The ratings debate

There's been a lot of discussion on Blip recently about the ratings system, and a few calls for it to be changed or completely done away with.

Before we talk about that, we wanted to clear up a couple of recurring ratings myths:

1. There is no mystery 'one voter' - lots and lots and lots of people rate images '1'.

2. Voting '1' isn't abuse of the system - if you've enabled ratings on your journal, you're inviting other contributors to rate your entries on a scale of 1 to 5 and they're perfectly entitled to do so.

Any time we think about changing or updating a feature on the site, we have to consider how much it's being used and how any change might detrimentally affect those who like it the way it is. While ratings may be a source of controversy to some contributors, the fact remains that they're one of the most heavily used features on the site - every time you visit the rated page, there's always something new to look at.

These are some of the reasons we're reluctant to react to the concerns of a small number of contributors and pull the rug from under one of the most-used features on the site.

So, we're not going to make the decision about the future of ratings - you are.

Here are your two choices:

1. We retain the ratings system exactly as is.

or

2. The ratings bar is replaced with an 'I like this' button, which automatically appears on everyone's journal and each contributor can click only once. All '4' or '5' ratings received to date will be converted into one 'I like this' vote and all lower ratings will be disregarded. The 'rated' page will be changed to rank entries by the number of positive votes received.

You'll notice that the ratings bar has been enabled for this Blipblog entry - we'd like you to use it as follows:

If you prefer option 1 and would like to keep the ratings as they are, rate this entry '1'.

If you like the sound of option 2 and would like the ratings to be replaced with this new system, rate this entry '5'.

We're only going to make this change if there's a significant majority in favour. So, if at midday (UK time) on Tuesday 3 June this entry is rated higher than 3.5 (i.e. a 70% majority), we'll switch over to the new system as quickly as possible afterwards.

If it's rated less than 3.5, the current system will stay in place and our moderators will be sent an APB to remove any further complaints about ratings on anyone's journals or comments. No more talk. Zip. If you don't like them, just switch them off and leave them for those who do.

Over to you, Blippers.

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EDIT: This is starting to look like a very close race. For clarification, if the rating is equal to or higher than 3.5 at the cut off point, we'll go for option two. We're also aware that if everyone voted 1 or 5, a rating of 3.5 would actually represent slightly less than 70% of the total number of voters, but some people appear to be rating with in-between numbers and 3.5 is still 70% of 5 and way above the half-way point. So there.