[Hornbeam]

Does the star rating system average out the scores? If so, when someone gives his buddy 5stars for a middling photo, someone else can bring it in line by voting it 1 star. That would result in an averaged rating of 2.5

For several years I was an editor on another website which accepted photos from contributors. We experienced exactly the same problems that you are getting. Too many photos of common subjects and reluctance to reject anything. Quantity becoming more important than quality to maintain high hit rates and continuing advertising revenue. Ginormous size making culling essential but staggeringly formidable and so never done. Result is the same - the collection becomes unmaneagable and it is difficult to find anything.

IMHO - overall quality of photos on WAB is very, very high. When you look at the number of times a photo is viewed, it can be disappointing low and we all like to feel that our work is being seen. We could all do more to encourage high quality photos by commenting on those that we like and constructively criticising those that we don't. Getting no response is a big turn off. Editors really must edit and that means selecting and rejecting as well as ensuring accuracy. Failure to do that means that WAB's gallery will become little better than Photobucket where anything goes.