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[Open] - The New Rating System


[deXter]

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So MSFN finally decided to implement a (long overdue) post rating system!

The question is how useful is this? Right now, I feel that the rating system is no more use than visual gratification. Sure, it does help skip those posts which are really long but don't contribute to the topic, but the post is still occupying space. The post still shows up in search results. I still end up reading the so-called uninformative posts and waste as much time.

IMHO the following should be implemented to make the rating system (more) useful:

• Search by Rating: The search page should have an option to show only those posts rated above x stars.

• Hide all posts below x rating: While viewing a topic, this option will automatically hide all posts below a rating of say, 2 stars. (Slashdot and Digg have this system)

• Comments: In addition to the stars, there could be an option to mark a post as "funny", "insightful", "informative", etc. (Same as Slashdot).

If these changes are implemented, it'll become easier for everyone to weed out unwanted information and keep topics more organized.

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Fair enough, but as people read the posts that they come across, they can rate them. Whenever I get around to finding that Office 2003 SP2 slipstreaming guide the next time I need it, it's gonna get 5 stars.

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i feel that the post rating is pointless.. especially at this stage in the forum. it has been around for years so there will be thousands of excellent posts that will have no rating.

pointless? we have a saying here in The Netherlands: "Beter ten halve gekeerd dan ten hele gedwaald" Which means something like: You better turn half way instead of doing it the whole way and dont do it good. :) We implemented this feature in order to prevent this forum for people who dont have replies that contribute :)

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How about allowing only mods/admins to rate a post? Chances are that people may senselessly give someone's (useful) post a 1 star rating just because they don't like them, like it happened to my post here.

Surely, the mods would be more sensible. I for one feel that I'd rather have few posts with right ratings than many posts with biased/misjudged ratings.

Edit: Darn it, they did it again! Who's the jerk who keeps rating my posts 1 * ?! :angry:

Edited by [deXter]
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Personally, I think individual post ratings are useless and may lead to thread discontinuity when people start filtering by ratings.

If ratings are really desired (though I still think it's a waste and pointless), they should be on the thread, not individual posts.

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Post ratings can be handy because many msfn threads are dozens of pages long (and that's already with a high number of posts per page).

I think we (the most active posters) should make an effort and massively rate. The first example which comes to my mind is nlite: many people quote their lastsession.ini and therefore their posts contain all the possible keywords and this pollutes search a lot.

But I'm not sure how ratings should be interpreted. I don't like the idea of giving a score to a post; it just feels like giving a score to the poster. :/ However I do like the idea of being able to help with searches so it comes down to "Do we simply rate posts or do we rate posts to help other people find information?". It seems Martin L and xper are for the second answer but most people, including me, don't and for me, it's not volontary.

It's clear we're not used to this; it's really too manichean atm. We should maybe agree on some standards:

-1: should be excluded from search

-2: not very useful

-3: may help, may not; average

-4: good post, helps a lot; should be seen

-5: excellent post, make it frontpage!

Also, there might be a problem because rates will appear after only one vote. Could this be delayed? I mean, hide it until a second (not more) member votes.

And would it be possible to have some ponderation: give more weight to rates by big posters (something like one per thousand posts)?

Last, I think there's no point for this outside tech sections so could it be disabled there?

In some sections, we will of course argue (without killing anybody) and post ratings will only deserve such arguments.

Rating should not be seen as a Ditto/+1/plussoyer* post; it's not how much you agree with the post, it's how much the post helps.

Hope this helps. :P

*we (French people) made "+" a verb. :P

PS: btw, I can't give any rating in Konqueror (don't tell me to use Firefox or Opera): when I try, the dropdown list appears and I can chose how many blue stars I want to give but then clicking is effectless and if I move my cursor, the number of blue stars still changes.

(Konqueror and Safari use the same rendering engine: KHTML; IIRC, Konqueror is very strict on valid javascripts/html/css)

Edited by Camarade_Tux
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This is getting out of hand. :angry: Someone's going and rating all my posts a 1 star. This isn't done. It's unjust, biased, and insulting to say the least. I take some time out to contribute something, and this is how I get treated?

If this goes on, I'm afraid I won't be contributing to this forum again. Please, please do take a look at Camarade_Tux's suggestions or simply scrap the whole rating system as jcarle suggested. The way it's going at present, I'm only being discouraged from posting. It's doing more harm than good.

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Also, there might be a problem because rates will appear after only one vote. Could this be delayed? I mean, hide it until a second (not more) member votes.

And would it be possible to have some ponderation: give more weight to rates by big posters (something like one per thousand posts)?

Last, I think there's no point for this outside tech sections so could it be disabled there?

In some sections, we will of course argue (without killing anybody) and post ratings will only deserve such arguments.

Rating should not be seen as a Ditto/+1/plussoyer* post; it's not how much you agree with the post, it's how much the post helps.

Hiding it untill at least 2 people voted is a good idea IMHO specially because of what happens to certain people now. As for disabling in certain forums... it is already disabled in the general discussion, introduction and announcements, we will look into it for disableling more forums.

About the weight by big posters, good idea, will be looked into :)

@ dexter: dont worry, this system is not on its limites so we can make changes :)

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As for disabling in certain forums... it is already disabled in the general discussion, introduction and announcements, we will look into it for disableling more forums.
Which is simply proof that since this was needed, it was a bad idea to start with.

Let's not turn MSFN into a popularity contest.

Edited by jcarle
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I rather think such a system has only interest in forum where you want to note. Would you note somebody introducing himself in the corresponding section? These sections don't even count for the number of post.

On a private board (friends; not warez) I visit pretty often I usually have difficulties finding a specific topic or post though I know which keywords to use, when it was written, who wrote it... and we're around 20 members there!

MSFN has topics that are even longer. Imagine how hard it can be for people who don't know exactly what they search.

And as for the popularity contest, I think we're adult enough. Hum,... are we? :roll:

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As for disabling in certain forums... it is already disabled in the general discussion, introduction and announcements, we will look into it for disableling more forums.
Which is simply proof that since this was needed, it was a bad idea to start with.

Let's not turn MSFN into a popularity contest.

it will turn into that stupid digg site..

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