i have tried searching and clicking but cannot find the answer to two simple questions.
1.  How are the photographer/image rankings done and what do they mean?

2. What exactly are the martial arts belts above our names in the forums?

thanks
rosta

Hi Rosta,

1. Our system is called ZyRank, and is loosely based on the principle behind the Google search engine ranking system - that is, many different factors combined together in an algorithm to (hopefully) give each file it's proper ranking status.

I am not at liberty to disclose much more about it at this point, as it is still a work in progress, but the basics are:

- it is on a scale of 1 to 10, with all files initially being scored at 5. It is not a linear spread up or down but rather exponential.. meaning, going from ZyRank 6 to 7, is much harder than going from 5 to 6.

- many of the scoring criteria you see public on other stock agencies (download count, file view count, thumbs up/thumbs down ratings, comments, etc.) will not be as public as you often see. For example, lets say that we have a thumbs up/thumbs down rating system - there are many different ways to stop people from cheating at this for their own benefit, or putting down others. If the results are instantly visible to all, then it quickly becomes apparent how to cheat the system - use a different IP address, sign up for new account, etc.

What we hope to achieve is a semi-private aggregation of all social-based ranking, combined with basic stats such as views per file. The intent is for an honest artificial intelligence that lets people know whats hot, without giving away so many details that the system could be gamed.

Again, this is just a description of our beta system.. once we go production mode we can say more about it.



2. The martial arts belts are simply an indicator of the members post count in the forum. I thought it'd be less dull than stars. :) By the way, ZyRank is intimately tied to each members 'rep' so you will most likely see a ZyRank tags added to the message posts soon.

Thank you

How are the prices figured I just noticed my approved files have prices on them

Hey Ghoststock,

Welcome to the forum!

We have an internal scoring policy that sets the initial price of the file, based on it's technical merits and perceived market value.  The Artist can however change this price immediately under Account > Art Manager.

So, we could set it at $29 and you could thereafter change it to $5 if you wanted. We want to have a dynamic marketplace where people try their own pricing strategies.

Thank you.
Very informative and innovative, too.
I have been watching closely Zymmetrical evolution, and maybe it's time to upload some more.
Best regards,
Rui

I am getting an error using FTP
[2/7/2008 7:29:18 AM] Can't resolve "upload.zymmetrical.com\". Network connectivity was detected. Check the spelling of the server name or contact the server administrator.

Also in my submission page I cannot change pages to see my photos  I get an error 

A critical error has occurred. Cannot find a column with UniqueName 'EditCommandColumn'

---

Thank you

Jack

Hi,

The URL is UPLOADS.ZYMMETRICAL.COM, not UPLOAD.

As for the Submissions page, i'm thinking you might be getting a cached copy. Please try pressing Ctrl-F5 on that page to reload it and let me know if that doesn't solve it.

Thanks

Appreciate the good info here - am new to Z, and will be uploading soon.

:)  b