My Frustration with the Ratings System

This small rant isn't really geared towards post rating specifically, but it's in the same boat. Here we have a great website with a lot of good users, and then the ones that sour everything beyond belief. Posts that are completely opinionated and backed-up often have a heavy amount of negatives. This leads to their constructive posts being inadvertently avoided by users who care to read. They can press a button to reveal the post but it's still disgraceful just to see what users do when given freedom. This is why we have rules, because people in general are genuine assholes (for lack of a better word).

Let me then go to my primary example, a Dead Space achievement guide I made. If you take a look, it's pretty well-made. Everything is explained and organized. Yet out of 20 ratings my average comes to 1 star... out of 5. Is this serious? I guess so. Surely there must be a better guide on this website, for Dead Space, that trumps mine? Oh, nevermind. All we have here is Chililili and Kingmastersachievement/trophy compilation with no explanation what-so-ever. All they made is a list of the achievements that could have been found anywhere and even on your system. Then again, when so much of Chililili's work is into copying and pasting, he'll average half-stars. Guess Kingmaster likes to do the same thing.

Let me divert the topic for a second, because my anger isn't at Chililili or Kingmaster. Rather, it's at what people do. There are people who contribute to a site, and then there are those who don't. Hopefully in the future, which I've heard they might be doing, is to take out the post ratings and replace it with a "report post." I'd also like to see more users contribute, but not everybody can I understand. Contributing doesn't have to be a big thing. If you see something you like that a user has done, rate them accordingly. Don't just use what they give, and close the page. When I look at my Fable II achievement guide and see a 5 star rating, it makes me feel like I've helped some people and I want to contribute more achievement guides.

That's all I really have to say, hopefully you found this a meaningful blog. Especially if you are in the same boat. Don't feel the need to rate my Dead Space guide, this was not to self-advertise.

Dude, I just 5 starred it for you, now chill!

"Dude, I just 5 starred it for you, now chill!"

I skim-read it, looks like a well-made guide.

Shit happens. Trust me, I know where you're coming from in terms of having posts or guides raped into oblivion. Very much. According to the general higher-ups, last year was some kind of "implementation mode", this year should at least start off as bug-fixing mode. That's what I've heard. Here's to hoping.

That guide definitely does not deserve a 1 out of 5, that's pretty ridiculous. I think it would better if people were forced to leave comments before they could rate it or something. It may not help the rating, but you would know who was doing it and if they honestly thought it was a poorly-constructed guide or if they were just being jerks.

I gave your guide 4 stars since it is a great one

In-freaking-deed, my friend.  I'm sick and tired of people abusing the rating system, I could say so much more, but you pretty much said it above. But I will say, although the "Trophy/achievement list" things are not hard at all, they can be time consuming. But still, nothing compared to writing an achievement guide or walkthrough.

I think the guide-rating tools are borked, the same way the game review averages don't display correctly. I've run into the same problems with some of my guides- as you probably saw, since you linked my guides page :P I'd like to be optimistic and say it's not assholes but rather a broken system here, but I could be wrong.

The post rating system is going to be removed at some point, according to the staff. But then again, we heard that quite a while ago and nothing's happened since :| So yeah, it's kinda annoying, but don't let it ruin your experience.

Sometimes the rating system with stars here is a little wonky so I would guess that is the problem. I don't think people just came to your guide and gave it 1 star for no reason.

I think, first off, that you need to take a chill pill, Vinchenzo, as you can not be definite that people are rating your guide low.

I do not know about that since I do not make guides, but I must say that would suck, but if you help someone by making it, then it shouldn't matter.

I miss the threads where people criticizing the rating system got a million down votes. :( Has everyone lost their sense of irony?

I've only used guides twice on this site and they were two guides for the same game. I rated them both because clearly people put a lot of work into them. It's cool that you support this feature because it's one that could be really helpful to people looking for info on a game. And I'll be sure to use your Dead Space achievement guide to get the Trophies in it whenever I stop playing Resistance 2.

I am not too fond with the idea of a ratings system.

1)  How does one express opinions numerical?  Perhaps if the scoring system was designed to be technical.  However, most people are not that technical and don't have the patience to learn it properly.

2) The majority of human civilization is not very intelligent.  People think opinions are just as good as evaluation.

3) Some people will give a full 5 stars due to fanboyism.  I am not even talking about "The console wars LULZ"...exclusively, I am talking about things like Naruto, Bleach and other main stream bullshit.  If someone wants to get a good score do the following,  "Dead Space guide, in loving dedication of Naruto-san."  It lets people acknowledge you as a Naruto fan (even if you are not) and the "san" lets people know you are hardcore otaku (even if you are not).  Then they will be all over your review and say "This guide is ultra super mega collossus sonic hyper turbo speed to the nth power cool", as if they were trying to name the next Street Fighter 2 game.