Please shut-off 1-start - 4-star ratings!

[Ian.W]

Stepping back a bit let's ask why we have star ratings.

It seems that they are there to:

• (a) provide a measure of the reliability of a person's posts, and/or
• (b) reward a poster for a good post.

Re (b): The reward function now is shakey. For some occasional posters (rightly or wrongly) it can be a disincentive for them to pitch in with a partial answer, a very brief reply, or a best-guess.  A single one-star rating takes a while to "recover" from, if that person values the "reward' aspect. Remember that for the power-posters of these boards (esp. this board!) this typically isn't an issue, but it is much more likely the case for occasional posters, who we'd like to draw into the community, rather than annoy.

Re (a): And on the topic of reliability, it is far to easy to become "Proven" with a few good posts.

I also want to add that more documentation on the meaning of the star system won't ensure people read and understand it.

All that said, I'm for just a "recommend this post" or nothing. (If you wish to dispute/correct/admonish you can simply post a reply, rather than throwing an anonymous 1-star rating) Everyone should be able to see how many recommendations a particular post gets, judge the reliability of that specific post based on total recommendations.This is much more useful and informative than an average number of stars.  And the number of recommendations that a person's posts garner could form the basis for a new scoring system for the first bar.

Admittedly my proposed scoring system also factors in the interest level in the topic, but I'm will to live with it.

--Ian

[smercurio_fc]

Even for the "power poster", as Ben is, it can be quite frustrating, which I believe is why he posted this in the first place. For example, in this response to this long thread, the original rating given to Ben's reply was 1 star. Why? Does somebody have it in for Ben? Or is it that perhaps many simply don't understand how to properly use the stars?

As Ben indicated,
this issue has come up quite often over the years, though I've only actively participated in these forums for a short time. And, as Christian indicated, the ratings used to have only 4 stars. Did adding that fifth star improve matters? Doesn't seem so.

After all, there's some folks who are harsh critics, so no matter how appropriate a response is, or how correct a response is, that person may only hand out 2 or 3 stars. This has happened many times. The current system seems to punish the person who responded, even though the answer may have been correct, but not to the liking of the person who asked the question.

[Ben]

Re: the old system

The old system had questions, answers and replies.

When a Q was posted, our only option was to "answer" the question. Answer could be rated.

Replies could also be posted to answers but the replies were not ratable.

People used to sit back and wait for someone to answer, so that they could post without being rated.

In this sense the old system was BETTER (there I said it!) because there was a way to help without having rotten vegetables thrown at when you tried to help.

Ben

Message Edited by Ben on 06-13-2007 10:46 AM

[Ray.R]

Judging from the 3 @ 5-star ratings, smercurio_fc hit it 100%.

[Laura F.]

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for my delay, it has been a busy week. 

I have talked over this issue with my manager, and we both agree that working on this issue is a high priority for us.  We soon will be prioritizing projects for this fall and this project, along with a few other forum improvements that NI can control, will go into the list.  I will know after the prioritization when I will be able to research the ratings problem fully and propose a solution.  I will update you all when I have more information, hopefully in about a month. 

In the meantime, if you encounter problems with people abusing or misusing the rating system, I can make a particular user's ratings have no weight in the average rating number.  I will use this to clear up any problems we have with "1-star bandits".  I need to be notified fairly quickly after this happens because I only have about a day to see who has rated what message, so it is probably best to send me a moderator notification (Options > Report to a Moderator) about these situations.

The discussion on this thread about the merits of a rating system will be of great help to me, and I thank you all for your feedback.

Regards,
Laura
Web Support & Operations

[Ben]

Cool!!!!

So you are entertaining the possibility of fixing it and not just shutting it down.

Why don't you start a new thread with an anouncement on all boards to get suggestions on why the users would like to see (Like you for choosing "Zealous" ).

That would make your life easier while also letting you know that what you implement will please the users.

Thank you!

Ben

[altenbach]

For reasons I have outlined in many past posts on this subject, I suggest the following:

1. Retain the 5 star rating system
2. Get rid of the averaging, just show the total number of stars per post (or thread) directly with a number (that hovering is silly!).
3. A post with 50 stars is worth a look, and nobody needs to know if these are 10x5 star ratings or 50x1 star ratings. 😮
4. The current rank based on rating average should be converted to something that is reached after the user has accumulated a certain number of stars (e.g. 100). We then simply have a bar based on # of posts and a bar based on # of stars. (or maybe we can do something with the ratio "stars/posts"?)
5. This ensures that all stars are positive (they are quite shiny after all!)
6. A post with no or few stars has less weight in the scheme of things.
7. Negative ratings should not occur. Truly inappropriate posts (spam, offtopic) should be removed by the moderators.
8. Maybe we can have a rating bar for each post/thread (with e.g. 8 or 16 segments) that lights "log2(# of stars)" segments.

The issue is further complicated that users can change their profile to allow "simple ratings", which is a boolean system (recommend: yes/no) and which might map to 1 and 5 stars respectively (not sure about that!). Maybe this should be discontinued. It just confuses the matter even more.

[Ray.R]

Hi Altenbach,

Wow.. excellent suggestion!!  *** now why didn't I think of that *** 😉

I like how any star then contributes to an overall weight or rating.  And this way, the current system can be easily converted over.. (easy... famous last words, right!!)

Thanks buddy for one of the best suggestion so far..   Now where is that thumbs up icon??

😄

I'm glad to read that something will be done to further enhance this forum.  It will encourage more contributions / participation from members.

Message Edited by JoeLabView on 06-13-2007 03:39 PM

[Ben]

Christian,

YOU are a genius (but you knew that already).

The "total" idea turns all of the bad things that have happened over the years into good.

Ben

PS: Have we discussed this all before? I got a sense of Deja Vu as soon as I posted.

But did you have to mention logs?

The last time I was involved in a discussion on this board that involved Logs CC was accusing me of being mathematically challenged becuase I tried to take the log of a negative number.

Message Edited by Ben on 06-13-2007 02:57 PM

[smercurio_fc]

Perhaps a small amount of deja vu', Ben. Shane had mentioned the "total" idea in his response, though had not expounded on it to the depth that altenbach did.