New Ratings Discussion - Ratings Conversion

[Laura F.]

Hi Everyone,

I set up a poll in this board that you can use to vote. It will be open for two weeks. 

Ben - one thought I had about the one star ratings - if the message did not deserve a one star rating and other users rated the message so that the average went up above the conversion threshold, then that user will actually get quite a few kudos for that message because each rating will be converted into a kudo.  For users, each message that has the appropriate average will get kudos equal to the number of ratings that message had.  

Thanks,

Laura 

[JB]

My opinion has just been voiced trough the poll...

[RobertoBozzolo]

I have just voted in the poll, lining up in the '4' team

I have noted in the past that intermediate votes are rarely used here: I seem to remember that I never saw a 2 rating and very few 3s and 4s, so it seems to me that as of now the system is interpreted by the users as a pass/fail machine: 1 for negative rating, 5 for positive, with few exceptions. So it seems to me that intermediate ratings are almost always a result of an average between a -possibly wrong- 1-star and one or some 5-star votes. In this case I prefere to loose some good rating rather than overestimating bad ones, so it's good to have a high barrier in the transition.

Edit: To the detriment of my counters, I stoutly second the opinion that only posts in the technical forums should be counted... even though with this exact post I crossed the 2k barrier

Message Edited by Roberto Bozzolo on 09-04-2008 05:18 PM

[chilly_charly]

I think Roberto is right : a 1s rating, corrected with a 5s result in a 3s. That's the lowest rating that can be obtained after a single corrective action.  I'll change my vote from 2 to 3... 😉

[wbadry]

I'd totally agree with Laura. 4.0 is very acceptable

[Huskerdoo]

As somebody who uses these forums from time to time to learn but isn't really qualified to contribute knowledge, I would like to see something more visual.  The five star rating system doesn't really mean anything to me anymore seeing how I think five stars is abused.  If it actually said on the post there were 10 kudos given or if in the list of threads searched that one thread got 43 kudos, I would know to look at that over similar titled posts/threads.  The same thing could be applied to the current star system if it said next to the post that 10 five star ratings were given.

[Pnt]

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Huskerdoo wrote:
The five star rating system doesn't really mean anything to me anymore seeing how I think five stars is abused. 

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Very good point. Maybe there should be a second option for rating, open only for the more advanced users. Or it is getting complicated ?

[RobertoBozzolo]

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Huskerdoo wrote:
As somebody who uses these forums from time to time to learn but isn't really qualified to contribute knowledge, I would like to see something more visual.  The five star rating system doesn't really mean anything to me anymore seeing how I think five stars is abused.  If it actually said on the post there were 10 kudos given or if in the list of threads searched that one thread got 43 kudos, I would know to look at that over similar titled posts/threads.  The same thing could be applied to the current star system if it said next to the post that 10 five star ratings were given.

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Well, an icon in the star column informs you that some rating is given, and if you hover the mouse on the icons you will see a ballon with the number of ratings and their average, so some sort of information is already given, even in not-so-explicit form. The number of stars in the column is itself an integer aproximation of the average rating.

[RobertoBozzolo]

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Pnt wrote:

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Huskerdoo wrote:
The five star rating system doesn't really mean anything to me anymore seeing how I think five stars is abused. 

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Very good point. Maybe there should be a second option for rating, open only for the more advanced users. Or it is getting complicated ?

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Rating a post should be free for every participant in the forums in my opinion (maybe a small barrier should be left, like in the actual system): on one hand questions are often placed from recent users and they must have the possibility to rate the answer if it has helped them; on the other hand should rating be reserved to experienced users either no more ratings will be given or those users should read all threads just to verify if a good post is sent and rate it! 

Message Edited by Roberto Bozzolo on 09-12-2008 07:50 AM

[RobertoBozzolo]

While we keep discussing about the new rating system and before it effectively starts, it seems to me that a simple modification to actual message aspect could clarify: we could change the aspect of the rating area from this

to this

This simple modification could clarify the meaning of one-star rating, avoiding the risk that someone interpret a one-star rating as better than no rating at all, ingenerating a lot of confusion.

Forgive me if a similar solution has been already discussed: I have not read all rating-related threads!

Message Edited by Roberto Bozzolo on 09-12-2008 03:30 PM