Ratings Here Permanently??

[Guy Fawkes]

The Jury is still out on the personal rating. However, it was left on BECAUSE anybody that wanted to "Opt Out" could. If it starts being abused again, I suspect that Hooboy will have it turned off.

 

As for Thread Rating, I respectfully have to disagree. I feel that it is VERY useful for the community as a whole to be able to express an interest level in a given topic.

 

It then becomes possible for community to descretely, and without comment express their interest (or lack thereof).

[Guest fukamarine]

>As for Thread Rating, I respectfully have to disagree. I

>feel that it is VERY useful for the community as a whole to be

>able to express an interest level in a given topic.

 

I would have thought that the number of replies to any given topic would be an excellent indicator of the level of interest. For that reason I would consider Thread Rating to be redundant.

 

 

fukamarine

[OneFinger]

Daddy, thanks for the swift response.

 

I have to agree with Marine that the number of posts and views is a good indicator for the value of a thread. I just don't like being rated personally or having someone else place their value judgement on topics I post. It just reminds me of being back in school and getting a report card from someone I didn't always respect or trust. x(

 

But, I appreciate that there is still the option of turning those features off if they're abused.

[Guest fukamarine]

>The Jury is still out on the personal rating. However, it

>was left on BECAUSE anybody that wanted to "Opt Out" could.

>If it starts being abused again, I suspect that Hooboy will

>have it turned off.

 

I don't have any problem with the personal rating system being used again. If someone doesn't like me - or my posts - and wants to call me a prick - that's OK by me. Hell, I even find it amusing! We must have pretty thin skins to get upset over an anonymous person's opinion of us, probably typed as they sit in their baggy drawers in a vinyl covered lazy-boy!

 

fukamarine

[Guy Fawkes]

<ROFL> Oh my words! Did I have my Web Cam on? Thanks...You've made my day!

[Guy Fawkes]

But remember that it's not a score card for your post/topic. It's a report card for the entire class. More importantly, it's a report card that's being generated by a group of people not just one person.

 

In my case, if a thread degenerates to two or three people tossing insults over the net at each other, I rapidly lose interest. Yes, there was a LOT of replies but the quality of the thread has dropped immensely.

 

:o Now mind you, It can go both directions. When a pair of famous movie critics both turned "thumbs down", I always put the movie on my "Must See" list. About 80% of the time it would turn out to be a movie that I greatly enjoyed!

[+ Lucky]

If a thread gets a high rating and then degenrates into name-calling, do we get a second vote?

[Guy Fawkes]

Excellent point Lucky! No, you can not.

 

I will report that as a bug. Under the old system it was a major pain, and he cleaned it up for the new version. It's easy for him to adjust a score now.

 

Thanks!

[handyandy]

>As for Thread Rating, I respectfully have to disagree. I

>feel that it is VERY useful for the community as a whole to be

>able to express an interest level in a given topic.

>

>It then becomes possible for community to descretely, and

>without comment express their interest (or lack thereof).

 

This *would* be true if everybody or at least most people made use of the rating option. But almost all don't, so it isn't. Meaningful ratings also depend on all the raters being "men of good will." Read on.

 

>But remember that it's not a score card for your post/topic.

>It's a report card for the entire class. More importantly,

>it's a report card that's being generated by a group of people

>not just one person.

 

Daddy, I must respectfully disagree with you. In theory, yes, but in practice, no.

 

The vast majority of topics are completely unrated. Even when they have 30, 40, 50 or more posts in them and hundreds of views. A few current examples from the Lounge (at least as of this writing):

 

Trent Lott's words... 36 replies, 552 views, unrated

Gaiety Review Sept 23... 40 replies, 1060 views, unrated

 

...plus dozens, hundreds, of other threads with smaller numbers of replies and views.

 

A very small minority of threads has a rating. In almost all cases the rating probably comes from *only one* person, who either doesn't like the poster or the topic and is rating it to express personal enmity or disapproval, not the degree of interest in the topic, or, less often, is expressing personal support for the poster or the topic, again not the degree of interest in the topic. Almost all people who read the topic do not rate it, and the few who do usually rate it out of some ulterior motive. And even the people who do give a rating in this way give ratings only sporadically for a few topics and not across the board for all. The topic thus remains with a very skewed and unrepresentative "rating" representing only one or two persons' spleen or delight, as if it had come from the reasoned evaluation of the group and represented the view of the community. A few examples, again from among current threads in the Lounge (at least as of this writing):

 

the Trent Lott thread above: unrated, but can anyone who has read it doubt that there is a very high level of interest in it in this community, both pro and con?

 

Masturbating with Matthew Rush: 18 replies, 1150 views, rating 1 (="skip it"). The 18 replies are from 11 different people, and the thread contains 2 large pictures of MR. Can anyone really believe that all 1150 viewers of this thread, or even any significant fraction of them, have unanimously rated this thread as "1" (skip it)? Or can anyone really believe that the rating represents anything more than the bilious comment of one sourpuss (maybe at most 2) who doesn't like MR? Why should the thread stand for posterity with that unrepresentative rating?

 

Aging: 37 replies, 841 views, rating 3. This thread had a lot of interaction and has been widely praised for its intelligent, insightful and useful discussion. It was obviously of great interest to many members here. The rating of 3 is clearly unrepresentative and cannot have come from more than 1 or at most 2 readers (probably someone who rated it 1 and then someone else who saw that and rated it 5 to balance it out).

 

(Daddy's Place) Missing Text - Mac OS X: 0 replies, 16 views, rating 5 (="must read"). Obviously of little interest: no replies, very few views, although the thread has been around for a month (it is from *November* 16). A very specialized post, of interest only to a minority of a minority (Mac users - of whom I am one - are a small minority: most members are probably PC users; and among all Mac users by far not all are using OS X), and in an out-of-the way place (Daddy's Place). (Sorry, Daddy, but I had to fish out a little-read thread.) Yet it is rated as a "must read" (5) for all. (OK, I admit that I just rated it that way. But now that I have done it, it stands. And if I can do it here with this thread, anyone can do it anywhere else with any thread, and that is exactly what all or almost all of the "ratings" are.)

 

Consider also that almost all of the existing thread ratings are whole integers. In other words, either all the raters rated it with exactly the same number, or there was an exactly equal number of 1's and 5's, etc. How likely is that with any substantial and significant number of raters (especially the people around here, who can hardly agree on *anything*) - that is, with more than 1 or 2 raters.

 

These ratings are few and far between, misleading, unrepresentative, and usually the product of an ill-use of the ratings system, which is generally unused. I think you and HooBoy ought to reconsider and turn off that option. Besides, it would make room on the page to restore the pull-down menu for moving from forum to forum which used to be there, which is *much* more useful and would be *much* more used.

[OneFinger]

I was very dismayed to see that the ratings returned with the new software (both on rating the poster and rating the post). I personally feel this feature significantly contributes to problems in the Message Center.

 

I have chosen not to participate in the personal rating system. But, I really prefer to see that feature totally turned off.

 

So, Daddy or Hooboy, is it possible to not use the rating system on this site? I'd really prefer not to see old problems become current problems again.

 

BTW, I appreciate all the time and hard work it took to get this upgrade working properly. I think you've done a wonderful job responding to comments, suggestions, and problems.