Thread ratings seem kind of dumb

[Token]

Originally Posted by Krylo

But Pokemon is terrible. It's the same game being repackaged for over ten years now, with no meaningful new mechanics or changes to the story, or even upgrades to keep up with technology... and people still gobble that shit up like it's the best thing ever.

You've played one Pokemon, you've played them all. Just because the next one has more spikes on the evil Pokemon or whatever ridiculous thing, that doesn't make it worth buying.

Couldn't we discuss something more interesting?

Ignore list +1.

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Fenris

Maybe if threads weren't terrible they wouldn't get poor ratings?

Like I said earlier, if this were a larger forum where the ratings functioned as any kind of consistent meaningful aggregate, then this might be the case. Reddit, after five thousand people have up/down voted something, that's a pretty decent measurement of whether something is judged good or bad by the standards of a given community.

As it gets used on this forum a low rating does't really say "oh gosh here is this thread that is much poorer than these other threads and is best avoided" so much as "a small number of people have decided to anonymously say this thread sucks".

So like not so much that the feature is being used as that it seems pretty useless, and where it is being used that use seems kind of jerky in an un-useful way (as opposed to the many various useful ways of being jerky).

Originally Posted by Fenris

I mean if you think people are being dicks with it or whatevs nobody's stopping you from rating the thread up if you think it's a good thread so a couple of anonymous jerks or whatevs shouldn't really be a big deal.

You are 100% correct, none of this is in any way a big deal. I for one am making no contrary claims as to the deal-ness of this or its size in relation to other deals.

EDIT: This thread is basically as much of a deal as if I had instead posted the other forum-related thread I have occasionally meant to post for however long now

"It would be rad if we had multiple icons and could set them individually by post to indicate tone and such, like they do on Livejournals and shit."

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Krylo

The forum feature has existed ever since 2003.

It just used to be stars.

...

I'm not seeing how something that has worked fine for seven years is suddenly an issue. The same thing Fifth is describing happened with the stars too.

The only difference is that I guess one star is better than no stars? The boxes make it more visible?

It didn't so much work fine when it was stars as it just didn't do anything, because nothing really ever got rated anything less than five stars. Which made it useless in an almost completely ignorable way, instead of a "this is useless in a kind of dumb, mildly annoying way, PATAI I guess" kind of way.

[Krylo]

I don't know that rating a thread that you don't like down is really being a jerk. I mean, that's kinda what they're there for.

The problem is just that there's so few of us, and it's so much easier to notice a thread you don't like than one you do, that only the people who don't like whatever thread tend to bother using the rating system--in exactly the manner it was designed.

Especially seeming as most threads here are decent to good on average, so good threads just don't stand out.

I think we just have a problem of basic human psychology plus a relatively small group. You could try to train everyone to use thread ratings, which would probably help, but it seems like it'd just be an annoying and cumbersome extra step for anyone who wasn't either annoyed enough to rate something down, or fantastically amazed enough to rate something up.

[Archbio]

Originally Posted by Krylo

The only difference is that I guess one star is better than no stars?

I think that's part of it.

But even if every thread had had a star meter, but with empty star notches if the thread doesn't have a rating, the bar system would still register the impression of negative appreciation more clearly because of the colour coding. A red square in a mostly empty bar communicates the idea of awfulness pretty efficientely compared to just a numbering system like the stars.

I think ideally a rating system, stars or bars, would have to be somehow applied to every thread, actively rated or not. Like, maybe an empty bar if not always a default rating of 1. Maybe that would give too cluttered a look?

My personal preference would go with less red/green, awful/perfect type of colours however. More neutral, if you will. Especially if the system was propagated.

Still not a big deal.

[Seil]

What's wrong with stars?