1 to 10. I claim with reasonable certainty that positions of minies will not change at all. Totally baseless, but I am sure that most people ignore them already and score not based on some preset standards but rather based either on their own experience (I \"know\" that 7 mini should have smooth basecoat, highlights here and there smooth transition blah... blah.. blah... lets look at this mini I am about to rate) or their own abilities (I know that on average I paint at level 7 let see whether it is better or worse then me).
Probably it is possible to create an incredibly rigid scoring system, (The highlights on this cape is different from the basecoat by less then 3 tonal points which results in insufficient contrast which results in deducting 0.3 from perfect 10), then soring on comon will become like scoring in the figure skating, and about 70% of current painters leave or die while rating.
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Shadzar
Guest
im not getting into the \"thick skin\" bit when tlaking about comments because iron-clad skin doesnt mean anything when it comes to comment that are not constructive but just opinions. one of the main reasons i don\'t offer advice on minis is because i don\'t know the tips and tricks to do what i want so why screw up someone elses mini with my bad ideas? i will screw my own up and keep going until i get it right.
well the voting guide itself is the problem there. you are given a baseline to go from, but nothing identifies what this site itself classifies tabletop quality. so then agian the voting guide is flawed. either it should be removed and jsut tell people to vote how you feel, or it should be explained why it is there.
so the guide is showing to be the problem in most of the cases as far as i see it.
maybe we should instead switch to the Spaghetti Western voting guide and let the Eastwood, Van Cleef, and the other guy tell people what the range means?
The Good - 10
The Bad - 5
and
The Ugly - 1
so if the words mean nothing, why have them? to waste bandwidth and nominal storage space?
i figure 2k for the voting guide and the script it takes to \"turn it off\". figure 10000 hits per day a good start for this site.
thats another 3 images per day bandwidth that could be viewed in a month without increasing hosting fees.
and saves space on the main page.
so if it means nothing, then why IS it there?
what of those that don\'t know where they paint and use the voting to help determine that?
Of course it does! If you\'ve got thick skin then you\'ll be able to shrug off comments like that for what they are... useless to you!
I don\'t have the energy to continue talking about the voting guidelines as basically I think it\'s too much fuss over something that is really, really simple.
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Shadzar
Guest
shall i complicate it for you then so it isnt that simple and illustrate ways other than padding votes on a single mini that circumvent the overall average of some voters?
lets say, and i have seen a few lately; som gallery user posts an image of a mini and it gets high marks. in order to circumvent the voting process and site ranking they know that the top 5 minis are averaged to give each voted their average in order to rank them on the site.
now this one mini has a pretty good score and isnt dropping, so this person then takes 4 more pictures from different angels and includes them into their gallery staggared so moderation doesn\'t notice they are of the same mini, if even that matters to moderation staff.
now this one mini with multiple shots gets say an 8 on each gallery image.
8*5=40/5=8
this person has an average score of 8 from a single mini. and rather than making a collage of the iamges showing the multiple angles they have \"cheated\" the system by \"tampering\" with the ranking system in order to skew their own score.
while i don\'t know if the exact thing is done or for the exact reason by some of the people that have multiple images of singular minis it does pose a bit of a problem in the way averages are made. the computer cannot tell if a mini is acceptible for inclusion into a gallery thus a human must check it to activate it. likewise the computer would not know that 5 images are of the same mini from different angles.
i myself have one mini in two gallery images that is the same mini. one was before it was fully base and one after. i like both images so i left the older. oddly the before is the higher rated image and the only thing changed was the based was flocked and some flocking on the rear tire to show it was driven trough the grass on the base leaving a trail behind it.
neither are my top 5, but one mini i have one with flash and one without. these do affect my score, but i did not plan it. i only wanted to show the details that the different lighting would reveal in the mini.
should i consolidate the images into 600px wide and 200k an place it as one gallery listing to no slightly circumvent the ranking system?
i can and would have no problem with doing so if need be to correct my and those below me (all like 12 people) rankings.
so you see it isnt all about the voting itself, their are other flaws in the system other than something as simple as you want it to be a voting guide of:
rate this mini on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest and 1 being lowest.
yeah it is a simple guide, but there are numerous ways of getting around the ranking system even with no voting guide at all.
in the event i should consolidate my images someone let me know prior to deleting them so i can save them and merge them without having to take new pictures before re-adding them as a single image.
E
elouchard
Guest
I would say, yes, add a few more layers to the existing algorithm to counter deliberate \"spiking\" of scores upwards or downwards. While this is not an electoral poll, the site now does have an effect in an economic reality for some. Any time money gets involved, there will be those who try to manipulate the results, and even if it is a small minority, those in the minority are the ones who are gaining and losing something based on the scores here. A couple of years ago I don\'t think this site had much impact on anything besides egos, but it really does seem to have become important in real life to some now.
Fairness is crucial now, more so than before. One could reasonably expect a small amount of sniping and pimping in years past and people would complain and forget about it later. It is not a fair system when someone can use a script to skew the distribution in such a way that passes the standard deviation algorithm(masses of 8\'s and 7\'s are good for this on a 9 scoring figure, especially in the first few days after submission). If this site is not fair, and some folks are benefitting by cheating, then why not add a layer of protection for those who want a level playing field. It may or may not slow the site down, but it deserves some analysis before dismissing it.
@ shadzar
The multi-pic submissions trick is more of an irritant to the voters, even though it does help get a good average score. I would not call it cheating really, as sometimes it is not easy to get a good composition in one big picture. I would still say that the bigger problem is coordinated, deliberate vote-tampering.
The voting guidelines are fine. They are subjective, as they should be. The system works great when people don\'t subvert it.
