They’ve just made the rankings visible again over at Renderosity — meaning that I can now see how each individual scored me on my images. It’s quite an eye-opener. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or anxious about the situation, but I’ve definitely been educated.

One of my images received about twelve 10’s before kaptenkattis gave it a 6 — a 6, and all he said was “nice”. No constructive criticism. No explanation for the low score (which, by the way, blew my 10 average). At the time he scored me, his image was fast on the rise in the 2D Gallery’s Best Rankings list — except that my image was in the way. Naturally, that meant that my image needed to be knocked off. Hence, the 6.

I was devastated when it happened — so much so that I actually mentioned it in an entry here. At the time, though, I thought the low score was a 9, not a 6.

Since then, I’ve had one other non-10 score on that image from jtron, but I’ve seen his work; I admire and respect him and his art, so I’m completely okay with his 9.

Still, another one of my images was a victim of negative-but-not-helpful feedback. I actually got a 1 from someone with the name Niti this time — a 1. Again, no constructive criticism — nothing to tell me why he didn’t like it enough to give me at least a 2. Again, I went investigating.

Niti’s gallery did not enlighten me. I found his images to be uninspiring, so I let the whole thing drop — that is, until I saw someone comment on one of his images and mention a thread about him in the Complaint & Debate forum. Evidently, Niti makes a habit of leaving bad comments and low ratings for no apparent reason. I added my own words to the thread and left it at that.

Now that the rankings are visible, though, I wonder how many more unjustified low rankings I’ll see. Probably none. As for the hard-core 8’s and 9’s — boy, it’s a tough audience out there! — they’ll still be pushing me to do better in my next image, looking for that high-hit, many-commented, 10-average work of art.

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