I have made the note in the past I hate rating systems. It was told this would be a decent one. It might be to some of the people who can handle the politics of the website. I personally prefer the rating system of Perl Monks, which forces the user to rate based on content. I have said this quite often (or so I thought) So my following posts will be protest of this.

Okay.

You (and plenty of others) may not like it, and have made us well aware of that, but as much as you might like to say otherwise it is generally accurate. It's meant to give an indication of the communities opinion of you as a user, and it fills that role perfectly fine. It also just so happens that higher rated users are generally helpful people and a lot of the lower rated users (not all, some people just had bad luck with it or have yet to recover from some past irritating behavior) are genuinely annoying and unhelpful.

Note that for those users who stick almost exclusively to the lounge the system doesn't work out so well, as helpfulness doesn't really come into it in there. It is however still an accurate reflection of the communities feelings about your posting activity in the lounge.


...and in the spirit of being sick-to-death of these threads, closed.

//EDIT: Re-opened at user request. It would appear some people consider it bad form that I closed this, and as it doesn't actually overly bother me nor violate any forum rules I don't particularly mind reopening it to give people a chance to chime in if they have something to say on the matter. I await the startling and original comments and suggestions for improvement that will surely result with baited breath!

If you genuinely do have some new suggestion for improving the system - I said new, check the sticky to see some of the ones we've already heard most often - I'm sure everyone would be glad to hear it, but otherwise I feel your time would be better spent in other topics (perhaps in one of the technical forums) or doing something you enjoy; if you disagree you're quite welcome to blow off some steam posting more complaints about the rating system here.

[Edited by - Kazgoroth on December 30, 2006 8:49:32 AM]

I'm confused. It's been observed that your rating goes up when being helpful. It's also been observed that Lounge-ing tends to bring down ratings. It is a fact however that AP posting is banned from the Lounge. But you want to post as an AP so you can be helpful to others. Therefore not allowing your rating to reflect your helpfulness, ie. have it increase. I don't understand.

Once every few weeks some fool decides to "protest" the ratings system by starting a thread like this and watching their rating drop. You're not a martyr, you're wasting your time. The majority of regulars think the ratings system is fair, because it accurately reflects your reputation on the board. The argument that a single post will kill your rating is BS, I have posted many times in the religion/politics threads, including a 5 page debate with Oluseyi about why blacks need to stop being racist (a good way to get your rating dropped if you're not careful) and multiple arguments against Christian propaganda. And yet I've never seen my rating go down more than 20 points from a single thread, because I write these posts with respect for the other users.

Don't post with regard to rating, you are more than just a number. Post with regard to the feelings and opinions of other people... they are more than just numbers as well. Also keep in mind that this is a semi-professional forum, if you post exclusively in the lounge you will never get the up-ratings from helping people with coding/design/art/sound/writing questions.

Quote:Original post by Servant of the Lord
If people wish to live in delusion of how the community feels about them, why not let them? (Or is that the purpose of the rating system; to let them know to get their act together?)

Wasn't there a time when your rating was 0? If I remember right, then you are proof that the ratings system does work :)