Stars upon Thars

Rating systems, evaluation, organisation, data, visualisation.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• thumbs
• ratings
• youtube
• youdoubled
• data visualisation

[2bsirius]

If you try to make this geographic distancing, I assume you've thought about the obvious fact that people with divergent opinions will likely become slum dwellers in the sixth circle of Dante's hell., the one marked heresy. Right?

Others will be agreeing to nonsense in order to find a place in the intercircle of the popular. I guess I could be wrong, of course. We'll see how human nature shakes out on this.

[conferencereport]

@2bsirius Personally I would like a de-centred space with no dominant 'hub'. Kind of a Pascal thing. No centre, no periphery, no Heaven, no Hell. 

[rozeboosje]

Careful with the Sneetches references. I had a 3 1/2 year struggle after Seuss DMCAed me over that LOL

[conferencereport]

@rozeboosje :)

[TWITfromURANUS]

I don't see why a site couldn't just have an 'uprating'/'approval' button. & just leave-out the down-rating thing altogether. If people have any problem with a video, they will obviously not 'approve' it. & if they 'really dislike' they can just say so &/or why...

i think YT's downrating option is mainly just cheap entertainment (thru a small moment of 'power') for viewers of videos ... like shouting at the TV but with some vague sense of 'being heard'.

[conferencereport]

@TWITfromURANUS I totally agree. Just a 'like' button is much better. I only ever use the up thumb on YT because the down is totally useless imo.

[VitaM1977]

isn't a dislike a meaning that the person either doesn't like the content or is at a distance from the video?

Either way I think the dislike system (thumb down) is a message and a sign to the video maker (a nice sign) and this means that they are in a position to 1) Go away to their own community or 2) Brush up their videos.

[carmel1119]

@conferencereport

That's a nice ideal, very Taoist in nature, but wherever people congregate, there will always be both heaven and hell. It doesn't bother me really, the calm of Nirvana can get a bit boring; groups need the occasional hellraisers to stir things up...or as I like to say:

Samsara! because it's fun! :)

[BoStevoD]

I've given some time to the exact same problem. For instance, I'll notice a video on Associated Press's page is overwhelmingly thumbed down not because the audience disagrees with its production, portrayal, etc, but for disapproval purely of the content: that of a shifty politician, a scandalous trial, a region suffering starvation. It is incredibly hard to thumbs up a video which has the title, "Mass Bombing Leaves Hundreds Dead, Thousands Homeless".

[Jespax]

I tend to agree with you. However, the downrating of a video can, in some instances, be useful to viewers who are uncertain about the content of a video and the intentions of the uploader: Is there a match between the title and the content, is this an annoying troll video or some kind of 'rickrolling' prank? In those cases a rating bar that is mostly red often functions as a warning to other viewers to not waste their time on this video. Maybe I just hang out in the wrong places. :)

[0gods]

@conferencereport

In the current YT evaluation system, my activity stream is constantly clogged with activity from the same cluster of videos. I now have to wade through them to get to something that is interesting. I would rate the YT evaluation system as poor for this reason.

In consulting, a quadrant system is often used to evaluate 'cases' with the upper right quadrant be assigned the best qualitative/quantitative choices. What each axis should measure for videos is a tough question.

[allertonoff4]

whatever ratings systems are utilized, they should not be anonymous.

[PBrofaith]

It seems to me that it is all in the meaning we attach to what it is we are looking at. The meaning I attach to the thumbs is, if someone can be bothered to rate ether up or down, the video has generated a reaction in the viewer and should be understood as being successful. I notice that one of your friends reacts strongly. He needs that provocation so one day he can wake up to what an asshole he is, and choose something more self supporting. can our reaction to thumbs down be positive

[SkepticInTraining]

@SkepticInTraining The other thing is that if you are going to have a rating system then the statistics should be able to be seen before you click on the video (before you help the view count). I can't tell you how many times I've click on a video that had millions of views but when I view it, it had 99% dislikes because everything about the video was misleading.

[rozeboosje]

@conferencereport [grin]

[SkepticInTraining]

I have always had trouble with YT rating system as well. There were several times that I disliked the content of a video but wanted to promote the video so that other would see it. I would really like those two functions to be separated. I think that there should be a promote button that alerts your subs to the video and a some feedback buttons (like/dislike or stars) that create the statistic numbers and a comment line with and icon so others can see who and maybe why the rating was given.

[Loreleila]

@conferencereport Maybe. The trouble with thumbs ups is that often people will give you one just to support you, or as a calling card, or because they like you rather than the content. Even the 'like' can mean so many different things. I do find it interesting how powerful a tiny bit of apparent negativity can be, how much it can outweigh any positive, but then I've noticed that before relating to all sorts of things.

[conferencereport]

@Loreleila That's always going to be the case, as you say, but maybe that's not really a problem. The 'like' function works quite well right now because it is public, which means that there is always a context for the evaluation. Knowing who liked a particular video gives a sense of what criteria are being applied (kind of like reviews). Maybe it would be good if there was a list underneath the videos of those users who had 'liked' it, so you could see what constituency it was appealing to.

[Loreleila]

Is someone distancing themselves from you (as you say in this video) when they clck the little mountain, or just saying the content is not so close to their own perceptions? Therein lies the heart of the problem with any of this kind of stuff, that it is so easily perceived as a personal thing rather than an ideas and concepts thing. None of what we have or have had (stars or thumbs) is a good enough statistical tool to offer any useful data.

[EquitoErgoSum]

How about more than one dimension of feedback? Instead of a linear like/dislike or near/far scale, could there be a planar, two dimensional system of feedback. Say, agree/disagree on the left to right scale and like/dislike on a bottom to top scale - you could label each axis as you see fit for "youD". A 5x5 or 6x6 box where the user can select any one cell would give two useful parameters to assess. I hope I'm explaining myself clearly. Do you get what I mean?