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Author Topic:   New Feature: Message Rating System
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 1 of 258 (526625)
09-28-2009 8:15 PM


I've just installed a new feature: a message rating system.
Each message can now be rated on a scale from 1 to 5. Little rating buttons now appear in the left hand column next to each message. Messages that have been rated display their rating. Members whose messages have been rated are given a rating which is displayed with their profile info next to each message, and with their member profiles.
This is just the bare bones. In the future the feature will be made graphically attractive (something like the Netflix approach), rankings of the best posts by week, month, year, and all-time will be provided, and members will be able to comment on rated messages.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by NosyNed, posted 09-28-2009 8:20 PM Admin has replied
 Message 3 by Theodoric, posted 09-28-2009 8:28 PM Admin has replied
 Message 6 by Dr Jack, posted 09-29-2009 5:00 AM Admin has seen this message but not replied
 Message 49 by shalamabobbi, posted 08-15-2010 1:15 AM Admin has seen this message but not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 4 of 258 (526631)
09-28-2009 8:30 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by NosyNed
09-28-2009 8:20 PM


Re: Logged in
NosyNed writes:
It may not be obvious that you have to be logged in to get the buttons.
The software checks to make sure you're logged in before it will display the buttons. This is because each member's rating for a message is stored in the database by his member ID. The database is updated directly from the mouse-click using Ajax.
But what a wonderful coincidence that you're on-line! As I mentioned, I want to make the feature more graphically attractive. Can I get an icon that looks like this, only icon-size, of course:

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by NosyNed, posted 09-28-2009 8:20 PM NosyNed has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 5 of 258 (526633)
09-28-2009 8:30 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Theodoric
09-28-2009 8:28 PM


1 is lowest or worst, 5 is highest or best.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Theodoric, posted 09-28-2009 8:28 PM Theodoric has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


(1)
Message 10 of 258 (526737)
09-29-2009 8:26 AM


How good an idea is this?
Responding to the last few posts, I don't have any experience with message rating systems at other boards, but the downside risks mentioned above do seem real to me. The intent is consistent with what LindaLou mentioned at one point, and is the same as the Post of the Month threads. Members should rate messages as to their quality, not as to whether they agree or disagree, or whether they like or dislike the author.
In case it helps, I'll describe the algorithm for calculating member ratings that I'll be installing soon. The current algorithm is extremely simplistic, just the average rating across all of the ratings other member's have assigned (people might have noticed that they cannot rate their own posts).
The new algorithm will first calculate a single rating from each of the other members by averaging all their ratings for the member whose rating is being calculated. Then the member's rating will be the average of all these ratings from all the other members. This prevents any single member from overly influencing a member's rating by visiting all that member's old messages and giving every single one a low or high rating. When someone does this, all those ratings still only count once when calculating a member's rating.
One advantage of the rating system here is that your feedback goes directly to the implementer. This isn't a case of somebody buying bulletin board software and then one day deciding to enable the message rating feature. This is a case of somebody implementing a bulletin board software system from scratch, and then one day finally getting around to implementing a message rating system. Since this person would like to one day market this software, features like message rating (and many other features, too) are essential in order to be competitive. EvC Forum is actually the testbed for dBoard bulletin board software. The current membership are the guinea pigs for this development process, and the big advantage is that I'm not only listening to all feedback, I can actually go in and modify the software in reaction to that feedback.
I hope people have noticed that this board has features that no other bulletin board system has, and this will be the case with the message rating system, too, it will just take a little more time. Sometime soon you'll be able to list best messages of the day, week, month, year and all-time, not just for the current, but for any. And every message with one or more ratings will be able to collect comments about the message and why it is good or bad or whatever, similar to the Post of the Month threads but much more flexible since any and all can add comments and discussions can develop. It will be as if every rated message had its own thread.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by New Cat's Eye, posted 09-29-2009 10:35 AM Admin has seen this message but not replied
 Message 13 by RAZD, posted 09-30-2009 9:00 PM Admin has seen this message but not replied
 Message 16 by Perdition, posted 10-02-2009 11:43 AM Admin has seen this message but not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 21 of 258 (527891)
10-03-2009 7:26 AM
Reply to: Message 20 by Adminnemooseus
10-02-2009 11:59 PM


Re: A 3 button admin only demerit system?
I'm actually responding to the last few posts...
A "moderator only" demerit type system seems a good idea, I like it. For anyone familiar with soccer where the accumulation of a certain number of yellow cards (I think 7 here in the US) brings an automatic one game suspension (a red card is ejection from the current game and suspension from the next), the software could issue an automatic suspension after the accumulation of a certain number of points.
The number of levels in the current rating system is not hardcoded, and I will be adding a couple lines in the board's control panel to make it settable. Directors will be able to set it to as many or as few levels as they like.
The rating system is a feature that I have to keep turned on in order to hone it to production quality and to wring out the bugs. Some with experience with them elsewhere haven't had much good to say about them, so I'm not sure how seriously to take it yet, not that I won't be making frequent mention of my lofty rating in the moderator lounge.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 20 by Adminnemooseus, posted 10-02-2009 11:59 PM Adminnemooseus has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 22 by RAZD, posted 10-03-2009 11:31 AM Admin has replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 23 of 258 (527940)
10-03-2009 11:50 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by RAZD
10-03-2009 11:31 AM


Re: A 3 button admin only demerit system?
RAZD writes:
If you want to keep a record of POTM through the radio button response on a members profile, with links to the posts, then that might be a value when running yearly stats.
All such information is retained in the database. At some point I'll be making it available.
Netflix adjusts a movie's ratings according to how you've rated other movies relative to how everyone else has rated them, and I plan to do something similar, including detection of when someone is rating in inverted fashion.
But I hope we don't agonize over the rating system too much. If it happens to be EvC Forum that manages to develop the most effective rating system yet devised, more power to us, but if not, it's just a board feature I'm testing.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by NosyNed, posted 10-03-2009 12:38 PM Admin has replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 27 of 258 (528240)
10-05-2009 10:41 AM


Reputation Points
Anyone ever heard of a member rating system called "reputation points". I think vBulletin might use it.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by Dr Jack, posted 10-05-2009 10:48 AM Admin has replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 32 of 258 (528279)
10-05-2009 1:54 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by Coyote
10-05-2009 1:07 PM


Re: Reputation Points
Coyote writes:
Granny Magda writes:
AbE; Shouldn't admin messages and accounts be exempt from ratings?
And from ignore?
Moderators and so forth couldn't be ignored, and in turn they couldn't use the ignore feature themselves.
About making moderators exempt from ratings, I don't know. It seems like a good option to be able to make them exempt, but I actually like the idea that membership can give their opinion about moderation, and just let me apologize profusely to anyone I've recently suspended.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by Coyote, posted 10-05-2009 1:07 PM Coyote has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 33 by iano, posted 10-05-2009 2:32 PM Admin has replied
 Message 36 by Taz, posted 10-05-2009 6:55 PM Admin has replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 34 of 258 (528284)
10-05-2009 2:40 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by iano
10-05-2009 2:32 PM


Re: Reputation Points
iano writes:
A real boon would be one-click text formatting features built into the reply box. The need to write out dbcodes in 'longhand' being a bit of a drag in this day and age - especially in what is an otherwise slick-as-can-be user interface.
Can you point me at a discussion board that has implemented this feature in a way you like?

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by iano, posted 10-05-2009 2:32 PM iano has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by iano, posted 10-05-2009 6:42 PM Admin has replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 37 of 258 (528336)
10-05-2009 8:41 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by Taz
10-05-2009 6:55 PM


Re: Reputation Points
Taz writes:
I just made it my mission to give a 1 to every moderator post I come across, no matter what content.
Just to save you some time, if you're going to give every moderator post the score of 1 then you only need to vote for one message from each moderator. It's the average of all your ratings for a moderator's messages that matters. That average rating is combined with the average rating for that moderator from all the other members, then an average is computed. You could rate every single message from a moderator a 1 and it would be the same as just rating one of his messages a 1.
Hope this doesn't spoil your fun. I know how enjoyable it must be watching those little radio buttons blink while the database is udpated.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by Taz, posted 10-05-2009 6:55 PM Taz has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 38 of 258 (528337)
10-05-2009 8:43 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by iano
10-05-2009 6:42 PM


Re: Reputation Points
Thanks, Iano. That's not hard to do at all. I was worried you were requesting WYSIWYG.
But let me qualify "not hard to do at all." There's still only one of me. It won't be soon. Sorry.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by iano, posted 10-05-2009 6:42 PM iano has seen this message but not replied

  
Admin
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Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 39 of 258 (528340)
10-05-2009 8:47 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by Dr Jack
10-05-2009 10:48 AM


Re: Reputation Points
Mr Jack writes:
I really like Post of the Month, I think it's been remarkable successful at bringing light on the best posts, rewarding good posts and promoting the best of the site. I think any new system you bring in should try and be closer to that model than any other.
Good point. I'll give this some careful thought. Maintaining the advantages of the current approach while adding automation feels tricky.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Dr Jack, posted 10-05-2009 10:48 AM Dr Jack has seen this message but not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 40 of 258 (528341)
10-05-2009 8:51 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by NosyNed
10-03-2009 12:38 PM


Re: calculations
NosyNed writes:
I suggest that it be a "moving average" so the most current ratings be weighted most highly. Otherwise it will eventually "lock in" and never change.
Good point. What if I made the rating only pay attention to ratings from active members? Active members are anyone who has visited the board while logged in during the past 90 days (the time period is settable through the control panel and can range from 1 day up to infinity).

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by NosyNed, posted 10-03-2009 12:38 PM NosyNed has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 41 by NosyNed, posted 10-05-2009 9:02 PM Admin has replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 42 of 258 (528345)
10-05-2009 9:12 PM
Reply to: Message 41 by NosyNed
10-05-2009 9:02 PM


Re: calculations
But the last 20 ratings could be from long ago, or someone could have rated messages posted long ago. With moving averages for stocks you're guaranteed that the last x prices are for the last x days, but for messages the last x ratings could be all over the map timewise. I was thinking that the member active period could act as a reliable time horizon. The average would "move" just like a stock average, but instead of averaging a fixed number of values it would average all the values over a moving period of fixed length.
Looking at the example chart on the webpage you linked to, wouldn't it be neat to see member's ratings plotted over time?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 41 by NosyNed, posted 10-05-2009 9:02 PM NosyNed has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 43 of 258 (528347)
10-05-2009 9:16 PM
Reply to: Message 41 by NosyNed
10-05-2009 9:02 PM


Re: calculations
Let me try again. I suddenly realized you were talking about the message ratings, not the member ratings. You're thinking of placing a time stamp on each rating for a message and only averaging the most recent x ratings. Let me think on that.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 41 by NosyNed, posted 10-05-2009 9:02 PM NosyNed has not replied

  
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