New Feature: Message Rating System

And from ignore?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

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.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

One of the things I like about this sites interface over others has been:a) the dark background / light text format which is easy on the eyesb) post management: what's a response to what and has it been responded to.b) the complete lack of gimmicks/noisy graphics.Message rating doesn't tell me anything much because partisanship is usually a feature of the discussion sites I visit. I've only used the ignore function for kinds of posters who don't feature / continue in an annoying vein ... for long here.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?

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This is about the best one I've seen - you get to see formatting changes live on the reply screen rather than just seeing the formatting codes and having to preview in order to see what things will look like. www.boards.iemessage reply screenshotEdited by iano, : No reason given.

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.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

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.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Good point. I'll give this some careful thought. Maintaining the advantages of the current approach while adding automation feels tricky.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

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).

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I hadn't thought about by member so much.see: Moving Averages - Simple and Exponential [ChartSchool]If you use the last 20 ratings (to see if that works) and keep dropping ratings as in the first example at that site I think it will work.

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?

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.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Hi all!I'll be implementing a redesign of the rating system sometime soon, and when I release it all current message ratings will be deleted.The redesigned approach will focus on the positive, and it will tie in to some kind of post-of-the-month type system. My thinking could change, but right now I'm considering a two step approach where first a post must be nominated, and only then can voting on it begin. Member's wouldn't get ratings, but if they've had post-of-the-month nominations then that will be indicated in some way with the rest of their information in message lists, and in their profile.Comments, ideas and feedback are, of course, welcome.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This seems like a good idea Percy.I'm finding that if I'm talking in a thread about theism, the atheists don't rate my posts very highly. But I've picked up lots of 5s in a couple of science threads. I thought it was a nice perk for one post I put detail into, but the other posts are short and nothing special; I don't know who rated them 5s or why.Part of me thinks, I've got a good member rating now, so I'm going to avoid topics where I'm unpopular. No way will I talk about the paranormal anywhere. It shouldn't matter to me at all really but I find it hard to ignore my ratings and those of others. Why on earth are you at 2.1??So yes, limiting ratings to post-of-the-month material sounds very reasonable to me.