Up rating.

Given that it's practically impossible to prove a negative "unfair" rating that's not NH, I find it interesting to see your vitriol and aggression at such ratings. In fact, given your comment above, I find it somewhat hypocritical.

What makes you think that low ratings are not good for the community spirit? Is this because almost all lower than usual ratings are viewed with suspicion? That people who rate lower tend not to get read in return? That people who do rate lower are abused, often behind their backs by idiots or bullied for higher rates?

What makes you think that the community spirit on Ciao is healthy anyway?

Do you know what is good for the site? Honest rating. Not unfair negative rating and not unfair positive rating. Just rating.

Chuchy: No but if you honestly feel you are doing your part for the database, you have to seperate the better reviews from the good ones. If I was looking at reviews for a product, would I really want to trawl through 47 VH reviews of varying quality? I don't think so.

If we rated for effort we might as well all verify whether a review has been copied or not, rather than rate.

scream4bruce wrote:

Chuchy: No but if you honestly feel you are doing your part for the database, you have to seperate the better reviews from the good ones. If I was looking at reviews for a product, would I really want to trawl through 47 VH reviews of varying quality? I don't think so.

If we rated for effort we might as well all verify whether a review has been copied or not, rather than rate.

Like I said before, very few people actually scroll through the products by category. They search the Internet, not Ciao. The more reviews published, better the chance they will get out there and people will find what they are looking for.

If I could make any changes to the Ciao rating system, there would be just two ratings based on whether members think the review is worthy of being published or not. Apart from that, it doesn't really matter what the members say in terms of helpfulness. I would set up a rating system for visitors to the site and they would be the authority to determine which reviews are the most helpful to them with some sort of measures in place so that you couldn't vote on your own reviews.

And if Ciao's Favourite Member is right in saying that there should be a whole range of votes on each review anyway, then the ranking would be irrelevant in the first place, as all of them would be just standard helpful.

Chuchy wrote:

Like I said before, very few people actually scroll through the products by category. They search the Internet, not Ciao. The more reviews published, better the chance they will get out there and people will find what they are looking for.

I agree people search the internet, (although they probably only read a few reviews if there are plenty so the order is important (not that ciao's orderering system is particularly effective.....)

Chuchy wrote:

If I could make any changes to the Ciao rating system, there would be just two ratings based on whether members think the review is worthy of being published or not.

That's too black and white for me.. Ciao readers often rating on a product they have no understanding of, and therefore no understanding of the trigger points in the purchasing decision...(arguably they shouldn't be rating of course..but that's another debate..!)

This is apparently obvous when you get short reviews and the only comments are of course academic as if they were genuinely interested in many products, they would already have the background about what it "does" or "offers" or whatever..

Chuchy wrote:

And if Ciao's Favourite Member is right in saying that there should be a whole range of votes on each review anyway, then the ranking would be irrelevant in the first place, as all of them would be just standard helpful.

As an average Helpful? If a range of votes were cast it is unlikely their numbers will be equal.

scream4bruce wrote:

Chuchy wrote:

And if Ciao's Favourite Member is right in saying that there should be a whole range of votes on each review anyway, then the ranking would be irrelevant in the first place, as all of them would be just standard helpful.

As an average Helpful? If a range of votes were cast it is unlikely their numbers will be equal.

Well, my understanding was that if everyone was rating "honestly" then there would be an equal number of votes for each category representing our diverse society and personality types, etc. Or did I get that wrong?

Yes.

scream4bruce wrote:

Yes.

In what way?

It would be naive to assume that the votes for each rating would be equal to represent our society.

What you have is a 'popular rating', the rating with most votes. You would expect the ratings beside this to be nearest the number of popular rating with those of the lowest votes to be at the ratings at the opposite ends. Roughly.

Chuchy wrote:

Like I said before, very few people actually scroll through the products by category. They search the Internet, not Ciao. The more reviews published, better the chance they will get out there and people will find what they are looking for.

Do you know that as a fact or is this an assumption? Based on my own experiences of such sites, I tend to read a few reviews on each category, starting with the review I find, then reading through a couple of top ranked reviews.

Chuchy wrote:

And if Ciao's Favourite Member is right in saying that there should be a whole range of votes on each review anyway, then the ranking would be irrelevant in the first place, as all of them would be just standard helpful.

I don't understand your logic here. If a review has 5 possible rates and a number of people rate these reviews to varying degrees of usefulness, then it should be possible to come up with an algorithm that sorts the reviews by rated helpfulness. Why would all of them be "standard helpful"?

scream4bruce wrote:

It would be naive to assume that the votes for each rating would be equal to represent our society.

What you have is a 'popular rating', the rating with most votes. You would expect the ratings beside this to be nearest the number of popular rating with those of the lowest votes to be at the ratings at the opposite ends. Roughly.

A bell curve.

Exactly.

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

scream4bruce wrote:

It would be naive to assume that the votes for each rating would be equal to represent our society.

What you have is a 'popular rating', the rating with most votes. You would expect the ratings beside this to be nearest the number of popular rating with those of the lowest votes to be at the ratings at the opposite ends. Roughly.

A bell curve.

Exactly.

A bell curve to me would still suggest average H.

It might be a skewed Bell Curve... (Most would be on CIAO!!)

Chuchy wrote:

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

scream4bruce wrote:

It would be naive to assume that the votes for each rating would be equal to represent our society.

What you have is a 'popular rating', the rating with most votes. You would expect the ratings beside this to be nearest the number of popular rating with those of the lowest votes to be at the ratings at the opposite ends. Roughly.

A bell curve.

Exactly.

A bell curve to me would still suggest average H.

But that's wrong. If out of 50 members 42 rate VH, 4 rate E, 2 rate H, 2 rate SH then surely that is average VH.

Yes most cases would produce the skewed bell curve.

scream4bruce wrote:

If out of 50 members 42 rate VH, 4 rate E, 2 rate H, 2 rate SH then surely that is average VH.

Yes most cases would produce the skewed bell curve.

I get it, I get it! The SH-raters are just making sure that everyone gets a nice skewed bell curve!

No. Making sure people have something to whine about.

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

No. Making sure people have something to whine about.

No excuse is needed for that

chuchy wrote:

I get it, I get it! The SH-raters are just making sure that everyone gets a nice skewed bell curve!

You mean the VH whores Only newbies get rates skewed to SH!! Other writers learn the way of the ciaoworld and manage to write something skewed to VH, or they leave.!!!

Rater Skew, now that's another debate...

Anyway, if I rate something as SH, I rate it that way because I didn't get a lot out of it in terms of experience and/or opinion, not because I want to skew the bell curve or think I'm better than anyone else (though, obviously, I am) or a million other reasons.

It's simply a reflection of how useful I found the review.

That it ultimately costs me reads is unfortunate and a sad reflection on the "Ciao Community".

Your choice Aaron as long as your SH is within the boundaries of the Ciao rating guidelines.

Ratings given 41449 100.0% - -
"exceptional" Ratings given 552 1.3% 1 552
"very helpful" Ratings given 27093 65.4% 1 27093
"helpful" Ratings given 8572 20.7% 1 8572
"somewhat helpful" Ratings given 4624 11.2% 1 4624
"not helpful" Ratings given 486 1.2% 1 486
"off topic" Ratings given 122 0.3%

I'm clearly a VH whore...!!!!

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

Anyway, if I rate something as SH, I rate it that way because I didn't get a lot out of it in terms of experience and/or opinion, not because I want to skew the bell curve or think I'm better than anyone else (though, obviously, I am) or a million other reasons.

It's simply a reflection of how useful I found the review.

That it ultimately costs me reads is unfortunate and a sad reflection on the "Ciao Community".

I never thought of the bell curve in relation to Ciao! before tonight either..

I do all the time, but only because this subject of rating has cropped up time and time again and people don't seem to get the concept of peer review or the concept of rating how useful you found a review.

It has been a while since I've done any statistics though.

I do remember all the jargon though - standard deviation of the mean and all that malarkey.

Quote :

Ratings given 41449 100.0% - -
"exceptional" Ratings given 552 1.3% 1 552
"very helpful" Ratings given 27093 65.4% 1 27093
"helpful" Ratings given 8572 20.7% 1 8572
"somewhat helpful" Ratings given 4624 11.2% 1 4624
"not helpful" Ratings given 486 1.2% 1 486
"off topic" Ratings given 122 0.3%

I have thought about this one as well time and time again Helen since seeing so much criticism from people about VH ratings. Then I thought surely the percentages will depend upon whom you rate, and the quality of the ratings. I saw someone the other day with 23 per cent exceptionals, but explained that the amount they give has relevance to the importance of their ratings, and that if I give an E rather than them, it actually means a great deal more since my percentage is very much lower than theirs, unless of course, their reads are only of 23 per cent exceptional reviews, which I would find hard to believe.

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

I do all the time, but only because this subject of rating has cropped up time and time again and people don't seem to get the concept of peer review or the concept of rating how useful you found a review.

It has been a while since I've done any statistics though.

I do remember all the jargon though - standard deviation of the mean and all that malarkey.

LOL , I quite like SD stuff, in the real world, but too complex to worry over in our little five box rating system!!