filter - rating - XP

...AND on the fly rating would help aswell. It seems that hardly anyone bothers to rate skins anyway. Propably they are all to lazy to open the popup if thay don't like the skin!!!!

enz, I don't think your idea is bad, lets see what Brad and Alexandrie has to say about.
For now, the only thing I have to say is: Lucky visitors and Exiles!

exile MMMMEEEEE, please.

I dont agree with this, at all. This is because what you are saying is based on your own feelings on what YOU percieve to be 'crap'. It is so easy for this system to be abused by anyone with rights to grade a skin as well. This is what I mean by a predjudiced vote.

I will just not take part in a scheme such as this. I will rather not vote at all if it has to be like that. I have always been fair minded with my voting I am very sad to see that many people on this site do not have the courage to be mature about voting and vote in fair mindedness as to wether the skin was worth that bad or good vote. People vote out of malice, predjudice, and fovouritisim,. It does not give the new up and coming skinner a chance if there early work is all voted a 1. Because the skin is blanked out from being previewed no one will see the work. How many people will bother to choose to see all skins ?

I doubt not many. All this is, is an excerise to white wash skins that you personally dont like. But this does not reflect what the general Public think of the skins you actually hate. Skins of what ever standard should remain to be viewed as is, with no censorship. After all what you are implying is censorship, and as we are in a democracy, where it is free will and choice for people to see and choose what they want in the first place I would rather we kept to these terms. If some one does not like a skin then let them give a justified and mature reason for this, not some for example : an 'XP white Wash' rant to say you dont like it. There are ways of saying you dont favour a type of skin with out acting childish for example. But I have seen many immature and childish ranting on XP, and to be honest I feel very sad for these people. There is a life out there in the real world too you know.

I use XP now on Post Beta, So Any work I have done will remain as they are. Even though people vote with hatred of XP. Rather than commenting on the technical skill I used to make the damned OS Import in the first place. People just dont stop to think what kind of technical skill actually goes into making a skin. Not every one can do a WindowBlinds Skin, or a Desktop X Skin. Or an Object Blinds skin. So do us a favour and give XP a break. In fact give us all a break. If people want XP then who are you to judge wether they should see it or download it or not anyway. ?

[oops,thats Objectbar] uyrrrh.

thecat: If I understud correctly of what enz is saying is:
If we could have a OPTIONAL feature that allow us to see wich rated skins we want to see as an option on our own systems.
So, anyone can have their own rate level to see the skins. Independently if they are OS skins or not.
If this is what he is means, I agree with him.

enz: Am I correct?

Ok, this seems fair minded if that is what he means Treetog, then I agree with this.

treetdog, exactly;)!
cat, I don't know if I should even reply to your post as obviously u got me wrong . Just to sum this up.

1st having the chance of an on the fly rating would make things (the rating) easier. What does it mean if a skin has been rated by one person with a '1' or '10'? Does it mean its good or bad? If we want rating (that would be a principle discussion) we need more people to be involved in rating, so it should be easier to rate. agree?

2nd I didn't realy mean, that you could have a washer for poor rated skins by default. Who, if he's realy interessted in skins, would want that anyway. I wouldn't want anybody to decide for me which skins are bad or good and which I can see or not (if i'd want that I could simply go to the page as a visitor...)! But I would like to have an option that if "I" rated a skin 1 that the next time "I" go to the page "I" don't see this skin anymore. Cause by then I know already I don't like it.

And ranting about XP...sorry cat but I don't feel immature, just because I express my feelings about that. I truly think that there are some brilliant XP themes out there, and we actualy do need replicas of all OSs for all skinnable apps. I've done a MacOS 9 port for OB myself (2 actualy). What I dislike is the following: Go to (for Example) the ObectBar section; there are about 20 differnt XP themes out of a total of 30 themes. But the difference in the XP themes is most likely only the color. Now if you take OB you could have posted one OB theme including 10 different colored skins. But offcourse it is all about downloads and you get more hits with 10 themes than just having 1 with 10 skins.

To end this and point out once more that I do recognize skills behind any skin [if there are any, colorizing bitmaps does not require any skills] let me repeat...we do need ports of any OS including XP; there are brilliant XP themes out there and I do want to see them!; there are horrible copies of copies of copies and I want the option to only see them once!

enz
please don't feel sad for me now .

not a good idea... how are you going to notice new skinz with low rating... you know?

GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL!!!! (C)

If I read enz's response correctly, what he is suggesting is that the filtering would only be based on ratings that you have supplied.

So if I rate a skin a 3 and you rate that same skin as a 8. That skin would have an overall rating of 5 or 6. Then I set my filter to only show me 4 or higher. I will not see that skin becuase I rated it a 3 which falls below my filter setting.

So the filter would be based on user specific ratings and not averaged ratings.

thecat2000,
I agree with you, (for the first time! ).
My opinion is, that the best and most fair, rating system is, what the people like and that is of course, the DOWNLOADS!

""""the best and most fair, rating system is, what the people like and that is of course, the DOWNLOADS! """ -adni18-

Based in the last events here I don´t think so:/

Actually the best rating system is semi used on the Stardock WindowBlinds library. The popularity rating is based on Actual Usage of the skin!

I agree with this T-Man, and this is what counts, at the end of the day. People seem to forget about that I think. I always consider the ratings on that site more valuable and accurate ? but maybe its just me ?

Anyway, I think the system StarDock currently uses should Stay. Especially after reading T-Mans thought on this.

Here is an idea I don't know how well it would work but I noticed that the individual sections are broken down into subsections. Like Window Blinds has subsections for holiday skins and so on. Maybe it can be a user setting that you only want to see the ones under certain subsections. If they made a subsection for xp skins then people who don't want to see the same skin over and over can simply uncheck that box in the user profile and they won't have to see them again.
I do not know whether that is possible to code or not but its just a sugestion.

You know, I've finally reached my limit on this XP stuff. At this point, I'm in favor of a user-definable filter that will let you hide anything with "XP" in the title.

I won't argue that skinners creating XP skins lack talent or skill. But enough is enough. Ratings could and very well should reflect the fact that an idea or theme has been done to death, and that the skinner is visciously pommeling a deacying stallion with a large, nasty club repeatedly for no good reason.

Count me among those that wish the XP themes would stop rolling in in such mass quantities as to drown us in a sea of quatrained primary colors.

Artistic skill or not, the next one I see will get a rating of 1 based purely on the skinner's lack of basic math skills.

'deacying stallion', misterME?....

Pedjudisim is an ugly thing Mister ME but I understand the grief of a lot of people here. I already pointed out that a lot of my WB XP skins I deleted myself. I left I think three, one was an old Luna style, and one based on the current one, and the old Whistler style skin I did. I wont be making any news WB skins for XP now. But want to instead create some new ones.

[But not XP] ! I think just giving a skin a rating of one just because it is XP ok, it is a protest of saying we have had 'enough' but at the same time the rating in that sense isn't really helpful to anyone, because of the fact that rating all XP stuff a 1 will NOT distinguish the Good XP imports from the BAD ones anyway. They are not all bad Imports either. But there are some that are. Rating all a 1 wont help to seperate the bad skins from the good ones. Some XP skins are just bad and some need moderating I possibly agree with that. But I think the idea Of filtering selected skins of your preference is not such a bad idea either.

Ms. Cat....'prejudice'....

I KNEW you would say that Jafo. [I knew I had made a mistake he he!. ]

If ratings are ever used for filtering purposes, then I think the filtering options should also include usage and downloads.

One quick thought about ratings: in a lot of sports using judges, the top score and the lowest score are eliminated and the average is calculated on the remaing scores. What about something like this for the ratings? I would suggest the top 10% rates and the bottom 10% votes be not calculated into the overall ratings.
Example: if 100 persons have rated a skin, the top 10 scores and the bottom 10 scores are eliminated, and the average is calculated amoung the remaining 80 people.

Also, I strongly think ratings should NOT be anonymous. I think a lot of people are too mean when hiding behind the mask of anonymity.

I doubt it's worth implementing a controversial ratings system (justified or not). The current XPmania is a faze and will fade like all others.

After it's over just sort catagories by alphabetical accending and it will take you forever to hit XP stuff anyway

Taking up on Paxx's point I agree with him as it is not fair that people can hide behind a vail of obscurity, when voting for a skin,. Because it and they are anonynous. It lets people judge things harshly or mean in their vote.

I ALSO think that a system should be brought in where a person can only make one comment per skin. And that there comments should be moderated to make sure it is within the guidlines of this web site. So authors are NOT harrased or recieve Malicious abuse to them personally or their work. After all We want everyones experience to be an enjoyable one dont we ? Not to leave the site feeling hurt and never wanting to come back here.

so Comments should be moderated too, and the offending comments can then be hidden according to preference. JARK has it right on this as they plan to introduce this.

'phase', Phar0e.....

Jafo, I never thot I'd see the day.