Star Ratings quck rundown

FatWallet.Com (Staff)
Chief Mucky Muck

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:02a

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What you see live on the site is just the core functionality of a star based rating system.

the quick rundown... If you like the "simplicity" of the prior +/- system... simply use the 1 and 5 stars... it is the same functionally.

Currently only topics are rated... not the individual messages. individual message ratings are in the works (but not tonight)

The functionality to see who voted and how is not yet live (developers need some sleep)

When you rate a topic, you will continue to see your rating overriding the site wide rating... making it more personal for you.

You can click "not interested" on the topic list view as well as in individual messages... this does not create a rating, it simply removes that topic from your normal view. (if you want to see it again, select "all messages" on the dropdown.

There are a couple usability issues involving the not interested button in the message view... that is a project for another day.

currently a message shows the rating after the very first time it is rated, and it calculates a simple average of all votes for a given topic. We will look at methods for showing "new topic" or not showing aggregate reviews if it is found that it is more valuable to not show ratings until some threshold has been met.

We realize that the quality of a deal is not necessarily directly connected to popularity - this part needs a bit of work, but I'm pretty sure we can get that worked out too.

Thank you in advance for giving this new mechanism a chance! change is hard, but isn't always bad!

when you see "no stars" it means that the topic has not yet been rated (since the minimum is one star) - this is another usability issue that needs to be addressed.

obviously we need to figure out a solution to see the community vote give us a bit to work that out.

(for clarity, i'm moving the old topic out of hot deals now - apologies to those that already commented on the new concept)

update 1 at 3:05AM CST 9/14

at the risk of a tired brain - I think I've come up with a way of differentiating between a 4 star post that only has one vote and a 4 star post that has lot of votes.... obviously the confidence level is higher and would have equated to a green bar in the past.

i shot off an email to the development team on this project and will meet with them after a few hours of sleep. I think we're on to something here.

nothing ever gets polished without a bit of friction

Quick Summary
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posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:02a

Originally posted by FatWallet.comOnce you have rated something, the display shows your rating rather than the community rating.

1 star is the minimum.... you can think of 1 star as "maximum red"

1 star = hate it
2 star = don't like it
3 star = ok
4 star = like it
5 star = love it*****Disclaimer: The following link has been allowed by a moderator, please do not delete:******
Link for the petition to keep the old red/green system

For now, you need to log out to see the community vote.

Things the FatWallet community would like to see addressed (Please feel free to add on to this list)

* Is there any chance of having a clear red or negative voting option coming back? How about red stars?

* On the same note, can Fatwallet provide an actual vote of some sort to see if the users feel a change was even necessary?

* Is there any chance that we will revert to the old system for the interim while FW works out the kinks in the new voting system?

* New threads will need to be set at 3 stars, the neutral setting

* Please get rid of the "Not Interested" button, by the time I've read the post, it really is too late.

* The star system doesn't look good on PDA.

* Please remove voting privledges from those who make it a common habit to bombard dozens of posts in a given thread with negative ratings, in this case what will be equal to voting 1 star. This was an issue that was ignored with the previous system and will continue to be just as much an issue with the new system if it isn't addressed.

* Please add a rating system to individual posts.

* Please make the stars a different color depending on how many there are. Five stars would be a vibrant green, four a lighter green, three can be yellow, two can be a light red, and one can be red. This would more closely resemble the older rating system and would also be helpful for browsing the forum.
* If you go to this direction, please explain how this is any better than the old system.

* Please add a way for users to view who voted and how they voted, like the last rating system.
* Please do not show who voted it only leads to petty people retaliating against each other.

* Please say, clearly and frankly, what deficiencies you hope to address with ANY new system. One deficiency you mentioned was people ranking negative to suppress posts they personally saw. The "not interested" button addresses this. Why did you go to the boost and then to the stars (both all green and both taking up more real estate)?

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Here's an exercise for you all who like the 5-star system. How do you differentiate these two 5-star deals???:

Caribou Coffee Buy 3 pound, get 1 pound free $10.99 valve online only.

Windows Xp Home Upgrade/w SP2 $10 AR Begins 09/10/06

Hmmmm?????????

The old green bar would've helped you differentiate. Why change it?
The old system followed the "keep it simple stupid" principle.

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I didn't like this at first but now I see the point...

This is much better for PERSONAL use, and if used as such it becomes much more helpful.

1) If you don't like a deal, just click not interested - all gone for you!

2) If you love a deal, rate it 4 or 5 stars -- yellow stars make it easy to "bookmark" your favorite posts.

3) The green stars become an indicator of the average rating give by others - very much like Amazon, newegg's, etc rating system for products.

4) No more hate redding, or green begging. It's irrrelevent, as once a thread has been rated none of the voters see the green stars anymore. Quite frankly, I don't give a hoot what others think of a deal, I want to find my favorite threads quickly.

Please keep the not interested button - it helps sooo much when, say, Fry's deals stay up at the top and I have no fry's near me - same with Meijer, or other local deals. It really helps declutter fatwallet for us regular users.

adiganifatwallet
Senior Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:05a

alert mods

This is a continuation from previous (now closed and moved to FW forum) thread.

Once you have rated something, the display shows your rating rather than the community rating.

1 star is the minimum.... you can think of 1 star as "maximum red"

1 star = hate it
2 star = don't like it
3 star = ok
4 star = like it
5 star = love it

I still think the +/- system is BETTER. Color coding works better. And the government use it too.
It is not obvious by seeing 1-green-star as HATE IT. Instead, the obvious would be "Oh.. not so-so deal"

Oya.. and you will get complaint from FW Finance forum.
Especially there, individual rating (not only thread rating) IS SUPER important.
Again, we don't have 25 hours a day (like the FW mods) to read everything on FW.com

How do we clear the rating we gave to a thread?

fish777 mentioned:

But if you stuck with your own rating, then you will miss out the deal.
This is NOT movie rating since the DEAL is dynamic and ever changing.

alphaqb
Frivolous Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:05a

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i can tolerate this system

Fka200
Senior Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:05a

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Add a function near the filter to CLEAR our rating all at once. What do you think?

dIPseta
Broke Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:06a

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This might just work out...

Toddler
Ancient Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:06a

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When you rate a topic, you will continue to see your rating overriding the site wide rating... making it more personal for you.I have a BIG problem with this. Regardless of how you rate a thread, you should still see the community rating.

Deals often change after the initial post. Maybe I am not initially interested in a thread, but the deal gets sweeter or I missed something initially that the community picks up on. I am never going to see that everyone else considers it a 5-star thread because I already rated it early on? That is a total disincentive for me to ever rate a thread, and that's not the spirit of FW.

myAmex
Senior Member - 7K

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:07a

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FatWallet.Com said: If you like the "simplicity" of the prior +/- system... simply use the 1 and 5 stars... it is the same functionally.

You are telling me that they are the same thing, but you still want a change.

Fka200
Senior Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:08a

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myAmex said:FatWallet.Com said: If you like the "simplicity" of the prior +/- system... simply use the 1 and 5 stars... it is the same functionally.

You are telling me that they are the same thing, but you still want a change.

Wish i could give u green.

fresh463
Senior Member - 2K

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:08a

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bar is better than star.

RightHere
Senior Member - 4K

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:08a

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I think you're not quite ther yet (DAMN THE SLEEP MAN!!! Put the developers back to work!) , but it seems a lot better than the system that was up earlier.

I love the "not interested" option!! You might want to consider a user-configurable way to have their "not interested" deals reappear if something changes. If the deal doesn't look great at first, but changes later, you might want to be alerted to it (same point that folks in the other thread were making about only seeing their votes instead of the community votes). Maybe tie it to quantity of votes of a certain rating (for example, if the post gets 25+ 4* votes, it's probably a really good deal).

When viewing a thread, if I click on the "not interested" link, I think that should take me back to the topics list. I made a clear choice that I was not interested in the topic, so I think it's clear that I don't want to read it anymore

Edit: I feel sorry for the developers that will be reading this thread in the morning. I'm sure it'll be hundreds of messages long, with most posts making the same points. But with no way to rate a post, each user will have to post the comment separately in order for it to be seen.

dIPseta
Broke Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:08a

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Can you please make it so we still see the collective community rating. This kind of system discourges me from rating something becasue early becasue I want to know how the community thinks beefore I rate something myself.

Fka200
Senior Member

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:08a

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Toddler said:When you rate a topic, you will continue to see your rating overriding the site wide rating... making it more personal for you.I have a BIG problem with this. Regardless of how you rate a thread, you should still see the community rating.

Deals often change after the initial post. Maybe I am not initially interested in a thread, but the deal gets sweeter or I missed something initially that the community picks up on. I am never going to see that everyone else considers it a 5-star thread because I already rated it early on? That is a total disincentive for me to ever rate a thread, and that's not the spirit of FW.

That is MY (and im guessing a lot of others) MAJOR concern. It makes me NOT WANT TO VOTE BECAUSE I WANT TO SEE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE VOTED!!?!?!?!?!

additive
Senior Member - 2K

posted: Sep. 14, 2006 @ 2:08a

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so 3 stars means average? 1 star--very bad, 2-bad, 4-hot, 5-flaming hot?
haha.. basically, it's same as previous version. users could only boost the topic but no way to neg it.

cool.. I give this idea at least 1 star.