Rate mining?

Wow, I just learned that I'm a rate miner (I guess) When I meet people, I automatically rate them. I thought it was my right, and want to help everyone out with finances??? I thought I was just being nice???

I did think it strange that very few people have rated me in return, though I don't really care. But after reading one of the long winded posts, I realize my "habbit" is going to make me look bad.

Do I have to stop being generous? Well, I must tell everyone that I probably will continue rating people I meet, especially newbies. I mean, I figure it's a Second Life right, no? (that's how I see it) So when you see the number of ratings I gave out, I hope you won't judge me badly. It's just fun to rate people (always good) and one of my Second Life joys.

Love Ingie

At one time i did this too, but then i realized what the ratings were really for. I still rate a good amount of people but only if they've earned it in my opinion that rating.

The thing about ratings is, its our means for survival, its not just a hey look this guy has a high rating, its a direct cause of higher income.

I saw a couple people just the other day who were very new like 3 or 4 days old. They already had ratings almost as high as i did and i've been in almost 2 months now. They have these ratings because they are girls and have "cute" av's. I think this is rediculous.

The ratings are meant to reward people who work hard and contribute to SL. That means the builders, the scriptors (your rating is coming i hope!!) the event hosters, etc...

Also since it is a direct cause of higher income, i own a good chunk of land in Shipley and have lots of objects in blue and shipley, so my taxes are getting higher. Why should a newbie who has been in world for 3 days have a higher bonus because people just hand them ratings than me? I have more to pay for and I like to think have contributed more to SL.

Higher ratings = higher bonus, in case i haven't stressed that enough. So basically these people i have seen can just continue to run around to all the events, get ratings cuz they are "cute", never build anything and have much more money than I do.

I used to think some people complained about the rating system too much, or that there wasn't really a problem with it, but now i totally understand how they feel. Its kind of insulting to see someone brand new with a higher rating when you have put a lot of work into SL and what you do.

So ingie while i don't think you are a bad person for doing this, understand it has a real economic effect and it throws the whole economic system out of whack.

I heard somewhere suggested that you should be able to click on an object and then rate that and the owner gets the rating, this might help since then the n00bs would at least have to make something to get any ratings.... and i doubt as many people would rate the floating n00b cabins....

JV's rant of the week

Ingie,

Everyone has a different definition of <gag> rate mining <gag>. I personally hate the term, but *my* definition of it is "asking someone to exchange ratings with you".

I've had a couple of people ask me to exchange ratings. I declined.

As far as giving ratings, I kinda go in cycles. I never give a building rating without having seen examples of the person's building, but where appearance and behavior are concerned I'm sometimes I little quicker to give a rate. Not always, and there's really no rhyme or reason to when I do or don't. It's probably something to do with the tide and/or the moon, I dunno.

Umm.. anyway, if it matters to you, I don't think what you're doing is rate mining. Some people will, others won't. Point is, you *cannot* please *everybody* *all.the.time*. Do what feels right to you =)

#!

I agree what your doing is not Rate Mining. My policy is, if I have a converstation with you, and its and enjoyable one. I will rate you. This frist rating is usually apparance and behavior. Then if I come across you again and see your build I will rate that.

But no, I don't think what your doing is wrong.

i'm one of the ppl that complain about the ratings system. i agree with shebang. i don't think what you're doing is wrong at all. if anything its good for all of us to exchange ratings as much as possible, due to the way the system works. but i think we need to be more honest with the ratings. like maybe give out some negative ratings for once. personally i just try to give ratings where they are due. like if you're a total stranger and rated me, i won't necessarily give you a positive behavior rating but i'll look at ya and if you have a creative av i'll give you the appearance rating. and if i see you can build well...yada yada. just be honest with em, and maybe give out some negative ones too is all i'm saying. i think it'll help.

Yes Ope, I would love to see some negative ratings handed out sometime.

I have handed out 1 negative rating before, and it was the persons only rating in that category so it showed -1, i have wanted to hand out a few more to griefers but the problem i have with it is that if they notice you gave them a negative one they can rate you back negatively.

I don't want to get a negative rating just because some jerk wants to retaliate.

I think if we are going to stick with this current system then we should make ratings anonymous, what is the point of knowing who rated you other for you to rate them back, in which case its a matter of he rated me so i have to rate them and not about earning it.

If it just said "you have been rated" i garuntee you would see a lot more negative ratings on the jerks.

JV

Ok, I understand a little bit now, and will take it all into consideration. I'll consider what I'm doing more closely. I guess I'll come up with a more defined system for myself. Don't know what it is .... yet... lol... but I'll think about it more carefully

Thanks for your input everyone!

Love INgie

When I meet someone, regardless of sex, creed, or color, and I find them friendly, I often rate them for attitude. I will usually rate him or her for appearance as well unless he or she is wearing starter jeans and shirt.

I never give a building rating unless I've seen that person's work. And I wouldn't give anyone a building rating for a starter cabin.

I think this is not only reasonable, but quite sociable.

I never ask anyone for a rating. I don't think that's right to do, and while I might be hoping to be rated in return, I don't hold it against anyone should they not reciprocate.

I don't think ratings should be handed out indiscriminately, but also think there are those who hit the opposite extreme and "keep it like the kaiser."

I also agree that ratings should be anonymous. You can always verbally compliment someone if you want them to hear your praise.

Overall, I believe you have to do what you feel is right for you and not bend in either direction to satisfy someone else's idea of when and how to give out ratings.

Well, my theory is that any system that CAN be abused WILL be abused. So, while I think its a great idea that we all use the rating system responsibly (whatever that means to each of us) I still know for a fact that there will be an constant influx of people misusing the system (that being a subjective judgment on my part). For that reason I'd rather have the system that allows the abuses to be fixed, rather than just asking people not to abuse it.

I've rated everyone I know positively, and the people I know the best get a vote on their builds every single day from me. Most of them do not return the favor (but thats ok!). I don't REALLY understand why I can vote for someone once in the building category, and can also vote for them every day on as many builds as they choose to put up. But, since I am basically voting for my friends (as I suspect most people are) the rational of the system doesn't really matter. If it were to cost $100 to cast a vote, rather than $1, maybe (definitely) my habits would change.

The current system has a lot of slop built into it (IMHO). People who are good builders will TEND to get more votes for their builds, people who do nice avatars will TEND to get more votes for appearance, people who like to meet people and chat will TEND to get more votes for behavior and so on. But I guarantee you that a person who excels in all of these areas will not do particularly well if they only sign on for an hour or two a day, or even less, as I am sure will be the case for some people. Finally, anyone who does scripting well, or is an enterprising builder, can make money by selling scripts and objects. I have yet to hear of anyone getting rich only by selling objects, and I suspect that the income from selling scripts will level off after a while too. In any event, these things won't sell themselves, so the key to doing well by selling things is to be online a lot "marketing".

I am a 2-hour a day user. If I hadn't signed up for the lifetime membership and were actually paying the full monthly price for the service I would be the IDEAL customer. (Actually the IDEAL customer would pay the monthly rate and NEVER sign on, I'm just talking profit motive here folks). People who sign on for 4, 8 or more hours a day on the other hand will be paying the same amount for using the service, and will be consuming vastly more server resources. Since they are on more, meet more people, accumulate more rating points, they will also buy more land, run more scripts, rez more complex objects, load more textures and sounds, etc. For every user that uses more than their "fair share" of the system resources, there will have to be users who willingly use less than their "fair share". The alternative may be a competition for which there are more losers than winers.

While the program is new, having lots of people online all the time building up the infrastructure is a good thing and, in that sense, the economy is probably doing exactly what it is intended to do at this moment. I question whether this will continue to be the case though. As the user base stabilizes to some extent (but hopefully continues to grow too) I just wonder if the experience will discourage the beginner who knows nobody, owns very little to start with, and for whatever reason, can't afford to be online more than a couple hours a day. If the economy causes these users to drop out after a few months, and also encourages the compulsive online-till-you-drop people to remain active, will the burden on the servers allow the monthly prices to remain low?

Yeah, what Skippy said.

i wish we could be rate anonymously too, but i think the whole problem with anonymous ratings is that someone could anonymously go around and rate everyone negatively just to bring their ratings relatively higher, and that way they get a bigger percentage of the pot. so theres gotta be some way to discourage ppl from doing this.

ooh i just had a thought. maybe we could rate everyone relative to one another. what i mean is i would have a list of everyone that i've rated, and i'd put ppl somewhere on that list depending on how good i think they are/who they are better and worse than. this way someone couldn't give out all negative ratings. only one person could be at the bottom of their list. i'm sure an algorithm could be figured out to average the opinion of everyone and see how everyone ranks relative to eachother.

might be a pain in the butt, but i think it would solve that problem. whaddya guys think? either way i think that something has to be in place to keep ppl from lowering everyones ratings altogether like that.

Interesting Idea ope, I still like an idea i heard a while back.

1-10 scale (1 not being bad but just a lower rating) and it costing $1 per rating point you give. That would make it so we wouldn't walk around handing everyone the highest rating but people could give ratings to everyone they like. It would satisfy both ends i think. It would also make it so that people who actually really contribute to SL get a higher rating than those that just go to every event to meet and get ratings. But both parties would get rated.... if you see what i'm saying


JV

Actually, I think you're now officially a rate miner if you use the word "rate".

Heh, who brought this up again, Ingie? Does anyone at all care anymore? The rating system encourages rate mining. If you want to spend your entire SL experience trying to goad others into rating you, please, be my guest. After all, I could use the company, hehe.

These days, I think most of us do what Merriman and Shebang do -- rate for what we see. If the user is well- or at least competently-dressed, and isn't a jerk, that's +1 for both Appearance and Behavior. If I've seen their build, and it's good, (pretty much anything other than a newbie cabin, in my book) then they get a +1 in Building too. You just have to look at the board to see that I think most of us rate others based on what we see. Building, the lowest category, is far below the other two.

Honestly though, I don't think the rating system works terribly well, but I've never been able to come up with anything better. It's simple, and frankly, it's time consuming to try to game it.

As for negative rating, it occurs to me that with my rating (thanks everyone, I think it's high enough, hehe) I could easily weather quite a bit of retaliation from any griefers and idiots I decided to rate negatively. Just think of it! I could be a one-woman neg-rating machine! Except I'm not. There simply aren't that many people I feel the need to rate negatively. Most of the things I'd give a neg rate for are violations of the ToS anyway, so what's the point?

If you want to solicit rates, go for it. If you want to complain about rate miners, knock yourself out. It's your Second Life to live. Like Shebang said here, you have choices to make. Second Life lets you do anything, but you can't do everything. Obsessing over your rating or getting riled up at what other people do with their time leaves less time for hanging out with friends or building things.

I mean, hey, the only reason I'm posting here instead of messing around in-world is because I'm still getting my account converted and I'm temporarily locked out.

Catherine

yeah i like 1-10 scale idea. i've always been for that. i'm actually not too sure that the charging would totally solve the problem tho. if someone has a rating of over 1 then everytime they give out a 1 rating they would be bringing their relative rating higher. and in this case that is also the cheapest rating to give. plus, i'm jsut not too crazy about having to pay to rate someone so i thought this might be another approach. but either way i'd be happy

I find it rude that people don't rate me back when I meet them. I mean, I'm being nice enough to rate them and help their stipend out, to me that's what it's all about. Think of a society where everyone spent a small amount of money to help out their fellow citizens.

Things would generally run smoother and people would have more money in their stipends. I rate just about everyone I see right off the bat, if they don't say thanks or they say thinks and don't rate me back I then change my rating of them to negative. It may sound harsh, but 1 buck is not very much money. Now if it costed more to rate someone I could see it, but it doesen't. Say for hypothetical reasons only, you lived in a life that was like this one. Everyone came together as a group to help each other out. Now for hypothetical opinions only, would you like or dislike that?

I just wondered, if people helped you put bread on your table by investing 1 dollar on you, and it helped you out in the long run, income wise, or even added more happiness to your life, would you still be reluctant to do the same for that generous person? Just hypothitical, not actually meaning anything here.

the only reason i said have the graduated cost on the rating scale is because if they all cost the same or nothing then noone would use 1-9 except the people that care about a valid rating scale, and everyone would just hand out 10's.

JV

THe only thing i really see wrong with this is, as i understand it this won't make more money in everyones stipends. From what i understand there is a stipend pool that we all share based on our rated and how they are relative to each other, so we could all have huge ratings from one massive communal rating ceremony but it would not increase that pool or our stipends.

JV

I think LL and all it's users need to take a course in Game Theory (the mathematical kind). If we could all give each other money by voting (lets say a vote costs $1 and every person you vote for instantly gets $100) then we could all go around and vote each other as much wealth as we needed.

The problem is that the total number of $ is fixed relative to server resources making it a zero-sum game. The purpose in making it zero-sum is not to torture us, it is to control the use of those resources, so the servers don't grind to a halt.

This means that every time you vote for someone who doesn't vote for you, they win and you lose. If you vote equally for each other, your votes pretty much cancel out. If you want to get together in a "voting club" you can improve everyone in the clubs situation as compared to people not in the club.

I've seen about 4 rules of voting etiquette presented here and as far as I can tell they are all rational. If someone attempts to make you feel guilty about your voting choices I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

As with any new game some adjustments may be necessary as we go along. Maybe more time is needed to see how things turn out before the rules get adjusted again. But in the mean time, let everyone interpret the voting system as best they can and not try and impose our own etiquette on everyone else.

Ultimately if the results are bad the rules will have to change to fit voting behavior, not the other way around.

OK, I promise to shut up about this.

Yes there will be more ways to abuse this. Pp will always find a way to work the system.
With TSO the way you got extra money was in how many friendship balloons you had. There were ppl there who would buy balloons from others to raise the amount of friends in order to remain in the top 100 list. They would if they had the opportunity ( additional accounts)) use the account to bring them selves extra money, and a balloon. Thankfully Linden Labs has tried to take steps to prevent the muling from occuring. THye have taken a strong stand on this kind of behavior and with making themselves availible to the citizens of SL hopefully these thigns will get nipped in the butt before they get out of hand, and not turn a blind eye like Maxis did, and allow anything to get outof control.
I am sure with many ppl leaving TSO. Some of the "balloon whores" will be showing up in SL. I am very much a person that belives in rating, if it is ment for the reason, it was intended. I will rate ppl after I have gotten to speak with them for a bit. How can you rate positve behavior if you haven't had a converstaion with some one. How can you rate their building skills if you have never seen what they do? Upon meeting some one for the first time the most you can actually rate is appearence. You can always change it.
I hope that the TSO ppl that come will soon realize that SL is not the same. That the ppl of SL report anyone offering money for their calling cards.

Haha! That saying is "nipped in the bud," Nyna, but "nipped in the butt" is cute. I'll have to start saying that.