Written by Dick CarlsonI’m watching an interview with DanMcComb (founder of Biznik, an business networking community). I’ve posted some articles there, and have enjoyed getting feedback from participants — both comments and the numeric rankings. (As an egomanic, the higher my number is the better I feel.)
He’s the web development guru, and his wife Lara does a lot of the community development. In talking about how the site is growing, he mentioned the use of agile development techniques — one of my favorite project management methods. His example was how users were rating the quality of the articles. It seems that very few wanted to assign a numeric rating, and low ratings were rarely given — out of a fear of offending. There was also a problem with isolated individuals using frequent “Zero” ratings that skew the results.
They plan to make an interesting change — future ratings will only be “thumbs up” for an article or nothing at all. The assumption is that more readers will take the time to rate, and that the total number of thumbs will better indicate the quality and usefulness of the content.
It sounds interesting. But I’ll only like it if I get the most thumbs, you know.
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There’s quite a vigorous discussion surrounding this topic among the Biznik community members. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in the pros and cons of ratings systems, and what people think of them: The New Rating System.