Voting how, why and the rules

The vote system is probably one of the most important features in the GFXartist galleries. While it allows you to rate an artwork, the votes also push an artwork into the top 10 (thus give more exposure). If the score of an artwork is high enough the artist is nominated for the elite status (more about the elite nominations).

Thanks to the vote system the highest rated works in the member gallery can easily be accessed since they appear in the top 10 and on the highest rated artwork page. There is also the new artworks section that displays the newest artworks that you have not yet voted for. If you are really hardcore, tap into this section once or twice a day and go through all the new submissions.

While everybody has a different way of rating artwork, we'd like to ask you to think about your vote before you cast it. It is also appreciated to leave a comment. Here are a few important features of the vote system:

• You can only vote on artworks when you're logged.
• You can not vote for your own artworks.
• You can vote for an artwork only once. When you vote again the status window will appear at the top of the page showing when and what you voted.
• When you vote, you username is attached to it so that admins can monitor strange vote behaviour.
• The amount of point you can reward depend on your score (read below)

The vote system has been expanded with a score. The score system categorizes the members into groups based on their 'activity' and reputation. We keep the fine details to ourselves, since we don't want to help the badguys manipulate the system. What it basically does is assign you a score based on your actions and reputation within GFXartist, it's a quite complicated calculation so the score will be updated once a day. Based on your score we will extend the amount of points that you can reward an artwork. People in the lower ranks will not see any difference, a select group in higher ranks will notice that they can now vote more than +5, some even up to +10.

There are 5 ranks. The lowest and largest rank (+80% of the members) will see no difference and can vote up to +5. Members with the second rank can vote +7, with higher ranks this increases up to +10. Thanks to the score system we trust the members in the higher ranks with this power and believe they will use it responsibly.

Then there is abuse. Even though we try, the voting system will never be fully safe from abuse. We monitor the voting to filter out accounts with strange voting behaviour. We've banned groups of people who vote +5 on on all artworks of one user alone and vote low or not at all on other works.Here is a list of actions that are not tolerated and that will get you banned:

• Creating vote accounts for the sole purpose of voting on your own items or on those of your friends.
• Vote vote up an artwork with a large group of fellow members.

Since we can never prevent all abuse, help us out by reporting strange activities. Send us a report and we'll recheck the votes and intervene if necessary.