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Thomas Main wrote:
<snip>
>
> I love LUGNET and don't know what I would do without the many resources it
> provides...not the least of which is a feeling of community and commonality.
> But there are trends within the community that disturb me...the creation of the
> council group, the article rating system, the self-appointed "police" of LUGNET
> who monitor appropriate use of the server (although I fully support the
> sanction of members who break the TOS...I just feel that there is an
> appropriate authority that should enforce the TOS) and the air of
> self-righteousness that I feel some members of the group have and use to make
> others feel less worthy.
You perfectly expressed my feelings. Actually, I don't use web interface
and never care about rating someone's post and/or ratings of my posts,
and Todd made clear several day ago what the council is for, but they
all made me feel sad. It all smells elitism IMHO, which is not so a good
thing.
Selçuk
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In lugnet.lego.direct, Todd Lehman writes:
<snip>
> The ratings indicate a reaction and collective recommendation to read. In
> the .lego.* groups, which are primarily intended as a communications link to
> the LEGO Comapny (.lego.direct in paricular), their primary reason for
> existing is to channel feedback to LEGO in a way that they can best use. • <snip>
> --Todd
The rating system has seriously made me (and perhaps others?) consider
returning my LUGNET membership card. It seems to me that a few people enjoy
rating the "newsworthiness" of others' thoughts and opinions...perhaps out of
some false sense of ego or power...and the rest of us sit awaiting their
judgment :(
I know that there are some good aspects to article rating...such as filtering
noise and creating a "best of LUGNET" sort of highlight page...but I don't
think the current system is the best tool for the job. Consider if, instead of
a 0-100 ten point scale, there was just an option to rate an article as "I
think this is noteworthy" By default, the articles an individual didn't think
were great would sink to the bottom and articles that stood out as particularly
important would rise to the top. The ambiguity of the ratings would be
diminished too...I don't know what a rating of "30" versus "40" means...but I
can understand "look at these articles...a majority of LUGNET members thought
these were excellent." Simplifying the system would also eliminate some of the
subjectivity of the scores the articles receive. Someone might think "40" is a
ok score whereas someone else might choose "60" as a low score. There's less
confusion about a system that just uses "noteworthy" as a "good" score and lets
other messages default to "no comment."
I love LUGNET and don't know what I would do without the many resources it
provides...not the least of which is a feeling of community and commonality.
But there are trends within the community that disturb me...the creation of the
council group, the article rating system, the self-appointed "police" of LUGNET
who monitor appropriate use of the server (although I fully support the
sanction of members who break the TOS...I just feel that there is an
appropriate authority that should enforce the TOS) and the air of
self-righteousness that I feel some members of the group have and use to make
others feel less worthy.
I realize that LUGNET is an evolving community and I hope that I can continue
to be a part of it in my very small way (I assume that there are a lot of
members who are like me...infrequent posters, but nevertheless concerned
and involved in LUGNET in a quiet way)...I also wonder how many have already
left the community...
--
Thomas Main
main@appstate.edu
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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> [...]
> I know that there are some good aspects to article rating...such as filtering
> noise and creating a "best of LUGNET" sort of highlight page...but I don't
> think the current system is the best tool for the job. Consider if, instead
> of a 0-100 ten point scale, there was just an option to rate an article as
> "I think this is noteworthy" By default, the articles an individual didn't
> think were great would sink to the bottom and articles that stood out as
> particularly important would rise to the top. The ambiguity of the ratings
> would be diminished too...I don't know what a rating of "30" versus "40"
> means...
Well, it doesn't really mean (and isn't supposed to mean) anything profound
but simply that the 40 is 10% higher than 30 on the recommendation-to-read
scale. Similarly, an 80 is simply 10% higher than a 70 -- nothing profound.
But the difference between an 80 and a 30 is more meaningful, and the
difference between a 95 (for example some of Brad's announcements) and a 23
(for example some bickering and name-calling in .debate) is profound.
The ratings are intended mainly for casual and less-active readers -- to help
them locate things they might find interesting or useful more quickly. There
is still a lot "to do" of course (such as top-N recent listings) before this
will truly become helpful.
> but I can understand "look at these articles...a majority of LUGNET members
> thought these were excellent." Simplifying the system would also eliminate
> some of the subjectivity of the scores the articles receive. Someone might
> think "40" is a ok score whereas someone else might choose "60" as a low
> score.
Do you think that a standardized rating-recommentation info-page would help?
I've been following Richard Franks's suggestion for the past couple of weeks
and trying to consider 50 an "average post" midpoint. Most of the things,
I end up marking 50 or 60, with some 40's and 70's and occasional 80's, 90's
30's, 100's, and 20's. That seems to produce consistent results from day to
day, and is quick.
Also, do you think that the default rating should be 0 rather than 50? For
a default of 0 would mean that articles tended almost always to go upwards
in rating over time, rather than either upwards or downwards -- in other words,
no one would feel that their post was ever "marked down from a 50 to a 30 or
40," but rather that their post was "marked up from a 0 to a 30 or 40."
> There's less confusion about a system that just uses "noteworthy" as a
> "good" score and lets other messages default to "no comment."
Do you mean like a 0 (zero) and 1 (one), or 0 (zero) and 100 (one hundred) and
averaging those rather than more gradations in-between?
--Todd
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Thomas Main wrote:
> I love LUGNET and don't know what I would do without the many resources it
> provides...not the least of which is a feeling of community and commonality.
> But there are trends within the community that disturb me...the creation of the
> council group, the article rating system, the self-appointed "police" of LUGNET
> who monitor appropriate use of the server (although I fully support the
> sanction of members who break the TOS...I just feel that there is an
> appropriate authority that should enforce the TOS) and the air of
> self-righteousness that I feel some members of the group have and use to make
> others feel less worthy.
These are some serious concerns, and a while ago, I was on the verge of
leaving Lugnet. I think things have taken a turn for the better. Now
that Todd has clarified that the purpose of the council is not to be a
panel of judges, but to be a place where issues with the T&C can be
hashed out (with a specific invitation to a group of people Todd
respects to help him do that hashing out, but not closing the discussion
to others).
I do agree that the self-appointed "police" is a problem. I have
occaisionally called for people to refrain from this, and e-mail Todd if
they see a problem. Of course, just yesterday, I called out a post in
lugnet.admin.council, but that was to open a discussion (and I chose to
only post to council so that it didn't appear as a public condemnation).
Lugnet is Todd's creation, but by his intent, it is also a community
place, and being that, people need to be involved in how it's run. Todd
has set some parameters for how that involvement happens, which is good,
even if they perhaps need refinement. Note also that currently, only
Todd can enforce the T&C, although anyone can make noise about a
perceived offender.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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Todd Lehman wrote in message ...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> > [...]
> > but I can understand "look at these articles...a majority of LUGNET • members
> > thought these were excellent." Simplifying the system would also • eliminate
> > some of the subjectivity of the scores the articles receive. Someone • might
> > think "40" is a ok score whereas someone else might choose "60" as a low
> > score.
>
> Do you think that a standardized rating-recommentation info-page would
help?
Yes.
I would also suggest that some explanatory text (i.e. how ratings
should be interpreted) be added to the rating histogram page itself.
I think that some people might interpret a low rating as "a bad post"
in general, which is not the objective, of course.
For the casual user, the intent of the rating system should be
as clear as possible.
> Also, do you think that the default rating should be 0 rather than 50?
I think that the chance for misinterpretation of the rating system
would be the same regardless of the starting point. The current
system works well for those who understand what it means.
--
John
(remove the obvious to reply)
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
<snip>
> Do you think that a standardized rating-recommentation info-page would help?
Yes, that's a great idea.
<snip>
> Also, do you think that the default rating should be 0 rather than 50? For
> a default of 0 would mean that articles tended almost always to go upwards
> in rating over time, rather than either upwards or downwards -- in other • words,
> no one would feel that their post was ever "marked down from a 50 to a 30 or
> 40," but rather that their post was "marked up from a 0 to a 30 or 40."
Yes, I think that would alleviate the perception that certain people don't
approve of the posts someone else is making...I like the idea of a post getting
points for its merits and "floating up" rather than being marked down.
<snip>
> Do you mean like a 0 (zero) and 1 (one), or 0 (zero) and 100 (one hundred) and
> averaging those rather than more gradations in-between?
>
> --Todd
Yep, I think so. I see you as the kind of person who likes gradations...you
see the need to keep adding to and refining the newsgroups on LUGNET, you like
details, compartmentalizations, complexities, hairsplits... :) I prefer simple
things (as long as they work). The newsgroup rating system would be simpler
for me if there were less choices...and I think it would be more
objective (of course the recommendations page would also address this problem).
Thank you for considering my ideas.
--
Thomas Main
main@appstate.edu
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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> [...] The newsgroup rating system would be simpler for me if there were
> less choices...and I think it would be more objective (of course the
> recommendations page would also address this problem).
Do you mean that from the point of view of a producer or a consumer of the
rating information (or both)?
As a producer of ratings, it is certainly your right to treat the rating
levels more coarsely if that helps you produce ratings more comfortably or
more quickly or more meaningfully to you. In other words, if you wanted,
you could apply this approach:
- Liked it: mark it High (100 -- the rightmost choice)
- Didn't like it: mark it Low (0 -- the leftmost choice)
- No opinion: leave it blank
The system is designed to work whether people always rate 0 or 100 and never
use anything in between (ultra-coarse), or whether they use the 11-point scale
from 0 to 100 by 10's (moderately coarse), or whether they use the 101-point
scale from 0 to 100 by 1's (very fine). (There's currently no interface which
actually uses the whole range 0 to 100 by 1's, but the system will handle it
if someone wrote a custom client to submit fine-grained ratings. The finer-
grained ratings will be more useful for things like sets and websites, of
course, and not too useful for news articles since they are so temporal.)
As a consumer of ratings, any method for calculating a rating which averages
input ends up producing some sort of multi-position scale. That is, even if
only two inputs are is 0 and 100, the average of several values still might be
something anywhere in-between such as 57 or 83.
As a consumer of ratings, would it help you more or less if the output had
fewer degrees of freedom? Siskel & Ebert used a 5-degree system for rating
movies: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. Other rating methods include use 4-star or 5-star
systems and some of these even output 8 or 10 positions by giving halfs as well
as wholes (i.e., "3 1/2 stars"). Then there's the classic primary-school
rating system of A, B, C, D, F, sometimes with +'s and -'s, giving a 15-point
scale. And then there's the classic secondary-school rating system of a 0 to
4 (or 5) point system producing extremely detailed average GPA's with 4
significant digits.
Giving a two-digit rating 0 to 100 which is intuitive in the sense of a
percentage seems like the simplest general-purpose way to go for something
where the domain of input (articles) spans the entire emotions-range from
incredibly exciting to incredibly disgusting.
Would you find it useful as a consumer or producer of ratings if you had the
option to specify how many choices (radio buttons) you saw when you rated
messages and how many scale-steps you saw when you viewed ratings?
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Do you think that a standardized rating-recommentation info-page would help?
Maybe something expaining the "judge whatever you feel" philosophy? Rather than
'an average post should have 50', 'a more than average post should have 60'
etc..
> I've been following Richard Franks's suggestion for the past couple of weeks
> and trying to consider 50 an "average post" midpoint.
Erm, I'm flattered! :) But I really didn't mean to say that anyone should give
average posts '50', or any other figure. LUGNET is full of worthy (average)
posts, I totally respect someone who would therefore rate an 'average' post as
40, 30 or whatever.
What I meant was that people will tend to see '50' as an average - eg Scott who
automatically considers <20 as a terrible mark (worthy of justification)..
which is why I feel it would solve a lot of problems to remove the ratings from
general view.. and let people use tables to see the most popular posts.
I would probably rate quite a few more posts if the scores were removed - there
is a lot of fluff around.. but it's *really* not worth it (to me) to make
someone feel disenfranchised(1) by rating an otherwise harmless post as 0.
> Also, do you think that the default rating should be 0 rather than 50? For
> a default of 0 would mean that articles tended almost always to go upwards
> in rating over time, rather than either upwards or downwards -- in other
> words, no one would feel that their post was ever "marked down from a 50 to a
> 30 or 40," but rather that their post was "marked up from a 0 to a 30 or 40."
No - I think the current default=50 paradigm is great - just that by making the
entire focus of the rating mechanism the scores themselves, people
understandably get hung up on them.
Richard
1 - Unwelcome, picked upon, boring, unworthy, afraid to post, etc - some of
these I've seen people compain about, others I've felt myself to varying
extents; as a result of the rating system.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> In lugnet.lego.direct, Todd Lehman writes:
> <snip>
> > The ratings indicate a reaction and collective recommendation to read. In
> > the .lego.* groups, which are primarily intended as a communications link to
> > the LEGO Comapny (.lego.direct in paricular), their primary reason for
> > existing is to channel feedback to LEGO in a way that they can best use. • <snip>
> > --Todd
>
> The rating system has seriously made me (and perhaps others?) consider
> returning my LUGNET membership card. It seems to me that a few people enjoy
> rating the "newsworthiness" of others' thoughts and opinions...perhaps out of
> some false sense of ego or power...and the rest of us sit awaiting their
> judgment :(
I think the rating system is generally a good thing. I also think that some
types of messages shouldn't be rated at all, especially posts announcing
pictures of original creations. There was at least one case where I've seen a
post like this being rated below 50. So even if you don't like John's Ninja
fortress/Spaceship/Whatever and don't have anything positive to say about it,
please keep it to yourself and don't rate at all rather than leaving a low
rating. Nobody wants to hear that their creation sucks even if it really
does ;-) especially when it took them many hours/days/months to build it.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > I've been following Richard Franks's suggestion for the past couple of weeks
> > and trying to consider 50 an "average post" midpoint.
>
> Erm, I'm flattered! :) But I really didn't mean to say that anyone should
> give average posts '50', or any other figure. LUGNET is full of worthy
> (average) posts, I totally respect someone who would therefore rate an
> 'average' post as 40, 30 or whatever.
I wanted to try that out, to see how well it worked and, after doing that
statistical analysis last week (in reply to your original message about what
50 could mean) was encouraged that the average average was already near 50
(I think it was 56 or something like that).
So far, it feels comfortable (to me, at least) to mark a 50 if my reaction was
an average or typical reaction (read: the average over all articles I've ever
read, not the predicted reaction of the average person; the ratings are
supposed to be personal recommendations/reactions).
> What I meant was that people will tend to see '50' as an average - eg Scott
> who automatically considers <20 as a terrible mark (worthy of justification)
> ..which is why I feel it would solve a lot of problems to remove the ratings
> from general view.. and let people use tables to see the most popular posts.
You mean...like...don't ever show the composite numbers or raw data? Just
use the composite ratings to produce listings, but never show the numbers?
I wonder how that would affect custom clients (like the ones DanB and JeremyS
are writing) which certainly could benefit from knowing the numbers. I think
in order for those software clients to be most useful, they need that raw data.
Or do you mean hiding the ratings from general view by default, and perhaps
making the user go through some sort of brief overview page in order to enable
the view of the numbers?
> I would probably rate quite a few more posts if the scores were removed -
> there is a lot of fluff around.. but it's *really* not worth it (to me) to
> make someone feel disenfranchised(1) by rating an otherwise harmless post as
> 0.
Hmm. Well, I wouldn't recommend marking a harmless post a 0 -- save 0 for
harmful posts, unless you're restricting yourself to using exclusively 0 or
100. A zero should indicate that the article *shouldn't* have been posted,
for whatever reason -- that it was just pure noise or actually hurtful. Or,
more specifically, that no one should bother to read the article. IMHO, there
is lots and lots of harmless fluff that people should read -- for fun or
entertainment.
For example, when someone puts up photos of a new model that blows everyone
away, and it winds up with a score of, say, 90+, it tends to generate several
"wow, that's cool -- keep it up!" types of messages. I've been marking those
40, 50, or 60 depending on how much new (useful) information they add. If
the reply just says "that's cool" I tend to mark it a 40 (or sometimes 30);
if the reply helped me find something I might've missed, I mark it a 60 (or
sometimes 70). But most replies of that type are just harmless fluff --
people patting each other on the back. Those are important messages to the
community as a whole, even though taken along many are just noise that
doesn't particularly enrich the reading experience. (Who but the poster of
a cool model wants to read 20 "wow, that's cool" replies? But when those
replies talk about things in specific that they like, that becomes much more
helpful and less fluffy to other readers besides the original poster).
> > Also, do you think that the default rating should be 0 rather than 50? For
> > a default of 0 would mean that articles tended almost always to go upwards
> > in rating over time, rather than either upwards or downwards -- in other
> > words, no one would feel that their post was ever "marked down from a 50
> > to a 30 or 40," but rather that their post was "marked up from a 0 to a 30
> > or 40."
>
> No - I think the current default=50 paradigm is great - just that by making
> the entire focus of the rating mechanism the scores themselves, people
> understandably get hung up on them.
What if...hmm...what if, instead of a number 0 to 100, there were a small
horizontal colored bar representing the number graphically?
--Todd
>
> Richard
>
> 1 - Unwelcome, picked upon, boring, unworthy, afraid to post, etc - some of
> these I've seen people compain about, others I've felt myself to varying
> extents; as a result of the rating system.
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D. Jezek wrote:
> I think the rating system is generally a good thing. I also think that some
> types of messages shouldn't be rated at all, especially posts announcing
> pictures of original creations. There was at least one case where I've seen a
> post like this being rated below 50. So even if you don't like John's Ninja
> fortress/Spaceship/Whatever and don't have anything positive to say about it,
> please keep it to yourself and don't rate at all rather than leaving a low
> rating. Nobody wants to hear that their creation sucks even if it really
> does ;-) especially when it took them many hours/days/months to build it.
If one takes the rating system as a judge of usefullness, I would be
inclined to rate MOC posts high if the creation was really worth looking
at because it was so impressive, or demonstrated some nifty technique or
something. I would be inclined to down-rate such posts which have broken
links, point to web sites which are really obnoxious, point to just one
small, dark, out of focus image, etc.
On the other hand, I'm mostly ignoring the rating system, so feel free
to ignore my opinions of how to use it :-) :-)
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> > [...] The newsgroup rating system would be simpler for me if there were
> > less choices...and I think it would be more objective (of course the
> > recommendations page would also address this problem).
>
> Do you mean that from the point of view of a producer or a consumer of the
> rating information (or both)?
I think both would be useful...
>
> As a producer of ratings, it is certainly your right to treat the rating
> levels more coarsely if that helps you produce ratings more comfortably or
> more quickly or more meaningfully to you. In other words, if you wanted,
> you could apply this approach:
>
> - Liked it: mark it High (100 -- the rightmost choice)
> - Didn't like it: mark it Low (0 -- the leftmost choice)
> - No opinion: leave it blank
And the few times I have used the system...that's the way I've used it. I
marked a few articles I read at "100" -- I don't think I would ever rate an
article "0" though...I only rate things that I think are really important (who
cares if I think something is really *not* important...I guess I just don't
like to spend too much time focusing on the negative). One thing I really
don't understand is who goes to the trouble of rating articles that everyone
realizes are not important....like maybe the "me too" posts (in general groups,
not the new LEGO ones) or auction posts that just convey information about an
auction. To me, it seems like a big waste of time on the part of the person
rating.
>
> The system is designed to work whether people always rate 0 or 100 and never
> use anything in between (ultra-coarse), or whether they use the 11-point scale
> from 0 to 100 by 10's (moderately coarse), or whether they use the 101-point
> scale from 0 to 100 by 1's (very fine). (There's currently no interface which
> actually uses the whole range 0 to 100 by 1's, but the system will handle it
> if someone wrote a custom client to submit fine-grained ratings. The finer-
> grained ratings will be more useful for things like sets and websites, of
> course, and not too useful for news articles since they are so temporal.)
>
> As a consumer of ratings, any method for calculating a rating which averages
> input ends up producing some sort of multi-position scale. That is, even if
> only two inputs are is 0 and 100, the average of several values still might be
> something anywhere in-between such as 57 or 83.
I realize this...and that's fine...I think the resulting "average" is more
representational of the entire group's opinions, rather than the "weighted"
opinions of one or two persons who chose to use coarse versus fine rating
scale. For instance...since folks have the option of rating a post "60" and
most people will take advantage of the available options and rate things in the
gray area between 0 and 100. If I continue to just dole out "100s" that's
skewing the average and it's not fair. I either have to ask for a simpler
system or try to use the "fine" system as it's intended.
>
> As a consumer of ratings, would it help you more or less if the output had
> fewer degrees of freedom? Siskel & Ebert used a 5-degree system for rating
> movies: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. Other rating methods include use 4-star or 5-star
> systems and some of these even output 8 or 10 positions by giving halfs as • well
> as wholes (i.e., "3 1/2 stars"). Then there's the classic primary-school
> rating system of A, B, C, D, F, sometimes with +'s and -'s, giving a 15-point
> scale. And then there's the classic secondary-school rating system of a 0 to
> 4 (or 5) point system producing extremely detailed average GPA's with 4
> significant digits.
>
> Giving a two-digit rating 0 to 100 which is intuitive in the sense of a
> percentage seems like the simplest general-purpose way to go for something
> where the domain of input (articles) spans the entire emotions-range from
> incredibly exciting to incredibly disgusting.
>
> Would you find it useful as a consumer or producer of ratings if you had the
> option to specify how many choices (radio buttons) you saw when you rated
> messages and how many scale-steps you saw when you viewed ratings?
>
> --Todd
As a consumer, I'd rather not see the ratings at all ;) Usually I read LUGNET
through a newsreader, so I don't see the ratings, but occasionally I peek at
the web page and see that this or that article was rated a certain way and I
think, "Wow, someone has a lot of extra time on their hands," or "Why would
someone rate this article so low," or "Wow, that rating seems petty and
vindictive to me...I wonder who is doing all this rating anyway?"
As a producer...well, I think it's best if I don't rate posts because I don't
want to mess up averages by giving out 100s and I don't want to have to think a
long time to try to come up with a number between 0 and 100 (particularly, if,
you're like me and would rate the same message "40" one day and "60" another
depending on when you read it, what you were thinking about at the time, and
all the other random things that contribute to scoring subjectively.)
--
Thomas Main
main@appstate.edu
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Thomas Main wrote:
> And the few times I have used the system...that's the way I've used it. I
> marked a few articles I read at "100" -- I don't think I would ever rate an
> article "0" though...I only rate things that I think are really important (who
> cares if I think something is really *not* important...I guess I just don't
> like to spend too much time focusing on the negative). One thing I really
> don't understand is who goes to the trouble of rating articles that everyone
> realizes are not important....like maybe the "me too" posts (in general groups,
> not the new LEGO ones) or auction posts that just convey information about an
> auction. To me, it seems like a big waste of time on the part of the person
> rating.
I just thought of a way to alleviate this problem.
Don't publish the average rating unless there are at least N values (N =
10?).
If there are fewer than that many values, just say "insufficient sample"
or
something like that. That way only the articles that people feel are
important
will will get ratings, and articles that are irrelevant will continue to
be ignored.
I also think the idea of starting at 0 and going up is a good one, but
that
is an independent decision.
/Eric McC/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> I think in order for those software clients to be most useful, they need that
> raw data.
Agreed - as I see it, the problems created by the rating system aren't because
some posts are bigger than others, but rather because people can't avoid seeing
the ratings that they recieved. Especially when the ratings are for harmless
'me-too' posts - if it really stinks, or is really great.. then it is good when
the author sees the rating!
> > I would probably rate quite a few more posts if the scores were removed -
> > there is a lot of fluff around.. but it's *really* not worth it (to me) to
> > make someone feel disenfranchised(1) by rating an otherwise harmless post as
> > 0.
>
> Hmm. Well, I wouldn't recommend marking a harmless post a 0 -- save 0 for
> harmful posts, unless you're restricting yourself to using exclusively 0 or
> 100. A zero should indicate that the article *shouldn't* have been posted,
Yup - it wasn't a great example.. probably should have made it '30' instead!
> What if...hmm...what if, instead of a number 0 to 100, there were a small
> horizontal colored bar representing the number graphically?
Do you mean in the multiple-post group listings? If it was easy to tell a 35,
from a 50, then the casual (mostly-harmless) authors of me-toos would still
feel bad on a regular basis.
What about a simple 3-colour interface:
00-33% - blue
34-66% - green
67-100%- red
Or to distinguish between real turkeys, and super-posts:
00-15% - black/dark blue
16-29% - blue
30-70% - green
71-84% - red
85-100%- bright red
The latter is an un-even scale - the benefit of it is that most people will get
a uniform grading (less bad feelings).. but it is easy to scan between great
posts and horrid posts.
This might actually be better than removing the ratings from the general
display - the concerns that I had were mainly that 'harmless' fluff posts were
being put to 30-49.. (which is great from a system-sorting POV), but people
were feeling bad because of it.
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> [...] One thing I really don't understand is who goes to the trouble of
> rating articles that everyone realizes are not important....like maybe the
> "me too" posts (in general groups, not the new LEGO ones) or auction posts
> that just convey information about an auction. To me, it seems like a big
> waste of time on the part of the person rating.
Probably depends on how quickly they can rate articles. Through the website,
it's a little cumbersome to give input on everything -- a lot of scrolling and
mouse-clicking and waiting, etc. But using a custom newsreader client, it can
be as fast as a single keystroke.
For example, if I want to rate an article 70, I just press the "7" key on my
keyboard and it queues up a 70 for that article (which it sends to the server
in the background) and then immediately shows me the next article. If I could
(theoretically) actually read 1 article per second, I could actually rate 1
article per second. But my brain doesn't work that fast. :)
My overhead for rating something I've read is probably 1/2 second per article.
I have to hit some key to advance to the next article anyway, so it might as
well be one of the rating keys. If I don't have an opinion, I just hit a non-
rating skip-to-the-next-article key and don't mark the article.
> As a consumer, I'd rather not see the ratings at all ;) Usually I read
> LUGNET through a newsreader, so I don't see the ratings, but occasionally I
> peek at the web page and see that this or that article was rated a certain
> way and I think, "Wow, someone has a lot of extra time on their hands," or
> "Why would someone rate this article so low," or "Wow, that rating seems
> petty and vindictive to me...I wonder who is doing all this rating anyway?"
How about search results? Sometime down the road (a long way, probably) the
search results could take the ratings into account (at your discretion at
search-time) and you could ask the search engine to give higher priority to
articles with higher scores. Would you find that useful?
> As a producer...well, I think it's best if I don't rate posts because I
> don't want to mess up averages by giving out 100s and I don't want to have
> to think a long time to try to come up with a number between 0 and 100
> (particularly, if, you're like me and would rate the same message "40" one
> day and "60" another depending on when you read it, what you were thinking
> about at the time, and all the other random things that contribute to
> scoring subjectively.)
Well, maybe it's not something for you then. (Certainly, it's not for
everyone, because it does take a bit of time and concentration sometimes.)
What if, instead of giving out 0's and 100's, you could give out either a
25 or a 75? (Or some other pair?) Would you find that less intimidating?
--Todd
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> On the other hand, I'm mostly ignoring the rating system, so feel free
> to ignore my opinions of how to use it :-) :-)
Well, I get all my LUGNET content through the e-mail exchange, and I very
rarely frequent the web interface. I don't see the ratings at all, and I
really don't care all that much. Knowing the assualt I got in debate, it
probably is better anyway. Are there a lot of people like this that don't
use the web interface?
Scott S.
--
Scott E. Sanburn
Systems Administrator-Affiliated Engineers -> http://www.aeieng.com
LEGO Page -> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/3372/legoindex.html
Coming Soon: The Sanburn Systems Company
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> For example, if I want to rate an article 70, I just press the "7" key on my
> keyboard and it queues up a 70 for that article (which it sends to the server
> in the background) and then immediately shows me the next article.
Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this available?
It sounds *extremely* useful!
> How about search results? Sometime down the road (a long way, probably) the
> search results could take the ratings into account (at your discretion at
> search-time) and you could ask the search engine to give higher priority to
> articles with higher scores. Would you find that useful?
Yep! Yep! Yepyepyepyepyepyep! Useful! Yepyepyep!! Yeeeep!
Actually, if that included fuller search capabilities as well (date, author,
subject, etc) then I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one doing bad Seasame-Street
alien impersonations :)
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Charles Eric McCarthy writes:
> I just thought of a way to alleviate this problem.
> Don't publish the average rating unless there are at least
> N values (N =10?).
I think that if N can be defined by the users, this would work well. I
personally think that if even one person rates a message that some information
is better than none. However that's just me, and I think that new users would
like to have N a little higher. If it could be changed much like the
"skip-filter", that would work well. I like 10 as a default value, but I
personally would change my setting to 1.
Ben Roller
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> [...]
> Well, maybe it's not something for you then. (Certainly, it's not for
> everyone, because it does take a bit of time and concentration sometimes.)
Yikes, I gotta watch my wording. There's nothing to read between the lines
there -- those are two separate statements. I realise that rating takes time
and that not everyone has time or wants to spend it.
> What if, instead of giving out 0's and 100's, you could give out either a
> 25 or a 75? (Or some other pair?) Would you find that less intimidating?
Intimidating was a poor word choice... I mean, would you find that more
inviting (or less unpleasant)?
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
my particular home machine, but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
(Search for "GUI streaming newsreader Jeremy Sproat Dan Boger"...)
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> > available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
>
> Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> my particular home machine,
If you mean that it would be virtually impossible for me to do some hacking of
my own to get it working, or you're embarrassed to share the source, then fine!
Otherwise, I'm still interested :P
> but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
Yup - these are cool developments, but ideally I want something low overhead -
Linux has started thrashing on my p166 already, and once I start up a few java
instances it crawls even more..
Richard
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Richard Franks wrote:
[snip]
> Or to distinguish between real turkeys, and super-posts:
> 00-15% - black/dark blue
> 16-29% - blue
> 30-70% - green
> 71-84% - red
> 85-100%- bright red
[snip]
I think it should be the other way around.
Red for low bandwidth, violet for high bandwidth.
/Eric McC/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Charles Eric McCarthy writes:
> Richard Franks wrote:
> [snip]
> > Or to distinguish between real turkeys, and super-posts:
> > 00-15% - black/dark blue
> > 16-29% - blue
> > 30-70% - green
> > 71-84% - red
> > 85-100%- bright red
> [snip]
>
> I think it should be the other way around.
> Red for low bandwidth, violet for high bandwidth.
Yeah, the colours are a bit squiffy!
Bronze, light bronze, silver, light gold, gold?
(Silver being light grey or white)
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> > my particular home machine,
>
> If you mean that it would be virtually impossible for me to do some hacking
> of my own to get it working, or you're embarrassed to share the source, then
> fine! Otherwise, I'm still interested :P
It's not particularly bad code or anything like that, it's just that it was
an evolve-mode prototype -- didn't know Curses at all before digging in (still
don't know it well) and wasn't sure it would even end up working. It also is
still using an older undocumented pre-avid.cgi gateway to the server for its
incoming feed, so until I update that to avid.cgi, I can't release the code.
But maybe it would be a useful example client if cleaned up a bit and released
with the understanding of no little or support being offered to get it up and
running (I just haven't the time to support it).
> Yup - these are cool developments, but ideally I want something low overhead
> - Linux has started thrashing on my p166 already, and once I start up a few
> java instances it crawls even more..
What I made is pretty low-overhead -- it just uses Perl5 and the Curses.pm
Perl library and runs probably any Linux (although many of the colors are
currently hard-coded for my settings) and typically consumes about 2-4 MB of
RAM while active. Lemme think about what would be involved in making it
releaseable...
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Charles Eric McCarthy writes:
> Richard Franks wrote:
> [snip]
> > Or to distinguish between real turkeys, and super-posts:
> > 00-15% - black/dark blue
> > 16-29% - blue
> > 30-70% - green
> > 71-84% - red
> > 85-100%- bright red
> [snip]
>
> I think it should be the other way around.
> Red for low bandwidth, violet for high bandwidth.
Blue and purple/violet are automatically out anyway because of traditional link
colorings. Green is out because green text looks horrible on white background.
A statistically significant portion of the population is also some form of
colorblind -- and brightnesses of a single color work just as well for relaying
information on a single scale as two colors. Two colors are most effective
when a two-dimensional scale is needed (not really the case here).
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
Well, the Java client is mine, but I'm not considering adding a rating
capability until after I can get posting to work (1). Dan is working on a
non-Java client (Perl?), with which he does plan on supporting article rating.
Cheers,
- jsproat
1. Gotta learn cookies. Actually, I just gotta take the time to implement
cookies using java.net.URLConnection, but I've been swamped lately.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> The rating system has seriously made me (and perhaps others?) consider
> returning my LUGNET membership card. It seems to me that a few people enjoy
> rating the "newsworthiness" of others' thoughts and opinions...perhaps out of
> some false sense of ego or power...and the rest of us sit awaiting their
> judgment :(
I admit I do a lot of rating, I've switched over to the web interface for the
most part, partly because I had to and partly because I want to rate and see
ratings.
Despite that, I share some of Thomas's misgivings. I know that there are people
out there who do strategic rating, I am sure of it. (I expect that if a certain
person sees this reply, they will give it an 0) I know that I've seen things
rated low and seen people get upset about it. I know that I myself have asked
for guidance about an article I posted that got low ratings and didn't get any
useful feedback, rather I got stubbed for asking.
Todd can say "they don't mean anything, 30 isn't bad it isn't good, it's just
a number higher than 20 and lower than 40" till he's blue in the face but
people still are going to take them as value judgements.
That's not bad, mind you. Rating is here now, and probably is here to stay. But
part of me wishes it wasn't. So far it hasn't been all that great, although I
do see the promise
So that's my 2 cents. I find it particularly ironic that Thomas's article is
currently (as of this reading) rated 80.
However, there is one thing to consider. If you use the NNTP interface you will
not see ratings and will not know what things are rated (except when people
mention it) which might be a way to go.
++Lar
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> Well, I get all my LUGNET content through the e-mail exchange, and I very
> rarely frequent the web interface. I don't see the ratings at all, and I
> really don't care all that much.
Your not missing much. Just as a guide, the post below has been rated by 4
readers and has a score of 80 - which probably puts it in the top 10%.
Enjoy:
http://www.lugnet.com/market/auction/?n=5468
> Knowing the assualt I got in debate, it
> probably is better anyway. Are there a lot of people like this that don't
> use the web interface?
I think Todd said before that about 50% of readers use the web interface.
Scott A
>
> Scott S.
> --
> Scott E. Sanburn
> Systems Administrator-Affiliated Engineers -> http://www.aeieng.com
> LEGO Page -> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/3372/legoindex.html
> Coming Soon: The Sanburn Systems Company
>
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In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Todd Lehman writes:
> until I update that to avid.cgi, I can't release the code.
> But maybe it would be a useful example client if cleaned up a bit and released
Funky!
> with the understanding of no little or support being offered to get it up and
> running (I just haven't the time to support it).
Yup - I forgot to mention that I expected no support for it :) In fact, if
someone doesn't take up the challenge before me (I couldn't justify it until
June, so it's likely they will!), it would make a good way to get a bit more
perl experience.
Richard
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> Lugnet is Todd's creation, but by his intent, it is also a community
> place, and being that, people need to be involved in how it's run. Todd
> has set some parameters for how that involvement happens, which is good,
> even if they perhaps need refinement. Note also that currently, only
> Todd can enforce the T&C, although anyone can make noise about a
> perceived offender.
In an ideal world all the groups could self police, and Todd's intervention
would not really be needed.... but then in a ideal world there would never
be any problems.
The problem with LUGNET is that it is the noise makers who shape things to a
certain extent. The average guy/gal who browses the messages and just talks
LEGO has a important opinion, and just because he does not shout about it
does not mean it is not worth listening to.
Scott A
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In lugnet.admin.general, Scott Arthur writes:
> The problem with LUGNET is that it is the noise makers who shape things to a
> certain extent.
Unless you can name some names, and cite some examples then I don't think I
can agree. Also, 'noise makers' is a bit of a troublesome term - eg. not many
posts caused more noise than your request to change the T&C, and that didn't
shape policy ;-)
> The average guy/gal who browses the messages and just talks
> LEGO has a important opinion, and just because he does not shout about it
> does not mean it is not worth listening to.
Do you mean that people feel intimidated, or apathetic about sharing their
thoughts? Or maybe, if you're talking about LUGNET admin stuff, they don't feel
qualified enough to give their opinion? If that is the case, then what do you
think could be done to make more people feel welcome to participate?
In the economics of ideas, those who contribute with thoughtful words (eg Frank
Filz, and Thomas Main) 'compete' with those who might seek to shape, by
repeating their ideas periodically... do you think by having some sort of
'feature table', or suggestion board which people could vote upon ideas, would
help?
The rating system is sometimes used for this (especially in .debate).. but it
is a flawed meter - I might rate highly a well-thought out post that I disagree
with.
Richard
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"Richard Franks" <spontificus@__nospam__yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Ft9Is6.JAC@lugnet.com...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Scott Arthur writes:
>
> > The problem with LUGNET is that it is the noise makers who shape things • to a
> > certain extent.
>
> Unless you can name some names, and cite some examples then I don't think • I
> can agree. Also, 'noise makers' is a bit of a troublesome term - eg. not • many
> posts caused more noise than your request to change the T&C, and that • didn't
> shape policy ;-)
Sorry I wrote that with TM's "air of self-righteousness" comment in my
head - absolutely no slur was intended.
>
> > The average guy/gal who browses the messages and just talks
> > LEGO has a important opinion, and just because he does not shout about it
> > does not mean it is not worth listening to.
>
> Do you mean that people feel intimidated, or apathetic about sharing their
> thoughts? Or maybe, if you're talking about LUGNET admin stuff, they don't • feel
> qualified enough to give their opinion? If that is the case, then what do • you
> think could be done to make more people feel welcome to participate?
I think Mike Stanley mentioned a survey they other day. Not sure how
representative it would be, but that is the only method which comes to mind
right now.
>
> In the economics of ideas, those who contribute with thoughtful words (eg • Frank
> Filz, and Thomas Main) 'compete' with those who might seek to shape, by
> repeating their ideas periodically... do you think by having some sort of
> 'feature table', or suggestion board which people could vote upon ideas, • would
> help?
I saw this mentioned before (I think by you?), I liked it then - and still
do now.
>
> The rating system is sometimes used for this (especially in .debate).. but • it
> is a flawed meter - I might rate highly a well-thought out post that I • disagree
> with.
The rating system will only be any good when it is representative (of
what?). I doubt it is right now. It needs more time (still).
Scott A
>
> Richard
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On Tue, 18 Apr 2000 23:07:52 GMT Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote
concerning 'Re: Article rating (was: Re: the latest news)':
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> > available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
>
> Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> my particular home machine, but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
I'm still working on my perl/tk based streamer... it's coming along
slowly, since work keeps bugging me. What about addind the
X-lugnet-rating header to avid.cgi, though? Without it, the client
can rate, but won't be able to see other people's ratings... Also, is
it ok for the client to use the raw.cgi to get specific messages, when
needed? Or is that not a part of the published API?
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Actually, if that included fuller search capabilities as well (date, author,
> subject, etc) then I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one doing bad Seasame-
> Street
> alien impersonations :)
No, you wouldn't be alone!! I'll join with Big Bird any day for those
enhancements.
-Shiri
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In lugnet.admin.general, Scott Arthur writes:
> The problem with LUGNET is that it is the noise makers who shape things to a
> certain extent. The average guy/gal who browses the messages and just talks
> LEGO has a important opinion, and just because he does not shout about it
> does not mean it is not worth listening to.
Currently, you're right. The rating system allows me to rate the "little guys"
with good opinions up and the loud guys just blowing off steam down. Without
ratings, whoever posts the most often gets seen the most. With ratings, I
could (eventually) tell the system to only show highly rated articles,
reguardless of who posts them. Heck, if you wrote your own client, you could
even put your personal bias for or against certain people (For example, if I
value Todd's opinions over yours, in my client Todd gets an automatic +10 and
you get an automatic -10). (1)
Ben Roller
1. I would urge people not to do this. That's just dumb IMO.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Scott Arthur writes:
> Your not missing much. Just as a guide, the post below has been rated by 4
> readers and has a score of 80 - which probably puts it in the top 10%.
> Enjoy:
> http://www.lugnet.com/market/auction/?n=5468
That one surprises me. I marked it a 50 as soon as it appeared, but 3 other
people marked it 100. Only thing I can figure is that they thought it might
be helpful to raise its visibility. It's certainly not anything I'd call
worthy of 100 in its own right. (For anyone following along but not clicking
the URL, it's a message I posted yesterday about a mysterious payment
received).
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Frank Filz wrote:
> ... Of course, just yesterday, I called out a post in
> lugnet.admin.council, but that was to open a discussion (and I chose to
> only post to council so that it didn't appear as a public condemnation).
Huh? I'm not seeing any new posts to lugnet.admin.council.
Steve
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> [...]
> The rating system is sometimes used for this (especially in .debate).. but
> it is a flawed meter - I might rate highly a well-thought out post that I
> disagree with.
Exactly. Ultimately, the output of the ratings (the composite ratings for
each article) are nothing more than a recommendation to read the article.
Higher scores mean higher recommendations to read. (Lower scores might also
mean that too, if one is actively curious to look for low-scored articles, but
anyway.)
The input is multi-purpose... It's how you personally reacted to an article
(which might help later with so-called "collaborative filtering") as well as
your personal recommendation to read. In most cases, these are probably
fairly similar. In the case you menteiond above, you've rated something
highly (a high recommendation to read) even though you disagreed with it.
if your reaction to it was highly positive even though you disagreed with it,
then it actually matches, because you're saying that you'd like to see more
articles like that.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman wrote in message ...
> > http://www.lugnet.com/market/auction/?n=5468
>
> That one surprises me. I marked it a 50 as soon as it appeared, but 3 • other
> people marked it 100. Only thing I can figure is that they thought it • might
> be helpful to raise its visibility. It's certainly not anything I'd call
> worthy of 100 in its own right. (For anyone following along but not • clicking
> the URL, it's a message I posted yesterday about a mysterious payment
> received).
>
> --Todd
I saw this post soon after it was posted and I rated it 100.
It is rather an important post--not for me but for someone, namely the
person who sent the payment. My reasoning behind rating it 100 was so that
it would stand out and have a better chance of being seen by the sender of
the cheque.
I wondered at the same time why Todd did not think to cross-post to
.loc.germany and even some of the other bordering nations locations groups.
The whole thing does not concern me other than I hope that the sender of the
cheque will read the post and come forward to take claim for the payment.
_______________________________________________________
Kevin Salm
....The biggest fan of the Gray Lego brick....
_______________________________________________________
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> I'm still working on my perl/tk based streamer... it's coming along
> slowly, since work keeps bugging me. What about addind the
> X-lugnet-rating header to avid.cgi, though? Without it, the client
> can rate, but won't be able to see other people's ratings...
The avid.cgi script is meant to serve things continuously, not backward in
time, so adding the header to that doesn't fit its design very well. (It
would also add load to it.) (But serving the ratings via something specially
constructed to handle back-in-time or since-some-time queries efficiently
through another separate script is planned.)
> Also, is
> it ok for the client to use the raw.cgi to get specific messages, when
> needed? Or is that not a part of the published API?
It's not a particularly streamlined script like avid.cgi is, but it's not
particularly inefficient either. It's more efficient than the HTML display
of articles, for one thing, but still really intended for only interactive
display.
It doesn't have a published API, and it wasn't intended to be called from
user agents other than web browsers, but if you access it randomly (i.e.,
right when your app needs to display it to you) without hammering on it
(fetching zillions of articles in rapid succesion), it shouldn't be a problem.
In that sense, your agent would be acting like a browser.
For fetching multiple articles, instead of using raw.cgi, open an NNTP
connection and send:
1. GROUP <group> to change into a group, followed by
2. ARTICLE <artnum> to get the article data.
Repeat at 2 if fetching multiple messages from a single group, otherwise
repeat at 1 if fetching multiple messages from different groups.
--Todd
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Steve Bliss wrote:
>
> In lugnet.admin.general, Frank Filz wrote:
>
> > ... Of course, just yesterday, I called out a post in
> > lugnet.admin.council, but that was to open a discussion (and I chose to
> > only post to council so that it didn't appear as a public condemnation).
>
> Huh? I'm not seeing any new posts to lugnet.admin.council.
oops, sorry, lugnet.admin.terms...
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
>
> > The rating system has seriously made me (and perhaps others?) consider
> > returning my LUGNET membership card. It seems to me that a few people enjoy
> > rating the "newsworthiness" of others' thoughts and opinions...perhaps out of
> > some false sense of ego or power...and the rest of us sit awaiting their
> > judgment :(
For a few days I was thinking that too. But then I realized "I don't care,"
and also "I have no idea who rated this" -- they could be out to lunch for all
I know, either for the duration of rating my article, or permanently. Or they
could be interested in some other facet of Lego of which I care less than a
fig.
While Lugnet is a great resource, I still find what postings interest me,
either by their title or by who posted it, as in, "let's see what Sproat does
with this," "let's see what Lindsay Braun has built now", or "red 4x4 cones
found where?"
> I admit I do a lot of rating, I've switched over to the web interface for the
> most part, partly because I had to and partly because I want to rate and see
> ratings.
I see it a lot like a newspaper, where the editor feels that all the important
stuff, according to him, goes in the front of the paper, while other things
fall where they fit. But that doesn't stop me from reading the comics first,
or even exclusively (which is most of the time).
> Despite that, I share some of Thomas's misgivings. I know that there are • people
> out there who do strategic rating, I am sure of it. (I expect that if a • certain
> person sees this reply, they will give it an 0) I know that I've seen things
> rated low and seen people get upset about it. I know that I myself have asked
> for guidance about an article I posted that got low ratings and didn't get any
> useful feedback, rather I got stubbed for asking.
Does the rating system really serve regular readers and posters in a positive
way? For the drive-by reader, I can understand the logic behind "show me
what's hot/being talked about". From http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?
n=533 : "This feature is designed to benefit all, but particularly to benefit
casual readers who cannot devote time."
Personally I see it as benefiting only casual readers. I've noticed that many
builders derive "personal or creative validation" from displaying their MOC's
or opinions in a public forum. To knock such validation down in another
(albeit sometimes harsh) article is one thing, for there's a chance to rebutt.
But to just give it a number seems like an impersonal system that stamps a
arbitrarily subjective value judgement on something. The casual reader
therefore doesn't have all the facts regarding how that rating really came to
be (esp. where Larry's above "0 rating" is concerned.. and who wants to print
on a public web page that the reason could be a personal one?).
If a rating is designed to attract readers, here, as a small aside, is another
method that can do it: multiple group posting. When someone posts something
that can benefit/entertain many people in many ways, they often should do it
to as many applicable groups as possible thereby receiving greater visibility.
If I build an MOC spaceship using some obvious Star Wars parts with custom
minifig pilot that I want everyone to see, I could post to space, starwars,
build, build.minifigs, my loc group (if I really want to), and of course to
general. These are six groups read by a lot of folks. Some share crossover
readers, others don't. And I realize that I'm not talking to idiots, but
sometimes I see stuff that can be cross-posted to other groups and yet isn't,
even by "veterans".
> Todd can say "they don't mean anything, 30 isn't bad it isn't good, it's just
> a number higher than 20 and lower than 40" till he's blue in the face but
> people still are going to take them as value judgements.
Yes.
> That's not bad, mind you.
And Larry can say "that's not bad, mind you" till he's blue in the face but
people still are going to take them as value judgements. ;-) (I'm not beating
up on you Lar.. you said just about everything I was thinking)
> Rating is here now, and probably is here to stay. But
> part of me wishes it wasn't. So far it hasn't been all that great, although I
> do see the promise
And now to contradict just about all that I've said, I see it too. But.. could
there be a way to have the ratings not appear with the article itself, or in a
group's index? (Small message to Todd: while I don't totally disagree with
implementing/using a rating system, I didn't ask for one or particularly want
to see one. So could there be another way to access it upon demand, or toggle
it on and off?)
> So that's my 2 cents. I find it particularly ironic that Thomas's article is
> currently (as of this reading) rated 80.
And.. it's a subject actually having very little to do with Lego or its
products. If such a rating system is intended as its heart to display/help us
find "really good" or "important" postings about Lego stuff, then Thomas'
article shows that such a system can be used to highlight other subjects too.
While this in and of itself isn't bad, I must say that I care less about
the "feelings" and any "politics" that are associated between two people
and/or Lugnet than I do about Lego.. Lego stuff is why I'm here, firstly and
foremostly. And I can't thank Todd and Suz and all who continue to contribute
toward that end enough.
> However, there is one thing to consider. If you use the NNTP interface you • will
> not see ratings and will not know what things are rated (except when people
> mention it) which might be a way to go.
True.. yet I find that after using Todd's web interface, I don't use my
newsreader anymore for Lugnet. I use the traffic page which I find extremely
handy for locating this week's new stuff. And I've never had to deal with the
problems that are associated with newsreader bugs.
-Tom McD.
when replying, please rate the spamcake as "0".
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In lugnet.admin.general, Tom McDonald writes:
> > So that's my 2 cents. I find it particularly ironic that Thomas's article is
> > currently (as of this reading) rated 80.
>
> And.. it's a subject actually having very little to do with Lego or its
> products. If such a rating system is intended as its heart to display/help us
> find "really good" or "important" postings about Lego stuff, then Thomas'
> article shows that such a system can be used to highlight other subjects too.
Short note: in the temporary "top 40" page Todd put up, at least 50% (if not
more, I didn't count) of the posts were related to the discussion about the
rating. That's too bad, because it shouldn't be (AFAI gathered from Todd's POV
on what ratings should tell us).
-Shiri
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In lugnet.admin.general, Shiri Dori writes:
> Short note: in the temporary "top 40" page Todd put up, at least 50% (if not
> more, I didn't count) of the posts were related to the discussion about the
> rating. That's too bad, because it shouldn't be (AFAI gathered from Todd's
> POV on what ratings should tell us).
Except for the fact that the message-group filter isn't applied there, it's
actually working perfectly well, IMHO. The ratings are, in the final analysis,
recommendations-to-read. If the original message and its replies are getting
high ratings, then it's a clear indication that the community feels it is an
important issue to discuss. Higher ratings raise the visibility of things --
that's their purpose. A secondary purpose (for way down the road) is having
the system collate your input with the input of others to make predictions to
your about what you might most want to read -- but that's secondary.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> [...] Consider if, instead of a 0-100 ten point scale, there was just an
> option to rate an article as "I think this is noteworthy" By default, the
> articles an individual didn't think were great would sink to the bottom and
> articles that stood out as particularly important would rise to the top.
> The ambiguity of the ratings would be diminished too...I don't know what a
> rating of "30" versus "40" means...but I can understand "look at these
> articles...a majority of LUGNET members thought these were excellent."
Thomas: First, thanks for your comments (I don't know if I've thanked you
directly yet). Second, things have just been "peeled" way back to their bare
essentials. The underlying system is almost the same, but it's got a
completely new skin -- hopefully one which replaces discomfort with appeal.
Since the ratings were mainly intended as a recommendation-to-read scale (they
were many things, but that was the primary thing), the first thing to get rid
of was the negative stigma associated with people "rating" everything and to
objectify the input. Thus, the first change was to change the input-
solicitation question from:
How would you rate this message? Low * * * * * * * * * * * High
to:
Would you recommend this message to others? No * Yes! * * * * Yes!!!!
(the *'s represent radio buttons). The rationale for the change: Why not
simply ask the most important question directly?
This immediately cuts down on the sheer number of choices as well as the
inclination for one to mark a message highly which isn't necessaily a message
one would recommend to others.
However, this still leaves one to wonder what is the difference between
something with a recommendation of !!!! (the highest) and something with a
recommendation of "only" !!! (the next highest). Also, with four positive
choices ("Yes!" through "Yes!!!!") and one neutral choice ("No"), it still
leaves room for one to feel bad when one's message is left unmarked amid a
dozen other messages marked "!" to "!!!".
Still more simplification was needed.
The next step was to ruthlessly chop again the number of choices -- this time
from 5 down to 2 -- a bare minimum. The philosphy here now is even simpler
than a "would you recommend this?" -- it basically asks, "what type of marking
(if any) would you recommend show up next to this message?" After all, why
not just ask the question even _more_ directly so that its entire purpose is
clear in the question itself?
So, you can now ask that a message be included in the LUGNET Spotlight page by
selecting
°° Spotlight
and you can ask that a message simply by highlighted (with a ° symbol) by
selecting
° Highlight
There are no options to give a message any kind of low score, and in fact the
default choice of "- - -" (empty -- no action) causes an "erase my opinion"
action to be sent rather than an input value of 0. In other words, this
follows the old adage, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything
at all" -- and even goes so far as to _prevent_ people from saying bad things.
The ONLY input that's allowed is positive input. You can recommend something
for Highlighing, or you can recommend something for Spotlighting, or you can
opt out -- those are the only three choices (so, two choices, really).
(Of course, something marked "Spotlight" by 3 people can still be "marked
down" a very small amount by a 4th person marking it "Highlight", but that's
not a pejorative mark in the same sense that a 0 or hard "no" would be.)
> Simplifying the system would also eliminate some of the subjectivity of the
> scores the articles receive. Someone might think "40" is a ok score whereas
> someone else might choose "60" as a low score. There's less confusion about
> a system that just uses "noteworthy" as a "good" score and lets other
> messages default to "no comment."
Thomas, have a look now -- if you're still with us -- this is basically how
it turned out. No more 40's, no more 60's, no more 100's, no more 0's.
Things not marked as noteworthy (i.e., Highlight or Spotlight) sit pristinely
unmarred.
Internally (this is just some geek details), the "Highlight" recommendation
translates into a numeric value of 75, and the "Spotlight" recommendation
translates into a numeric value of 100. A default "softener" value of 0 is
still included by the system for all messages, in order to prevent "pegging"
by a small number of inputs.
Thus, it now takes two people both rating (er, highlighting) something in
order for any mark at all to even show up next to an article (they would both
have to give it a "Spotlight" recommendation). And it takes at least 4 people
all recommending something as "Spotlight" in order for a °° Spotlight mark to
show up.
A couple of one-person-input examples:
Person A ° Highlight => 75
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 37.50 => (blank)
Person A °° Spotlight => 100
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 50.00 => (blank)
And a couple of two-person-input examples:
Person A ° Highlight => 75
Person B ° Highlight => 75
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 50.00 => (blank)
Person A °° Spotlight => 100
Person B ° Highlight => 75
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 58.33 => ° (Highlight)
Person A °° Spotlight => 100
Person B °° Spotlight => 100
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 66.67 => ° (Highlight)
And a couple of three-person-input examples:
Person A °° Spotlight => 100
Person B ° Highlight => 75
Person C ° Highlight => 75
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 62.50 => ° (Highlight)
Person A °° Spotlight => 100
Person B °° Spotlight => 100
Person C ° Highlight => 75
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 68.75 => ° (Highlight)
And a four-person-input example:
Person A °° Spotlight => 100
Person B °° Spotlight => 100
Person C °° Spotlight => 100
Person D °° Spotlight => 100
Softener => 0
COMPOSITE => 80.00 => °° (Spotlight)
Thus, this simplified system requires a very solid base of input from several
people before significant recommendation symbols show up. It's designed to
make abuse very, very difficult.
Internally, there is a table which simply associates the internal composite
numbers with what to show as symbols (output):
0-50 => (blank)
51-75 => ° (Highlight)
76-100 => °° (Spotlight)
Thomas (and anyone else), does this seem like a positive change to you?
My thinking here is if people can see _exactly_ what they're doing when they
mark articles, and if they are physically unable to "begrudge" articles, then
only good can come from this. And if the LUGNET Spotlight page can be
automated to display things based directly on these recommendations, then
we'll have a collaboratively generated Spotlight page more representative
of community opinion, instead of one which is hand-picked by a single person
(currently the case).
In this sense, the highlights (down with ratings!!!) are sort of like a
community project -- people working toward a common goal rather than serving
their personal interests.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> There are no options to give a message any kind of low score, and in fact the
> default choice of "- - -" (empty -- no action) causes an "erase my opinion"
Ah yes, erase. I wasn't considering that -- good call. I suppose with the
1 button idea, the button could change to 'undo rating' or something once
you've rated an article (although that requires a lookup).
> order for any mark at all to even show up next to an article (they would both
> have to give it a "Spotlight" recommendation). And it takes at least 4 people
> all recommending something as "Spotlight" in order for a °° Spotlight mark to
> show up.
One consideration is that these thresholds may need to change if LUGnet (and
/ or the rating system) grows massively in popularity. (You've probably
already thought of that, but I figured I'd throw it out there just in case.)
> Thomas (and anyone else), does this seem like a positive change to you?
I think so, but I suppose that's already clear. :)
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
[snipped some good discussion and examples]
> 0-50 => (blank)
> 51-75 => ° (Highlight)
> 76-100 => °° (Spotlight)
>
> Thomas (and anyone else), does this seem like a positive change to you?
>
> My thinking here is if people can see _exactly_ what they're doing when they
> mark articles, and if they are physically unable to "begrudge" articles, then
> only good can come from this. And if the LUGNET Spotlight page can be
> automated to display things based directly on these recommendations, then
> we'll have a collaboratively generated Spotlight page more representative
> of community opinion, instead of one which is hand-picked by a single person
> (currently the case).
>
> In this sense, the highlights (down with ratings!!!) are sort of like a
> community project -- people working toward a common goal rather than serving
> their personal interests.
This does seem like a positive change. I appreciate not having as many
choices. I personally have not been a victim of getting low ratings on
messages that I cared about, and people have been very positive about
models/MOCs that I have posted. But I think this (highlighting) system is
better.
I do have one concern and that has to do with automatically generating the
Spotlight page based on these recommendations. The concern is that
significantly fewer posts will show up. Reloading the current Spotlight page
indicates that only one post (Brad Justus' Lego Direct post) in the 4-5 days
it shows would warrant being on the page. I think that either the threshold
should be lowered, or that some hand-picking will still have to be done. Or I
suppose you could automate it so that any posts that have received some number
of spotlight recommendations (like 3 or 4) regardless of other recommendations
are listed on the Spotlight.
Just some thoughts,
John Gramley
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In lugnet.admin.general, John Gramley writes:
> [...]
> I do have one concern and that has to do with automatically generating the
> Spotlight page based on these recommendations. The concern is that
> significantly fewer posts will show up. Reloading the current Spotlight
> page indicates that only one post (Brad Justus' Lego Direct post) in the
> 4-5 days it shows would warrant being on the page.
Good point, but keep in mind that it's using old data -- collected under the
old system. Having an explicit "Spotlight" highlighting choice may (ought to)
make this not only easier but clearer for people.
> I think that either the threshold should be lowered, or that some hand-
> picking will still have to be done. Or I suppose you could automate it so
> that any posts that have received some number of spotlight recommendations
> (like 3 or 4) regardless of other recommendations are listed on the
> Spotlight.
Yup, the threshold can be set to 75 or 80 or 60 or whatever it turns out to
need (since everything internally is still 0-100). The "Spotlight" choice
that people pick is just a recommendatoin (taken seriously, of course) but
perhaps the Spotlight page "itself" could have its own opinion (i.e. the
threshold) if it needed to.
Wanna get it 100% automated, if possible. Not sure what to do about the left
column though -- no one has said it's useful or not useful. But IT's what
chews up so much time, and why I need desperately to shed the Spotlight from
my daily/weekly duties.
> Just some thoughts,
Thanks!
--Todd
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John Gramley <jkgii@aol.com> wrote:
> I do have one concern and that has to do with automatically generating the
> Spotlight page based on these recommendations. The concern is that
> significantly fewer posts will show up. Reloading the current Spotlight page
The theory (my theory, anyway *grin*) is that the new system will shortly
result in more people participating, so it'll all work out.
One concept would be to have the spotlight threshold be related to the
number of ratings made within the relevant period. This would 1) scale up to
the future when millions of people read lugnet daily and 2) make it possible
to do weekly or monthly spotlights.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, John Gramley writes:
> > [...]
> > I do have one concern and that has to do with automatically generating the
> > Spotlight page based on these recommendations. The concern is that
> > significantly fewer posts will show up. Reloading the current Spotlight
> > page indicates that only one post (Brad Justus' Lego Direct post) in the
> > 4-5 days it shows would warrant being on the page.
>
> Good point, but keep in mind that it's using old data -- collected under the
> old system. Having an explicit "Spotlight" highlighting choice may (ought to)
> make this not only easier but clearer for people.
Definitely agree. It sure makes it easier for me to know what to rate and
what the rating specifically.
> > I think that either the threshold should be lowered, or that some hand-
> > picking will still have to be done. Or I suppose you could automate it so
> > that any posts that have received some number of spotlight recommendations
> > (like 3 or 4) regardless of other recommendations are listed on the
> > Spotlight.
>
> Yup, the threshold can be set to 75 or 80 or 60 or whatever it turns out to
> need (since everything internally is still 0-100). The "Spotlight" choice
> that people pick is just a recommendatoin (taken seriously, of course) but
> perhaps the Spotlight page "itself" could have its own opinion (i.e. the
> threshold) if it needed to.
Do you mean something like it could "change its mind" daily to make sure that
some minimun number of posts show up?
> Wanna get it 100% automated, if possible. Not sure what to do about the left
> column though -- no one has said it's useful or not useful. But IT's what
> chews up so much time, and why I need desperately to shed the Spotlight from
> my daily/weekly duties.
I completely understand wanting it automated. Now about that left column...
I have always thought it was uselful but not necessary. Most subject posts
are clear enough to not need the summary. Maybe the usefullness of the
subject line could be considered when trying to decide whether to rate as
spotlight or just highlight.
John Gramley
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In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> John Gramley <jkgii@aol.com> wrote:
> > I do have one concern and that has to do with automatically generating the
> > Spotlight page based on these recommendations. The concern is that
> > significantly fewer posts will show up. Reloading the current Spotlight page
>
> The theory (my theory, anyway *grin*) is that the new system will shortly
> result in more people participating, so it'll all work out.
Agreed. I will be using the new system more than the old.
> One concept would be to have the spotlight threshold be related to the
> number of ratings made within the relevant period. This would 1) scale up to
> the future when millions of people read lugnet daily and 2) make it possible
> to do weekly or monthly spotlights.
I would love to see weekly and monthly spotlights. Great idea!
John Gramley
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In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> [...]
> One concept would be to have the spotlight threshold be related to the
> number of ratings made within the relevant period. This would 1) scale up to
> the future when millions of people read lugnet daily and 2) make it possible
> to do weekly or monthly spotlights.
Another alternative might be to let the user give the threshold and time-
period they want at view-time! :-) Someone in a super-hurry who only stops
in once a month might want to set the threshold to 95 and 30 days. Someone
who dips in quick daily for 20 minutes might want a threshold of 75 and 1 1/2
days. And someone who has been away on holiday for a week might want to set
the threshold to 50 and 8 days. Would that be useful?
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, John Gramley writes:
> > Yup, the threshold can be set to 75 or 80 or 60 or whatever it turns out to
> > need (since everything internally is still 0-100). The "Spotlight" choice
> > that people pick is just a recommendatoin (taken seriously, of course) but
> > perhaps the Spotlight page "itself" could have its own opinion (i.e. the
> > threshold) if it needed to.
>
> Do you mean something like it could "change its mind" daily to make sure that
> some minimun number of posts show up?
Ya, something like that -- I was just being nebulous -- needs some magic
sprinkles applied somewhere to make it work. Maybe letting the user set the
threshold would simply solve it.
> I completely understand wanting it automated. Now about that left column...
> I have always thought it was uselful but not necessary. Most subject posts
> are clear enough to not need the summary.
Ya, the left-column (weblog style) methodology is best broken out separately
into a real weblog (which will be perfectly simple with the member-pages
feature -- that's what the Spotlight actually uses currently).
> Maybe the usefullness of the
> subject line could be considered when trying to decide whether to rate as
> spotlight or just highlight.
Ahh, yes...that might help.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> So, you can now ask that a message be included in the LUGNET Spotlight page by
> selecting
>
> °° Spotlight
>
> and you can ask that a message simply by highlighted (with a ° symbol) by
> selecting
>
> ° Highlight
Hello Todd,
I thought the exclamation point was a good idea. This little circle is just
too darn small to see especially by looking at it from a laptop. How about
some kind of a small graphic like a red star?
D.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Another alternative might be to let the user give the threshold and time-
> period they want at view-time! :-) Someone in a super-hurry who only stops
> in once a month might want to set the threshold to 95 and 30 days. Someone
> who dips in quick daily for 20 minutes might want a threshold of 75 and 1 1/2
> days. And someone who has been away on holiday for a week might want to set
> the threshold to 50 and 8 days. Would that be useful?
Yes, please. But I personally would like to see that as possibly an
additional choice and to always have a "standard" daily spotlight. I know all
I would have to do is innput the right values and I could get it myself, but I
liked the Spotlight page being a kind LUGNET daily journal, a record of sorts.
John Gramley
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Thomas: First, thanks for your comments (I don't know if I've thanked you
> directly yet). Second, things have just been "peeled" way back to their bare
> essentials. The underlying system is almost the same, but it's got a
> completely new skin -- hopefully one which replaces discomfort with appeal.
>
> Since the ratings were mainly intended as a recommendation-to-read scale (they
> were many things, but that was the primary thing), the first thing to get rid
> of was the negative stigma associated with people "rating" everything and to
> objectify the input. Thus, the first change was to change the input-
> solicitation question from:
>
> How would you rate this message? Low * * * * * * * * * * * High
>
> to:
>
> Would you recommend this message to others? No * Yes! * * * * Yes!!!!
Hrmmm.... maybe this is the Bushmills talking, but this new thing (I just
noticed it) seems a little ... watered down.
I'll admit - I've rated things high and low, for lots of reasons.
I'll probably not go back and read this whole discussion since a consensus
must have been reached, but for the record, I didn't see the rating thing as
that big a deal, or that broken, or anything to get worked up about, one way
or the other. I also never rated an article down, to the best of my foggy
memory, just because it had something like a broken link in it - that would be
pretty petty and stupid, imo.
I did rate things down because I didn't agree with what the person said,
because I thought the post was flagrantly useless or off-topic, or because,
once or twice, I thought the prices on items for sale were so ridiculously
high (say a place that's trying to push 6097 at $65 when they can be had for
$31.96 from another site with more proper grammar and spelling) as to boggle
the mind.
What I think you saw, in seeing some people react in a "oh this is so bad"
or "oh my feelings are hurt" manner with respect to the ratings is a result of
what I thought would happen all along - most people will ignore the capability
to rate messages, most people aren't signed in, most people are using
something other than the web interface that allows them, and mostly they
reflect the opinions of the few who are opinionated enough to go through the
hassle of signing in and using them in the first place, when signing in with
this member password basically still only provides you this almost meaningless
functionality. Maybe when singing in would allow you to do some of the cooler
stuff in "THE PLAN" you'd see a more balanced coverage and usage, but I doubt
that right now more than 10-15 people are actively rating articles, and the
thought that you might see them ratings skewed one way or the other isn't
surprising.
As for "highlighting" - it seems a little silly, almost like light beer. I
doubt I'll do it much, or if I do, I'll probably only spotlight a tenth of the
messages I might have otherwise rated, since I won't have much choice other
than "no comment", "check it out", or "you gotta freakin see this, dude". I
personally liked having the option to say, "what the ____ - this is crap."
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In lugnet.admin.general, John Gramley writes:
> [...]
> > Yup, the threshold can be set to 75 or 80 or 60 or whatever it turns out to
> > need (since everything internally is still 0-100). The "Spotlight" choice
> > that people pick is just a recommendatoin (taken seriously, of course) but
> > perhaps the Spotlight page "itself" could have its own opinion (i.e. the
> > threshold) if it needed to.
>
> Do you mean something like it could "change its mind" daily to make sure
> that some minimun number of posts show up?
No, but one example of the Spotlight page having "its own opinion" might be
if it gave a significantly higher precedence to articles appearing in
newsgroups containing the name "announce", regardless of current human input.
That is, maybe the Spotlight page would consider that, say, two inputs of 100
(i.e., Spotlight) had been input along with all other input. That way, it
would only take 1 other person to mark an announcement as "Spotlight" before
it appeared there (depending on the threshold).
Similarly, it could un-give precedence to anything in a group "off-topic",
which wouldn't prevent .off-topic.* messages from ever appearing, it would
just make them much harder to appear there. But maybe that would already be
taken care of by the fact that no one had marked an .off-topic.* message as
"Spotlight." Maybe only "announce" needs an extra boost. Yeah.
--Todd
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> Thomas: First, thanks for your comments (I don't know if I've thanked you
> directly yet). Second, things have just been "peeled" way back to their • bare
> essentials. The underlying system is almost the same, but it's got a
> completely new skin -- hopefully one which replaces discomfort with
appeal.
This does not change the fact that the data itself leaves a lot to be
desired. All this tinkering tinkering is like rearranging deck chairs on the
Titanic.
If I were a new here, I'd be bemused both by all this "admin" chatter and
the constantly changing interface.
Why not just mothball the whole idea for a while?
Scott A
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In lugnet.admin.general, John Gramley writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> > Another alternative might be to let the user give the threshold and time-
> > period they want at view-time! :-) Someone in a super-hurry who only stops
> > in once a month might want to set the threshold to 95 and 30 days. Someone
> > who dips in quick daily for 20 minutes might want a threshold of 75 and
> > 1 1/2 days. And someone who has been away on holiday for a week might want
> > to set the threshold to 50 and 8 days. Would that be useful?
Whoa -- dang -- I didn't realize how easy this would actually be to do when
I wrote that. Here's something sorta like that (it goes back a maximum of
7 days):
http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi
> Yes, please. But I personally would like to see that as possibly an
> additional choice and to always have a "standard" daily spotlight. I know
> all I would have to do is innput the right values and I could get it myself,
OK, try that thingie there above -- just click up that URL. It defaults
(right now) to 1 day and a threshold of 65. Subject to tweaking later,
naturally. Ideally the threshold for Spotlight should be 75-ish, but things
need time to adjust.
> but I liked the Spotlight page being a kind LUGNET daily journal, a record
> of sorts.
ya, it needs to be able to instantly generate a page for any given day, eh?
OK, something for later. This is just proof-of-concept for now, sorta.
Boy, if this works, this will really save time.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> in once a month might want to set the threshold to 95 and 30 days. Someone
> who dips in quick daily for 20 minutes might want a threshold of 75 and 1 1/2
> days. And someone who has been away on holiday for a week might want to set
> the threshold to 50 and 8 days. Would that be useful?
Definitely. Downside: it requires some comprehension of what the numbers
mean. It'd be nice to have decent auto-calculated day, week, and month
pre-made options.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
<snip>
> Thomas: First, thanks for your comments (I don't know if I've thanked you
> directly yet). Second, things have just been "peeled" way back to their bare
> essentials. The underlying system is almost the same, but it's got a
> completely new skin -- hopefully one which replaces discomfort with appeal.
Well, thank you and the community for having such a detailed and invloved
discussion and consideration of the system. I never really expected this sort
of response; I suppose that a lot of other people weren't 100% happy with the
rating system as it was. This new system is better, I think. If it serves
your purposes and a majority of the other members are happy with it also,
that's great.
<snip>
> Thomas, have a look now -- if you're still with us -- this is basically how
> it turned out. No more 40's, no more 60's, no more 100's, no more 0's.
> Things not marked as noteworthy (i.e., Highlight or Spotlight) sit pristinely
> unmarred.
I'm still here. I had thought of posting a message during the first few days
of the old article rating system but held off until I could really think about
what it was that bugged me about it. When I did post, I felt better for having
expressed my opinions...wasn't expecting any real in-depth discussions to take
place, though. To tell the truth...I'm a little embarrased seeing my name in
the announce group...I want everyone to know that apparently a lot of people
felt the old system was not working for them...was I responsible for tipping
the first dominoe over? Yikes.
--
Thomas Main
main@appstate.edu
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Whoa -- dang -- I didn't realize how easy this would actually be to do when
> I wrote that. Here's something sorta like that (it goes back a maximum of
> 7 days):
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi
Could you also add a way to limit the groups from which the spotlight pulls
articles? Also, it's very hard to see how articles have been rated with the
little circles. I think it would make the highighting much more useful to the
casual reader if it actually highlighted the newsworthy articles. For example,
the subject field is currently color #E0E0D8, right? What if highlighted
articles were color #FFFFCC and spotlighted articles were #FFFF99 ? Wouldn't
that make it easier to find good posts right away? Or would that throw off the
ratings by making people ignore unrated articles and just increase the ratings
of articles already rated?
--Bram
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In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> > in once a month might want to set the threshold to 95 and 30 days. Someone
> > who dips in quick daily for 20 minutes might want a threshold of 75 and
> > 1 1/2 days. And someone who has been away on holiday for a week might want
> > to set the threshold to 50 and 8 days. Would that be useful?
>
> Definitely. Downside: it requires some comprehension of what the numbers
> mean. It'd be nice to have decent auto-calculated day, week, and month
> pre-made options.
Canned queries? Ya sure, definitely, things like this?--
http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi?threshold=60&days=1
http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi?threshold=75&days=4
http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi?threshold=80&days=7
(with meaningful link labels, of course :-)
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Whoa -- dang -- I didn't realize how easy this would actually be to do when
> I wrote that. Here's something sorta like that (it goes back a maximum of
> 7 days):
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi
Looks good.
> > Yes, please. But I personally would like to see that as possibly an
> > additional choice and to always have a "standard" daily spotlight. I know
> > all I would have to do is innput the right values and I could get it myself,
>
> OK, try that thingie there above -- just click up that URL. It defaults
> (right now) to 1 day and a threshold of 65. Subject to tweaking later,
> naturally. Ideally the threshold for Spotlight should be 75-ish, but things
> need time to adjust.
I agree. 65 works okay for the last day, but 75-ish will be better long-term
when more people are making recommendations.
> OK, something for later. This is just proof-of-concept for now, sorta.
> Boy, if this works, this will really save time.
This is a really good idea. I agree with Bram that when this is up and
running, the user's skip-filter settings could be applied to the results to
help limit what's displayed. But the settings should also be easily
bypassable so you can pick either one.
John Gramley
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John Gramley wrote:
> > Wanna get it 100% automated, if possible. Not sure what to do about the left
> > column though -- no one has said it's useful or not useful. But IT's what
> > chews up so much time, and why I need desperately to shed the Spotlight from
> > my daily/weekly duties.
>
> I completely understand wanting it automated. Now about that left column...
> I have always thought it was uselful but not necessary. Most subject posts
> are clear enough to not need the summary. Maybe the usefullness of the
> subject line could be considered when trying to decide whether to rate as
> spotlight or just highlight.
I liked the left column since it allowed me to go to the link mentioned
in the article directly, and not have to open the message to get to it.
Perhaps it could be replaced with a "references" column, that will just
extract the Links/Posts/Sets whatever that are mentioned in the
article... not great, since it'll be hard to get the description
correctly, and it'll get extra stuff as well... but it could be useful,
IMO.
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi
Great work :) just curious, how is it sorted? It seems to be sorted by
elapsed time... shouldn't it sort by rating, perhaps with a time formula to
lower the rating?
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> > http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi
>
> Great work :) just curious, how is it sorted? It seems to be sorted by
> elapsed time...
See text at top of page there.
> shouldn't it sort by rating, perhaps with a time formula to lower the
> rating?
It would quite easy to offer a sorting choice --
a) Newest first ("weblog" style)
b) Most recommended first ("weekly top 40" style)
c) Fuzzy combination of both ("today's top stories" style)
--Todd
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Todd Lehman wrote:
> > > http://www.lugnet.com/spotlight.cgi
> >
> > Great work :) just curious, how is it sorted? It seems to be sorted by
> > elapsed time...
>
> See text at top of page there.
doh, yup... it's right there.
> > shouldn't it sort by rating, perhaps with a time formula to lower the
> > rating?
>
> It would quite easy to offer a sorting choice --
>
> a) Newest first ("weblog" style)
> b) Most recommended first ("weekly top 40" style)
> c) Fuzzy combination of both ("today's top stories" style)
mmm... fuzzy :) by day then by rating? nod... even put a separator
between days, somewhat like the current (Static) spotlight...
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> > > shouldn't it sort by rating, perhaps with a time formula to lower the
> > > rating?
> >
> > It would quite easy to offer a sorting choice --
> >
> > a) Newest first ("weblog" style)
> > b) Most recommended first ("weekly top 40" style)
> > c) Fuzzy combination of both ("today's top stories" style)
>
> mmm... fuzzy :) by day then by rating? nod... even put a separator
> between days, somewhat like the current (Static) spotlight...
Hmm...Maybe, but I meant fuzzy in the fuzzy-logic sense -- take the internal
score (0-100) and convert it to a real number in the unit interval [0,1], then
take the age of the message relative to the specified time period and make
that also a number in the unit interval [0,1]. Then combine those two numbers
(either via addition or multiplication or max-function) and sort by that.
I believe this is the algorithm used by "real" news like, for example, CNN
Headline News. It lets something slightly older but with a higher score
outrank something slightly newer but with a lower score, but also lets
something newer with a high score outrank something older with the same score.
Thus, everything making it into that list starts out at some position and then
either goes up a bit (if more people come along and rate it higher) but always
is guaranteed to drop at some point. Super-duper-duper important news tends
to hover near the top much longer than "only" important news.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman wrote:
> Hmm...Maybe, but I meant fuzzy in the fuzzy-logic sense -- take the internal
> score (0-100) and convert it to a real number in the unit interval [0,1], then
> take the age of the message relative to the specified time period and make
> that also a number in the unit interval [0,1]. Then combine those two numbers
> (either via addition or multiplication or max-function) and sort by that.
> I believe this is the algorithm used by "real" news like, for example, CNN
> Headline News. It lets something slightly older but with a higher score
> outrank something slightly newer but with a lower score, but also lets
> something newer with a high score outrank something older with the same score.
> Thus, everything making it into that list starts out at some position and then
> either goes up a bit (if more people come along and rate it higher) but always
> is guaranteed to drop at some point. Super-duper-duper important news tends
> to hover near the top much longer than "only" important news.
nodnod, that's what I expect from the top40 page, but for the spotlight
(which I do like to think of as day oriented) the age of the message
shouldn't matter that much, cause the set we're ranking is (should be,
IMO) restricted to one day...
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Thomas (and anyone else), does this seem like a positive change to you?
Yes.
I still think that Matthew's (and other people's) suggestions to have more
than one category is useful; but I'd much rather let the whole thing drop. The
way it is now (highlight--spotlight--nothing) is fine, and useful. And if you
make a computer-generated spotlight page or a "top N" or "top N of X", I'll
definitely use it and most likely benefit from it. I'm pretty sure I won't be
the only one, too.
-Shiri
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Jezek writes:
> I thought the exclamation point was a good idea. This little circle is just
> too darn small to see especially by looking at it from a laptop. How about
> some kind of a small graphic like a red star?
No red stars, please. The red star is one of the signs of evil walking the face
of the earth.
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Jezek writes:
> I thought the exclamation point was a good idea. This little circle is
> just too darn small to see especially by looking at it from a laptop.
I did a quick font test yesterday and noticed that the exclamation point in
Arial & Verdana displays double-weight when put inside of <B></B>, but that
the degree symbol in same fonts doesn't get any bolder (at those small point
sizes).
The thin exclamation points worked out better when there could be a long
string of them (like 3 or 4 or 5) on Friday, but when there's only 1 or 2,
it doesn't stand out much -- BUT if it's boldfaced, it works.
Anyone else having trouble seeing the little circles?
> How about some kind of a small graphic like a red star?
Text characters have the distinct advantage over images here that they can
scale with the personal font-size settings that someone might have -- for
example if someone makes their base font size larger for a really big
screen, or if they have reduced eyesight.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> The thin exclamation points worked out better when there could be a long
> string of them (like 3 or 4 or 5) on Friday, but when there's only 1 or 2,
> it doesn't stand out much -- BUT if it's boldfaced, it works.
FWIW, I don't have a strong objection to the exclamation point.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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