Thread rating

[RobertoBozzolo]

In my opinion there is a basical misunderstanding in this column in the main page of forum boards that lists messages.

The way this forum works, with few exceptions, is basically question&answer: I post a question, someone answers to it, I myself or someone else revise the answer and judge if and how to rate it. However, the rating column in thread index is populated by ratings on the question! Infact in all boards, even in the largest of all (the LabVIEW one) there are only a few rated threads being good-rated answers much more than these.

I suggest to modify this column so as to reflect if and how many stars have been given to all posts to the thread.

Or else the signature of one of us (I don't remember who is he) that recitates "Dont forget to rate a good answer" will need to be modified in "Dont forget to rate a good question"! 🙂 🙂

I am sorry if this argument has already been discussed, I was not clever enough as to read the 10 pages of the whislist addition thread!

[altenbach]

Roberto,

See, I gave you five stars because I think it is a good question that should be discussed. 🙂

There are many possibilities to handle this and I agree it is poorly defined at the moment. Here are some possibilities to handle it.

(1) A question without even a single answer can be an excellent question or thread. For example if nobody has an answer but everybody thinks "I always wanted to know the answer to this question!!!", they can rate it high to draw attention to it.

(2) It could act more as a thread rating. In this case, the first post should read "rate this thread" and the thread originator should not get credit for these stars because it is an overall indication of the quality of the thread and all its answers.
Some threads are more memorable than others and there should be a way for them to be highlighted in some way. Some threads are true perls and others are quite forgettable.

(3) The thread rating could be automatically calculated as a function of the total number of all answer stars. Maybe the column should simply list the total number of stars in the thread. Threads above a certain star count could even be highlighted with shades of a different background color in the forum listings. (e.g. 0-10 stars=white backgrond, 11-20 stars=light yellow background, 21-50 starts, medium yellow background, 51+ stars=bright yellow background, etc.)

It could even be a combination of the above.

Just some ideas .... 🙂

Message Edited by altenbach on 05-14-2005 10:11 AM

[tst]

Roberto, the signature's is Waldemar's.

Altenbach, I think that the person asking the question should definitely get stars. I'm not prone to giving out single star ratings (expect to CC), but there are some amazing questions which deserve 5 stars.
I like the idea about highlighting threads - maybe there should be a way to seperately rate a thread (although that would probably make the not-so-easy-to-use interface even less friendly.

BTW, regardless of the topic, and since I'm sure Molly's following this, I wanted to point out that the thread icons have problems. Not only is there no icon for "A thread I replied to which has more than 10 posts", but even threads I replied to which have less than 10 posts often appear as regular threads.

[tst]

Sorry for this further derailment, but I think the ones that aren't displayed right are the one that I've replied to and have new posts in them. In short, a few more icons are needed which combine the different data - For example, an icon for a thread with more than 10 posts AND which I've replied to AND which there are new posts in.

[RobertoBozzolo]

altenbach is right telling that the true goal to which we should tend is to highlight interesting / important threads, ans maybe the number of rating can help us to value this. Another instrument could be to place on message listing page a column for total times the thread has been viewed: even if it has a few posts only, a discussion observed by several persons can effectively be an interesting thead.


And a little comment to tst post: new threads are highlighted both by the "new replies" column and by the title written in bold, so seems there is no need to add a full family of icons for a thread with new posts. It's true that the interface is not-so-easy-to-use and a new full set of icons could make it a little bit harder to read...

[tst]

Here's the thing - as you may or may not have noticed, I post here quite a lot, and I do so almost every day, so I don't want to get any email messages, and I simply go through the list of messages. My problem is that I can't recognize threads I've posted to, because the icon representing them only appears for threads where there are no new posts.
For the same reason I can't go over the list of my posts to see where there are new posts because the first page gets filled fairly quickly.

[RobertoBozzolo]

Ah, I didn't noticed this icon problem.
So you've pointed out that I post a little less than you 😉

[Molly K]

tst -

You are right that not all the unique combinations of threads have unique icons (yet). I will add this to the list.

Roberto Bozzolo -

We are currently working with the discussion forum vendors on getting the board view to show the average ratings for the entire thread and the thread view to show the average ratings for each message.

I will let you know when I have updates on either of these requests.

Thanks for the feedback!

[waldemar.hersacher]

I have changed my signature.

Rating a thread should indicate a general unusual problem with an interesting solution. Taking a thread on this level is very subjectiv and depends on the experience of the rating person.

Personally I don't give a lot on the stars. For me its one way to say "I have seen your answer and it helped me" regardless of how much stars I get.