How It Works

How It Works

This page explains how the site works from a user's perspective, it does not explain in depth the statistics and actual mechanisms which are discussed on the Theory and Philosophy page.

No Direct Ratings, Just Compare Photos

As a user on EloGrade you would primarily engage in two activities, comparing other people's photos, and submitting your own photos for comparison to get their rating.

On EloGrade, no one directly rates any photos. Instead, users are presented with pairs of photos and are asked the question Which do you feel is the better photo? These comparisons are then recorded. A photo will be compared with many different photos and the comparison results are processed to arrive at a rating for the photo. EloGrade is essentially both a tool and a community. It provides the processing to convert comparison results to ratings, and it is also a community for people to come and compare others' photos so that their own can also be compared by others.

Ratings system is similar to systems used for chess, World of Warcraft arenas, and sports

EloGrade uses comparisons of photos instead of direct rating. As a result, each comparison can be seen as a game match with a winner and a loser. This makes it so we can use traditional ranking methods used in the gaming industry. EloGrade's system is based on the Elo Rating System first developed for chess and which is now widely used in the sports industry as well as the video game industry.

To the end user, the system pretty much acts like this: All photos start with a 1500 rating. If a photo wins against a highly rated photo it gains a large amount of rating. If it wins against a low rated photo it gains a small amount of rating. If it loses to a highly rated photo it loses very little rating, but if it loses to a lowly rated photo it loses lots of rating. Given enough comparisons, the photos' ratings will settle towards their true rating and there is meaningful distance between any two ratings.
