Ratings - temporary Band-aid!

Okay, Linden Lab... we've been talking about changing ratings for months now. At the very least, can we have a temporary patch?

How about allocating 255 characters for a person to input comments for a rate, like Ebay does? (I'm sure Pierre would approve!)

This way, at least we can get some meaningful feedback from people, and some meaningful info when first dealing with a person and looking at their ratings.

I'd prefer them to limit the amount of ratings you can hand out in one 24hr period to about 10 maybe 15. The other night I spent 15-20 mins hunting around a packed, lagged out club looking for someone that had rated me, only to find out they'd rated my ghost at a club I'd left 2hrs previously.

That's 15mins of my RL time, I'd rather have spent watching TV, reading my book, doing housework, chatting with my friends in IMs, or whatever it is I choose to do while my AV is dancing in a club.

The original purpose of Linden's vision of the rating system has become perverted by serial raters, rating everyone in the hope they'll get rated back so they can get an extra 1K Linden on Tuesday. 1K Linden is like $4 on GOM, honestly if you're that hard up IRL I'll mail you $4.

You're suposed to rate someone or someone's creation, if that person really impressed you with their helpfullness to another player, or you think that person's piece of architecture or artwork enhanced your Second Life experience in some way.

I'd like for your real life Job to limit the amount of money you can make in a day, I think your paycheck benefits you too much, because obviously you have a premium account with Land and you are a merchant of some sort making money other ways, that is the perception I am getting from your comment.

Maybe im misunderstanding you, however; not everyone makes L$ building or being a merchant, and if they did; you certainly wouldn't want that much competition because the L$ would crash. When you start talking about taking away L$ from people think about the negative effects first. In other words, L$ isn't that easy to come by for people that don't have that much time, and if they did and they all were forced to be merchants; I don't think that would be feasible because many would quit if they couldn't afford to buy what the merchants put out. But the L$ would go down probably, making it even harder for those that try to make real money and then you may loose many merchants as well as account holders.

Limiting Ratings is like saying Limit my Paycheck because looks mean nothing. Then if looks mean nothing; skin sales plummet along with the unaffordability of them or the incentive to buy them.

Ratings should be available via the "Find" function, look up their name and then rate them without hunting them down. That needs to be implemented if it isn't; that would help fix the inconvenience. People should understand in a crowded Club if they don't receive a return rating because it is difficult to find an AV.

Or maybe if you didn't receive a return rate it's because you didn't do anything to deserve a rate?

Ratings should be earned rather than a courtesy.

Totaly Agreed but a pipe dream unfortunately for the TSO Escapee's that are so mentaly dependant on the "I got a friend ring" Anyway I digress.

Yes, Blake, and ratings reward people who go out and 'club' and rate farm more than those who stay home and build. Sometimes far beyond what one of these people would 'sell'.

It goes both ways. Ratings reward socialites. Those who aren't in SL just to shake their ass don't get that benefit.

Ratings were never intended by LL to be a "gotta catch em all!" go-out-and-collect-as-many-as-you-can sort of schema. They were supposed to be a reputation system, and were implemented in a very different time and SL economy than what exists today.

Being a relic of that time, people have simply gamed them. As has been said ad nauseum, there are are club dancers who have never created a prim in their entire 'second life' who have better building ratings than some of the most prolific builders on SL -- and they get rewarded for it.

Few, few people actually rate by category. It's "I +3'd you, +3 me back! We both get money!", or "I think the sports team you like sucks so I'm going to -3 you" -- nevermind that the person has never seen that person build anything, nor is it a critique of appearance.

This argument has been going on for a lot more than 'a few months'. And in all this time, I have NEVER, EVER seen a valid argument for keeping the rating system as it is except for: "DON'T CHANGE IT - BECAUSE I GET MONEY FROM IT!"

That's the ONLY pro to it. Nobody wants to discuss, perhaps, an overall base stipend increase (even for one-time 9.95'ers). They don't want to entertain ideas for a new bonus system. They don't want to work on a new reputation system. It's just a bunch of kicking and screaming, "DON'T TAKE THE THING THAT MAKES MY MONEY AWAY!".

Ratings and stipend are not two things that are innately tied to eachother. They could be decoupled, and people could still make money. Right now, people who don't sell or own venues are using ratings to fill in a gap, or a deficiency in LL's provisions to them.

That, obviously, has to be addressed. And it's going to have to take some creativity. Many of the folks here now saying that the ratings system is super-duper don't remember the days of fly-by-calling cards.

The amount of calling cards you had used to also effect stipend. So wherever you went, you'd be bombarded by people who wanted to exchange cards. Eventually, the very purpose of the calling cards (to keep track of friends who are online, and to use to re-contact folks you found interesting) was almost completely defeated. EVeryone had hundreds and hundreds of calling cards in their inventory, and nobody dared clean them out, because it'd mean a lower stipend for both you and the person who gave you the card.

That, thank god, has been decoupled from income, and I haven't had a fly-by-carder in a long, long time.

There are behind-the-scenes ways to reward socialization that don't require a ratings exchange. There are better ways to do this, but people are deathly afraid that if ANYTHING changes, they won't have as much money as they used to.

This is NOT neccessarily true, nor is it an inevitability. LL has acknowledged that the ratings system is ineffective, and that at this point it is a relic. The reason they haven't done anything about it, is because they want to make sure that whatever does replace it doesn't cause too much upheaval. So it has to be studied very carefully.

But keep in mind, with change, there were people who wanted the system to stay the way it was, pre 1.2. Some people benefitted from that; back then we lived in a world where one person, in a sim, could use all of the available prims in that sim to construct a single diningroom set. But still, people were afraid of that change, and protested it. If it wasn't for the SL residency's willingness to adapt, we'd still be paying to rez prims, paying for teleports, paying taxes, and not getting a stipend if your total account balance was more than L$3500.

LL is trying to improve both the social -and- development spaces of SL. They will NOT 'forget' the socialites, Blake - one thing I believe they have learned, is to not make sweeping changes without significant input from the population first. That's why this has been taking so long.

That would be -excellent- for people who want to neg rate you in building because they didn't like your forum post, or for folks who simply want to go down the list and neg whoever they feel like. Bored? Screw with 10 people for L$30! Not a bad deal for an aspiring troublemaker.

Not only that, but imagine logging on to see a screen full of stored messages, that 100 different people have "search-rated" you positively, and now expect a positive "return rate", or they'll come right back and rate you negatively!

"No, sorry, can't hang out yet, I haven't logged on in a week and I'm catching up on my counter-rating."

Bad, bad idea. The last thing we need is ratings spam, and expected reciprocity, from people you've never met.

Another bandaid:

You can only rate a person's Building skill if you right-click on an object they created.

You can only rate Appearance/Behavior if you see the person in world.

I also like the idea (in another thread) of charging more for each rating. Make it more meaningful.

Can you say.....


POKE' AV..hehe

Hiro, that exists right now as you receive the ratings. If you are in world you see the rating message as an system message that appears in your chat history. If you are offline at the time and your IMs are set to go to email, you will receive a copy of the message. People often do not use the feature now - you get a rating with a blank message. I definitely would not like to see these messages permanently in a profile - my god, it would just add to the damage of abuse ratings.

*pokes Shadow in the ribs*

Hey now - I'm a TSO escapee!

Then again.....TSO's friendship web sucked too. Only ones I had on the friendship web were myself and other nerdy loners that just wanted to test it out. Go figure!

LOLarious, that. Meowth is, like, my favorite.

Newfie your a convert...anyone that Joined SL after Jan 2004 is an escapee and after June 2004 is a Refugee. Anyone that Joined SL 1 month after TSO went Live out of beta is....dare I say it OMG NO I Shouldnt but...I will an ANCIENT...LMAO

That's called "salary"

I disagree. If people saw that they stayed in your profile, people would be more apt to use them.

As for the damage of abuse ratings, if you saw one, "OMG this guy is a f**ker" and 300 "Great builder" and "Helped me out"s.... I'd say that'd be a good thing.

It's also called tax. *shakes fist*

Better: open the Find dialog, search for the name, then click on Profile and Rate...

Much faster