New Ratings Discussion - Ratings Conversion

[Graziano]

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muks wrote:

 I partially accept but the whole point is that the one stars are being misused.

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Maybe, but they can always be recovered from other positiveratings! If someone gives 1 star for error, or other reasons, and he's not righ, other people can correct  this giving some 5 stars.  I did both: gave 1 star when needed, and recovered other people's one star when not appropriate. Of course, this depend of my advice...

graziano 

[muks]

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Please give us an example how the Kudos would be counted for some of the exceptional threads. I recieved 13 5-star ratings for one of my nuggets. If the threshold was 4, does that get one Kudos or 13?

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I think each kudos will be equalent to a 5 star and there will be no deterants like 1-4 star.So the avg message rating will go off and only the number of kudos will alone count.Sounds good to me.

[smercurio_fc]

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MikeS81 wrote:

Hi Laura,

how will you present the Kudos? Will you calculate an average from Kudos to overall written messages (from one user)? 

Mike 

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I think trying to do something like this is not worth the effort and would actually be misleading. For instance, someone who posts a lot in this forum and/or the Breakpoint forum but has few posts in the LabVIEW or other technical forums would get a skewed "Wow, this person really must know their stuff!" based on just looking at the kudos/stars count or just overall post count. Conversely, someone who just posts in a couple of the technical forums, but doesn't really post a whole lot in these forums may have a lower post count (and potentially kudos/stars rating), but their knowledge and advice may be dead nuts on. This is what I've never liked about the whole ratings system and the leader board compilations.

It comes down to what you want the ratings (whether you're referring to stars, kudos, or kumquats, or post count) to represent. If it's a measure of how much the person provides valuable and correct, advice, a simple post count or message rating isn't necessarily sufficient (I exempt Dennis, altenbach, Ben, tst, etc, for being well-known for their valuable advice and comments). If, on the other hand, it's a measure of how much the person frequents these forums then it may simply be an indication that the person has no life! Or, they could simply have buddies that give them stars/kudos to artificially inflate the stats. (Note that I am not implying this has happened on these forums - just that the possibility exists.)

Caveat: I've never put too much stock into the ratings system or the post counts, so my opinions are colored based on this and should be evaluated as such. Personally, I think Laura is doing a great job and should be lauded in trying to reach some sort of compromise among all the varying opinions. Remember that if you ask 10 people for their opinions on a subject you will always end up with at least 35 opinions. 

[smercurio_fc]

Corollary to the above with respect to post count: What about someone who simply asks a lot of questions? They'd have a high post count, but would you consider them to be a reliable source of advice on coding?

[muks]

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Corollary to the above with respect to post count: What about someone who simply asks a lot of questions? They'd have a high post count, but would you consider them to be a reliable source of advice on coding?

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Questions will rarely get rated unless very informative or startling.On the other hand posting 2000 questions would defenetly enabled the user to learn a ton.He can be trusted cause he could share his experience.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Questions get rated all of the time and many of them are not particularly informative or startling. If it was up to me, I'd drop all of the ratings (including the new 'kudos') but if we have to have them, then I think that only answers should be applied to the proven/trusted status and none of the stars in posts to such boards as Breakpoint (get your free stars!) should be applied at all.

I have less faith in the person who has to ask hundreds or more questions. What I often see is a person who is just not capable of learning the basics.

[Laura F.]

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smercurio_fc wrote:

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Remember that if you ask 10 people for their opinions on a subject you will always end up with at least 35 opinions. 

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Wow, smercurio - you definitely stated my thoughts.  Fortunately, I am prepared for many opinions!

It seems that most people's questions have to do more with the system itself than about the conversion, so I will try to answer them.  I apologize in advance if I left anything out.

• Regarding concern about people driving up Kudos count
  • Yes, this could happen, just as people can drive up the average rating now.  However, as a moderator I will have much more control and visibility into the system and will be able to investigate abuse and take action.  I have not been able to do that with ratings.   As a user, you will also be able to see who gave a Kudo to a message, so you can help me with this task.
• What about only allowing a thread author to rate messages in that thread?
  • Your questions are very insightful!  The author of a thread will be able to mark a message as an "Accepted Solution".  This is a separate feature from Kudos, but this allows you to both give a Kudo to a helpful message and then mark the message that actually provides the answer.  I am not sure if I should enable this at the same time as Kudos since people ask about ratings more, but it's entirely possible to do them both at once.  I am concerned about new feature overload!
• Accepted Solutions will address many of the other concerns above - such as a person that posts a lot to off topic boards would not get accepted solutions since you do not answer questions on these boards, or a person that asks a lot of questions would not have many accepted solutions
• There would be no averaging for Kudos, just an overall total
• Anyone would be able to give Kudos.  The 50 post minimum for being able to rate was to try to minimize the "one star" problem with the theory being that people who have posted 50 times will have a better understanding of what ratings mean
• I think the best way to say that a particular message is an incorrect reply is to post a reply to this effect in the thread
• I will provide an example of how Kudos will be counted - I will work on that tomorrow (I hope!)

Thanks for all of the replies!

Regards,

Laura 

Message Edited by Laura F. on 08-26-2008 05:14 PM

[muks]

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I think the best way to say that a particular message is an incorrect reply is to post a reply to this effect in the thread

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Yeah that will avoid confusion and complications. One more suggestion seeing all the people's concern here. The enthusiast or the zealot tag can come cosidering something like avg msg post to the number of kudos got.This will make user post unneccasary questions just for the sake of it.

[MikeS81]

Hi smercurio_fc,

i thought to calculate an indication number from overall writen posts and the given stars/kudos or whatever could represent if the user only writes much posts or also good and helpfulll posts! I think it would be better (if we need a rating system) to take all messages into account, not only some as we do now.

I also think Laura do a great job and i never said somthing else!

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smercurio_fc wrote:
Corollary to the above with respect to post count: What about someone who simply asks a lot of questions? They'd have a high post count, but would you consider them to be a reliable source of advice on coding?

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I don´t think the post count says something about the quality of some/all posts.

Mike

Message Edited by MikeS81 on 08-27-2008 09:50 AM

[muks]

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I also think Laura do a great job and i never said somthing else!

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Yes laura's patience is something defenitely to be appreciated.

Message Edited by muks on 08-27-2008 03:15 AM