DinoToyBlog Star Ratings

[DinoToyForum]

Is there anyway to limit the voting to just one per member? I didn't know you could vote more than once but thinking about it, may have inadvertently done so if I'd forgotten I voted for a figure!

@Ikessauro - it could also be an older member if they are not working any more? I guess we shouldn't speculate though and leave Dr Admin to do what he needs to do to prevent it happening again.

In principle, yes, voting is limited to one per member. At least, it should be: I have set the plugin to record the IP address of voters to limit each IP to one vote. But, for some reason, this seems to be hit and miss, so I'm seeing the same IP vote multiple times. I don't know why the plugin is allowing it.

In any case, committed visitors can always get around the limit by using tech to change their IP.

The only way to completely limit the voting to one per person would be to set the plugin to only allow registered blog members to vote. As things stand that would be quite limited, but it is possible to set the blog so that visitors have to register for a 'guest' blog account to, say, cast a vote or write a comment. Basically, how this forum works. But I don't want to place such barriers to comments and ratings on the blog.

By the way, the forum runs on a different database to the blog, which is why it isn't possible for the blog to recognise forum members. I can only do so looking up and manually matching IP addresses.

[ceratopsian]

I'm an "old retired dude".  As a group, we're usually pretty busy!

[Gwangi]

Is there anyway to limit the voting to just one per member? I didn't know you could vote more than once but thinking about it, may have inadvertently done so if I'd forgotten I voted for a figure!

@Ikessauro - it could also be an older member if they are not working any more? I guess we shouldn't speculate though and leave Dr Admin to do what he needs to do to prevent it happening again.

I just don't see an old retired dude that invested in a single figure rating on a toy blog. Could happen, but sounds more like a childish behavior to me. I see no harm in speculating, since I'm not asking anyone to reveal the person's identity. I mentioned it might be a kid because some people seem to be very upset with the situation and it is good to remind everyone that sometimes all that is happening is a small kid that doesn't know better having fun with something they like very, very, VERY much. Not worth losing sleep over .

Well, more like dislikes it very, VERY much, in this case. The toy had a 2-star rating, it's actually gone up to 3.3 since losing votes.  Although 2-stars is still better than 1 which is what every other Nothosaurus on the blog has. So I guess they disliked it but not VERY much. Seems like a strange rating to push.

[CityRaptor]

It has gone up to 3.8 now. A far cry from the 1.9 it had at it's lowest point. Someone had some serious grudge against that figure.

[Crackington]

Hopefully it'll make it to 4 @CityRaptor. It's a good toy and deserves a decent score.

[Eatmycar]

Hopefully it'll make it to 4 @CityRaptor. It's a good toy and deserves a decent score.

I think the toy aspect gets forgotten a lot here and it's frustrating at times.

I'm not looking to Mattel for paleoaccuracy. It's a toy company. While I'm not saying let's take a well known animal like Sinoceratops and drill massive holes in the frill for shits and giggles... it isn't fair to hold a clearly stylizes figure up to the same standards of a company that aims at producing scientific models such as PNSO.

Nor is it fair to rate a T. rex from 1980 the same as one from 2023. Sure both may have been intended to be accurate, but one clearly was made without the luxury of modern science at hand.

It pained me a lot to describe the 80s as not modern...

[Faelrin]

@DinoToyForum Can you check to make sure I didn't vote a second time on the (Mattel) Nothosaurus by accident just now? I couldn't remember if I voted for it earlier, so did so now just in case.

[DinoToyForum]

I've enabled a stats icon next to each average star rating, which shows how the votes break down. You just have to hover over it. It looks like this:

[DinoToyForum]

@DinoToyForum Can you check to make sure I didn't vote a second time on the (Mattel) Nothosaurus by accident just now? I couldn't remember if I voted for it earlier, so did so now just in case.

Don't worry about it, even if you did vote twice, the odd accidental duplicate vote is no big deal. I'm only trying to undo the concerted attacks on the ratings where one or two people have voted for the same figure dozens, and in some cases even hundreds, of times.

[ceratopsian]

I like this breakdown visibility @DinoToyForum. 

One question - I've voted just now for the new PNSO and Haolonggood upcoming releases.  I can see the breakdown of votes when I hover. But I don't see the enabled/disabled pairing.  Do you see the "disabled" box only if you are the person(s) who have been blocked from voting because vote rigging?

[DinoToyForum]

I like this breakdown visibility @DinoToyForum. 

One question - I've voted just now for the new PNSO and Haolonggood upcoming releases.  I can see the breakdown of votes when I hover. But I don't see the enabled/disabled pairing.  Do you see the "disabled" box only if you are the person(s) who have been blocked from voting because vote rigging?

Apologies for the confusion. The image I shared above is from the plugin settings so it simply shows the two settings available for me, as an admin, to choose from, enabled or disabled. I changed the setting on the blog from disabled to enabled.

[ceratopsian]

Thanks @DinoToyForum !

[Gwangi]

The stats icon is a fun new feature. I was just checking it out. It is AMAZING that there are people that actually give figures like the Safari Estemmenosuchus, PNSO Centrosaurus, BotM T. rex, and CollectA Hadrosaurus 1 star! And when it comes to Mattel people either love it or hate with few in-betweens. The '93 Classic T. rex has 50 five star votes and 38 one star. The Hammond Collection Concavenator has 70 five star votes and 54 one star. In my opinion few Mattel figures are five star toys but a lot are at least 3-4 and those I just mentioned are definitely not one star.

I agree with E @Eatmycar... "I think the toy aspect gets forgotten a lot here and it's frustrating at times. I'm not looking to Mattel for paleoaccuracy. It's a toy company." An analogy I've brought up before... comparing Mattel to PNSO (or similar) is like comparing My Little Pony to Breyer horses. People that collect Breyer probably don't think twice about My Little Pony and it would be ridiculous if they did it in the same way we often see here. They're all technically toy horses but occupy vastly different niches. And collecting one or the other doesn't make the one you don't collect bad.

[DinoToyForum]

The stats icon is a fun new feature. I was just checking it out. It is AMAZING that there are people that actually give figures like the Safari Estemmenosuchus, PNSO Centrosaurus, and CollectA Hadrosaurus 1 star! And when it comes to Mattel people either love it or hate with few in-betweens. The '93 Classic T. rex has 50 five star votes and 38 one star. The Hammond Collection Concavenator has 70 five star votes and 54 one star. In my opinion few Mattel figures are five star toys but a lot are at least 3-4 and those I just mentioned are definitely not one star.

I agree with E @Eatmycar... "I think the toy aspect gets forgotten a lot here and it's frustrating at times. I'm not looking to Mattel for paleoaccuracy. It's a toy company." An analogy I've brought up before... comparing Mattel to PNSO (or similar) is like comparing My Little Pony to Breyer horses. People that collect Breyer probably don't think twice about My Little Pony and it would be ridiculous if they did it in the same way we often see here. They're all technically toy horses but occupy vastly different niches. And collecting one or the other doesn't make the one you don't collect bad.

Those extremely polarised reviews you mention, and some other polarised reviews, are due to duplicate votes from naughty individuals trying to game the system. I'm gradually going through them and removing the duplicate votes. Basically, any figures with many more than 100 votes, regard the result with suspicion.

[suspsy]

I was flabbergasted when I saw that the 1/18 BotM T. rex had three one star votes. I wondered if perhaps it was a case of resentful individuals whom I've crossed online, but then I noticed that a great many other BotM reviews also have one star votes. Even if you don't like the poseability feature, you should still be able to recognize that David Silva and the other artists at Creative Beast have genuine talent that deserves to be recognized.

[CityRaptor]

Obviously they are both, too articulated and too colorful for some people. Basically those people want grey or brown blobs. And yes, I've seen a comment on Andy's Dinosaur Reviews video about the BOTM Yutyrannus, where someone compared it to a bird of paradise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-aCuVrIyxs&lc=UgxKr5RavI-l57JKRjB4AaABAg

[Halichoeres]

Some interesting perspectives here that helped me understand people's predilections a little better. Thanks, and sorry I've taken us off topic (not sorry enough to stop, though). Collecting things, especially useless things like dinosaur toys, is a thoroughly silly hobby, maybe even a mild form of mental illness. Sometimes I think we forget there is no sensible way to participate in it. I don't always succeed, but I try not to stumble into thinking that someone else's way is somehow sillier than mine.

Whatever happened to nostalgia (sigh)....

I see what you did there.

I've been thinking about this too and examining my own feelings towards these older figures, books and other paraphernalia.

I've concluded that whilst I have some nostalgic feelings towards things from my own childhood (e.g. Aurora, Invicta, Inpros, Neave Parker etc), this doesn't translate to things I only encountered on rediscovering the hobby as an adult. Hence I do not feel nostalgia for Marx, MPC, Charles Knight etc. I rather have an undiluted historical appreciation for those things.

I do not have a science background, my degree was in History and Philosophy, which may help explain the direction I approach the hobby from. I simply prefer to (mostly) mine the hobby's rich history rather than try to keep up with an endless search for an elusive perfect iteration of a species.

I certainly do not view the past through rose tinted glasses and agree with Hobbes' dictum that life then was "nasty, brutish and short", as it still is sadly for too many people in the world today.

I'm interested in history, too, just with special emphasis on a much more remote stretch of it! But in seriousness, it's possible that different academic and professional backgrounds play a role, I'm not sure. I wasn't always a science major; I started in art, but the truth is I didn't really have the chops. Anyway, I definitely have an appreciation for some (not all) vintage figures, although the hunt for those can be nearly as quixotic as the one for up-to-date ones! The prices on things like Lanier and Chialu, yikes! To some extent I sympathize with your distaste for a fixation on accuracy, but maybe in maybe a narrower, more specific way: I am not very interested in tiny incremental updates to perfectly adequate figures of taxa that have already been done well many times, which is why I've stopped buying new e.g. T. rex and Spinosaurus figures (except when the latter is a byproduct of a fish). I'm trying to represent as much of Earth's history as possible on my shelves, and new taxa advance that goal much more than a 2% refinement to an animal I already have.

I think I've made this analogy before, but I'm reminded of George Carlin's classic bit on maniacs and idiots: an idiot is anybody going slower than I am on the highway, while a maniac is anybody going faster. Likewise, anybody more concerned with accuracy than I am is a joyless pedant, while anybody less concerned with accuracy is an ignorant lout!

@Faelrin it's interesting how differently people sometimes respond to similar circumstances. Like you, I had an extremely unpleasant youth, and for the most part I prefer to forget it. I came across some crockery identical to what my family had at a craft fair this summer, and experienced visceral revulsion. I had the same reaction to some blocks I saw at a toy show a few years ago. But somehow things like movies and TV from the same era don't elicit those responses. To the extent I experience nostalgia, it might be for music--I would probably not like Nirvana if I were introduced to them today, but I liked them when I was 14 so I'll probably like them forever.

Why? Because of Nostalgia? Nostalgia is toxic...just like many of the toys associated with it. KICK NOSTALGIA TO THE CURB!
 

I've been thinking about this sentiment. In a lot of contexts I am pretty suspicious of nostalgia, when it takes the form of "Life was simpler when..." or "This country has gone downhill since..." That kind of nostalgia is often toxic and reactionary. But I guess I think toy nostalgia is one of the more harmless kinds. I don't really understand nostalgia myself--I appreciate the artistry of Invicta or Marx without having any particular attachment to the figures or desire to own them--but it doesn't bother me. Similarly, I think the original Jurassic Park was a very good movie, and I still enjoy watching it from time to time, but I don't have any desire to own figures depicting the characters or creatures in it. Clearly a lot of people do, which is fine, but I don't really relate to it.

When it comes to things like dinosaur toys or movies I am definitely nostalgic but I'm not one of those "life was simpler" kind of people that I frankly find insufferable and potentially dangerous (MAGA). With something like old dinosaur toys or movies they feel like a direct link to another time in my life that I cannot get back. They help me more vividly recall the people, places, and events that are gone and I cannot have again. But a toy or movie that connects you with those things is something that I find powerful and meaningful. When I watch a movie I have nostalgia for and have seen before it ties me to other times when I experienced it. Example...

When I watch Jurassic Park I feel connected to 9 y/o me sitting in the movie theater seeing it for the first time, the 16 y/o me eating an entire watermelon half while watching it on VHS on my bed in the middle of a hot summer day, the 21 y/o me eating chicken wings with my brother-in-law while watching it in my first house, and the 29 y/o me watching it again in the theater in 3D with a group of friends that I'll never have again. I have a vivid memory, I'm not sure that most people can remember where they were and what they were doing when they did something as simple as watch a movie, but I can. Similarly, I collect vintage dinosaur toys because my father collected them when I was a kid, and it was a passion we shared. He's gone now but having Marx dinosaurs around my house feels like a connection to him, an honoring of him. My avatar is actually a childhood drawing of my father's.

But yeah, that's just me and why nostalgia is both a blessing and a curse, because it is often as painful as it is anything else. Maybe other folks don't reflect on the past like that, maybe they haven't lived long enough or experienced enough changes, or maybe they're happy to be rid of the past and only move forward. I can't speak for them but I both envy and pity the people that don't feel the effects of nostalgia and effects of their own lives previously lived. All that said, nostalgia is never much of a factor when it comes to rating dinosaur toys. The age and historical importance of it is though.       

Really interesting thoughts. I sat and tried to remember seeing JP for the first time. I know that I saw it in theaters the year it came out, since I was already a prehistory-obsessed kid. But I don't remember anything about the circumstances, not even which theater we went to--and there were only two to choose from! I think it must have been me, my brother, and my mom, because my sister would have been a bit young for it. But I don't remember that, I'm just reasoning that it must have been so. I DO remember getting the first book as a present from my older brother when I was 10 or 11, and how tattered and dog-eared it got. I guess people remember different things. I have a great memory for names, like I'll learn a new class of students within two weeks, but unless I've seen a movie three or more times I wouldn't be able to give you a plot synopsis.

Nostalgia can be nice and wonderful, as well as dangerous and mean, because it is all based on feelings and experiences.  If someone treats a toy, story, music, etc. that I have connection to in a positive way, it can make me happy.  Of course, it can be true the other way as well.  Each person is allowed their opinion.  I grew up watching movies from 30's on up.  Black and white shows in my house was as popular as color shows.  Music was the same way.  To my mind as a child, Beethoven was just as relevant as Madonna, or Glen Miller compared to U2.  When I talk to my students, most of them have little knowledge beyond what is current.   They know the latest Rod Wave song but have no idea who the Beatles were.  Everybody has a reason to why they like or dislike something.  I enjoy exposing people to ideas or things that they haven't heard or seen.  In the end it is their choice what they want to do with it. 

Here's my long-winded point is.  The rankings are nice, and I enjoy putting my opinion in.  If the score is different from what I expect, I don't care.  Maybe I am the only person who likes that toy, or the opposite, I am the only one who dislikes it.  It has no further effect on me.  I am a firm believer in looking into the facts, and not stopping at whatever a ranking tells me. 

Interesting you mention the Beatles. I know that they're important, and on an intellectual level I recognize their talent and their enormous contribution to 20th century music. I like them fine and I'm content enough if I'm at somebody's house and they put on a Beatles record. But if I'm choosing music to listen to myself, it would never occur to me to play one of their records, because I have no connection to them. In that way, for me, they are to music what Marx is to toys: interesting, important, sure, but not what I seek out.

[Gwangi]

Only 8 votes and the Haolonggood Wuerhosaurus already has a 1 star vote. I would really like to pick the brain of whoever votes these objectively good figures so poorly.

[ceratopsian]

That is bizarre @Gwangi. While there are minor things that could have been slightly better, one star could never be justified for this model. I get the feeling some people derive perverse fun from throwing a spanner in the works.

Still, I personally have always paid far more attention to the review and my own judgement rather than the star rating.

Only 8 votes and the Haolonggood Wuerhosaurus already has a 1 star vote. I would really like to pick the brain of whoever votes these objectively good figures so poorly.

[stargatedalek]

I have to wonder even if it isn't malicious botting, how much of this could still be bot activity. Perhaps voting based on keywords to try and mask themselves by simulating user behaviour from the IP?