A couple things. Voting models; versions.
Long, sorry. Please read anyway.
Have you folks thought about maybe allowing the upload of several versions in the workshop? I think that could come in handy sometimes, and it makes some other things interesting.
You might have an original, several in-betweens, and a final... then I suggest it be set up so that people could vote for any one or several of the designs; simply count votes for, instead of ratings.
If you don't like it, you simply don't vote for it. That'd ID designs that were popular, and it'd also pick the version(s) of that design that was most popular.
Having watched the system for a little while, I have to say I think it has some flaws... I'm thinking you may have some trolls in the woodwork, or if not yet, then soon, because the current voting system is pretty vulnerable to astroturfing both ways - up and down.
Just voting for things you like - up only - is vulnerable too, but it's a lot less harmful to the business model because there is no mechanism for haters to step on things they don't like.
Plus, if you really don't like a design, you should probably be commenting anyway, rather than voting down, as it's considerably more useful to the designer.
For example, Lucky is really active in handing out useful comments... I'm to the point where I hope he has something to say about each new design of mine. I don't always agree (nor he with me when the situation is reversed), but it's *really* nice for me to get some feedback. Voting down... it just feels like a pissant thing to do. I'm not comfortable doing it myself, frankly.
Maybe a "vote up" should simply be a checkbox marked "I'd like to wear or gift this version."
The thing that bothers me the most is that for any tee that's freaky enough to be interesting to some particular demographic, there's probably going to be a counter-demo that it irritates mightily. You could have a tee that would sell well into group A, but group B hates it... and the combo of ups and downs would get you a poor rating of a shirt that would sell fine to group A.
What I'm thinking is that what you really want to know is if it looks like group A is a decent sized group. Group B isn't the market, so who cares about them anyway WRT to that specific tee? With the present system, if group A votes 100% 50 times, and group B votes 0% 50 times, you're going to end up with a tee ranked at 50%, which I don't think is what you want -- because it's a mediocre rating on a great tee.
I'll give you an example where I ran into this myself. Lucky's got (again with the Lucky!) a tee up with an elephant on it, quoting some Obama saying. Man, I hate that tee. Mainly, I think, because I'm really pissed at Obama (who I voted for), congress in general, the democrats, the republicans, the supreme court, the FCC... you get the picture. Anyway, I bloody well despise that tee. I wanted to "0/VeryBad" that tee *so* bad...
So I tried real hard to step back, forget what it said, and who said it, and what the elephant means (democrats I assume) and look at it as art, presuming that whatever it said was of interest to someone - was the art bad? No. Was the text ok? Yeah, it was. Was it either of great longevity (no) or highly topical to the moment (yes.) So... I voted it up. Because I felt it was important to counter the negative folk that I strongly suspect are lurking around here. But really... I would *never* wear that tee. I'm group B; totally not the target demographic. If someone *gave* me that tee, I'd use it to wipe out the catbox. And never wash it. And throw darts at it. Rusty ones. While cursing Obama roundly.
So my point is, if voting up (a version, hopefully) were the only option, you'd only have a set of votes that told you how many people thought they'd like to wear it, and no one grumping that it was a cat box rag and voting it down, hiding the fact that the tee actually had a decent audience (it probably does, probably half the country in fact, just not me.)
Right now, the site is so new, and the pool of active voters so sporadic (I mean, some designs get 6 votes, some get 42), it seems like if a suggestion like this is to be considered... now might be the time, rather than when the site has gathered significant momentum.
Lastly, I don't know how many of the site's authoratoti are familiar with flickr, but one of the things that has always struck me about that site is that at the community level, negativity is not encouraged, and it's by design. Some wag comes in your account, dissing your pictures, you can kill the comment, ban them from ever coming back, and keep things entirely positive. Same capability exists in the flickr "groups." I think - just my "IMHO" - this is one of the key reasons flickr has been such a raging success.
This relates to tee virus, how? Well, simply that voting up is positive. Voting down is negative. Quite aside from the potential to make it look like a popular tee isn't going to be all that popular, it just isn't all that nice. For a community to encourage a basic action from user to user that isn't nice... I think that's a design flaw that inherently weakens the community. Again, that's an IMHO, salt to taste, from a single grain to an entire shaker.
Anyway, just some Saturday morning thoughts on a site I like a lot.
Have you folks thought about maybe allowing the upload of several versions in the workshop? I think that could come in handy sometimes, and it makes some other things interesting.
You might have an original, several in-betweens, and a final... then I suggest it be set up so that people could vote for any one or several of the designs; simply count votes for, instead of ratings.
If you don't like it, you simply don't vote for it. That'd ID designs that were popular, and it'd also pick the version(s) of that design that was most popular.
Having watched the system for a little while, I have to say I think it has some flaws... I'm thinking you may have some trolls in the woodwork, or if not yet, then soon, because the current voting system is pretty vulnerable to astroturfing both ways - up and down.
Just voting for things you like - up only - is vulnerable too, but it's a lot less harmful to the business model because there is no mechanism for haters to step on things they don't like.
Plus, if you really don't like a design, you should probably be commenting anyway, rather than voting down, as it's considerably more useful to the designer.
For example, Lucky is really active in handing out useful comments... I'm to the point where I hope he has something to say about each new design of mine. I don't always agree (nor he with me when the situation is reversed), but it's *really* nice for me to get some feedback. Voting down... it just feels like a pissant thing to do. I'm not comfortable doing it myself, frankly.
Maybe a "vote up" should simply be a checkbox marked "I'd like to wear or gift this version."
The thing that bothers me the most is that for any tee that's freaky enough to be interesting to some particular demographic, there's probably going to be a counter-demo that it irritates mightily. You could have a tee that would sell well into group A, but group B hates it... and the combo of ups and downs would get you a poor rating of a shirt that would sell fine to group A.
What I'm thinking is that what you really want to know is if it looks like group A is a decent sized group. Group B isn't the market, so who cares about them anyway WRT to that specific tee? With the present system, if group A votes 100% 50 times, and group B votes 0% 50 times, you're going to end up with a tee ranked at 50%, which I don't think is what you want -- because it's a mediocre rating on a great tee.
I'll give you an example where I ran into this myself. Lucky's got (again with the Lucky!) a tee up with an elephant on it, quoting some Obama saying. Man, I hate that tee. Mainly, I think, because I'm really pissed at Obama (who I voted for), congress in general, the democrats, the republicans, the supreme court, the FCC... you get the picture. Anyway, I bloody well despise that tee. I wanted to "0/VeryBad" that tee *so* bad...
So I tried real hard to step back, forget what it said, and who said it, and what the elephant means (democrats I assume) and look at it as art, presuming that whatever it said was of interest to someone - was the art bad? No. Was the text ok? Yeah, it was. Was it either of great longevity (no) or highly topical to the moment (yes.) So... I voted it up. Because I felt it was important to counter the negative folk that I strongly suspect are lurking around here. But really... I would *never* wear that tee. I'm group B; totally not the target demographic. If someone *gave* me that tee, I'd use it to wipe out the catbox. And never wash it. And throw darts at it. Rusty ones. While cursing Obama roundly.
So my point is, if voting up (a version, hopefully) were the only option, you'd only have a set of votes that told you how many people thought they'd like to wear it, and no one grumping that it was a cat box rag and voting it down, hiding the fact that the tee actually had a decent audience (it probably does, probably half the country in fact, just not me.)
Right now, the site is so new, and the pool of active voters so sporadic (I mean, some designs get 6 votes, some get 42), it seems like if a suggestion like this is to be considered... now might be the time, rather than when the site has gathered significant momentum.
Lastly, I don't know how many of the site's authoratoti are familiar with flickr, but one of the things that has always struck me about that site is that at the community level, negativity is not encouraged, and it's by design. Some wag comes in your account, dissing your pictures, you can kill the comment, ban them from ever coming back, and keep things entirely positive. Same capability exists in the flickr "groups." I think - just my "IMHO" - this is one of the key reasons flickr has been such a raging success.
This relates to tee virus, how? Well, simply that voting up is positive. Voting down is negative. Quite aside from the potential to make it look like a popular tee isn't going to be all that popular, it just isn't all that nice. For a community to encourage a basic action from user to user that isn't nice... I think that's a design flaw that inherently weakens the community. Again, that's an IMHO, salt to taste, from a single grain to an entire shaker.
Anyway, just some Saturday morning thoughts on a site I like a lot.
Originally the 5 star vote was labeled "I Want It" and the 4 star was "I'd Wear It" but during our beta test we almost immediately had to change that because even if most people really liked a design they couldn't honestly vote a 4 or a 5 because they wouldn't personally wear it.
So we changed it to be a very general gauge for overall opinion of a design. We like to think that the vote is as objective as such a subject thing can be, meaning that people who don't necessarily agree with a mildly political point of view will still upvote if they think the design could do well in the store.
Thus far we don't have anyone who seems to vote low just to be an ass, but we do pay close attention to voting patterns and if anyone seems to be doing anything like that we will definitely take some kind of action. And if it ever becomes a serial problem, we could even go so far as to restrict low voting (similarly to how we do it at VideoSift).
I don't think low voters should be regarded as pissants (although I do something lean toward such a feeling) because it's really just the personal opinion of others who have very different taste in concept and aesthetics than the designer. If we were to do anything initially, perhaps we should institute a policy wherein a user couldn't vote for the lower 2 options unless they first posted a comment... That might be something to consider because then at least you'd have some (hopefully) helpful feedback.
As far as allowing for multiple designs and voting, it's an interesting idea but really probably too big a change that would require serious restructuring of our software so I couldn't see that being a viable option, but we definitely appreciate the idea.
It's true vote counts fluctuate greatly, but we're going to continue doing our best to encourage everyone to participate a bit more (as it is, I think most folks just look at designs and go away without bothering to vote or comment).
Now...I need to hit the drafting board again. I'm on a dry spell!
Great suggestions, though!