Rating system solutions!

Well instead of pointing out the obvious, that our rating system needs a revamp. Post your CONSTRUCTIVE solution\ideas here!

The only thing I can think of right now is maybe a points system! Liek you are only allowed X amount of points per RL day. THEY DO NOT STACK! if you don't use them one day they will not be like day1+day2+day3 they will stay at the limit of say 1 a day. And make the total general formula like 1 + ((integer)(X / 100)) (that 100 could be changed) where X is all your rating added up.. + and -.

A a noob would start with 1 points per day max to spend (free) and someone with +200 would have 5 points per day to spend.

And maybe have more catrgories, like... behavior, help, scripting, building, event holding, texturing, avatar making. You would ONLY be able to rate a script + or - by Right-clicking on THE script (or object that is scripted)! same with event.. you would only be able to rate an AV during THEIR event time! The only rating that you could give out anytime would be behaviour and helping ppl.

That's it for now.. feel free to add on! LINDENS feed back on some of these would be great!

Categories! After reading Kex's post, I foudn that my solution lacks categories! So put all this stuff with the stuff above!

A ton of excellent suggestions were posted in this thread: /13/33/11121/1.html

Too many for me to bring over.

I've had a few thoughts.

A ratio sytem... IE, you can only give so many XXX ratings for so many XXX pos ratings... Make it, say... I dunno... 40 pos ratings to give a single neg rating, or something.

Temporary negative ratings: Ratings need to be re-enforced. Negative ratings only 'keep' for, say... 2 weeks, lets say. Unless you get a second neg rating, which resets the timer on the first one, and then has its own. So if you had 2 neg ratings, you would need 4 weeks to get rid of them all. This should work per-catagory, to combat the tripple neg raters.

Just a couple of ideas.

** deleted **

As for limiting types of ratings you can give. I don't agree with that. As the suggestion I posted on top, limit the number of ratings you can give but not the type!

Rather than doing away with ratings altogether, why not do away with negative rating? People either sneak around in the dead of night with trail accounts giving them anonymously (which doesn't teach the recepient anything; likely they are unaware why they got neg rated.) or the legitimate neg rater is immediately neg rated back by the recipient and all their friends.

Negative ratings provide no real social leverage against bad behavior. All they do is cause forums to clog with complaints about being anonymously neg rated.

I have 2 systems I like. I will admit to not reading everyones posts on this subject - no interenet except what I can sneak at work and the 6 million posts on it preclude that.

Obfuscated Ratings
You can rate someone Positive or Negative or Nuetral like you can now, with a few more categories. However the amount a rating effects your 'ratings score' is a number calculated by a weird formula that takes into account your age (in SL), their age (in SL), number of ratings given, the rating of the person giving you a rating (both overall and in the category they are rating you), etc. No warnings/messages at all about ratings. If you want to tell someone what they did wrong then tell them.

The result would be that getting a rating by PlayerA who has been in world a long time, has lots of good ratings will effect your score a significant amount, while a negative rating by newbie001 won't. Someone who gets a lot of building ratings from good builders would have a higher score than someone who got a lot of building ratings from people with low building score but high overall score and they would have higher effect on building ratings than people with low scores. This idea would have to be combined with limits on how you rate as suggested elswhere (can only rate building on a building etc). All this is hidden and all you ever see is your rating change and you would never know why. I don't know that this idea scales well.

Smilies
I said it before in jest, and I say it again for real. This would require taking ratings completely out of any rewards system. Replace it with a series of 'smilies'. Have Happy, sad, confused, party, angry, exploding, lovey I don't know. You only get to assign 1 to a player. You can look at their profile and choose Happy, if you later decide they are Sad you change that to Sad. When you look at their profile you get a nice little bar graph of their percentage of each smilie.

I like the smilies idea best.

I have to get back to work.

Correct. Each of my negative ratings have been given to me while I was offline. Seems the "negator" didn't want to be AV to AV with the "negatee".

It's the same ol' person over and over again. I guess little things amuse little minds with this "I'll show her! 'neg rate'

LL needs to be made aware of these neg ratings when they occur -- because if this person is only in-world to do neg ratings, could that not be considered a form of harrassment?

Unfortunately, the $9.95 trial account(s) with no limit on credit cards -- this is only going to continue by some small-minded individuals. Personally, I think they should join a gym and take some boxing classes to work out their anxiety/anger.

New rating system please.

To me the easiest solution to the ratings would be just to eliminate them. It's been a long time since ratings had any effect on my behavior, and since 1.2 there hasn't been a really strong motivator to try and get them. Sure, you'll get a bit bigger stipend, but it no longer determines how much land you can have to any great degree.

Generally these days, I'll get a rate, and react with consternation as I realize I haven't rated others that deserve it too.

Anyway, here's a whole slew of options, any of which I'd prefer to the current system.

A. Do away with 'em.

B. Ama's suggestion - a simple smile or frown, except make it completely anonymous.

C. Replace the ratings with a publicly viewable comments page, where anyone can write what they think of the person in their profile. No monetary effect.

D. Whuffie. Make the ratings system subconscious. A person's rating would be determined by the number of people who smile (or frown), laugh, curse, etc. in their presence. In this case giving a rate would simply be a matter of appending the appropriate gesture or emoticon to what you're saying in chat or IM. Doing it multiple times on different days would have a cumulative effect.

In each case you'd be skipping any pretense that ratings are for anything other than how social and respected someone is. In each case you'd also do away with the separate notification of rating taking place.

I'm particularly in favor of "D", although it would be the hardest to implement effectively. I'm expressing happiness and admiration to people all the time but I often forget to take the extra step and rate them. (D'oh!)

I don't see that the current rating system has that much of an impact on the game for or against. I once wrote a forum post with my own solution to modify the ratings system, but that was the end of the voting box era, and I was more suggesting ways to replace THAT. Expanding ratings was more of a side-effect.

Ratings don't have a huge effect on the game, negative ratings all the more so. I've got 5 or 6 neg ratings (no idea why) which only have the effect to cancel out 5 or 6 of my positive ratings. A drop in the bucket. If someone has hundreds of total positive ratings, a dozen mystery "negs" won't make much of a difference.

There are many ways the rating system can be changed to add detail and additional categories. But it comes with a cost of being more of a chore to mess with and maintain. (Some people all ready forget to rate. Hey -- Me too.)


Now, I feel that calling cards are also a bit of a pain. With changes to SL since 1.0, calling cards have lost most of their reasons for existing. About the only advantages they give you now are

1) know when someone logs on or off
(Though they don't do this well, since you can't customize the behavior.)
2) know where they are in the world
(Since the people in question are usually your friend, you can always IM and ASK. With Offer Teleport, this is even faster.)
3) make IM groupings -- IM a folder of CCs

Now with the latest changes, we can bring up someone's profile and add notes to it that only we can see. This means that, somewhere, data specific to that person, as they relate to me, is being stored. Why not add a checkbox to that screen:

[ x ] Notify me when this person logs on / off

This eliminates the need for #1 reason for calling cards. But, you say, now anyone can type my name into the Find menu, get my profile, and check the box to know when I log on or off. To solve this, add another checkbox to the notes page:

[ x ] Allow this person to know when I log on / off

Turn that off and that person won't know. Now since most people either want to be totally private or totally open, a checkbox in preferences would set the default of this checkbox for everyone you don't individually check or uncheck:

[ x ] Allow everyone to know when I log on / off

Modify the wording of these checkboxes, or add a second set to control who can or can't locate you on the map. That's #2.


If you are still with me, you may be asking what the heck this has to do with this thread's topic. Well, this is the final step that should tie it all together.

In everyone's profile, there is a new "Picks" tab that shows PLACES that they like. I propose a new tab for "Friends". The "Rate..." button on someone's profile is replaced with "Add To Friends". Likewise, right-clicking someone has the same change to the pie menu.

Now the weekly stipend bonus comes from how many people have you on their friends list and how many people have something of yours in their Picks list. This matches the Building and Behavior rating categories.

The Appearance rating should get the axe. [RANT] If you use it to credit attractiveness, well, it can take a lot of skill and effort to make a truly ugly avatar. If you use it to credit skill in making avatars, you shouldn't dock a newbie because he doesn't now how yet, and perhaps that ravishing beauty is a store-bought shell. But mostly I dislike it because it echos the nastiness in real life where someone is treated differently because of the way they look. Second Life is ALL ABOUT people looking however they want. There's NO reason to reward and penalize their choice of appearance. Why should someone get a smaller or larger paycheck because of the way the frickkin' LOOK? HUH? Is THAT the Second Life spirit? I ask YOU, Phillip! *fume*[/RANT]


Anyway... *straightens imaginary tie*

For a bit more detail, add a comment field next to each person's name in your Friends list where you can say why they are on your list. (Nice person, good mentor, stylish dresser, accomplished builder, master scripter...)


Anyone can view anyone's Friends just as they can view the Picks. No more negative-anythings. You can review and change your list at any time. No notifications. No numbers. Clean, friendly, and useful to find other people you may want to meet.

And that's my idea. ''''

I like that idea Tiger...

Another suggestion I had is to have it so you can only rate people if you have their calling card.

The only thing about this kind of system is, say I'm flying around and see an awsome build, now, I want to rate the positivly because they deserve it, how can I show my appreciation?

I'm all for the ideas of adding the options onto Calling Cards, "Allow anyone to see when i go on/offline" check on and off, "Allow this person to see me go on/offline", "Notify me when this person goes on/offline" only enabled if you have permission, etc. Also, add onto that "allow anyone to track me" and "allow only this person to track me" aaaannndddd, also, folder permissions, right click the folder and you get the same option but for all the calling cards you have in that folder group...

Off topic there, but argh I really want that...

Anyway... The only downfall of the friends lists is the rating for people you can't or don't want to have in friends list yet want to show appreciation.

Personaly I wouldn't mind seeing negative ratings go away all together either. Then you either rate a person, or you don't.

The idea of a message list for everyone is kinda bad because you'll probly end up with people abusing that and spamming it.

What about, getting rid of neg ratings, but in order to notify people of griefers have a "tagging" system...

Something like, lets say someone comes and pushes everyone around, you can right click select some option and it will "tag" that person in some form with a temporary griefer tag, this tag wears off in say... x amount of minutes unless a alot of people "Tag" the person alot of times, the more tags the longer it lasts.

This tag would be visible to everyone.

Kinda works how in some MMORPG's with a PK system, where if you Player Kill someone your name becomes red or some other color, it eventualy wears off after you stop killing people or kill monsters etc.

The only downfall of this is if someone gets all their friends to tag you every day alot of times conesqutivly alot of hours, that would then be visible greifing though.

The Tagging would not effect anything about you personaly(bonuses etc.), and you could not see who taged you (except lindens of course to help with abuse cases).

It would just be a way to inform others about whos greifing and who to stay away from.

Thats the only way I can think Neg ratings would even be used for a good perpous.

Lets look at how each rating is supposed to or would legitly be used...

Positive, you like the persons build/appearence/behaviour, keep up the good work.

Negative, you dislike the persons build/appearence/behaviour, fix it up and maybe I'll positive rate you later, or your horrible I don't like you go away.

Now... legitly... if you neg rate someone and they turn around their style, will you really positive rate them? Most likely not as you may or may not even see their good work ever again.

So ratings are pretty much forever, you rate someone once, thats how you feel about them forever.

Good side of this? Well if someone continuesly produces good work you don't have to keep rerating them as you might have to with a retroactive system.

I love Xylor and Tiger's and other's works, but I hardly see them myself, just because I don't see them, yet they still pump out good work day after day, should they get less money for that?

Thats the problem with retrograde, people who do good work aren't always rewarded, even less so if they hardly go out of their house, more social/popular people are rewarded.

Thats all I can really think of.

I would say something that gives more of a fluctuation than Good or Bad or None, something that is anonmyous (if they want you to know, they can tell you theirself), something thats NOT retroactive.

Sorry for the long rantings, but we must address the problems of a system when also offering solutions.

How about people that have an overall better rating have their ratings count more than say, a newbie.

I wouldn't mind that... it would prevent people from using temp accounts to drive up ratings.

And people who are proficient in a field would then kind of be doing you an "honor".

But then lets say, someone has all their friends positive rate them, then they positive rate them back... again you could potentialy maybe break the system?

Might take more, but its still possible, but then no system is perfect.

However, whos to say a newbies opinion isn't really as important as mine or yours?

And as you get more and more ratings do you have to keep re-rating people? Or does your rating auto improve?

Like say if I rate you with 140 positive ratings, do I have to rerate you at 200 to up the rating?

great ideas guys! Keep em coming! To stop the mass rating... inpose a limit per day as stated above!