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Todd Lehman wrote:
> Specific personal questions:
> 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?
I mainly use the NNTP interface; my perception of the rating system wouldn't
change much.
> 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?
This sounds good. Instead of trying to express one's personal feelings
publicly but anonymously, a rater's motive would instead be to give feedback
to the server only. IOW, let's let someone express their opinion of my
message in a public reply. I would definitely feel better about this.
> 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)
I feel that something is needed, if for nothing else then for building the
Spotlight page. Scrapping the rating system in favor of something else might
be good.
> 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?
Yes. Yes. If someone disagrees with me and wants to let the world know, I at
least want to know who said it. This kind of anonymous, public reply is wide
open for abuse.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Not really.
> 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?
It doesn't affect what I say before I hit the Send button.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
I am actually disappointed in how it's turned out. I stopped rating messages
a while ago, largely due to the anonymity of the system, and the lack of
feedback. If someone doesn't like what I said (or if they did), I'd like more
feedback than just a 30 or 70.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
Probably a little too late, but most likely just in time.
> 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...
LEGO sets, of course. Websites and web pages, probably not. e.g. I know my
web site is lacking in sparkle, and it'll stay that way -- if someone doesn't
like that, tough. If someone wants to critique my web site *content*, then
let's *discuss* it.
Cheers,
- jsproat
--
Jeremy H. Sproat <jsproat@io.com> ~~~ http://www.io.com/~jsproat/
I think the mistake a lot of us make
is thinking the state-appointed shrink is our friend.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> > 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?
>
> Yes. Yes. If someone disagrees with me and wants to let the world know, I
> at least want to know who said it. This kind of anonymous, public reply is
> wide open for abuse.
Hmm, hmm... Very insightfully put. Hadn't looked at it from the point of
view of an "anonymous, public reply." Interesting...
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> > 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...
>
> LEGO sets, of course.
That could be a great application of a detailed rating system... Multi-
dimensional too, not just a single number.
> Websites and web pages, probably not. e.g. I know my
> web site is lacking in sparkle, and it'll stay that way -- if someone doesn't
> like that, tough. If someone wants to critique my web site *content*, then
> let's *discuss* it.
In terms of websites, I was thinking more along the lines of you telling the
server what types of websites you liked best, and it would compare that with
what other people had said about what they liked best, and would present you
with predictions about or lists of sites you hadn't visited yet. At present
there are well more than 500 fan-created LEGO pages (sites).
Composite collation of ratings would also help in building and maintaining
"cool links" lists which are currently created by hand by a number of people.
Imagine if you could get a "cool links" list tailored just for you, in addition
to lists prepared by hand or other impersonal composite machine-generated
lists.
--Todd
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Todd L wrote:
> Composite collation of ratings would also help in building and maintaining
> "cool links" lists which are currently created by hand by a number of people.
> Imagine if you could get a "cool links" list tailored just for you, in addition
> to lists prepared by hand or other impersonal composite machine-generated
> lists.
I don't think you need site ratings to do this. If there was some way
for a person (whether the site owner or someone else) to "register" a
site with the cool links page, and then fill in a form specifying which
themes (not just Lego themes, but themes popular with AFOLs such as
military models or Ancient Rome) or subjects it covered, and what kind
of other content was included, a user wanting a personalised list of
cool sites could then specify what themes or subjects they wanted to see
and get a customised list. This wouldn't address site *quality* but
that's so subjective and a site which might be very low quality from a
design point of view might be just the one I want from a content point
of view.
Kevin
--
Personal Lego Web page:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kwilson_tccs/lego.html
eBay auctions:http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/kevinw1/
Subscribe to my Lego auction mailing list:
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/Legopartsales?referer=1
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Todd Lehman wrote in message ...
> Composite collation of ratings would also help in building and maintaining
> "cool links" lists which are currently created by hand by a number of • people.
> Imagine if you could get a "cool links" list tailored just for you, in • addition
> to lists prepared by hand or other impersonal composite machine-generated
> lists.
What I think would be helpful for this is to come up with a good set of
categories (do a fair bit of brainstorming so it doesn't have to be expanded
too much later). Then when a web site author submits his website to the
"cool web pages" directory, it becomes open for rating (but an author can
withdraw his website at any time, in which case the ratings can be erased or
hidden at his choice). The author of course gets a vote (and each category
should be able to be listed by order of submission (even cooler - show me
all the ones in this category I haven't rated yet) or by levels of coolness.
People rating a web site just get a yes or no vote for each page in each
category. The scale of coolness could break down into say 4 groupings (top
10, top 1/3, 2nd 1/3, bottom 1/3) with the ranking being figured as a simple
num_yes/num_votes.
This will still have a subjectivity problem unfortunately.
Ultimately, I guess cool lists are best done by hand. Then they are just a
list of notable sites. Note that in my web categorization, I the only value
judgement I make is a small set of top sites. This is a set of sites that I
would recommend someone visit first. One shouldn't feel bummed out that your
web site didn't make that list (for one thing it doesn't get updated very
often). What I would like people to do though is let me know that they think
their site should show up somewhere in my categorizations. I make very
little value judgement when categorizing the pages (if you have a web site
with a picture of a train car, as long as I can decide what general type of
car it is, I'll list it). Of course some of those categorizations include
superlatives like "cool castle", which are value judgements. The main intent
of the pages is for ME to find web sites when I want inspiration, but since
I've gone to all this effort, why not share it.
I'm actually slowly starting to link to Lugnet messages on the pages. This
may be the best way to highlight information. There are a number of threads
which are real useful. Of course what would be nice is a way to create a
custom thread which had only the most useful posts (there are some valuable
threads out there which are so large as to be probably worthless to go back
and try and read). Of course creating edited threads would involve value
judgements (but hopefully people won't feel bad that their "me too" or a
post with wrong information gets left out of the edited thread). Perhaps
this type of thing could be done by giving each group an associated
.best-of. Then the articles are cross-posted to .best-of by the editors
somehow. If each group had a small team of editors, one would get around
most personal issues (and of course you can always ask in the original
thread "hey, why didn't my post get included in the edited thread"). Note
also that if a post filled with errors was not included in the edited
thread, the post with corrections which referred to it, will still do so, so
the post doesn't get totally hidden, it just won't show up in one's
newsreader or on the web page (though one might want to be able to see the
edited thread's posting tree).
Frank
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