New Ratings Discussion - Ratings Conversion

[Ben]

Well it seems that all of the Star-gluttons are keeping silent so I'll speak out just to play devil's advocate.

I'm glad there will still be Kudos that I can give out or recieve. I have and will post comments good or bad but they take more time than a simple click of a button.

And let me confess again that is was probably me that rated a question as good, if I did not know the answer but felt any discusion of that topic would enlighten me.

And on the topic of "answer accepted" from the original questioner...

We have all seen threads were we have given the "right" answer but it was not what they wanted to hear.

So now that I have that off my chest...

Bring on the change and let the night-mare of the one-star bandits fade into a vague memory.

Ben 

[johnsold]

I second Dennis' comments above.  A thought-provoking question can be very useful.  And at the other end of the spectrum, someone who seems to be writing a program by asking a large number of questions, each only incrementally different from the previous one can be quite annoying.

I do not pay much attention to the ratings, but if there is to be one, the Kudo system is probably less subject to abuse or misuse.

The Accepted Solution could be a nice addition.  "Accepted" may not be the best term, but I do not have a better suggestion at the moment. Having this flagged in the listing of threads could be useful, if it could be done without cluttering up that page any more.  Maybe a change in the folder icon to indicate a useful answer has been provided.  Sometimes I follow a thread to learn something.  If I do not know the answer but am interested in the question, being able to see at a glance whether the recent posts were clarifying the question, providing answers that did not work, or a useful answer would be nice.

Lynn 

[Laura F.]

I can see that we may have some problems with accepted solutions - they may not like your answer, etc.  However, the worst that would happen is that they don't mark any reply as a solution.  There's no penalty to the person posting the reply like there can be with a one star rating. 

As I promised yesterday, here is an example thread I will tally for the ratings conversion.  It's a Nugget from Darren.

• Darren's initial reply has two 5.0 ratings, the message gets two Kudos and Darren gets two Kudos.
• Altenbach's reply has one 5.0 rating, the message gets one Kudo and altenbach gets one Kudo.
• Darren's next reply has one 5.0 rating, the message gets one Kudo and Darren gets one Kudo.
• Mythilt's reply has one 5.0 rating, the message gets one Kudo and Mythilt gets one Kudo.
• Darren's last reply has one 5.0 rating, the message gets one Kudo and Darren gets one Kudo.

Totals:   Darren gets 4 Kudos for messages in this thread, altenbach and mythilt each get on Kudo.

 It's a simpler thread for an example, but I hope it illustrates the point.

Thanks,

Laura

[Laura F.]

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to bring this discussion to a close so that I can start to make arrangements to turn Kudos on. I'm going to link this thread from the announcements to hopefully get more activity.

So far, these are the votes for what the conversion threshold should be:

4.0 has four votes - smercurio, mathan, graziano, and myself

3.5 has one vote - muks

1.0 has one vote - Ben

For now, my proposal for the ranks is to leave them as is until after we have turned on Kudos.  Once we see how that goes we can decide if either Kudos or Accepted Solutions should factor into our ranks in place of the current rating system.  Currently, your rating affects the "Trusted" or "Proven" status.

Thanks,

Laura 

[muks]

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Once we see how that goes we can decide if either Kudos or Accepted Solutions should factor into our ranks in place of the current rating system.  Currently, your rating affects the "Trusted" or "Proven" status.

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• Are you gonna take into account the ratio of number of post to the kudos got(Will be very interesting)
• Are you gonna take into account just the number of kudos for the proven tab?(will be simple and have less confusion)

[Ben]

Hi Laura,

Can you set up a poll so people can vote anonomously?

Since I am currently in the minority with the vote as it stands, I'd like to make more points for making the threshold 1.

If the thresohold is 1 then all rating past and future will all count as positives.

As we go forward they will only be postive with the new Kudos.

Since this forum has distingished itself in how well mannered and helpful Y'all have been (even competitors help each other out) it would seem a shame to introduce any degree of negativity into this atruistic forum.

The issue of different cultures where one-star is superior to 5-stars should also be concidered. To make the threshold anything other than one would effectively make their opinions null and void.

I think that about covers it for me.

Ben

[RavensFan]

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Ben wrote:

Hi Laura,

Can you set up a poll so people can vote anonomously?

Since I am currently in the minority with the vote as it stands, I'd like to make more points for making the threshold 1.

If the thresohold is 1 then all rating past and future will all count as positives.

As we go forward they will only be postive with the new Kudos.

Since this forum has distingished itself in how well mannered and helpful Y'all have been (even competitors help each other out) it would seem a shame to introduce any degree of negativity into this atruistic forum.

The issue of different cultures where one-star is superior to 5-stars should also be concidered. To make the threshold anything other than one would effectively make their opinions null and void.

I think that about covers it for me.

Ben

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My vote would be 4 or 5 stars be the positive.  l respect Ben's line of thinking, but I don't think it is necessary to dip down to 1.

One star has always been considered a negative vote.  Some posts out there truly deserved to be 1 starred because it was either spam, rude, or unprofessional.  Under Ben's proposal, they would all be now kudo'ed and would show up as positive.

Some posts have been 1-starred when they shouldn't have been.  Whether it was a slip of the mouse button on the wrong star, a cultural discrepancy where the person rating thought 1 star was the highest honor, or whether the person being rated was being targeted by someone.  In these cases, the other forum members have taken up the cause to improve the message rating by giving out 5 stars.  In the end, the injustice was corrected.  In many cases, the message got a near 5 star average to correct the 1 star rating when the message in all honesty should have just been an unrated message, it didn't deserve a 1-star, but really wasn't worthy of getting 5 stars.

I think letting 4 or 5 star ratings getting the positive kudo is fine.  The negative aspect of the previous rating system will be eliminated as any 1-star ratings will now be white washed and will be the equivalent of a normal, unrated message.

Message Edited by Ravens Fan on 09-04-2008 09:14 AM

[chilly_charly]

Although there would be some jubilation in seeing the debilitating one-star-ratings (Ben's proposal) turned into positive evaluations, my own opinion is closer to Raven's. May be a way to conciliate the different opinions would be to make the threshold 2. That way "legitimate" negative ratings would be distinguished from any other ratings, taking into account the correction brought by the forum community.

[Dennis_Knutson]

I'm going to have to disagree with Ben, too. I think the threshold should be 3-4 if the old ratings are going to be imported. Those who got 1 star by mistake probably got it corrected anyway. I also don't see a problem with publishing the name of the person who gave out a kudo.

[Ben]

Kudos to Ravens, CC and Dennis for voicing their opinion!

Ben