Subject:
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Re: Opinions wanted: article rating harmful? (was: New feature: Article rating)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Thu, 20 Apr 2000 21:59:16 GMT
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman wrote:
[some concerns about the rating system]
I don't post here often, because usually what I want to say has
already been said. However, Todd asked for our opinions, so I
figured I would speak up, as a non-"usual suspect".
I don't mean for this message to sound snotty or anything like that.
If it ends up that way, it's because whoever is reading this doesn't
really know me. I think my overall reaction is, wow, this whole
ratings thing has really gone to people's heads and has been blown
WAYYYY out of proportion. (My reaction to most arguments I encounter
is, "Ahh, get over it already!")
I prefer to make my own decisions about what to read rather than
relying on someone else's opinion. That usually means that I end up
reading everything in the groups to which I am subscribed. (I am
currently subscribed to 135 of 725 total groups, and I am tens of
thousands of messages behind, but that's my "problem" and no one
else's.) Since I tend to read threads to their conclusion, I notice
that about 70% or more of all the messages are fluff: me too, wow
that's great, or person-to-person messages that would be better off
sent via email. Also, there are a lot of posts that are just not
legible, not relevant, or not in the right newsgroup. I don't see
that getting low ratings on these messages has caused their posters
to stop posting them.
Also, I think there are a lot of overly sensitive people here who
care overly much about what people think of their posts. It's just a
message; it's not evidence of your worth as a human being!
Since questions 1 - 5 assume that one is actually noticing ratings,
I'll answer them together:
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of
> the ratings were not displayed to you unless you specifically
> requested (via some simple setting) that they be displayed to you?
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of
> the ratings were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used
> by the server only for internal calculations, hotlist generation,
> and personal recommendations to you?
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not
> even collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the
> destruction of the feature altogether)
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you
> posted something which has obtained a low rating and felt
> uncomfortable or unhappy about yourself or about LUGNET because of
> the low rating? How often?
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone
> else's post get a high rating? How often?
I rarely use the web interface, so I would feel neither better nor
worse if ratings were hidden or disappeared entirely. If there came
a time when ratings were sent as an X-Lugnet-rating header, my news
client already gives me the option to selectively display headers, so
I would already have the option to display or not.
As for personal recommendations, I don't see how the bot would be
able to determine, from aggregate ratings given by others, what *I*
would like to read.
As I said above, I rarely post to LUGNET. A quick search shows a
whopping 139 posts in 1.5 years of reading, most of them unrated, a
few rated by 2. I don't think I've blipped enough people's radar to
have people rating my posts. Since I don't post enough to get rated,
and I don't see the ratings when I read, I don't feel victimized at
all either by getting low ratings or having other people get high
ratings.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for
> you or harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother
> you?
Neither, no. I try to police myself. Sometimes I'm more successful
than at other times. In looking over my past posts, I winced a
couple of times at some of the fluffy things I posted. Sigh.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the
> article rating system compare to your current opinion of it?
My current opinion is about the same as my initial reaction: what
would I use it for?
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to
> address these issues?
Probably the right time, since so much energy has been spent
discussing them already, energy that would be better spent clicking
bricks together. :)
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO
> sets? Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
I would prefer to see more time and energy put into objective data,
such as the set inventory & database, rather than subjective stuff
like ratings. Links to websites are more helpful if they include a
description of what one might find there. In general, I
prefer objective rather than subjective.
Thanks, Todd, for taking time to ask for our opinions, and thanks for
giving us a forum in which to express them.
Can we get back to building now?
--
Susan Hoover
Houston, TX
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