Abusive Ratings

[apotheosis]

Could you possibly appoint a moderator (someone who frequents the site) who can delete abusive ratings? This includes ratings that are specifically designed to insult the author without actually taking the story into consideration and ratings that are incredible low compared to the average rating without any explanation simply as a way to discredit the authors work.

I know many of the hardest working authors here have been the victims of abusive ratings and this is not what these ratings were designed for. Clearing all the ratings is not a viable option because that may eliminate upwards of 20 or 30 legitimate ratings.

[Vesnic]

I see what gojo did to HoID and I agree it's awful. However, let's keep in mind that many of us write and relish really abusive ratings (albeit for stories that deserve it). I don't think there should be any limit to the amount of abuse heaped on, but this does point once again to the need for a weighted rating system. Apoth, perhaps you could figure out a formula for determining weighted ratings and submit it to Sev. Maybe I'm not remembering, but as far as I can recall, we've all done a fair amount of bitching about this but no one's actually put forth a solid solution yet.

[End Master]

A weighted system really still seems too complex for this place, not to mention we've got "elite members" that routinely give abusive ratings more often than several of the more reasonable lurkers. Not to mention all those lurkers/noobs/etc that are giving your stories 10s rather than 1s would end up never amounting to a whole hell of a lot since you know most people rating aren't even writing stories and just pop in every now and then. It works both ways you see.

I'd rather just put up with the occasional idiot, and if your story is good enough, you'll eventually be vindicated by other giving you good ratings.

Personally I can tolerate abusive ratings, it's usually the stupid comments that accompany such ratings that you can't actually respond to directly, that are more annoying. Sure you can PM the fucktard or "revenge rate" but the fact still remains that you've got an idiotic comment on your story section.

Given that it's YOUR story, you should at least be able to slam detractors all you want on it. You've still got the 1s and 2s, but at least you can defend your crappy story with verbal abuse.

Not to sing a praise of our hated enemies CYS, but they've got a good option for that with their rating and comment system. You can respond back to comments. Worth1000 allows you to do it too.

EDIT: Not to say Apoth's idea is a bad one, but you'd be bound to get some complaints of mod abuse and the slight possibility of mod "corruption".

[apotheosis]

There are some ratings that are obviously abusive. If they give a 1 and no comment or give a 1 and just put up profanity and insults, the rating should be deleted. I think complaining would be minimal if we had a good moderator. It would have to be someone who is on the site a lot. End, DEP, myself, Ves, or Usoki are all good candidates.

[Usoki]

Hmmm...yes, but unless you wanted to have a "flag for moderation" command, it would also have to be someone who's constantly looking at stories and checking out new ratings. Without such a command, the candidate list goes down to you, End, or DEP.

[apotheosis]

It could just be by PM request.

[Locke]

I believe Worth1000 had a decent rating system. Perhaps there could be some sort "flag as abuse" button to alert a moderator or automatically remove the comment when flagged a certain number of times by unique users (necessarily logged in users, not different IP addresses). In that way a truly abusive comment would be taken care of in short order via one method or another. As someone who doesn't care much what ratings or comments a story garners (my own included), it's really not an urgent matter to me, but as some care a great deal for that validation these are my thoughts.

[Usoki]

That's actually an interesting point...we wouldn't even need a moderator in that case- we just need a certain number of people to flag it... Except, maybe the owner of the story has to approve of the flagged comment getting removed? Let's say, we get 10 people who are like drums to flag an awesome rating of DEPs solely because it has the word 'fuck' in it. DEP does good ratings, and the number's probably accurate. But if it gets removed, then that story has just lost an accurate rating- probably dropping its score- because of its content, not whether or not it was accurate.

So, in other words...it takes a bunch of people to remove a rating, but the owner has to agree that he wants it removed before it actually happens.

[apotheosis]

I think a moderator would be simplest. This site isn't that active or that big where it would be an issue.

[donteatpoop]

While the weighted system would be ideal (and has been submitted twice), a moderator would be the bast alternate solution. If this site were larger and had more people who would bother to hit the flag button, I could see where it might be removed. But with traffic here, it'll be years before a comment gets flagged. Someone sends a message to the mod, mod wieghs it out, maybe brings it to the infinite council, and decides whether it should stand or not.

[apotheosis]

We could also use infinite council as a way to weight ratings.... sort of...

Like, lets say DEP gets a 1 on one of his best stories. He would post it in an infinite-counil thread, the other members of the infinite-council would decide if this rating needs to be offset because it was from some newbie who wrote no reason for his rating what so ever and never contributed to the site... if we all agreed then infinite-council (the account) would rate the story a 10 to compensate.

[Nappi]

We could also use infinite council as a way to weight ratings.... sort of...

Like, lets say DEP gets a 1 on one of his best stories. He would post it in an infinite-counil thread, the other members of the infinite-council would decide if this rating needs to be offset because it was from some newbie who wrote no reason for his rating what so ever and never contributed to the site... if we all agreed then infinite-council (the account) would rate the story a 10 to compensate.


would this moderator also adjust the ratings from people who give you a ten then describe all the story's shortcomings?I have read quite alot of stories and even rated a few,and though I havent "contributed" I feel my ratings are still as valid as the ones given by the old timers here who score a story a ten but dont give a comment or a reason why.Why dont you just take your fukkin lumps and move the fuk on you whiney ass little twit.You have started nearly every thread in this section with your pointless contests.You fuck heads go on and on with me in the old forum about the sanctities of the freedom of speech but yet here you all are debating the best way to water down the opinions of others so as to preserve what you think is your story's rightful position (a position based solely on the opinions of others,hence a rating system).The guy that rated your story gave a good reason why he rated it,he may be erroneous in his mindset but nonetheless its his fucking opinion and his right to post it you leftwing little fart.:D

[apotheosis]

No of course, this is only for ratings with no rationale whatsoever or completely irrelevant comments such as "Feeling Froggie?"

[End Master]

Lol.

Actually Michael’s ratings and comments were sort of expected during that little incident, so those particular ones I cheerfully laugh at. If anything they serve as a nice little monument of just how bad I (and Katie) got to him. “Furries” on the other hand was much more irritating. (Which is why I’d like an option to at least write responses on your own story to cuss people out for leaving idiotic comments)

However that’s exactly why I don’t want a weighted system here either. There are tons of lurkers whose opinions I would “value” a lot more than certain “vets”.

Ignoring the obvious and serial culprit here, let’s use another example: Cab.

Cab isn’t a “vocal” member but he’s been here a long time and written a few stories. He went and rated Drag’s From Darkness Story a 5. Which is pretty low considering that it’s a solidly written story. However perhaps Cab found it boring, dunno, he never gave a reason. But in any case that’s his right.

Take the same story and someone called Vash who just joined earlier this year gave the story a 10 and explained why he liked it. Again completely their right.

You start weighting the rating according to “seniority” and you’re going to end up with a lot more “unfairness” than you have now. Get a 10 by someone who just joined the site? Means nothing and barely registers. Get a 1 by someone who wrote a couple stories back in 2003 and hasn’t been here since until just recently? Your entire story rating starts going down the drain.

That’s why I say let all the ratings be equal. No, it’s not perfect, but I think it’s better for this site’s purposes.



As for the mod thing, like I said I can deal with abusive ratings since I’ve only gotten a few and most of the time, people (Active members and lurkers) are rating my stories high so it usually balances out anyway. So whether we had a mod or not wouldn’t make any difference to me. (Unless the mod turned out to be a complete dickhead.)

I can see where some ratings would piss some off, but I can see what Nappi’s talking about as well. So I’m fairly neutral on the rating mod issue, but I doubt if we’d have one anyway, since as far as I can tell Sev likes to have total control over this site and is reluctant to hand over a little power to anyone.


Locke, go give Apoth’s HOID story a high rating and some praising comments, he’s probably just sick of looking at the 1 on the top of his comments list. (Yes, Apoth I sympathize and it is very annoying. I have to see "furries" at the top of Alpha Wolf anytime I check the ratings. Ves, go rate it!)

[JJJ-thebanisher]

A weighted system really still seems too complex for this place, not to mention we've got "elite members" that routinely give abusive ratings more often than several of the more reasonable lurkers. Not to mention all those lurkers/noobs/etc that are giving your stories 10s rather than 1s would end up never amounting to a whole hell of a lot since you know most people rating aren't even writing stories and just pop in every now and then. It works both ways you see.

I'd rather just put up with the occasional idiot, and if your story is good enough, you'll eventually be vindicated by other giving you good ratings.

Personally I can tolerate abusive ratings, it's usually the stupid comments that accompany such ratings that you can't actually respond to directly, that are more annoying. Sure you can PM the fucktard or "revenge rate" but the fact still remains that you've got an idiotic comment on your story section.

Given that it's YOUR story, you should at least be able to slam detractors all you want on it. You've still got the 1s and 2s, but at least you can defend your crappy story with verbal abuse.

Not to sing a praise of our hated enemies CYS, but they've got a good option for that with their rating and comment system. You can respond back to comments. Worth1000 allows you to do it too.

EDIT: Not to say Apoth's idea is a bad one, but you'd be bound to get some complaints of mod abuse and the slight possibility of mod "corruption".

Just a bit harsh.

[march5th00]

At Chooseyourstory.com we have a few things in place to take care of abusive ratings. First off, the higher your "experience points" (points earned for writing great stories / contributing to the site) the higher your rating is weighted (up to a certain point - it's never very high). Members automatically are weighted higher than non-members or anonymous ratings. Also, any rating outside of the standard deviation is automatically discarded. The system seems to work. We'd be happy to work with any of you guys on this if you'd like.

[donteatpoop]

I say any rating can be submitted for review, high or low. There are those Gary whatever stories that got tens, and no justification of the rating (such as Cab) only serves to help in the rating being deleted.

So here's what I think we have so far:

Abnormal Ratings are submitted to the council (likely by council members).

Council discusses the rating and what merit it may have, comments are taken into consideration. (discussion may take a few days, possibly a week so that everyone in the discussion has at least read the story and rating in question)

If the decision is to delete the comment/rating, then it is deleted.



I also propose an option for people who rate and wish to change their rating.


All of this, of course, only if severenz is cool with it. Perhaps it can be done with the site revamp?

[Dragavan]

I agree with most of what End said, but I want to comment on this part.

Cab isn’t a “vocal” member but he’s been here a long time and written a few stories. He went and rated Drag’s From Darkness Story a 5. Which is pretty low considering that it’s a solidly written story. However perhaps Cab found it boring, dunno, he never gave a reason. But in any case that’s his right.

This is the one thing about the current rating system that bugs the hell out of me. The lack of comments as to why AND the inability to ask (as they often have their messaging blocked). If I get a lower than normal rating (or even a higher one) I really want to know why so I can learn from it. I don't care so much that I got a 5, I care that I don't know why.

I am not really strongly for a complicated weighting system, but a simple one that gives a slight edge to votes from people who are writers of stories on the site (at least two large enough to show up) and are regular voters (having given a large number of them to a variety of authors), weeding out extremist voters (those who mostly only give 1s or 10s). I don't think the weight should be that heavy, just a slight edge in the way it ranks stories. I don't think activity level in the forums or recently logging into the site should have anything to do with it. I also don't think that ANY of us should know the actual criteria and algorithms of the system, since certain people who like to crunch numbers could use and abuse it. But I would really be just fine without any kind of weighting system.

As for putting a "report abuse" button on here, it would just complicate things and cause all sorts of extra debate, work, and stress. If we had an active site with a staff (and possibly money), I could see this being useful, but not for a one man show like this. Sev doesn't need more crap to deal with. Even if there was a "council" doing most of the debate and work, sev would still have to be more involved to deal with complaints, dispute, and other problems that grew out of the council and removals than he is now. I don't think that's really fair.

I also propose an option for people who rate and wish to change their rating.

This is something I really wish we could do. Most of the stories here are unfinished and still getting ratings. What if they change and improve a mediocre story? It still has a 5 from me and I can't change that. What if they totally screw up a great starter for a story later in it and make it turn into crap by the end? It still has a 9 from me and I can't change that. What if somebody (not mentioning any names here) goes on a bender and jokingly starts rating good stories with 1s, totally screwing up their position in the ratings, but later sobers up and realizes what they did? The story still is stuck with that 1 and no matter how many duplicate accounts they make to rate it with 10s, getting themselves banned (again) in the process, will actually repair the damage. The simple ability to change your own rating of a story would take care of all of this.

[Locke]

I'm not sure if site membership is currently required to rate. That's not something I would want (insofar as ratings matter to me I'd be against it), but some may want to consider it.

The ability to change ratings would be a nice feature. As to any weighting system, in principle I agree with End and Nappi: let anyone who wants to rate have a go at it. Site membership and participation do not necessarily make one more qualified to rate (though they may add bias one way or the other). Whoever happens to be reading is a member of the audience the author is trying to reach, and his perspective, even if very different or limited, is valid. Especially for pure statistics, I'd personally rather know exactly how well a story is being recieved by my readership (especially if I'm trying to cater to that readership) in general than have weight given to relative friends, skewing the results.

I don't care much about ratings one way or the other (save that the proposed changes set a slightly bad precedent by introducing restrictions) so whatever's decided is fine with me. As there is some concern over abuse, though (and there will always be abuse, if a relatively small amount) I propose an entry in the comment field where a user rates a story be required before the system accepts a rating, and the required length of the comment set at least a few lines. True, this will will result in a slight drop in overall rating of stories from those who won't take the time, and now and then a determined spammer/flamer will just post a longer nonsense comment, but by and large it will improve the feedback an author recieves, and even in the case of apparently extreme ratings the author will know the reason why.

That to me is the point of a rating system, after all, to determine how well one's story is being recieved - not necessarily to have the most and the best (even if abuse occurs and someone rates with the comment "furries" copy/pasted a hundred times you can disregard it, compute the averages yourself and concentrate on the ratings that actually tell you what someone thinks of the writing).

To augment the longer and hopefully more helpful comments, break down the rating into seperate categories instead of a single nondescriptive 1-10 (examples: "spelling/grammar," "overall quality," and of course "I liked it/I didn't like it" as the reader's opinion/enjoyment of the story is something we want to measure in addition to its literary merits. You can probably think of better categories, but these illustrate my purpose). The categories would be averaged for the purpose of the overall story rating, but remain individually visible in the comments section. This provides more and better feedback to the author as well as further spotlighting potential extreme or abusive ratings.

To counterbalance the slight possible drop in ratings on the site because of the somewhat more in-depth comment system, a comments box could be placed after every "the end" or a room of the author's choice where a reader could rate right there on the page. All this could someday evolve into a private statistics page only the author can view with a breakdown of ratings by room, site and non-site users, etc, but especially for the near future that's overkill, prohibitively labor-intensive and not likely.

I'm just throwing out ideas. My proposed solutions (if you decide abusive ratings are a real problem and merit a solution) vary in complexity (though the best and most helpful is in my opinion the simplest: the mandatory and longer comments) but none really require an administrator's touch after implementation and most importantly none are restrictive or give "weight" to some raters over others. If you do make changes to the system, I would prefer they stay true to those tenets. Make sure your motives for any proposed change are better feedback for the author (and to a small extent ease of navigation for the reader as some do browse by ratings) and not "I want to have the most/best." Whichever system is in place, your writing should take care of that aspect anyway.

[Nappi]

HOLY MOSES!!!:eek:Dragavan has got some serious competition in the long-winded posts department these days..heheh