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All,
It seems at this point that the article rating feature -- intended to help --
is actually causing more harm than good to the community. It's difficult to
gauge how much harm is being done when opinions are so varied, but it's clear
that something needs to be changed.
Technically, the rating system is working extremely well and, from an admin
point of view, the composite ratings being produced seem very well consistent
with the rating system's main goal of being able to highlight recommended
reading to those short on time.
However, it seems that the high visibility of both the raw and composite
numbers are having an overall negative effect on the community's morale.
Some of the deeper concerns are raised in this message and its replies:
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6130
I also received a private e-mail last night describing the rating system as
"a fiasco and an embarrassment to LUGNET" and calling for its removal.
Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people. How many
others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your thoughts
as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post your
thoughts publicly).
As to possible "fixes," there have been many suggestions over the past few
weeks, most of which center around making the rating numbers less obvious or
gone altogether. If you're curious, you can find most of these in the group
lugnet.admin.general -- but it's a lot to wade through.
The first, original purpose for having ratings was to be able to lay the
foundation for the later creation of variety of "what's hot" or "top X of
group Y" listings for quick browsing -- something akin to the current
Spotlight pages, only fully automated, instantly updating, and much more
representative of collective opinion. The second original purpose was to
lay the foundation for so-called "collaborative filtering" possibilities --
the server learns (could learn) what types of things you prefer to read,
and gives (could give) higher priority to you personally for messages rated
higher by people with similar interests. These two main purposes become
increasingly relevant as message traffic increases.
It was never a purpose of the ratings system to make anyone ever feel bad
or unwanted or unwelcome. It's core purpose is simply to highlight "neat or
noteworthy stuff" but not to downgrade "un-neat or un-noteworthy stuff" or
regular "fluff" (which there's nothing wrong with).
It seem that no amount of education about what the numbers mean will be able
to make a meaningful dent in the natural inclination to view, say, a 40 as
having been "marked down" from its default of 50. Even if the default were
changed from 50 to 0 (so that numbers tended almost always to climb rather
than to climb half of the time and fall half of the time), it seems likely
that feelings will still be hurt, because it seems that some people are hurt
by the fact that others are getting 80's and 90's while they are getting 40's
or 50's or 60's. Going with a scale 0 to 100, in retrospect, hasn't been any
better from an overall morale point of view than if a scale -100 to +100 had
been used.
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?
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?
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?
7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
system compare to your current opinion of it?
8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
these issues?
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...
Thanks for your time,
--Todd
[followups to .admin.general]
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Message has 29 Replies:
 | | Re: Opinions wanted: article rating harmful?
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| In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes: (Some snipping here, read Todd's post) (...) I think a combination of these could work well. The ratings could be hidden from public view, so that noone feels like they are being punished, and the server (...) (25 years ago, 20-Apr-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Opinions wanted: article rating harmful?
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| Todd Lehman wrote a bunch of worthy stuff about the rating system. Lugnet hosts an amazing variety of visitors. From my background, the rating system is fine. If I want to rate, I will (which I generally don't). If I want to pay attention to other (...) (25 years ago, 21-Apr-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | New feature: Article rating
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| LUGNET's article rating system is now running and hungry for input! As the community continues to grow, so does the challenge in keeping up. Some days it can be difficult to find exciting content among the hundreds of new messages. To aid browsing, (...) (25 years ago, 26-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.announce) !!
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