Hey Victor -

Here’s a thought I had about the ratings system - would it be possible to "weight" ratings based on if the "rater" left a review or not? I mean, maybe a simple way would be if someone rated a track and left a review explaining their rating then that rating would "count" twice in the average rating, whereas just a rating by itself would only count once?

The reason I’m thinking this is it would at the least encourage people to explain why they rate things the way they do, particularly if they rate something low. It can be frustrating for any of us to get a low rating and not get any feedback why, you know?

I’m sure there’s holes in this idea, like what’s to keep someone from posting a one word review or saying I love it and then give a rating of 1 or something, but it might help a little. It seems like it would help accomplish one of the objectives of the site, which is encouraging all of us to give and get feedback so that we improve, etc.

Not that I’m a model mixter citizen, I disappear for long periods of time :-), but I do try to give people an idea of why I rate something they way I do…

Just a thought…

Tim

I’ve messed with the ratings system quite a bit in the last year based on usage patterns and tried to make it fair. No matter what I do the main complaint seems to be "hey, why did I get a 2?" which, I have found out, has no correllation in code.

There have a been a few cases of people who ‘sweep’ with 1’s and they are (hopefully) quickly banned. Otherwise if you think someone has done a ‘payback’ rating let me know, I have no problem looking at it and nuking it if it’s looks crazy.

VS

Hey I totally understand that, I was just suggesting giving an impetus for people to explain their "2’s" or "1’s". Everybody likes to explain their "5’s" or "4’s", but noone leaves a review after rating something a "2". I’m just saying that should make the rating "count" a little less, so that if someone really feels strongly that something should be a 1 or 2 and wrote a review, it would count more. But it’s not a big deal, I was just thinking that could save some of the time spent counteracting the ratings "sweeps"…

Tim

Hello Victor,

I like Tim’s proposal, but understand also that there can’t be a "perfect" rating system…

From my point of view there could be introduced some slight changes like e.g. to introduce a second rating for guests (why not? I think this could be a cool feedback for mixters) or to split up the rating into a tecnical-, quality- and creativity rating (like used in contests)…

Regarding the 1 "sweepers" and "payback"-raters couldn’t it be a solution to make their rating visible on the track review? For me this would be more useful, because if the rater didn’t leave a review there would be at least the possibility to pm him. This way there can be set up a constructive dialog for both: rater and rated…

George

Thanks for feedback George, when the ratings were ‘attached’ to reviews I got just as many (more?) requests to make the two separate operations. Making non-anonymous (but not requiring reviews) seems like a solid idea for sure. In reality however the vast majority of paybacks and sweeps are done by folks who create a bogus ‘anonymous’ account anyway (so they can give everybody else a ‘1’ and themselves a ‘5’ — get it? very, very cunning ;)

fwiw, spotting, deleting and banning sweeps etc are 99.9% automated so it really isn’t an issue and while I can’t figure out a way to make it 100% without human intervention I don’t think I want to do that anyway.

I’m not sure the answer to anonymous-registered-user-ratings is to allow anonymous-NON-registered-user-ratings.

The ratings categories means complicating the user interface (not to mention the code) so I just want to make sure it’s really worth it. As it stands, there aren’t enough ratings per upload to justify it right now.

There are several ‘bottom line’ conclusions I’ve come to after nearly two years with this project:

- people panic and can’t get over a ‘3’ (leave alone a ‘2’) no matter what I do in code

- a person with nothing to do (and pimples to pop) will look for holes WHERE EVER they are and this forum will fill up with suggestions on how to fill them that will inevitibly lead to a policy that will just start that cycle over again (I’m not predicting or theorizing here, this is how’s it’s gone since we opened the site)

- This is primarily a ‘growing pains’ issue because if the average number of ratings for any given upload would be in the 100s then you wouldn’t even notice any other problem.

Makes sense?

VS

Hi Vic,

yeah. It does make sense… I agree that sometimes the best solution is the simpliest one…

George