Subject:
|
Idea: New Rating System
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.admin.general
|
Date:
|
Fri, 21 Apr 2000 16:26:45 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
640 times
|
| |
|
|
I already dropped this idea in an earlier post. Although it was highly
rated nobody responded, so I thought I'd put it out here in a separate
thread and not buried in the midst of my feelings about the current rating
system.
The idea in question is a *non-numerical* rating system that allows people
to "rate" posts. This is only designed to solve half of what the current
rating system was designed to solve - that is, it will provide a way for
peopel to quickly find articles of interest, but it's not really designed
to provide a "recommendation" service.
Here's the general idea: when a user reads a post, they'll have a choice
on what to "rate" it. This choice is based simply on how many people you
think would be interested in it.
Unrated - the user abstains from rating for whatever reason. This would
be the default setting.
Fluff - generally only of interest to direct participants in the thread.
(If people don't like the "Fluff" term it could be replaced with another,
or it could even be dropped completely) Do people think that getting a
"fluff' rating on their posts would discourage them? Even if the posts
are fluff? Example: the "name wars" in .castle.
(Personally, I love fluff. I think it really contributes to a
group's "sense of community" and puts a personality to all the names out
there. Some people might not like it, though, so this rating would hep
them avoid it.)
Informative - I want there to be a level between "fluff" and "Group
interest" but I'm not sure what it should be called. Basically, this
would be for posts that contain something interesting, but it might not be
interesting to the entire group. Examples might include when one of us in
.castle starts talking about historical weapons or heraldry - not everyone
is going to be interested in it, but it's not "fluff" either.
Group - This post is probably of interest to everybody in the group.
Examples of this include things like MOCs in theme groups.
Multi-Group - This post is so cool that people of multiple groups should
check it out. I'm not entirely sure how this rating would work - maybe it
would allow you to put in other groups that might be interested in the
post? An example might be someone who reads a really good review of the
MTT in .reviews - they could mark it as of Multi-Group interest and say
that .starwars should read it (for obvious reasons) and also .castle
(because the review talks about all the parts that make up the set).
LUGNET - this post is so earth-shatteringly important, general, and/or
cool that everyone on LUGNET will probably want to read it.
So, how do we avoid the "200 posts, all marked "great" problem? (Alluded
to in an earlier message by someone whose name escapes me...) The number
of people who rated the post. If 5 people say one post is so cool that
everyne in the group should read it, that's not as "strong" a
recommendation as 50 people saying that it's so cool that everyone in the
group should read it.
A vote for a "higher level" - perhaps I should not use that terminology.
How about: a vote for a "wider circle of interest" should encompass votes
for the "narrower circles" as well. So if I think something in
lugnet.castle is of interest to everybody on LUGNET, it would get 1 vote
for "LUGNET" *and* a vote for "Group" - so even if it doesn't show up on
the LUGNET list, it might show up on the group list.
I think that "older" votes should be less weighted than newer votes - that
would allow for "turnover" of stuff on the Spotlight lists (although you
could also do this by making the list be "Top X posts of today" or "of the
week", this would allow *really* good stuff that keeps getting new votes
to remain on the list) but you could have an "all time top 10" posts or
something where all votes counted equally, and it was based on the sheer
number of votes a particular post received.
Any thoughts? Potential problems? Questions? Would people feel fewer bad
feelings about a system that rated their posts in this way, or am I just
off my stump? I personally think the lack of "hard numbers" will avoid a
lot of the bad feelings that seem to be incurred by the current rating
system.
J
ADDENDUM
Hmm. It might be possible to turn this into a "recommendation" system as
well, if you let an individual person tailor the weight given by other
individual persons. For example, let's say I think that poster "Parry L."
has very similar tastes to mine. I could chose to give all of his votes a
higher "weight" than most other posters. If there was someone I
completely disagreed with I could assign their votes a lower (or even 0)
weight.
This would require a fair bit of programming and on-the-fly webpage
generation, but LUGNET already seems to do a fair amount of that
(especially now with the Newsgroup filters).
J
|
|
1 Message in This Thread:
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
