Updating the star rating system
here are the ideas...
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 by TYCUS | Discussion: Community
The following is an extended explanation of my idea in how the actual rating system can improve; the goal of this is to lower down the amount of threads at the forum complaining and asking why their skins got a low rating.
Stars 2.0
One of the common arguments about the actual rating system is the “why I got a low rate?”; right now when you submit a skin at any gallery your work will be rated by a moderator, this person will even decide if your work is good enough or suitable to enter into the gallery, in fact, this procedure is quite necessary and it doesn’t need to change at all, we can consider that like the “start point” to begin the rating. Now, how should we rate in the correct way? My idea is quite simple:
- - Rate and add a comment.
To prevent skinners fury we can replace the little window showing the amount of stars to rate the skin with two things: at the top right side of the skinner description of the skin it could be a star-meter, just to show the rating the skin has. The other part is at the comments area: in there aside the guy/gal name it will appear the rate he/she gave to the skin and comment will be the reason of the amount of the stars he/she gave. Now, you will ask your self how in the name of God we can make that person to leave a comment and not just the rate? It’s simple, during the procedure of rating a comment it “must” be added a comment to apply the rate, if not it won’t let the user to apply any star at all. If a user rates any skin just righting some useless words or typing anything in a random way without any sense, the skinner can request to undo the rate and delete the comment. All this can be done just by making a pop-up window to appear (we can even add an edit button to leave the option open if the user want to change the rate or the comment he/she did). By doing this we can even prevent other users to spam or put a low rating just to damage the skinner work.
2. - Hide the troll.
A plus to this idea is to add a “hide” button in every comment that can be use only by the owner of the skin, this is to leave the option of hiding useless comments with a low rating or other kind of comments that the skinner might consider unnecessary.
3. - Flaming stars!
Other thing that it might be good is to give to the skin the honor of “flaming star”; it is something like a popular skin thing. A skin can get the title of flaming star when it gets more than 20 or 10 five star ratings (given by users).
- - Who can rate?
I don’t remember who are able to rate and who doesn’t, but to me, the only ones who must rate a skin are the Master Apprentice, Journeyman and Masters. Why of this? Not only because they are at certain point experts on what they do, they also make a great effort to make this site even better in many ways.
And that is all.., I really hope my idea(s) could be considered and be applied…
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Reply #2 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:37 PM
I must disagree there on several points.I'm a WC subscriber and it' a benefit,I'm no expert,but I know what I like,and lastly,I too have an interest in making the site better.I like it here.
One idea:Once given a starting rating by the mods,it can't go below that,but ratings can make it go up or back down to that level..I do think there is room for improvement,keep the ideas coming. 
Reply #3 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 10:00 PM
Reply #4 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 10:21 PM
Skin for fun.
Skin because you enjoy doing it.
Share it because you want to give people the opportunity to choose whether or not it is usable to them.
Reply #5 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 10:35 PM
.Good day all.
Reply #6 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:03 PM
Reply #7 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:08 PM
It's a simple concept. I'm sure it's already been stated but it seemed fitting.
Reply #8 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:16 PM
Reply #9 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:48 PM
It's better to go by the comments and download count to see how well it is liked.
As for me, I skin for my self and share because I like paying back for what I download.
Reply #10 Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:11 AM
Zoomba
Member No.439,441
Karma+50
June 17, 2008 00:02:10
The ratings issue has been brought up over and over again in many threads by many different people over the years. If someone had a real, workable replacement to the star system that would still provide USERS with a meaningful score to browse skins by, I'm all ears.
Star ratings will go away if and only if a real, viable, and easy to understand method can be developed. It has to be something that is immediately understandable to anyone who comes to the site seeking skins.
...Zoomba ask for ideas, so i give ideas.
Thank you everyone for the comments and yes., i do care about the rating in some of my skins (not all!) I know i shouldn't but it is me and many others who care about it.., and no', i dont make skins just to have a clean five stars rating, but it makes me feel bad to see a low rate in something that i took the few free time i have to do skins., i'm not at school any more and i dont have that huge amount of free time to spend in doing lots of skins. Right now i'm doing a skin that i started two months ago.., two months in one skin is too much for me...Please try to understand my point and for the ones who say they don't care about the rating, it's ok., that means that at certain point you are more mature than me and others who do care.
that is true and i'm sure it will happend, but remember that the comments are for the skinner and his/her skin, hiding good critics that the owner of the skin disagree it's just an inmature atitud from the skinner and that is something we shouldn't care...
thankx again for the comments, feel free to leave a comment.., the point of this thread is to give ideas...
Reply #11 Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:14 AM
btw.., mmmh, i can't go into that link
Reply #12 Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:57 AM
That's not true. If there is a user-reported problem with the skin, you bet I want to know about it before I decide to use the skin. The comments are as much for other users as they are for the skinner; providing information, feedback, potential issues, links to corresponding skins, etc.
btw.., mmmh, i can't go into that link
Forums were being crappy on me, borked the link.
https://forums.wincustomize.com/314998
Reply #13 Thursday, June 19, 2008 1:18 AM
I do like Tycus's idea about the rating buttons not working til the download has finished...would cut back on some drive by ratings.
Reply #14 Thursday, June 19, 2008 1:19 AM
ok, mmmh., what about flaging the comment, not hiding but flag the comment and ask a moderator to check it and see if it is spam or a useless comment(by saying useless i mean comments like "this sucks".., "get a life" or even the blanck comments)
Reply #15 Thursday, June 19, 2008 1:22 AM
I think that was actually my idea.
Tycus' idea was to force people to also add a comment when they rate.
Although, like Zoomba has been saying, no system is foolproof. Sure...you might be prevented from rating unless you've downloaded the file in question, but what's to stop the person from skipping out on actually installing it and evaluating it first?
I'm hoping they'll add a "report" link to the skin comments just like we have it here in the forums.
Reply #16 Thursday, June 19, 2008 1:34 AM
She is right.., i was even readying back all my comments and the article itself to see where i put that
...that's an idea, so please give more!that's another good idea!
Reply #17 Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:09 AM
I know...thats why I said 'some'.
Reply #18 Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:17 AM
Reply #19 Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:32 AM
#of beers I'd buy the artist
#of beers I'd have to drink before downloading this item
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Reply #1 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:30 PM
A plus to this idea is to add a “hide” button in every comment that can be use only by the owner of the skin, this is to leave the option of hiding useless comments with a low rating or other kind of comments that the skinner might consider unnecessary.
With that option, the skin author could just simply hide all negative/constructive criticism comments that he/she feels speaks badly of the skin. It would unfairly skew the rating into a positive favor, in which case, why have ratings at all if only the positive ones will be shown?
I also don't like the fact that the rating will be shown next to each person who rated it. This should be done anoymously or it might deter people from giving honest ratings. However, it might be an idea to make the "rate this skin" option remain hidden until the download has been activated. How can someone fairly and honestly rate something they haven't even downloaded and evaluated? (see WOM's thread for a good discussion on that)