I was just thinking this to myself this morning, lol.

I left a link to one of my spots in the forum. I made the spot about 8 months ago and spent quite alot of time looking for content to post there. Last week i noticed that one pic had 137 views and yet only one rating. Im seriously not looking for a medal.....just a few ratings on content that took me time to find and post :)

PS.....I think a few unofficial rules may come in handy here.

oh i'm not saying that's a bad thing at all, if it hasn't been rated (especially for that amount of time) and you do deserve a medal for it then you should definitely get one

hopefully is it all rated and kosha now?

realized a post that i made suggesting some rules has been deleted (dam college computer)

so i will try and remember what i said
firstly i think

link shows that people want others to wait at least a month

also people have commented on links that have already been rated but i think that if someone has added loads of content to one spot and it has been viewed loads but rated once then it is a job for the vrsof, obviously if it has like 10 ratings then it's definitely not but i don't know what the cut off point should be? 2, 3?
or maybe some of you think it shouldn't be there if it's been rated once? i'm not sure

i think it's a given now that if you post any stuff here without keywords and image credit that it will be rated ones and if you go to atsof it will be rated even lower lol

oh and another good point made by ineedcoffee and knifewrench on the pick linked above, if you read a bit further down on the comments is you actually have to view the content

I agree. I think their need to be some guidelines.

I definately think there should be a cut-off point for number of ratings, like amazondebs said. There have been spots that I have rated and then thought "oh crap! I should have reported that to the VRSOF!" but then I'm not sure whether or not people would appreciate that.

I also agree with the 'at least 1 month' waiting period and that is the guideline that I go by anyway.

Personally, if we had to actually view everything that we rate, then I would not be able to participate because my internet is so slow I would probably only be able to rate a few things a day! So,with the exception of videos of course, I wouldn't agree with a "rule" that we had to view everything, but I think we should certainly attempt to.

So I'm definately a fan of creating some guidelines, so that we can clarify exactly what we are all doing!

ahh i appreciate what your saying about photos loading
perhaps viewing those than you can in a list but i think sometimes especially with larger photos and wallpapers you can't see them that way but with most images you can

but i think the vids and links should be viewed, although you can't really inforce that as a rule, that's probably more of a etiquette issue anyways

Why not write the guidelines as an article (once you hash them out here, of course)...?

Here's my suggestions for some possibilities. First of all, a charter:
VRSOF Charter: To ensure that content on Fanpop is evaluated and rated with some consistency and fairness.

Some suggested guidelines:
* content shall not be considered "overdue" for ratings until 1 month minimum has passed after posting with still no ratings
* VRSOF fans will view content before rating. Rating without evaluating the content is meaningless and defeats the purpose of ratings.
* A forum thread shall be created for "no ratings" content, to which people can post requests to review and rate content that hasn't a single rating.
* a separate forum thread shall be created for "few ratings" content, to which users can post requests to review and rate content that has at least one rating but not more than four ratings
* users will be discouraged from posting requests for ratings outside of those two threads (for ease of reference and to avoid a colossal pile-up of forum threads with only two comments)
* similarly, users who troll this spot soliciting for more fans for a newly-created spot (or any spot, for that matter) will be reprimanded, as the charter for a voluntary ratings squad has nothing to do with joining spots.
* VRSOF fans will give precedence to ratings requests from users who have not previously made a request for ratings, so as to avoid artificially bumping up repeat requestors. We get enough accusations of being used to game medals for users; a step like this would go a long way toward an impression of impartiality.
* another forum thread will be started for "Diamond in the rough content", wherein VRSOF fans can share links to little-known but exceptional content they've discovered through sifting through the site viewing and rating content.

Those are my ideas, off the top of my head. What do you think?

wow erm maybe we should just copy and past that
honestly harold i think your smarts and organizing skills are just something i can't comprehend lol
are you a professor by any chance?

i especially agree with just having a forum as sometimes we end up with it in a forum, a print screen and a link which really isn't necessary

anyways them rules sounds pretty good to me anyone else?

I like the diamond in the rough idea! Those all sound great to me. :o)

There you go Debs.....Harold has done it all for you! :)

I especially like the 'diamond in the rough' idea and totally agree that user's must view content before rating.

Yay for harold! Great ideas, especially about the forums, because lots of people don't seem to check the forums and just go straight to the links.

I vote to adopt Harold's suggestions also ;>

if this actually happens- i would totally subscibe to this spot again...i unsubscribed for the reasons above...even though in theory i thought this was a good idea- but i ended up just leaving rude comments on peoples requests to rate their really bad [endless contributions a day old, useless keywording etc] stuff so for karma reasons i left ;)

I say adopt harolds ideas...

Also like the diamond in the rough idea.

Edit: you can't see image credit if you don't view the images just so you know.

true coffee but often when i view icons if they are loaded up by the same person, with same name and keyword they have been uploaded together and so you can just check one and view the rest in a list

Thats what I do amazondebs. Random checks haven't let me down so far.

I agree with you on that If you know the user I am talking about this site and when we are asked to view items. I have gone and checked and their has been no image credit, but others on this site did not check and just rated because they either liked the site or the person who posted, also some videos weren't working and the user had asked to get rated but didn't know that they had been taken down because people were rating and not viewing that doesn't help when someone who really wants to view them can't and wonders why they are rated so high.

EDIT:I am not talking about any of you, by the way...:)

I tried to view a video the other day but it had been removed and had one rating. I looked at it again today, its still removed, but had been rated 5's by another two users. If people are gonna rate content then I think they should at least view it.

Lol yeah!

Just a note on the broken video thing: there is a YouTube bug that means that, for some users like myself, videos that have embedding turned OFF are only viewable embedded. ali22 and I had a series of correspondence about this that led to my discovering what was happening. I'd kept getting "broken" reports on my content and there was never anything wrong with them - they always worked for me! It turns out that it's a bug. For me, if the person who posted the video on YouTube selected to disable embedding, I can't see it on YouTube but if I link that page to Fanpop (or anyplace else, if I used other sites), I can then view it. Of course, I wouldn't do that exactly. But sometimes the original poster on YouTube edits the video to turn embedding off after it's been submitted to Fanpop. Then it stops working for most people, but continues working for a few (like me).

All that's to say that, with YouTube, it is possible for videos that don't work for you to work for other people. Don't assume that the ratings are bogus.

Just an aside about the bug: I've reported it to YouTube, but in the meantime I'm not posting any more YouTube videos to Fanpop, so as to avoid this fiasco in future.