Do away with "ratings"

http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/distract/ss.htm

The opposite fallacy is to do nothing because you assume nothing can be done.

And I have never suggested nothing be done. But there's a balance point between the two, which in my opinion involves an evolution of the current system to fix some of the flaws in it, and in the perception of it. A future proposal of complex rules isn't an "if" it's what's happening already.

But of course the simple evolutionary proposals have already been shot down repeatedly...

1. Make ratings anonymous
   - people will not know who negged them
   
2. Neg ratings expire after n units of time
   - some people claim if negs expire then so should positives
   - nobody wants to have to go through the "work" to "maintain" a rating on someone
   
3. Pile all three ratings into one overall rating
   - people complain they can't give another rating to someone for their building skill
   

So with that in mind, the only ideas I can come up with are ideas which completely replace the existing system, tuned to make gaming as inconvenient as possible.

[Edited to give examples of the counter-arguments to each minor evolutionary change]

Another possibility is for people to stop worrying if they get neg rated. Griefers don't worry about it so why should anyone else?

That's sort of like saying:

People should stop worrying about pollution to the environment. Big business doesn't worry about it, so why should anyone else?

The inherent problem is people often use negatives as a punishment rather than a judgement.

A better ratings system tries to emphasize more of the latter while minimizing the former.

People looking to cause trouble will always find a way to cause trouble. That's what they are here for, and they will find out how to grief you whether it is through ratings, firebombings, language, etc.

To them, finding out how to do something that makes you feel bad is part of their "game". Just like "bad hackers" are thrilled at cracking someone's technological defenses, and "good hackers" are interested in how to pick some piece of technology apart to learn how it works.

part of the argument here seems to keep revolving around the fact that its the people not the system that have the 'problem'


what people aren't accounting is that the ratings system is a system *for* the people of second life to use... and if its not working wellfor the population of SL. If its doing more harm to people than good... causing anxiety and making SL less fun.. regardless if its a problem with the rules, or with people abusing them... that *IS* inherently a problem with the system.


prohibition seemed like a great law at the time. It would lower crime, reduce domestic problems, increase productivity etc. etc.

It did not account however for the human propensity to get what we want, by any means necessary... and because it did not account for that it was actually in *REALITY* a very very bad law for the people of america.


It happens all the time in government actually... a 'good' law is proposed with a grand ideal... but because people don't live up to the specific pretenses that lead to that ideal.. the law itself ends up leading to another ideal entirely and becoming a *bad* law




to sum up a 'perfect' system that fails to account for a 'flawed' population is actually not perfect at all... but rather is *more* flawed than a slightly imperfect system that does however account for many of those flaws present.


one needs only look at a fameous quote "i disapprove of what you have to say,but i will defend to the death your right to say it"

(a system must inherently be flawed to accept and in fact expect imperfection from someone in order to become as close as otherwise possible to the ideal for everyone)

The Wuffie system looks interesting, but couldn't some disturbed person unload thier whole rating pool on you as negative ratings?

I was wondering, do we really need negative ratings? Are they actually good for anything?

Have any of us looked at someone with a high negative rating and said.. "wow, I had better stay away from him."

If someone is braking community standards, (hate, general nastiness etc) and you can just report them, why would you negatively rate someone anyway?

In the least they could keep the current fairly useless system and remove negative rating, or make negative ratings go away with time as others have suggested.

Before 1.2, when resources were basically distributed via community control, yes. Ratings up = bonus up = more tax credit = more building. The reverse was true also. So in the end people who did good things got more resources, people who did bad things got less. Not perfect of course, but nothing with humans involved ever seems to be.

Now our wallets control that, so they're good for the psychological harm they can possibly cause.

For this reason, I mentioned that it should be unit-per-time limited. That way the person would have to be quite persistent to unload their entire pool onto someone else.


In a more well developed system, having the ability to decrease someone's whuffie score can be useful for discouraging bad behavior.


They are useful, but not in the current system. The current system has such a low signal to noise ratio that you really can't tell too much about someone from their ratings.


Some people would tell you that reporting someone often results in no action from LL.

The problem is made worse by the fact that when action is taken against the griefer, it is not reported back to the person or group who filed the reports, so there is no feedback to know that the problem had been dealt with.

A good example is with the regular griefing of an event which has been the inspiration for several threads. Apparently a regular event has been disrupted by the same people four times in a row, with no apparent action being taken to stop the griefers. It would seem this is a prime example of how the reporting system is ineffective.

On top of all of this, LL's goal seems to be to make SL as self-governing as possible. The problem with this concept is we don't have adequate tools to perform this ability.


As I mentioned above, the it seems like all the obvious simple improvments on the existing system have been met with stern opposition.

In the specific examples you've pointed out, I believe the objection was that removing ratings will make people behave worse becuase you can't directly discourage bad behavior.

And to make ratings expire usually led to the argument that it'd be a lot of work having to regularly re-rate someone.

Just.
Do.
Away.
With.
Ratings.

I prefer Eltee's suggestion, where each additional rating of someone in a given day costs more of your wuffle than the previous one. That way, someone can unload their entire ratings pool to neg you, but it'll cost them far more than it hurts you.

For example, someone could expend 55 points, but only be able to give you -10. Expending 105 will only let them give a -14. A minor neg of, for example, -2, will only cost 3 points.

I agree with the idea to increase the cost of each rating made to the same person in a day.