By detailed I mean users are doing more than rating they're explaining the why, they're giving a full review to accompany their rating. There are two problems here you lose a lot of granularity for detailed ratings (with reviews/etc), and users of undetailed ratings (just a rating, no review) don't really use neutral votes.ĭetailed ratings like Amazon's reviews really need extra granularity. Since that describes very few systems (one notable exception being actual newspaper movie critics, which I understand are the originators of the system), you may benefit from experimenting with non-standard systems, and especially of systems that exclude a "neutral" option entirely. 1-star items are as likely as 5-star items). exclude "zero stars" as an option), and if users are equally likely to encounter items they strongly dislike as those they strongly like (e.g. There is no general solution here, then, unless you force people to select a rating (i.e. It's also worth pointing out that users rarely deliberately choose "no rating" being the default rating (and thus making other ratings optional) it's likely to be overrepresented in the set. It is probably unreasonable to suggest that users will follow a normal distribution of ratings, especially if they own the content or have otherwise self-selected to like it (as in an iTunes library). That means in an even distribution you would expect each rating to have 17% of the whole, and in a normal distribution you'd expect the most popular ratings to be 2 and 3. An optional 5-star system actually permits 6 ratings 0–5. Research has been done into the distribution of optional ratings on a conventional five-star scale, and that research seems to suggest people gravitate toward higher ratings (3s, 4s and 5s), especially 4. One other really terrific source for this discussion is the blog Life With Alacrity, which has an article explicitly debating the 5-star scale and another about comparative assessment of rating systems more generallyįurther edit: In the interest of clarification, I'll summarise my opinions/understanding thusly: The comments present some lively discussion both supporting and opposing the need to abolish the "neutral"/"maybe" option, including some that dispute the "most people gravitate to 3" claim he makes. Still can't find the actual article I was referring to, but Zeldman presents a similar case here. I can't vouch for any of that mind you, having never needed to apply it, and I'm not sure if rating things out of 4 would make users feel disoriented or uncomfortable, but it's an interesting thought. Go ahead and look at your iTunes library if you're anything like me you have squillions of 3s.īy only providing positive or negative options and removing "neutral", you apparently get more meaningful feedback from the users. The idea is that people naturally gravitate towards the 3 in a 5-star system (or the 2 in a 3-star system) because it's easy. There was a fantastic case put forward a while ago (if I find it I'll edit this answer) that the ideal number is actually 4 stars.
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