I can't speak up for the other side. It's indeed very difficult to vote yes/no for ALL the photos presented to me in the Pentax gallery voting system, for many genres I'm only a viewer. I have great respect for the judges, the resulting gallery is impressive. If they decided to drop the voting system I wouldn't complain. Peer review is great if I feel like a peer.
On 8/7/07, AlunFoto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > New acronym suggestion: POG for Pentax Online Gallery. > Not exactly off-topic, but I sense that this has limited interest anyway. > > Then into rant mode. Warning, this is long. It's the sort of post that > happens when you've thought about something for too long. :-) > > > Flipping through the Pentax Online Gallery (POG) has revealed both > awe-inspiring and surprising submissions. Sometimes it's been a real > eye-opener to great photos that otherwise wouldn't have caught my > attention. This, I think, is a really great asset for a gallery > because it brings inspiration to look beyond the accustomed. > > For myself, I know I tend to specialise in one, or perhaps a few types > of photography. When seeing pictures from my own sphere of interest, I > have appreciation for the tricks of the trade needed to accomplish > them, as well as appreciation for the photographer's artistic > interpretation. When presented with photos outside my sphere of > interest, however, I must confess ignorance of the finer points of the > craft. Studio lightning, for example, seems next to magic to me. As > does fashion photography all together. After a couple of beers, I > would even accuse the latter of black magic, but that's a different > story all together. > > In contrast to myself, I expect a skilled judge of photography to have > a much broader general competence on photography, and to be able to > select shots for display from a great variety of styles and genres. > > Until recently, the POG fulfilled my expectations. I have seen a very > reasonable, perhaps too mild, sifting of my own submissions. I look at > the presented work of other photographers and it seems well-selected, > creating a nicely balanced gallery on the whole. The judges seems to > have a clear view on what they want, for Pentax, for the Gallery, and > in terms of aestethics and genre representation. Based on this > experience, I TRUST the judges to provide me with a viewing experience > of interest. I also feel that I can trust them to weed out those of my > images that don't fit in the gallery. For quality reasons, or for > policy or aestethical reasons. > > Long-time submitters have noticed that the threshold for acceptance > has gone up with time, and have ascribed it to the growing base of > photos to choose from. > > At one point, the sheer volume of that base swamped the judging > process completely. To ease the workload of the judges, Pentax opened > the submission pool to voting by participating photographers. > > A peer-review system. > > In the FAQ it says that votes influence the selection process, but > that the judges will have the final word. In principle, this is the > same kind of system that science use to sift out research papers > worthy of publication, so it should vouch for a high quality threshold > for the gallery. > > In practice, however, I'm not so sure it is a good idea. To continue > the analogy with science, what they are really doing is equivalent to > set theologians to evaluate papers on evolution, or astrophysicists to > evaluate papers on bronze-age archaeology. To have me casting votes on > studio portraits, for example, is one sure-fire way of disregarding > the finer points of the craft. > > Of course it can be said that a peer-review system ensure a democratic > election process that is much more "fair" than having a small panel of > judges. It can also be said that this is a very valuable tool for the > judges which will simplify their job tremendously. > > But wait just a minute. Imagine you're a judge. You get a set of > photos, short-listed through voting. How does that influence your > decision? Would you assume the highest voted photos to be the highest > quality photos in the total batch by default? How far below the > short-list would you check for overlooked gems before flushing the > rest? Do you _really_ trust the submitters themselves to pick a > balanced sample of good photos for the gallery? What if the peers are > overly negative, or perhaps overly positive? With overly negative > peers, there will be good shots in the "Nay" part of the list. Online > communities have plenty of examples of this, like the > "deleteme"-movement on flickr, for example. With overly positive > peers, OTOH, you hardly get any reduction in the judges' workload at > all. > > I would like to question how probable it is that the voting hit the > "Goldilocks zone". > > Another issue with the notion of democracy is that it works best when > there are few candidates and many votes for each. In this case you > have a lot more "candidates" than voters, and a limited number of > votes for each photo. Pentax hasn't said how many, but there must be a > fairly strict limit like eg. 10 votes per photo. Otherwise, if > everyone would have to vote for everything, it would take too long to > complete the poll for each candidate photo, and leave all participants > with as much job as each of the judges had previously. > > Effectively it actually isn't democracy at all, because only a > minority is allowed to vote. The minority that happens to be the first > 10 (or so) to review one particular photo. Those who frequently log > on and cast votes will have much more influence than the occasional > submitter. > > All of this will radically change WHICH images are selected. I can't > see how it is supposed to be a good and purposeful sifting, but maybe > I'm overly skeptic. > > Anyone care to speak up for the other side? > > > Best, > Jostein > > > > -- > http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ > http://alunfoto.blogspot.com > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > -- Toine http://leende.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
