4 ms·

Agreed, and thanks for the link. I think this applies to almost all online rating systems, in particular ones where it's just pick a number out of five or ten.

Agreed, and thanks for the link. I think this applies to almost all online rating systems, in particular ones where it's just pick a number out of five or ten. Most will be either very high (perfect, or perfect with a slight problem), or the lowest (completely shit). Barely anybody will mark something as 2/5 because it was utterly terrible, but this one feature was good. They'll remember the bad parts. No, no data at the moment and it's just a hunch, but one I hope to be able to measure soon. I'm hoping to apply this to webhosting, rather than simply rate out of ten and leave a 2 sentence review, it'll be much more indepth, with multiple options (support, uptime, features etc). I'm betting that the more effort that you go through to leave a thorough rating will be balanced by the fact you won't have to rate that often (at most maybe once a year once you find a good host). Oh well, still in the idea stage but I think people should reconsider just a simple rating out of five for anything non-trivial (like rating videos). Anything important (major purchase decision) should be more detailed and have more information for the prospective user.

pedalpete 17y ago
I think you have another challenge when dealing with something like rating hosting. The problem, I believe, comes in where you will likely have many people leaving reviews after a bad experience, rather than a good one. For any negative experience, a person will tell 10 people, for a positive experience, they will share with 2 people. Videos are a bit different, because people review as they are watching. However with something like hosting, you need to give considerable thought to how you get people to report positive or average experiences equally as often as negative ones. That's just my initial reaction.
- decadentcactus 17y ago
  Yeah, being filled with negatives would be annoying although I'm hoping to come up with something, probably along the lines of discounts/coupons regardless of whether they left a positive or negative one (as long as it's an informative one). It's definitely something to think about and it's a pretty difficult balance I'll have to achieve but I'm confident I can figure something out.
thwarted 17y ago
It's a delicate balance. I personally don't want to fill out a massive questionnaire (even 5 questions may be too many) just to rate something, usually these fixed axises don't always fit what I want to say either. People seem to respond well to a simple rating and a free-form paragraph, both as readers and reviewers -- what is the incentive for the person writing the detailed review to actually write it? All the data needs to be boiled down to a single yes or no in the mind of the reader trying to make a decision anyway.
- decadentcactus 17y ago
  One of the things I've been contemplating is incentives, though not to the point where people will just fill out a lot of reviews to earn points or anything, more along the lines of random prizes or discount codes for hosting packages. Although then I have to be careful not to trivialize it and turn it into a game since I still want it to be a good resource for prospective customers.

pedalpete 17y ago

I think you have another challenge when dealing with something like rating hosting. The problem, I believe, comes in where you will likely have many people leaving reviews after a bad experience, rather than a good one. For any negative experience, a person will tell 10 people, for a positive experience, they will share with 2 people. Videos are a bit different, because people review as they are watching. However with something like hosting, you need to give considerable thought to how you get people to report positive or average experiences equally as often as negative ones. That's just my initial reaction.

decadentcactus 17y ago
Yeah, being filled with negatives would be annoying although I'm hoping to come up with something, probably along the lines of discounts/coupons regardless of whether they left a positive or negative one (as long as it's an informative one). It's definitely something to think about and it's a pretty difficult balance I'll have to achieve but I'm confident I can figure something out.

thwarted 17y ago

It's a delicate balance. I personally don't want to fill out a massive questionnaire (even 5 questions may be too many) just to rate something, usually these fixed axises don't always fit what I want to say either. People seem to respond well to a simple rating and a free-form paragraph, both as readers and reviewers -- what is the incentive for the person writing the detailed review to actually write it? All the data needs to be boiled down to a single yes or no in the mind of the reader trying to make a decision anyway.

decadentcactus 17y ago
One of the things I've been contemplating is incentives, though not to the point where people will just fill out a lot of reviews to earn points or anything, more along the lines of random prizes or discount codes for hosting packages. Although then I have to be careful not to trivialize it and turn it into a game since I still want it to be a good resource for prospective customers.