In the Off Screen Expectations challenge, the voting on my entry has gone like this over time:
16 votes, 5.6875 (first hour)
62 votes, 5.9516 (highest point) UP 5% from first hour
180 votes, 5.5880 (lowest point) DOWN 6% from highest point
276 votes, 5.6014 (current score) UP 2% from lowest point
For all practical purposes, the first 16 voters have been a fairly reliable predictor of my score, unless a rash of high or low scores comes in today. Voters 17-62 were my most favorable at 6.043, while voters 63 - 180 were the toughest, at 5.398.
Does all this prove a) the early vote is a good predictor of one's final score, or b) I've got WAY too much time on my hands!
About boomers question a) then I would answear: can be but not always.
I´ve entered 6 challenges and in 4 of them the final score has been similar to the score after the first day of voting. But now in the of-screen expectation I started in about 4,5 for the first 2 days but now I´m upto 5,15. This has once happened before.
Multiple choice...when in doubt...choose b. We both have too much time on our hands. I do that kind of analyzing, too. In my case, I've found that the votes from the first hour are always alot higher than my final score. It generally drops all day the first day of voting and then slowly climbs back up all week. It never reaches the high of the first hour score, though.
Mine usually start high ... drop all week (slowly) ... then go sharply back up to the first days total on the last day. This has been reliable enough that I no longer gets depressed when my score starts to drop ... it always does :)
Of course, my current portrait shot is hovering around a 7 and I've never been anywhere close to that, so I've been on an emotional rollercoaster for the past 2 days :)
In the hour after I posted my original question, I had three new votes: a 3 and two 4's. Ugh. I jinxed myself, didn't I? (Eleven points for three voters. I suppose it could be one 1 and two 5's...lol)
I dont think I've ever finished with a score that was near to my score in the first hour or first 20 votes. Yesterday was probably the first time where my score was higher at the end of the day than it was at the start. Usually it falls during the day and rises a little at night, and tends to go down just before rollover.
All my scores have dropped then climbed again. Normally a big jump over the last few hours.
By the way Garry (Or anyone else) how do you see detailed scors before the voting is over? I thought this was only available to members, but You are not a member!
I dont think I've ever finished with a score that was near to my score in the first hour or first 20 votes. Yesterday was probably the first time where my score was higher at the end of the day than it was at the start. Usually it falls during the day and rises a little at night, and tends to go down just before rollover.
Hey, this is very interesting.. I thought this just happened to me..but from what I`m reading here, it`s common to everyone.
So let`s get this right, regardless the quality of the image, your score will always start off at it`s highest..then drop, then make a recovery in the last few days of the challenge.
More interestingly..low scores during the day..recovery at night and then drop off again.
I think this says more about people than it does about our photography
Psychologists would pay a fortune to get hold of this info.
All my scores have dropped then climbed again. Normally a big jump over the last few hours.
By the way Garry (Or anyone else) how do you see detailed scors before the voting is over? I thought this was only available to members, but You are not a member!
I'm not a member, but I have a calculator! Non-members get their scores updated every hour. Then it's a simple matter of multiplying the number of raters times the average score to get the total points. Then you can subtract the previous total points, yielding the total points of the most recent scorers. If there's only been one, you know his/her score for your image. If there's more than one, you know what the average of the new scorers is.
Thus, since I started this thread, seven people have voted on my image, driving my score DOWN to 5.5724. That means this group of seven (who obviously know nothing about good photography! j/k) contributed only 20 total points to my entry. That means, on average, they voted 2.8571.
At this rate, I'll be under 5.0 by the end of the challenge.
Hey, this is very interesting.. I thought this just happened to me..but from what I`m reading here, it`s common to everyone.
So let`s get this right, regardless the quality of the image, your score will always start off at it`s highest..then drop, then make a recovery in the last few days of the challenge.
This is not completely consistent; I have had a couple of photos which started off at their lowest point (pretty darned low, too!) and gradually climbed during the week to finish just below respectability.
I find when my scores start high, like in the design challenge, they drop for the rest of the week, but when they start low, they usually reach their highest point at the end.
All my scores have dropped then climbed again. Normally a big jump over the last few hours.
By the way Garry (Or anyone else) how do you see detailed scors before the voting is over? I thought this was only available to members, but You are not a member!
I'm not a member, but I have a calculator! Non-members get their scores updated every hour. Then it's a simple matter of multiplying the number of raters times the average score to get the total points. Then you can subtract the previous total points, yielding the total points of the most recent scorers. If there's only been one, you know his/her score for your image. If there's more than one, you know what the average of the new scorers is.
Thus, since I started this thread, seven people have voted on my image, driving my score DOWN to 5.5724. That means this group of seven (who obviously know nothing about good photography! j/k) contributed only 20 total points to my entry. That means, on average, they voted 2.8571.
At this rate, I'll be under 5.0 by the end of the challenge.
If you really want to get analytical, I've got a spreadsheet where you can record your score every time you check. Imagine the graphs I could generate... :)
Does all this prove a) the early vote is a good predictor of one's final score, or b) I've got WAY too much time on my hands!
a) Yes. At least for me. My scores never seem to fluctuate very much after the first few votes. They start out low and stay that way to the end.
b) No doubt.
