Hey, you're on a roll. Lower case w looks like a thunderbird. Cool.

HEY COMMUNITY!

see this font?
watch it's votes!

i'm officially making a suggestion:
i think it's time for "earning" the ability to vote!
obviously there are SOME haters out there, who seem to have fun downrating the "real" good stuff.

All suggestions on giving permissions for voting and ish, are out of my hand, but i think it's getting a real problem actually.

@kix
I'd like to keep the principle of one designer one (anonymous) vote.
There are a few strangely negative people out there, but I guess they have a right to hate.

Some sites use special formulas to weight ratings so that the number of votes cast has significance for the average - such a formula is called Bayesian ratings e.g.:

http://www.thebroth.com/blog/118/bayesian-rating

The drawback of such a system is that it can tend to disadvantage newer work.

Anyway we are open to suggestions.

I think the current system is a good one. Over time, the low numbered negative votes seem to balance out the overly-exuberant '10' votes. I just reviewed all my public Fontstructions. If I were to rate/rank my own work, for the most part, it would match the way the community has voted.

@Meek: I'm sorry to admit that the current rating system is what is keeping me away from sharing new fonts.

A weighted rating system could improve the situation, but I cannot suggest a complex one (nor I can easily understand the page you linked to...:). For sure taking into account the number of votes to weight the rating could be a small improvement.

I see that you are worried about newer fonts not being exposed enough, but there's a What's New section for this purpose, and also the featured download that could be updated more frequently (I love Picto People, but how many new beautiful fonts have been shared since?).

Another small consideration: you might use the News sections to gather information and suggestions from users about hot topics like this one. Discussions like this one hosted in a font comment section are not easy to find... (And please, try to update the Latest News section in the Home page, to keep us updated about posted news.)

@Thalamic: welcome back, and excuse me for using this comment section to post my opinion about this issue.

I tend to agree with afrojet. It all comes out in the wash. We gottas suffer the slings and arrows to get to the bouquets, forgive the mangling of the metaphors. If a font gets voted down, at least somebody has taken the time to spit at it!

Thanks for the comments everyone. All of them are taken on board. @afrojet and @intaglio. I’m really glad to hear you speaking up for the current system. On the other hand some FontStructors are obviously dissatisfied and I’m interested to hear why, so we can see if we can do anything.
There is a ticket in our bugs and enhancement management system to look at this issue and some work has been done already. FontStruct lives from sharing and it’s very troubling if designers are withholding good work because of perceived failings in the ratings system. What are people most concerned about? Is it about good fonts being buried? or is it the sense of unfair evaluation? If anyone else would like to say how they see things, I've opened up a thread on the Facebook FontStruct board. Please post there, or send a contact mail with your thoughts using the “i have a problem” category.
Sorry about cluttering up your thread thalamic!

@thalamic. That's interesting. I wondered about why you pulled many fonts. I have also thought about dropping the ratings thing altogether, but maybe something joy-enhancing can be worked out ;) Either way, you should know your fonts are very much liked.

@meek: Rob, I appreciate you started a thread, but I don't have a Facebook account (I know I am one of the very few people without a Facebook account, but that's it :).

I agree with Thalamic (about the pile of crap issue) and I think it's natural to be deceived when you receive some unfair ratings after some passionate hard work (e.g. three 1 votes in a row in an otherwise very appreciated font with diacritics and thousands of bricks).

I suppose there are many correction methods that could be applied to the simple arithmetic mean. For example IMDb uses a mysterious weighted average scheme that seems to consider a lot of parameters.

And I suppose this involves some math that I'm confident the mind behind FontStruct (that's you, Rob :) can easily master.

I'm curious to hear soon some other opinions about this issue, and I hope some other users will join this thread.

nice, noticing nearly all of thinking about this.
After all, i guess, we all like democracy and that's what it simply is. even if haters have a vote as well :)

maybe that's the way it goes

@Em42 I don’t really use Facebook either ;) There are quite a few FontStructors over there though and I thought it might be an option. Anyway, noone’s posted on the thread yet so you haven't missed anything. The IMDB system is similar to the Bayesian system I mentioned above. Of course the IMDB is a very different kind of site with a huge volume of traffic and people accessing it in a very different way so voting patterns are different. Still it’s a useful point of reference. I like this bit from the page you linked to:
“This is all we are prepared to say and, owing to the way this whole topic tends to result in heated arguments, we cannot enter into any further correspondence on this issue.”
:-)

And that's just it. Heated arguments. I used to obsessively blog a NZ site called uthink but I got fed up with the incessant internecine warfare between various factions. I stopped blogging last year (an eternity) but a coupla months ago I went back to see if there was anything new going on. Dear, dear. The same old ranters spewing the same diatribes.

The great thing about Fontstruct: every day (well, nearly) somebody posts something praiseworthy. I'm not sick of it yet! And not yet sick of thinking up (a.k.a. recycling)ideas myself.

If the voting system changed I wonder if the delicate Fontstruct ecosystem might be disrupted. Australia has cane toads, NZ has possums.

Somebody please tell the irksome spellchecker that Fontstruct is an okay word and that some countries quaintly persist in spelling English as the English spell it.

There. That's my rant off my chest.

Whole. Eee. Crap. Rob! I think the solution to our problem lives in that Meek FM device you've created. That thing looks wonderful. How about a premium Fontstruct membership where we all get issued Meek FM devices that oscillate and synthesize our votes into bitmap graphical facial expressions, high fives, backslaps, and beat downs ;-)

One small but significant part of what makes Fontstruct fun is the friendly competition that we all engage in when releasing and reviewing a public font. I believe the ratings system adds to that. Because of its daily fluctuations - like a stock market - the ratings give each of us as designers a completely different (but just as interesting) view of our work then comments posted and fonts downloaded.

That's not to say that there might be a better ratings solution out there. I don't know. But if the ratings system was completely removed I think we would loose a key data point and I might be _less_ inclined to make some of my 'Structions public. If a tree falls in the woods...

@Kix: nobody is putting democracy in discussion :). But each democratic electoral system has different rules and correction methods to better represent the nation it refers to. Maybe some adjustments could be made in the FontStruct rating system as well.

@Intaglio: the issue seems to attract attention, but luckily everybody here is still expressing opinions in a polite manner and this has not become an heated argument (yet! :)

@Afrojet: it's true, the rating system is part of the fun, and eliminating it would not be a solution.

@Meek: we return the ball to Thee, father of FontStruct! :)

It's truly amazing, but I think you should remove these "bumps" in "W", "A", "M" and put there some 45 degree triangle bricks.