Prediction: The Lindens are preparing us to have ratings completely done away with..

....perhaps by ver. 1.6

Ratings have been increased from $1 to $25. This in iteslf reduces the number of ratings being given.

Starting Feb 16th, rathings will begin to be culled down to only the most recent 6 months.


Either action, by itse'f, would curb the amount of ratings being given. But both actions together will nearly kill the ratings system. After all, it's one thing to pay a nominal $1 to rate someone, if it will only stay on their record for 6 months. Paying $25 for a rating that will not last for more than 6 months seems downright silly though, and I think is unlikely to be commonplace.

I think we assumed at first that the $25 fee for ratings was supposed to partly reduce the amount of ratings being given, and to provide more of an economic sink, and fight inflation. However, by both raising the price of ratings AND putting a 6-month limit on how long they will remain effective, the Lindens are actually DISCOURAGING people from spending money on ratings. If they wanted people to spend money on ratings, they would either (a) keep the prices low, but the length of the ratings finite; or (b) keep the price for ratings high, but leave that expensive rating in place forever.

I am guessing that the lindens have already discussed this, and expect this to happen. I predict that the price increase, followed by the 6-month limit on ratings are deliberately put in place to discourage use of the ratings system, and prepare us for the total dismantling of the system. I will also go a bit further, and predict that there will be a new ratings system of some sort, and it will be implemented by 1.6 or 1.7 (I'll say 1.6)


Thoughts?

Well, for as long as I can remember, there have been several groups of people (various souls) who each have had their kick at the bucket about complaining about the ratings system. It always seems to come in waves at that. Each time, either the response was lacking from LL, or "we're thinking". It is quite refreshing to see the Lindens put a response out to everone, whether people like it or not.

Now I wouldn't go as far as to speculate that they're phasing it out, but nor would I be suprised if they chose to. It seems that every few monthes, a bunch of people get their panties and briefs into a knot about it, and maybe the best way to resolve the issue is to eliminate the issue alltogether?

Needless to say, I'm sitting here with my popcorn waiting to see what happens, and no matter what the Linden's choose, I'm behind them. For the longest time, I have not paid much attention to ratings anyways. Somewhat of a moot point here in SL as many people develop their reputations on their own, and those reputations spread.

Disagreeing here.

I doin't think having "a" ratings/reputation sytem is such a bad thing...I just think LL needs a non-broken one and from what I've picked up by Linden statements on the topic (from various town halls, etc) I think they want one too.

I'm not making any judgements either, or offering my opinion on what LL should do about a ratings system. But I think that the recent changes seem specifically geared to discourage, rather than encourage the use of ratings, and therefore I'm predicting that it's a preperatory move to disband the current ratings system entirely.

I think it'll be replaced with something like what they were musing about in some of the Town Halls; some sort of iteraction-dependant social "point" system.


It'll certainly be interesting to see the hoopla though, whatever happens.

A new ratings system is on the drawing board, but don't expect it for a point release or two (maybe not til 1..

You're right, they designed these changes to discourage rampant rate mining; now rates will MEAN something, at least until the new social reputation system is set up and ready to go.

LF

Prediction: duh.

seriously tho i agree. we're the frogs in a pot of water and they're slowly turning up the heat. fortunately in this case frog soup is good for us.

Robin has stated a few times that a new reputation system is being considered and the hold up seems to be deciding exactly what will work. I see this 6 month fix as a half assed, ummm, I meant half way measure to try to please everyone, an imposssible task.

Eliminate ratings now!

Let's all go stick our avs's heads in the sandboxes and panic like idiots.

Oh no! No ratings! Whatever will we do in SL?

I mean, gosh, what happens if:

No More Rating Parties
No More Multiple Neg Rates
No More Rate Mining by people you Don't know
No more whining that av Joe Schmoo who started 6 mos after you* has more ratings and they 'don't' build
No more complaining that they are screwed up, yet not wanting to get rid of them
No more 'money' tied to anything but drawing people to your builds or your stipend

They are phasing the ratings out, because obviously as the SL society grows larger, they lose quite a bit of their meaning. When was the last time someone went up to you and said "Gee willikers, you have a high ratings! you must be wonderful! oh and gee a few neg ratings! I'll still be your buddy!"

Get a grip people, it's just a change, no one's going to die or not be able to play because the ratings are gone and their stipend is lower. I mean, really, are you just in SL for the money? There are more lucrative things to do to earn money...






*you - meaning any SLian at large...

good.

Hmmm... Hope its so but they seem to be putting too much effort into editing it for me to have much hope it'll disapear completely.

Just to recap what I've read:

If I recall, the Lindens have said (several times in fact) that ratings were slowly to be phased out in order to promote a reputation system (similar to eBay).

While I'd appreciate it if the original Linden (or other individual) that said that would reinforce my point, I've read it more than a couple times. It's just hard to find the exact quote here.

I certainly don't think this is exactly "confidential" information, either, but by virtue of being an old quote, plans can change.

Does it really matter if ratings go away? Ceptin maybe to the welfare leeches that need em for stipend bonuses?

Well duh.

I believe this too, and I like how you mentioned this. LOL. Frog soup! Yummy.

These kind of changes that come gradually like gently lapping waves, as opposed to a torrential full-frontal assault, are more welcome and allow us to acclimate better. We live in an era with so much change -- what the Toffler futurists term as "accelerative thrust" -- and that rate of change breaks down a lot of people's minds and understandably stresses the heck out of them.

By implementing broad sweeping changes over a similarly broadly sweeping timeline, it will likely be easier on us as a community, as well as LL evaluating "experiments" as things go on.

Two years from now, if this is still in the forum archives, let's have a look back, shall we?

Geshhhhhh another Rating system! I wonder how this well effect the over all play of players? By doing this will improvement over the quility of the game. Then I be all for it.

Aww Hell they should have just cut em out entirely, deleted the scores and let the massive corinary assault begin. This taking us of the Heart Pump machine slowly only means the OXYGEN thieves are gonna get a few more minutes reprieve.

I say simply Pull the Plug clean up the code and and move foward without taking two steps back.

For those that can breath and move forward change and diversity can only make you stronger.

For those that cant and are living on that "Stipend Delta" to survive in SL well sorry to see you go if your that shallow in making it a point to quit a world because of change.

Call me Cynical, Call me Mean but dont call me Late for Dinner...

Shadow

i agree with shadow. and you don't have to call me cynical. that's a well established fact.

i suppose i do understand ll's need to mamby pamby the whiners with kid gloves though. they can just say "no" to the developers but have to waste extraordinary amounts of time in meetings and postings, not to mention suffering through all the bugs of transitional, blow softening code changes, in order to keep everybody else happy so they don't cancel their accounts en masse.

anyway, i agree with shadow. just write ratings out of 1.6 entirely so y'all can spend your time working on useful features. when we have an api, we can maintain our own little ratings systems.

The thing that nobody seems to be talking about is that the amount of money that's given out for bonuses has always been a set pool, and the Linden announcement about ratings "decay" didn't say anything about that pool amount decreasing. Yes, the folks with the largest amount of new ("fresh" ) ratings will now get more of a bonus than those of us with ratings that occurred many months ago. However, with everyone's ratings decreased so much, the effect may even out quite a bit more than anyone anticipates right now. Perhaps our stipend bonuses won't decrease as much as we think they will initially when this change goes into effect on the 16th.

It's certainly an interesting way to "redistribute the wealth" in SL.

Actually Beryl, based simply on your statement this 6 month thing is even more Benifical to the Rate Whores than in the past.

Why? well as you know you have been here quite a while as have I and those rates we all used to recieve were on Merrit before this thing went live will be leaving us soon.

Now just for a moment think on the aspect that every person from that time frame has roughly 3-500 rates each.

Thats a sizeable chunk of the pool, as we are recieving funds based on those 3-500 rates. So when those rates are gone because they are as old as they are...boom you now have roughly 500 olbies "so to speak" dropping out of that Pool you mentioned.
Thus that would increase the yeild for those that have been doing the Recent Rate Mining thing.

Synapsis, Suzie Q now goes from making 50 lindens with her little 250 rates to making over 800 with her 250 rates.

Sorry but no matter how you look at it the Rate Whores get over.

Meanwhile the rest of the world no matter who they are young or old gets the shaft without any KY.

So I stand by my words of Wax em entirely pull the life support and breath fresh air.

Shadow

Like it or not though, the existing rating system does function like the antithesis to the "Developer Incentive" (Dwell/Traffic). What most of us see as "gaming the system" is, in some ways, an effective means of getting a large group of people together in one place and offering incentives for doing so. The change enacted will only offer a greater incentive to do so, while making such rating a tad more thoughtful via the up in fee (L$25).

All in all, it's not a terrible thing - and neg-rate bots are given a huge disadvantage under the Basic stipend with these changes.

I guess what gets to me is there are fewer system incentives for the individual that owns something other than a Tringo stand, theme park, or club. But then again, word of mouth and private contracting still works in our favor.

I'd love to see what would happen under a eBay-like reputation system, though (with a minimum character limit).

What you say is entirely true in the short term, Shadow. People who have received many ratings in the past six months, no matter how they got them, will have an advantage in the amount of stipend bonus they receive after Wednesday's changes. However, with the advent of L$25 rates a month ago, I believe that "rate whoring" has been severely reduced in SL, probably all but discontinued, in fact.

Let's face it, the vast majority of us have done some "rate whoring" at some point in our SL careers (I'm not saying EVERYBODY has done it, mind you). But I believe that the Lindens semi-intended for us to use rating in this way, in the past; in order to rate people, you had to be social instead of just holing up on your own land and building, scripting and texturing. And the development of the SL social scene was just as important to SL's survival and growth as the things made by the "content barons."

Now, however, I think the Lindens want to wean us away from the ratings bonus teat and force us to treat ratings as a means of handing out "whuffie," or approval/appreciation. Hence, the raise in the cost of ratings and the "decay" of older ratings. Will we see the end of ratings entirely? I don't know. Will ratings cease to be tied to our stipend bonuses? I agree they probably should, but I doubt that LL wants to take that drastic a step right now. I'm betting that, by putting these new measures in place, LL hopes that ratings will self-correct and become a truer way of denoting (and rewarding) someone's worth to the SL community as a whole.

Or, people will just figure out another way to game them. I guess we'll see.

I would welcome ratings being abolished. I was happy to see the cost go up as I spent my first week in-game being rated postively by everyone and rating them back positively almost as if it were some sort of greeting ritual; like a handshake.

Ah but what you say here is true yet a true gamer can look at this as an opportunity to stay on top.

How you might ask ok lets take a look at a scenerio that is very likely applicable.

You have Alisa Tsisty (Thinks she is smarter than you) LOL anyway Alisa notes the new changes and knows the Feted Olbies are out the door soon with rates. She also knows the rating pool is going to jump up drasticly cause its based on current rate figures. So she bides her time. She knows her Rates are less than 2 months old and she has dang near 1000 per catagory. So once all the Fetted Olbies drop off BOOM baby she is in the dough.
Each week she sets back her Bonus knowing the day of Reconing is soon to come. On the 4th month of saving and scrimping every extra Stipend Delta bonus she now has a sizeable chunk of change. So what does she do now she starts a Rate campaign of I will pay you 75 Lindens and Rate you if you Rate me in all 3 catagorys.

Well, for the newb this is a win win situation. They are not out any money as she is in essence paying for her own rates and they get rated too what a bonus.

What she doesnt tell the newbie is she is only going to rate them in one catagory. They don't know they havent a clue other than they dont have to pay...yes people are that Naive.

Anyway, Now Alisa has maintained her Rate status but she didnt spend all of her money because each month she of course is going to have to replinish some rates that slowly are scheduled to drop off.

But by earning a Higher Stip Delta she now has the ability to foot that bill. For 1 year she does this and accumulates an average per month of Rates she has to have to maintain here celebrity hood.

Now she starts to campaign for more rates as she wants a bigger slice of that money pool. In the end she has maintained her rates kept her standing and is rolling in the dough from whoring ratings. Meanwhile everyone else won't spend that kind of cash on Rates so she effectively monoplizes the rate pool and becomes the next Rate Queen extrodinare.

Thats why based on the following context of your last stament Beryl I believe they need to kill the rate puppy right off.



I totaly agree with you on the aspect of disconnecting if from Money. I have said it more than one time.

But that wont happen either. I think for the most part just simply pulling the plug and letting a Quick respitory arrest happen to it. We can and eventually will wean the leeches that have lived on the system for so long.

Anyway I digress

Shadow

Haha, Shadow, you probably just helped out some enterprising newb by outlining this "ingenious" plan. People play all sorts of "games" in SL... whatever floats your boat, I guess. Personally, I'd rather work hard at making content than work hard at gaming the system, and I think you would, too. Any system the Lindens come up with can be gamed, period.

Totaly agreed and I outlined the plan just to see who was dumbass enough to do it ...LOL just wait it will happen. But you know me well enough I just make shit sell it and go on and have fun...minus drama mind you...well cept the forums the forums are a good place to ...well I had a long explination but believe me I dont want to step on to many toes..LOL

Shadow