Forum Settings
       
Reply To Thread

Rating System?Follow

#1 Feb 06 2005 at 5:08 AM Rating: Excellent
29 posts
Hopefully I dont get flamed for this, I finally got up the courage to point out that I'm a so called "noob" here and I admit I have no idea on how the rating system works.
I hear alot about people rating others up and down and have seen mine go up and down but if someone could maybe explain (or point me to where I can learn more) the whole thing like what the stars are what scholar is and what sages are(and possibly how you obtain them) I would very much appreciate it.
Thank You.
#2 Feb 06 2005 at 6:55 AM Rating: Excellent
****
6,947 posts
The idea behind the rating system is twofold:

One, that, in conjuction with the built-in adjustable filters for the site, the ratings that users such as you or I give to any post can cause it to stand out more prominently (if it is a good post and has been rated highly), or to fall below a certain level of filtering, so that we can be spared having to read drivel and tripe.


The default setting of the filter is "Default", which filters out any posts that have been rated so low as to be classified as "sub-default".

If I recall, the rating of 1.50 is where sub-default begins.

Thus, if you have not adjusted your filter settings at all, then you will never see posts with such a low rating displayed in the threads you read.

The idea here is that when someone has made a post that is a complete waste of time (fillied with bad information, bigotry, hate, or otherwise non-productive content), regular users can rate that post down so far that it basically drops off the radar and will not be displayed to anyone with the standard filter settings.


It is possible to set your filter settings higher, so that only posts rated as "good" or even "excellent" will be displayed.


Some people also set their filter to "never filter", which allows even sub-default rated posts to be displayed, simply because we like to see everything.




The other purpose of the rating system is to acknowledge posters who consistently make productive contributions to the forums, by identifying them with varying ranks.
This is a way in which it is possible to see at a glance if someone is generally thought to be a useful, helpful, or intelligent forum contributor (in the case of a Sage or a Guru), or one who has a tendancy to be controversial and generally recieves negative ratings because they may be unhelpful or inflamatory (usually a person with a fair or high number of posts, but they have no title and their name is still grey).


The caveat to this last statement is the fact that the ranking system as I just described it is really not a wholly accurate measure of an individual poster's worth.

I have observed plenty of people who's names are still grey, who have not been rated high enough to be a Scholar, much less a sage or further, even though they have been long-time forum goers with thousands of posts to their credit, and in some cases, these people are not necessarily bad people, and just because they are not scholars or whatever does not mean that they do not often have very useful things to say.

It simply means that they have said enough controversial things that they have recieved a lot of rate-downs from others.
It is not difficult to say something which makes you unpopular.


As well, I have also seen people who have been rated up to the status of Sage, with their names in red, which tends to give people the impression that such a person is more worth listening to than someone else, since they have evidently been rated up a lot, and often, and yet, some sages appear to have little better to say, and no better way to say it, than anyone else, and sometimes post equally inflamatory and controversial content, but have managed to say enough that was popular to be rated up.



Now... How do people get these titles and how do ratings affect them?

When you create your account here, you and everyone else begins with a base rating of 3.0 on all of your posts.

While each individual post that you make can be rated up or down, depending on how other readers feel about it, your account's "Average Karma Rating" is just that, a personal "score", if you will, which is an average figure from the individual ratings on all of your posts.

Since your karma rating is an average of the scores of all your posts, the fewer posts you have, the more volatile your karma rating will be... that is, the more easily it can be pulled in one direction or another.

The larger number of posts you have, the harder it is to move your average rating in one direction or the other.

Naturally, the more highly-rated individual posts you have, the higher your overall average is going to be.

The rankings a user can get are determined thusly:

If you have 15 posts or more, and your average karma rating is between 3.01 and 3.65, you are a Scholar.

With an average karma of between 3.66 and 4.34, you are a Sage.

With an average karma of between 4.35 and 5.00, you are a Guru.

Under your name, every post you make has it's particular rating shown.
To see your overal average karma rating, you can click on "User Account" in the navigation sidebar on the left of the screen.

Remember, just because you may see one of your posts get rated up, and it has a score of 4.00 or more, you mustn't wonder suddenly, "why am I not a Sage?".
Remember that your ranking is determined by your overal average from all of your posts.

Whatever your average karma score is, that is what each new post you make will be scored at, unless another user rates that post up or down.


Since, with a low postcount, it takes less influence to change your overall karma rating, many people obtain Sage status by managing to post helpful, useful, productive (or simply popular) posts while their postcount is still low.

You may observe some people, such as myself, who have been here for some time, with very high postcounts, who are not yet Sages. This, again, is because it takes more rate-ups on our individual posts to make any change in our overall average score, while for someone with a low postcount, it is relatively easy to be elevated to Sage with relatively little effort.


The best advice is to read each post and consider its content on its own merit, and do not automaticallly assume that because the poster is a Sage, they are necessarily more credible, or that just because the person is not even a Scholar that they are necessarily less credible.


Only a person with Scholar status or higher is able to rate other posts (you are prohibited from rating your own, though it is not unheard of for someone to have created a second account, and get it rated up to Scholar, so that they can then rate their own posts up with this "sockpuppet" account, or post things that they would fear might get them a bad rating on their main account, which they desire to shield from the backlash of posting stupid things)

While I am unsure of the actual math behind the various ratings you can give to an individual post, I want to observe one thing for you to be aware of:

It is possible to rate a post as "good" because you felt it was helpful, but if that post's score is already fairly high, your "good" rating can actually lower that post's score.

This has happened to me once or twice, where I felt a post had a well-deserved rating, and wished to add my own, but I felt it was merely "good" in my opinion, rather than "excellent", but my intent was not to lower that post's score, rather to bump it up a smaller amount than I thought an "excellent" rating would do.
What it ended up doing was decreasing the score of that post, and I was saddended that I had done that, because after rating a post once, you cannot rate it again.

This is just a side-note to be aware of.

I am aware of many people who, when they rate any post, will only use "awful" or "excellent", and never anything between.

I myself rarely rate posts down, and in the rare case that I do, I tend to use "awful" because it has to be pretty bad to make me feel it deserves a rate-down.

Similarly, when I do rate up, I tend more often than not to give an "excellent" score, since it gives the largest (most noticable) increase in score, and those posts I feel are worth a rate up are usually very good.




This rating system is primarily intended to allow the common users like you and me to moderate the forums, by rating down (to sub-default, below the filter) inflamatory, useless, or otherwise bad bad posts, and to acknowledge those posters who make an effort to contribute in a useful or positive way to the forums.

In extreme cases only, will the Admins come in and exercise their power to "nuke" a post or an entire thread to a negative score, so far below the filter that it cannot be seen by anyone except the admins.



The rating system is also a source of frequent controversy, due to its irresponsible use by forum users to simply express their dislike of a particular post or poster.

It is sometimes misused as a tool to attack other users by rating them down categorically, regardless of the content they post.
Someone who has developed a dislike of another person may sometimes go around rating down that person's posts wherever they find them, simply because they have decided not to like that person; they will rate down someone's posts regardless of whether or not the post contains useful or helpful information.

Similarly, cliques of people have been known to rate one another up indiscriminantly, as a sort of mutual ego boost or secret-society pat on the back, to try and elevate each other's overall karma just because they like each other (or, in their own justification, because "karma doesn't mean anything and we don't care about our karma"; sadly, it is precisely practices such as this which make karma here "meaningless").

In other cases, some people will evidently rate down a post simply because they disagree with the opinions expressed in it, or with the manner in which those opinions are expressed; but the rate-down has no actual bearing on the validity of those opinions or other content the post may contain.

A lot of users seem to take what other people say very personally.



Sooner or later, any outspoken person here will fall victim to some form of "karma camping", where they find themselves the target of rate-downs from someone else just because they have earned the dislike of that person.

Only in extreme cases will the admins be motivated to take any action to stop or counter the effects of this rather petulant practice.


People who complain out loud about their karma ratings will often be rated down even more, since evidently most of the people here are tired of hearing people complain about their karma.

If you complain about being karma camped, and post it in this forum here, asking the admins to do something about it, you may even get rated down by the admins, depending on which one sees your post first and what mood they happen to be in.

This is not to suggest that the admins themselves are petulant people, but they, evidently, don't care for "whiners" any more than anyone else does.
They are also a team of individuals, each of them having their own attitudes toward various issues, and their own approach to dealing with them.


People who openly request being rated up for no valid reason are also likely to be rated down instead.


It has been my observation that rate-ups and rate-downs, but particularly rate-downs, are far more liberally given in the main General Forum, while the rate-downs I tend to see in less-active forums, such as the job-specific forums, appear to be usually more appropriately handed out.




The stars under a poster's name reflect milestones in their postcount.
Unfortunately, I cannot actually recall what the stars denote, but I think that you get the first star after 50 posts, and the second star after 300 posts (maybe?).

I tried looking for this information for you, but I have forgotten where on the site to find it. Also, sadly, the search feature is currently disabled.





Before you ask, but since you may at some point, I'll also just throw out the answers to a couple more common questions.

Many people ask how to get an avatar picture beside their names, or how to insert little smilies into their posts like this Smiley: yikes or this Smiley: goat.
Also you may wonder why some people's names are much longer; for instance, instead of merely Tenmiles, you may see Tenmiles the Charming, or Overlord Tenmiles.
These are features which are only available to users who have a premium (paid) account.
Other features include the absence of advertising popups and a few other goodies.



[EDIT: I am adding here a post by an admin which answers a frequently asked question about precisely how karma is calculated.]

detlef wrote:
If you don't mind my asking, how is overall karma calculated?


Kaolian wrote:
When you post, what we admins see is this:

By: detlef
Scholar

1605 posts
Score: Good [3.55]
detlef: 3.55
detlef: 3.55

But lets say a few people come along and rate you, like so:

By: detlef
Scholar

1605 posts
Score: Good [3.62]
detlef: 3.55
detlef: 3.55
Kaolian: 6.00
Kaolian: 4.00
Kaolian: 1.00

note that your karma for that post is now 3.62. Your overall base karma, or average of all your posts, is still 3.55 however, since that wasn't enough to move you one way or the other on your total average. If you post again immediatly after that, you will have another post with again two 3.55 rateings.

Don't worry about that 1.00. I hit you with 3 extra 6.00's to even it out.




Hopefully this has been somewhat helpful for you to get a better understanding of the system, and hopefully I was able to present it with as little personal bias as possible.
Please forgive any glaring typos, as I made this post between 3 and 4 am, and while I did make a halfhearted attempt to proofread it, I probably missed a few.








Edited, Thu Mar 10 15:07:53 2005 by Tenmiles

Edited, Fri Jul 15 05:50:38 2005 by Tenmiles

Edited, Sat Mar 11 15:03:50 2006 by Tenmiles
____________________________
  • Tenmiles
  • Monk
  • (Lakshmi)

  • ______________
    Retired
    #3 Feb 06 2005 at 1:23 PM Rating: Excellent
    29 posts
    Thank You I understand it alot more now. It seems as though there are alot of people that really take this seriously, while I personally believe it is nice to have a higher rating I dont think I would ever find myself, as you put it, camping posts or making a "sock puppet" just to make myself look better.
    Thank You again ^^
    #4 Feb 07 2005 at 7:50 AM Rating: Excellent
    Spankatorium Administratix
    *****
    1oooo posts
    Tenmiles that was fantastic!
    ____________________________

    #5 Feb 07 2005 at 9:17 AM Rating: Good
    ****
    6,318 posts
    Tenmiles wrote:
    The caveat to this last statement is the fact that the ranking system as I just described it is really not a wholly accurate measure of an individual poster's worth.


    This is probably the main point that most people forget. For some unknown reason, people associate their "karma" on this site to their actual worht as a person, and then they get all bent out of shape when they get a rate down.

    Just remember that your Alla rating != your worth as a person.
    #6 Feb 07 2005 at 10:10 AM Rating: Excellent
    Tenmiles--I seriously think that was the longest post I've EVER seen.
    #7 Feb 07 2005 at 2:43 PM Rating: Excellent
    ****
    6,947 posts
    Naaah, it could have been shorter... I pressed [Enter] a lot of times though.
    ____________________________
  • Tenmiles
  • Monk
  • (Lakshmi)

  • ______________
    Retired
    #8 Mar 17 2005 at 4:49 PM Rating: Good
    *
    153 posts
    Wow! Just wow. I was looking through this forum for an explanation of the rating system and qualifications of different titles, but I was not expecting this fantastic and detailed explaination. Rate up ^^
    #9 Mar 18 2005 at 8:11 PM Rating: Excellent
    ***
    2,371 posts
    Quote:
    Since, with a low postcount, it takes less influence to change your overall karma rating, many people obtain Sage status by managing to post helpful, useful, productive (or simply popular) posts while their postcount is still low.


    This is one of the things about the system that has always bothered me. If it is even partly my goal to get Sage, any post I make that is not a well thought-out good or what not will actually hurt my efforts to raise my rating because it makes the higher average harder to obtain.

    The system really favors users who post good content but having posted much at all. I've posted so many good, informative posts at 3.59 that no one has cared to rate up, that I'd likely need to several 5.0's before hitting 3.60. It's just the way it goes.

    And yes, it may seem lame that I even care about this, but as Tenmiles mentioned, users can get annoyed when they get rated down by someone for simple disagreement. That said, there are two approaches to not caring: have a low enough rating that you don't care or have a high enough rating that their rate down won't matter. The reality is that red names get more attention and while I don't want to be heard more than anyone else, I also don't want to be ignored. This is why I care about it, at least.

    I often wished that there would be an option that I can turn on where I don't see karma at all. ie, I don't see any red names, I don't see any rating buttons, I don't see my default karma. I would like this because personally the system prevents me sometimes from saying things that I want to say and other times it upsets me when I say something substantial and it goes unnoticed. I haven't followed any developmental thoughts about the karma system but I personally hope it seems some changes one day.



    #10 Mar 19 2005 at 3:29 AM Rating: Excellent
    ****
    6,947 posts
    jerji wrote:
    I often wished that there would be an option that I can turn on where I don't see karma at all. ie, I don't see any red names, I don't see any rating buttons, I don't see my default karma.


    I think that's actually a cool idea.

    As for making it to sage eventually, I'm confident you will.

    Look at my postcount. I've been here about a year, and have been a moderately prolific poster.
    I had already resigned myself to the fact that I'd never be 'elevated' to sage for the very reasons you observed; yet against all probability, it happened about a month ago.

    Ironically enough, coming fast on the heels of this very event was the realization that I didn't even want to be one anymore, considering the actions and dispositions of many of those whos company I would now share.
    ____________________________
  • Tenmiles
  • Monk
  • (Lakshmi)

  • ______________
    Retired
    #12 Apr 01 2005 at 4:17 AM Rating: Good
    ****
    6,947 posts
    Quote:
    On the same token, if someone only rates posts as Excellent, it could give them a title of something like "Easily pleased" lol.


    I'll take "Fascinated by shiny tinfoil balls", thank you.
    ____________________________
  • Tenmiles
  • Monk
  • (Lakshmi)

  • ______________
    Retired
    #13 Apr 20 2005 at 11:03 AM Rating: Good
    Behold, it is I, the Post Necromancer.

    Anyways, now that we all know each other's names, I have an idea! How about make it so that we can see the logs of who rates you down or up. That way we can expose Karma Trollers.
    #15 Apr 23 2005 at 11:28 AM Rating: Good
    Well done, truely informative. Thank you!

    One question though. I have 15 posts so far (this should be #16) All of them were 3.0 except one 4.0 (making my average above 3.01). It seems I should be a scholar by now. I really would like to be able to rate up posts that I like, that's why I'm trying to figure this out.

    Anyone know why I'm not a scholar yet? When I check my user account it says I have 16 posts, and my karma is 3.0 But that can't be right. Perhaps I need another Rate up?

    Edited, Sat Apr 23 12:31:52 2005 by Sitaru
    #16 Apr 23 2005 at 12:23 PM Rating: Excellent
    Guru
    ***
    1,088 posts
    Sitaru wrote:
    Anyone know why I'm not a scholar yet? When I check my user account it says I have 16 posts, and my karma is 3.0 But that can't be right. Perhaps I need another Rate up?

    The karma calculator only runs once per 24 hours (at some point very late night / early morning).
    ____________________________
    http://everquest.allakhazam.com
    #17 Apr 24 2005 at 5:00 AM Rating: Good
    ****
    6,947 posts
    Not only that, but just recently there seems to have been some intermittent problems where some people's karma scores were showing up a little wonky (usually manifesting in a person appearing to have a default 3.0 score when they normally are much higher).
    #18 Apr 24 2005 at 3:39 PM Rating: Good
    Ok, cuz it's been like a week now since I received that rate up on my post, and my karma is still only 3.0 I guess I'll wait it out a couple more days.
    Reply To Thread

    Colors Smileys Quote OriginalQuote Checked Help

     

    Recent Visitors: 60 All times are in CST
    Anonymous Guests (60)