Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Could a rating system be the solution?

Thumbs Up

As already mentioned, we have tried rating systems here and they seemed not to work for any practical purpose. There was always the opportunity, whatever the intent of the ratings, for people to rate others on personal reactions rather than on content judgment.

I would like to think that most of us are discriminating enough to
- judge the values of posts for ourselves
- avoid feeding trolls
- staying out of contentious issues, or
- accepting the consequences of inappropriate involvement.

We don't really need to have a system of policing posts. Let's use our own judgment to decide on what is appropriate for our own preferences and how we respond or avoid those we think are inappropriate.

Regards,

The answer to the question in the title is "no", as of now.

It may take a while for these things to get accepted. What is clear is that there are problems with using forums that specialists are working on (think back why even this forum tried a rating system). Reading some of the replies above seem to indicate that some people are not aware of the issues, and the shortcomings of using forums in the current way. There is a difference between "having tried a rating system before ...", and "we are happy with this". The latter is the wrong answer, with all due respect. Improving users' experience with forums (and social network systems in general) is a serous issue being tackled by specialists and concerned developers.

Maybe I'm missing something but I just can't see how the separation of posters into a caste system - which is essentially what this amounts to - will enhance anyone's experience of Piano World.

(Frycek the Untouchable slinks off into her hovel)

What things?



What problems?



What issues? What shortcomings?



What users' experiences need to be improved, and how do you propose that we improve those experiences on this forum?

I think you need to clarify your perceived need for some kind of "ratings system" for this forum. While I perceive certain "problems" with any internet forum I have visited, they are based on elements beyond the control of any "system" I could envisage. I must be one of those not aware of how a rating system here would do anything more than give some posters the opportunity to make arbitrary personal decisions based on their personal feelings towards a post or poster as well as contribute to clutter on already "busy-looking" pages.

Who is going to be responsible for developing a ratings system that would reflect rational judgments; who is going to be responsible for maintaining it? Given the highly diverse backgrounds of the members here, a ratings system would only be valid if one knew which members were contributing ratings. It sounds too cumbersome to be worth any effort.

Case in point : It's possible that you might give this post a "poor" or "not useful" rating because it is not open to the (as yet to be clarified) idea you are advocating. Yet, I see it as a valid post given that it asks for clarification of your proposed idea.

Regards,

Don't worry Bruce, I'd give you a thumbs up for that one...

The problem with facebook's system is that the people doing the "liking" are generally "friends", so in the end it really isn't a rating system, but merely a shorthand way of providing acknowledgment (e.g. a one click "yes, yup, way to go, great, woo hoo, hooah, etc).

Someone mentioned utoob, it's interesting to note that even utoob has backed off of their fancier numerical/star ratings and have gone to a simpler thumbs up/down.

How about if we take it one by one? Since you've been around, why did PW even think about a rating system in the first place? Wasn't there a problem they were trying to address? Also, may be you can explain why others (many very smart people out there) are working to address these "problems"?

Please don't answer with more questions. Please just answer the 'what problems' question. Cheers

When you say, "Wasn't there a problem they were trying to address," I get the sense you're imagining this forum as a monolith that somehow thinks together. It's not. I clearly remember Frank acquiescing to an experiment of thread rating because a small subgroup of people kept insisting that we simply had to have it. The insistent subgroup made a lot of arguments that sound rather similar to yours, actually! Frank bowed to that subgroup's wishes, knowing full well that he could reverse the decision if the innovation didn't win big kudos.

Well, after a few weeks of thread rating an even larger group began complaining loudly about the whole thread rating idea. I'm guessing Frank decided the headache was uncomfortable and that there was no compelling case to continue the experiment in the face of

1. strong opposition, and
2. growing evidence that the new system was offering no real value.

This experience does not mean that for all time we will never have another rating system. We may indeed. But the problems with rating systems are legion, and often doing it 'right' is expensive.

It really ain't broke.

ok here is one example. EBAY has a rating system in which a seller who has sold to 100 customers with no problem is recognized as so, which helps you when making a decision whether to buy from him/her or not. The need for such a rating was recognized early on and was implemented by EBAY. Now, it may not be readily apparent why such a system would also work in discussion forums like this, but it is beginning to be recognized to be the case. Why? Well, people like you have precious time that they do not want to waste time reading threads or even users who would not add value to them, and thus would be a waste of their valuable time (hopefully this thread and this user do not fall in that category) to read their posts. Currently, it takes you a long time to get that piece of information, as you have to read and read till you realize oh yeah that thread (or that user) is not worth my time. It would be nice if fellow users cooperated with each other (especially in highly civilized forums like this one), in building this kind of information in the forum. People who are smarter than me, and probably smarter than you, have found that if users would assist each other by giving their opinion on what they read, we would all have a more powerful forum. You can at a later time, for example, search for posts by users with a high quality content...or users with helpful hints for beginners...or users who are proficient in their playing, or, or, etc. That is, you can restrict your viewing to a subset of the users who meet your criteria whenever you want.

You lost me at the 'smarter than me' part... No seriously, I'm just not that fond of the whole human selection thing. I will listen to you, but not to you. If somebody makes a bad joke, he will get thumbs down, and his next informative post will get overlooked. Furthermore some people tell good things, that I just don't agree with, what would I have to do with that? I think we just need a Gyro alert, thats all.

I can understand a rating system for places like Ebay and Amazon Marketplace where people are parting with significant sums of money. The stakes there are high and you want to have some reasonable assurance that you're not about to throw away your hard earned cash.

On this forum, on the other hand, the stakes are not that high. What does one have to lose? Only our time. Of course the mere fact that we are here instead of diligently practicing piano or doing our day jobs must mean we don't value our time all that much!

In addition, the concept of successful transaction is a bit more clear, even if it is not perfectly objective.

No one is buying and selling stuff here. It's a forum - an exchange of ideas. The ratings system was here when I joined. It might have started and stopped since then - I forget.
I just know that more people didn't like it than liked it.
It was meaningless garbage-in-garbage-out.

Actual money and goods change hands via ebay - some transactions going into the thousands of dollars. Comparing a piano forum to ebay is like comparing a Monopoly board to Wall Street.

How about you take into account that though there WAS a ratings system in place it's now gone!
Might I inquire as to whom these "smart" people are (or was that addressed to our Sir Bruce, who is none too daft if I say so myself), and exactly what "problems" here at PW are they trying to resolve?

Again a problem in nomenclature here, the ebay feedback score is not a "ratings system" in the same sense of the term being bandied about here (pianodad alludes to this). That feedback is based on the concept of a "successful transaction", something that is more concrete (which admittedly has grey areas). There is nothing analogous to that here.

Really one has to understand that the dynamics of this type of environment isn't the same as a retail environment. This is more akin to a community, which changes the dynamics and usefulness of a "ratings system" quite dramatically.



Consider that if this forum was all that civilized and populated by brainiacs then in theory there wouldn't be a need for a ratings system. If you accept that there is garbage and cruft then the same garbage and cruft would by definition creep into your ratings system. Unless of course you had weighted ratings based on a users rating (and other infallible metrics ;)). Or perhaps the /. type ratings system where you assign the ability to rate based on a pool of individuals who meet some criteria and use a weighted random way of selecting those individuals

So "smart" people leave no garbage eh? Pffft