My thoughts exactly. Sometimes I vote on on the Top Rated Images section but that's about it.

In my opinion the photos are being rated too high. Even bad photos get five points. On a rare occasions some photos get a four. Looking through the archives, three points or lower are few and far between. Rating accurately is more important than rating high.

If a stellar Outrider photo gets a five, then at the same time an out of focus, incomplete vehicle sitting on a kitchen table gets a five, rating becomes kind of meaningless.

oh this is sad of me, but I just learned I can rate image instead of leaving comments, not that i don't like too, but am man of few words and i hate say things like "good picture or cool" all time even though I mean it....... this would help.

I can disable ratings if that's what we want to do.

I'd rather not, though. Ideally, it would be good to require a post to be able to rate a photo, but I don't know if anyone's done that for vBulletin.

I have no problem rating a shot 1-2 stars just as I don't have a problem rating a shot 5 stars. 4s not too hard but 3s are middle ground for me and i'd say 99% are ABOVE the average or far BELOW. I don't often comment on 1-2 stars because it should usually be obvious; focus is out of shot, bad lighting, bad composition, etc.

I get the sense some people upload their shots directly to this site w/o ever checking them (you can't always tell your shot is fuzzy on a 2.5" lcd screen on camera) AND the fact the shots aren't resize.

Honestly, I'm a harsh grader. Some of the guys agree, if you see the same stuff over and over w/o progression, I'll start rating LOWER. It sounds mean because it can be hard to step up when your shots are already A+. DaveCW always pushes the envelope, imo. This might be a poor example but take Comic Artist Jim Lee. His artwork was the bomb in X-Men. Then he did WildCATs and got even better. Then he started the Deathblow project, changed his style and it was awesome! But when he did Divine Right, I felt that his work had lost a few steps. Then the work on Batman and whatnot, it's just not as exciting.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Get rid of the ratings, keep 'em up, Boss Fel has the power. Only the masses can sway his decision(s). Well, I think they can at least. :D

100 Percent agreement

hey Hammer can you rate the pics if your a non-member ? if so maybe you can change it so only a member can post and see if you can track who's doing the such a negative rating . I know thats prob a lot to do .
just an idea

For the longest time I didn't even notice the ratings thing was there. I have given a few good (4-5s) out but half the time I forget to do it. As far as my shots go I appreciate anyone that leaves me a good rating but i'm more intrested in the comments (kind of a comment whore). If you got rid of them I probably wouldn't notice for at least two or three weeks! :D

I don't pay attention to the ratings at all. I know what I like and if something jumps out at me I comment. Otherwise I could give half a crap about ratings. Just seems like its more of a popularity thing than anything else.

I also pretty much ignore the ratings, not because someone puts out random one-star ratings, but for the reason troopsofdoom speaks about above: too many pictures are given high ratings. On some pages of the joedios.com photos section, it's four or five stars for every single picture on the page, completely disregarding differences in quality. I can understand how some people feel even the attempt should be rewarded, not just the result, but this makes the whole ratings system meaningless.

OKAY WHORE GREAT COMMENT YOU DID A GREAT JOB YOU GET 5 STARS *****!
SERIOUSLY I DON'T RATE ANYONES PICS IF I COMMENT IT'S TO GIVE ADVISE OR BRING SOMETHING UP THAT CAUGHT MY EYE MY MOMMA TOLD ME IF YOU AINT GOT NOTHING NICE TO SAY SHUT THE $#^& UP! SO I DO. ;)