Life in the World of Ratings on Ciao, Dooyoo and at Helium (Rating other's reviews: on dooyoo and beyond)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Rating other's reviews: on dooyoo and beyond
Date:	04/03/07 (248 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Helps the site put reviews into a pecking order

Disadvantages: Causes all kinds of feelings

***Introduction***

Ratings: surely the most contentious and yet, for me, the most tedious debate you can get on consumer sites. Still, ratings play their part in the sites’ welfare, not least in ranking reviews in order of quality so that consumers are led to the best ones first (in theory). I’ve been rating opinions for coming up to six years later this year (reaches for zimmer frame) and have gone through all kinds of different theories and opinions. At one stage I kinda thought that it was only the comments that mattered and part of me still feels that way; certainly in terms of discernible feedback for the opinion writer as it’s hard to determine just how many people really read the review rather than following a group consensus in terms of ratings. However, the overriding concern for the sites mentioned in this review is to put them into some kind of priority order driven by peer ratings/pressure to cut the wheat from the chaff. What I would like to do is talk about ratings experiences across the 3 sites I know about. What I won't do is to tell you how to rate. There are guidelines set up to help and plenty of threads dedicated to this debate at the various satellite discussion forums where you can throw yourself into the various arguments that rumble along about the psychology of ratings if you really want to. If I'm honest, I don't know the answer that everyone is searching for but then the clue might be in this statement: if I'm honest.

***Rating on Ciao***

I am taking a bit of a risk here as I left Ciao some 2 years ago but assuming things haven’t changed: Ciao carries ratings that can categorize an opinion as unhelpful/somewhat helpful/helpful/very helpful. There are a further 2 extremes i.e. exceptional and off topic. All the same debates rage around Ciao ratings about over rating, harsh rating, members being over sensitive to ratings other than VH and maybe folks giving out E’s (ratings rather than drugs although it sounds like you need the latter on Ciao these days) with their hearts rather than their heads. How do I know these things? Well, I see the threads on the various forums and the debates have changed very little over the years (I lurk y'know). The other thing I used to find with "E" ratings is that they bore no relation whatsoever to those reviews selected as diamond winners. Then again, the formula for chosing the "best" reviews remains as mystifying now as it ever was, apparently!

In my view, the biggest problem on Ciao is the sensitivity to lower ratings and the impact on an opinion’s archive ranking. It only use to take one rating less than VH to see an opinion plummet from top spot in the archive to the lower depths of the pecking order thus denying the opinion potential reads in the future. Curiously, this never used to play a major part in a review winning a diamond award as there were plenty that had a handful of non-VH ratings that would win. Whether the solution is that the system should be more robust around the impact of lower ratings, I really don’t know but, from memory, this was the main issue folks had with getting lower ratings and all the kafuffle that went on because of it. I know that it was, and still is, prevalent for writers to challenge those that had given the rating to have another look at a revised review by the writer concerned. This doesn’t appear to happen on Dooyoo so much and we need to examine why that is. Of course, if profiles are set up in the same way on Ciao as they used to be with ratings given and received open to public scrutiny then there is a danger that these statistics can be used to label people as harsh raters/fluffy raters etc and herein may lie another problem.

***Rating on Dooyoo***

Things are a bit different in Dooyoo land. With a not useful/somewhat useful/useful and very useful, we only have 4 options other than nominating those opinions we feel warrant a crown (which carries a crown gif and an extra 1500 miles as an award if the review gets awarded a crown). Again, the main idea behind ratings is to put the opinion into some kind of pecking order although whenever I’ve wandered through the archive, I do wonder whether that’s actually the case any more as reviews don’t seem to be in any particular order other than chronological by category. Ratings received are displayed in personal profiles and a recent addition appears to be to show the number of crowns won too. Interestingly, ratings given aren't shown as a statistic and so members aren’t subjected to the same kind of indignation that they are on Ciao along with the lesser impact of receiving something other than the top rating. Crown awards aren’t affected either with the kudos going to reviews that routinely get the occasional “U” as well as the customary string of “VU”

Dooyoo has the same issues like "revenge ratings" that Ciao does i.e. a tit for tat rating given based on animosity rather than what the opinion deserves and the mechanisms are in place to deal with this through Dooyoo and Ciao abuse departments. Certainly, it would be fair to say that Dooyoo abuse has got its act together recently with a slew of writers being kicked off for skimming or giving recipricol clicks as Dooyoo HQ now run a program on Monday mornings that shows up the cheats. In theory, this should leave behind those members genuinely interested in actually reading and rating properly.

***Rating on Helium***

For anyone that hasn’t discovered www.Helium.com yet, it’s a US knowledge based site that allows members to post articles on just about anything. You get 1 cent per read and the lure is the fact that, potentially, you could be read by a wider audience. Ratings are a curious affair on Helium. I’ve been a member for just a few weeks and, from what I’ve seen, basically you post a review and then get invited to rate opinions which are put in front of you. They can be on any subject and you are usually confronted with two, side by side, and asked to determine which is the better of the two on a sliding scale given to the rater. I haven’t seen any other form of feedback yet; certainly in terms of comments and the ability to rate opinions in categories of your choice. This is a far cry from the systems in place at Ciao and Dooyoo and may be in its infancy with the site being relatively new. As a consequence, threads have popped up in satellite forums with writers appealing for feedback with the result that these links to their opinions have garnered hits and generated an income albeit nominal based on my own experience so far!

***Conclusion***

There doesn’t seem to be a perfect rating system anywhere and this aspect of consumer opinion sites will always be a rich source of debate. If I was pressed I would say that Dooyoo has the fairest set up due to the robustness of its system with not the same sensitivity to lower ratings that Ciao has and the ensuing shenanigans that come with rating other than VH. Dooyoo appears more clear cut around its purpose too. With Ciao’s café encouraging creative writing and Helium’s blurred definition as to what it wants to be, Dooyoo gets predominantly product/experience based reviews that takes away that greyer aspect of what opinions are about overall. Personally, I love writing creatively but have found other outlets outside the remit of sites like the above that are dedicated to the cause rather than including it as a fillip to its writing community but possibly confusing the issue as a result. Notwithstanding, I always enjoyed reading many of the opinions in the Ciao Café.

In essence, I think if you remember that as well as the established ratings guidelines that exist in each of the sites in the terms and conditions, a rating is personal to you and if you ask yourself how useful/helpful that opinion was to you and ignore everybody else then you will usually arrive at the right conclusion. Being able to rate opinions is your biggest privilege and your worst curse. Use them wisely.

Thanks for reading

Mara

Summary: My experiences of ratings