To some of you new members who haven't noticed; if you click on a picture in the "photos" section, on the upper right hand side is a link titled "Rate Image". If you click it, you get a drop down box allowing you to pick a rating from "terrible" (one gold square) to "Excellent" (five Gold Squares). Back in the day (READ; A few months ago) everyone here had some integrity, and when they rated a pic, they left you feedback. If it was good, they said what they liked, if it was bad, they told you what you could do to improve. These ratings really mean VERY little. Their intent was to be a tool to help diographers improve their craft.

What I have noticed lately is someone is lowering a LOT of the pictures ratings out there (probably by making multiple accounts, logging in and using each one to give a "1" rating on a pic). They are also not telling you what you can do to improve. I, and a few other on this board think it is the work of a disgruntled former member. Reguardless of who is doing it or why, my advice to you is to not take any stock in the rating. Read the comments and see what people think. It's easy to lurk and take pot shots from the dark, but the guys who are genuinely trying to help and guide you will back up thier ratings with in depth comments.

The older members of the forum have seen this happen before, and discused it. We take VERY little stock in the ratings system if we see someone has been doing this, but we do try to keep it honest when we rate pics. Don't stress the ratings fella's go by what is said in the comments!

Oh, and this goes for Posts in the forum, how to's, Reviews, etc. All of these things can be rated using that system, so if someone is deliberately lowering it's ratings, as you look at comments, you'll notice what has gotten a lot of attention and what is genuinely a bad post/pic/review, etc.