Q: Voting System

[Stratadrake]

This is a fork from the Announcements topic to explain how FAC's voting system works.

When you are logged in and view a picture, you will see a pair of smileys underneath a picture, which allows you to rate the piece as "good" or "bad".

Voting options also appear on the comment form when viewing a picture, allowing you to vote and comment at the same time.

The goal of this system is simple: To sort out higher-quality submissions so that they are easier for interested users to find. When you select the "Best Rated" option from a gallery listing, the pictures will be sorted in order of decreasing overall votes.

Now to answer a few voting-related questions:
[list]
[*][u]Who is allowed to vote on a submission?[/u]
[i]All[/i] registered FAC users are allowed to cast votes on a submission.

[*][u]How should I choose my vote?[/u]
A good rule of thumb is to compare the quality of the work to your [i]own skill level[/i]. E.g., a positive vote indicating that the piece is better than what you can produce, and a negative vote indicating that you could do something better than it.

[*][u]If I casted the wrong vote once, can I go back and vote again?[/u]
Sorry, no. Only the [i]first[/i] vote you cast on a picture will be recorded. Any additional votes by you on a given piece will be ignored.

[*][u]I can't vote on my own works, can I?[/u]
Actually, yes, you [i]may[/i] cast one vote on your own submissions if you want to. This is generally not a big deal.

[*][u]Will a user be told which vote I gave them?[/u]
[b]No[/b], individual votes are kept private. The user will [i]not[/i] be informed that you have voted on their submission, nor told what the vote was. Therefore, regardless of how you vote on a piece, you do not have to worry about upsetting the person's feelings by casting a vote.

[*][u]Can I see the total voting results for one of my submissions?[/u]
Sorry, no. All votes are kept private, but you can get a [i]rough[/i] idea of how well-voted one of your submissions is simply by selecting the "Best Rated" sorting option while viewing your gallery and comparing how close to the top of the list it appears.

[*][u]Is there [i]anyone[/i] able to see the total voting results on a picture?[/u]
FAC site staff members are able to see the total voting results on a picture. However, this is the total score only and FAC site staff do [i]not[/i] have access to a list of [i]who[/i] cast [i]which[/i] votes on that piece. This is for statistical interest only, so please don't go around petitioning staff members to tell you how the voted score for one of your pictures.
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