Vote system changes, please read

First of all the -1 vote is gone. It has become a source of negativity and we feel it cancels out the purpose we once gave it. The 0 vote will remain. It allows people to make a statement, even though it will in no way affect the score or rank of the artwork.

The second change is of a larger scale. We have introduced a score system that 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.

Those who receive this increase in 'power' still have the choice not to use it but we leave it up to them. We will also not put tags on people and leave the whole score system submerged in the backend of the site.

Rather than limiting the members in the lower rank we give the higher ranked members the power to correct deviant behavior when it comes to voting. In the end it mostly comes down to subjective reasoning and we feel a couple of hundred active, respected members have a better judgement than a handful of admins.

Now some of you might wonder why we avoid a system where a vote has to be accompanied by a comment. We on one hand fear that the amount of votes will decrease, and the amount of halfbaked comments will increase. On the other hand we think the privacy the current system provides the members the freedom let their vote reflect their true opninion.

This information will also be added to the FAQ. Next time to vote you might see and increase in the points to cast. As usual, feel free to discuss the above in the comments.

UPDATE: There is a forum thread available. Please post any questions you have there to keep things centralized. Look through the thread first to check if your question has already been answered.

Cheers,

Martin
on behalf of
Team GFXartist