Self-ratings go the way of the dodo
As you may have noticed today — or may not, depending on how you rate stuff — I’ve gone ahead and made one of the changes I had suggested in one of the surveys I posted over the last couple of months. What’s been changed is that authors are no longer able to rate their own work. This change was made for several reasons:
- First, I wanted to make the ratings a more reliable source of feedback/information about your writing.
- Second, this will make all of our “Top Rated” and “Hot Stories” rankings a much more accurate gauge of quality and/or popularity of content; it prevents the ratings systems from being gamed (intentionally or not) by people ratings their own work and not being rated by anyone else.
- Finally, it will help me provide more accurate recommended reading once the site’s recommendation engine is plugged in.
I’ve had feedback from a couple of people already today, wondering what happened to their ratings. All of your prior self-ratings have been removed, so your rating is now solely the ratings provided by your readers. If you’re seeing a big dip in your rating or in your total number of ratings… well, that’s something we’ll all have to live with. But at least this way, you’ll know more accurately where you stand amongst everyone else on the site.
For those of you wondering if this change came out of the blue, I’ll assure you that it didn’t. It was well thought-out and discussed, and the folks who responded to the survey were overwhelmingly in favour of the change: 93% of respondents voted for the change, and only 7% against it, along with a hearty discussion below my original survey question.
If you’d like to see the survey results, you can browse the thread over in the Protagonize Pub group. If you have any issues with the change, please feel free to contact me via my profile with your concerns. Although a few may be affected negatively by this update, I’m confident that it’ll be a boon to the site as a whole in the long run.
About this entry
You’re currently reading “Self-ratings go the way of the dodo,” an entry on The blog on Protagonize, a creative writing community
- Published:
- 10.25.09 / 5pm
- Category:
- Collaborative writing, General, Site mechanics, Site updates
- Tags:
- changes, rankings, ratings, self-ratings, Site updates
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