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Subject: 
New feature: Article rating
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.announce
Followup-To: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Sun, 26 Mar 2000 00:46:29 GMT
Highlighted: 
!! (details)
Viewed: 
4052 times
  
LUGNET's article rating system is now running and hungry for input!

As the community continues to grow, so does the challenge in keeping up.  Some
days it can be difficult to find exciting content among the hundreds of new
messages.

To aid browsing, each news article now carries a rating in the range 0 (low)
to 100 (high).

This feature is designed to benefit all, but particularly to benefit casual
readers who cannot devote time.


How it works:

Each signed-in[1] LUGNET Member may mark a read article from "low" (0) to
"high" (100) using a row of buttons.  This input affects the average rating
for that article.

To absorb and dampen extreme input conditions which would otherwise allow a
small number of inputs to "peg the scale," all articles start out with an
automatic midpoint rating of 50, which also participates in the average just
as any human-entered rating would.[2]

The marking process is lasting and unlimited.  Thus, you could rate messages
from weeks, months, or even years ago, and since the composite rating is
simply a numerical average, it doesn't matter which order you go in.

Only LUGNET Members can rate articles, but anyone can view and benefit from
the ratings.  Your individual ratings are shown to you only.


In the long-term:

*  Stronger content becomes easier and easier to find, rather than the
   opposite.

*  Spotlight[3] news becomes easier to identify and more representative of
   community opinion.

*  As you contribute more input, the system can learn how your input correlates
   with the input of others.  It could even attempt to highlight things it
   thinks you might find particularly interesting.

*  The rating engine could be put to generalized use, for example, in rating
   LEGO sets, voting on sites for CLSotW, in judging contests, and so forth.
   A sort of match-making service may even develop!

--Todd & Suz


[1] http://www.lugnet.com/people/members/sign-in/

[2] Thus, if a first person rates an article 90, its rating becomes (50+90)/2
    or 70.  If a second person then rates the same article 100, its rating
    then becomes (50+90+100)/3 or 80.  Average ratings of 0 or 100 are
    extremely improbable, by design.

[3] http://www.lugnet.com/?p=spotlight



Message has 11 Replies:
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
This looks really neat! :) Is there a table with the top articles on it? There's little point voting on something from a year ago if no-one will see it :) Richard (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general) ! 
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
(...) correlates (...) opinions without being able to inflict ours on others (well, numerically speaking). :-) Bruce (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
cool! I also like where it says "you just rated this message" and "2 minutes ago you rated this message" :) now, what about putting an X-message-rating in the outgoing mail/news so we can see the rating of messages in our newsreaders/mail? Shouldn't (...) (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
(...) That'll require my password...I hope this doesn't sound pushy, but when are the 260's packets going out? --Bram (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
(...) In my initial excitement, I missed the above - that's a really cute idea! Although if it correlated two people that liked the same themes there may be fights in TRU :) The ability to change how much you score the article is cool, and it (...) (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)  
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
Could you put up a thing that lets each person view their average rating? Alan (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)  
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
(...) Can't be as hungry as I thought it would be. It won't let me rate cancelled messages. A Default rating of 50 for a cancelled message seems a bit high for me. It might be more appropriate for a cancelled message to have a score of zero. __Kevin (...) (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)  
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
(...) Excellent. I do foresee one possible area that could be a problem (but I could be overreacting) - Auction/Sale/Trade announcements could all end up with a 75 rating (the initial 50 and then the poster gives it a 100). This could give a false (...) (24 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)  
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
(...) (low) (...) ...just my opinion I think the score has little value without knowing how many people have read the post and have chosen not to vote - it could be argued (not by me) that these readers should register an automatic 50 score as they (...) (24 years ago, 27-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)  
  Re: New feature: Article rating
 
I think a great side benefit of the article rating system is the fact that articles you've rated are marked with '>>'s. This alone makes it worth rating every article you read, as now you don't have to rely on having your browser remember which (...) (24 years ago, 31-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)  
  Opinions wanted: article rating harmful? (was: New feature: Article rating)
 
All, It seems at this point that the article rating feature -- intended to help -- is actually causing more harm than good to the community. It's difficult to gauge how much harm is being done when opinions are so varied, but it's clear that (...) (24 years ago, 20-Apr-00, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.general, lugnet.announce) !! 

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