Ratings Tweaking

Hmmm, I think having older ratings 'expire' (not exactly the correct term since they still count just at a different ratio) is actually rather clever.

My own gallery has gone through a couple of different designs since the ratings system started. I know some people haven't re-rated my gallery since I've redesigned it, so having those ratings matter a bit less over time makes sense to me. With any luck, eventually those fellow collectors will wander into my gallery again and feel inspired to rate it again!

Ne, Jason, that brings me to yet another wacky idea I've been sitting on for a while. Would it be possible to have a 'design updated' gallery feature, so that collectors can let it be known that the gallery design has been updated or changed, even though no new cel has been added?

And (I have this bad habit of running away with ideas) maybe there could be a nifty database manipulation that would highlight (on the rated gallery page) those galleries that have been changed since you last rated them, to encourage a revisit and a re-rate.

While I'm asking for so many impossible things, can I have the moon on a silver platter too? ^_~

I've got statistics running on "before" and "after" and for galleries with more than 10 ratings, about 25% of the ratings increased or stayed the same. A further 50% dropped less than half a point. About 8 or 9 were singled out as padding their stats, but no action will be taken at this time other than the 1.0+ point drops.

Everyone else just got gypped. Sorry about that. I wasn't trying to cut anyone down. It happens. Think of it as more statistically accurate -- it is.

Other notes:

- Unfortunately, MacKettric, the majority of Internet people will not appreciate older shows as much as you (and I, being a child of the 80s) will. To use your example, I like Inuyasha, but there's a great number of visitors to this site that know *only* Inuyasha, or *only* X, Y, or Z. I can attempt to balance ratings systems, but I cannot balance people.

- The proposed genre/club system that E and others have proposed in the other ratings thread is probably a far more useful than this. I think we have enough people now that we'd easily have enough people to break off into small groups/neighborhoods/etc. My goal is just to make the ratings system reasonably tamper-resistant. It still needs more work because it's still pretty easy to tamper with it.

- Having a user-triggerable "my gallery has been updated" flag is subject to abuse. It'll probably create so much noise (as opposed to "signal") that it will be an ultimately useless feature.

Hehehe I'm Such a weenie, the big drop in my rating numbers kind of made me sad. I can't take the pressure so I disabled the rate my gallery function, I was never really comfortable with it. I think I'm going to rely on the old fashioned feedback. As I?ve said before direct contact with all the wonderful collectors I?ve met through the gallery is the reason I have my collection on display, not really to find out if strangers think my collection is ?up to snuff? About once a month or so I ?meet? someone new through our collections, and that makes all the effort of maintaining a gallery worth it! and thats enough for me.

I have finally started rating galleries here and there for the past couple of weeks. ^^; I was just rating one today and I felt the need to give out my lowest scores so far. The banner was interesting but too large (IMO), the link color was virtually unreadable and the visited link color was the exact same color, the gallery has been open since late 2003 but there are no cels (or anything else) uploaded, etc.

So based on that, I decided to give scores of 3-1-3 and send the person feedback. I noticed that my scores had no effect on *any* of the three types of ratings. I changed it to 3-2-3 and it still had no effect. The averages changed only when I put in a score of 3-3-3. Even 4-1-3 didn?t work ? I?m guessing the total rating added together had to be at least 9, otherwise my rating was thrown out?

I wasn?t trying to be overly harsh ? there was just nothing for me to rate on the ?collection? category. I was actually going to use the score of a 1 on the collection rating as a reminder to revisit those galleries occasionally to check if anything had been uploaded and change my scores accordingly. In the meantime, my rating for presentation could still be used as valid feedback for the owner. Most of the scores I have given have been between 5 and 9. I was saving the lowest scores for the truly horrible ones (flashing sprites, anyone?). I?m a bit bummed that my ratings may not count in some cases.

That?s the one observation I?ve had so far. My presentation rating did drop around .7 points. *gulp* No biggie - I would prefer more accurate numbers rather than over-inflated ones I guess. ^_~ I noticed that my own gallery is on my unrated gallery list. Are you supposed to rate your own gallery? Has anybody? Just curious.

Yeah, still gotta fix that as mentioned above. Extreme scores are being thrown out without any compensation right now. How it's "supposed" to work is that extreme scores should have a weighted effect on the average dependant on how active the rating person is. They need to count for something, but I still have to minimize the effect of someone created a dozen fake accounts and voting themself up or others down. I wasn't kidding when I said I was being far more generous on the low scores being thrown out than high scores being thrown out.

You're still getting credit for rating the gallery, but the ability to potentially make someone unhappy has been minimized.

I'm tempted to just fudge the numbers so that all the galleries end up with something in between 8 and 10. It would make a weird sociology experiment to just tack on a point to everyone's scores and see if general happiness increases...