This had started out as a private message to the administrator and moderators of Progressive U, but as I was typing up this idea, I thought I would like to see the views and thoughts of other users on this site, particularly of those who feel that the ratings feature is overall a good feature but that other users are abusing this feature.
So, I was thinking about all the bugs that seem to be going about the ratings feature. Ultimately, I have decided that I still really like the idea, but perhaps there is a way to better fit the ratings to the site and help promote more readers to rate?
I don't know if you know anything about the trading card game Magic: the Gathering. But there is a website that I found on the game that uses a rating feature for decklists posted by users of the site that I thought would really help promote fair rating, more comments, and would keep people better held accountable for their ratings. Perhaps we can implement something like this onto this site?
This link will take you directly to a decklist's comments page. http://essentialmagic.com/Decks/CommentsAndRatings.asp?ID=537417
On that page you will see how commenters rated the deck and by what standards. Namely "Playability", "Synergy", "Originality", and "Overall." Each criteria is on a five-star scale. Now, I am a member of this particular site, so I can also explain to you the ins and outs of their ratings feature...
First, to rate a deck, the users have to leave a comment. If a user tries to rate the deck without leaving a comment, an error message pops up saying that it is a requirement. However, it is not a requirement to rate the deck. Therefore, people may comment on the deck, even multiple times, without ever rating the deck at all. I think this type of feature will help promote the idea of commenting on blogs. No longer will people be able to simply rate and not leave a comment, which will alleviate any potential problems of people voting low for the sake of voting low. Also, any and all accusations of members creating several accounts to be able to rate their own posts will end, as every one will see what is going on.
Additionally, the ratings offer four different criteria, and the overall rating of the deck is viewed as an average of each of these ratings. For this site, we could change around the categories a bit, (i.e. "Readability", "Originality", "Progressive Creativity", and "Overall" or whatever categories seem more pertinent to the site). The overall rating viewed on the blog itself takes an average of all these votes. You'll notice on the deck's page itself, the average rating of each of the criteria (http://essentialmagic.com/Decks/View.asp?ID=537417). But on a list of decks meeting a specific search criteria, the average rating overall is viewable (http://essentialmagic.com/decks/) along with the total number of rates.
And, finally, one other feature about this site's rating is that the ratings by the users are listed next to the comments that they leave. So, this enables the users of this site who are voting on a blog to be held accountable for their votes. You'll notice that next to the comments left by people who have not rated simply read "Not Rated" next to the respective categories. This is also the same listing for people who have left multiple comments and were not able to rate again. With the ratings being posted for every one to see, I think there will be fewer people rating poorly "just because" or rating highly without reading the content of the blog itself.
And, similar to the ratings feature of this site, users cannot rate their own posts, but can comment and reply to comments left on their post.
What do you think? Please take the time to go through and visit the links I've posted. I think that implementing something like this will help promote a feeling of fairness throughout this site, and promote more commentary on the blogs themselves.
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Seems cool, we can have seperate categories like "Grammar", "Progressiveness", "Overall" and etc. Overall sounds like a pretty good idea but honsetly I think many people will just be too lazy and you'll have tons of "not rated" blogs...even more so.
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See my blog and I'll love you forever! Or at least temporarily: www.progressiveu.org/blog/npsm18 or http://npsm18.wordpress.com/ for less progressive issues.
Now, this is true, many people may decide to forego rating any blogs as it might seem easier to just go along their merry way rather than rating on more than one criteria.
But, even if there are fewer rates being done overall, I still think that it will help the overall value of rates and the number of comments made when someone has to leave a comment in order to rate a blog.
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"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/fanaile-essence
Fanaile, i think its awesome how much you care about this site and how much you want to improve it and truly make a difference. Kudos to you!
hey! I liked that idea! How come we don't have it now?!?!
It's always great to get ideas from other sites, and this post is great because you provide a concrete reference and detailed analysis.
I think that allowing ratings by different criteria might be good in some cases. On the other hand, we need to keep things simple overall (especially at the start), because people will be less likely to vote when the system is more complicated or time consuming.
In our case I don't think holding people "accountable" for their votes is necessary or even desirable. For elected officials, who are voting as representatives of a constituency, you want the votes to be public information, and their reasons for the votes should be clarified whenever possible. But in this case ProgressiveU members are voting as individuals, and they should be able to vote anonymously, using whatever criteria they see fit, with no justification for their vote necessary. It's analogous to the way we vote for president -- as long as we are eligible, we can vote however we like, and we don't need to make that vote public or justify it if we don't want to.
I'm going to bookmark this for future reference.
Hi Art :)
At the time I wrote this, tensions were running very high and several accusations were flying around about people voting very low on a post simply because they didn't like them, or people rating high on a post without reading it (or creating separate accounts so they could vote high marks on theirs). By being held accountable, sort of speak, I only meant that if these votes were a little more publicized, more people would probably put some real thought into how they're voting for a particular blog;
Or, in the very least, it might alleviate any appearance of unfair voting. My general rule of thumb is, if it even looks like it might be a conflict of interest, steer clear. By implementing a system similar to the one I described, any conflict of interest is avoided.
But since that time, I have noticed more posts being voted on (at least, several more of my posts were voted on) and more posts last on the highest rated list than before. It used to be when I would vote on a blog and see it get listed, within five minutes 8 people would vote it off the list within minutes. That doesn't seem to happen as often anymore...
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"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/fanaile-essence
But alas, it's happening again
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"One of the things that draws writers to writing, is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life, by writing about them"
~ Tobias Wolffe
Yea...
I just can't seem to win.
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"when you have nothing else to say, "Fwonk" is always the perfect thing."
"yeah well, fwonk"
--Devon
Fanaile Essence