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The Obligatory Rating ReviewDec 07 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Ratings are totally subjective - the key is consistency. Develop your own standard and stand by it.
I was updating my profile page today, trying to streamline it and bushwhack some of the verbage. A dissertation on the way I rate has been lodged there for about 6 months now, and I'm thinking real estate's at a premium here, and I could sure use this space more effectively, but I think the information is worthwhile and I don't want it to disappear altogether… so I'm making an editorial out of it. Ratings are, by nature, highly subjective things. What's incredibly helpful to me might not mean squat to somebody else. Outside of my own "category of expertise," in fact, I'm sometimes lost as to the communities' expectations in a given area - a review on a particular car might be very helpful to me, but not so helpful to an expert in the field. What does this mean? It means I can't tell anyone how to rate the thousands of reviews that flood through the hundreds of categories on this site. Not and have that advice be meaningful, anyway, all I can do is to offer my own standards and hope that others find them useful. That being said: A review is "Very Helpful" to me if it leaves me with very few to no questions regarding the item in question. The review might be short or long - I don't really count words, but it's important that I come away feeling I have a relatively complete sense of what's being discussed. An opinion is "Helpful" if it answers most of my questions, or if it piques my interest enough to make me go search out other reviews and learn more about the product. "Somewhat Helpful" reviews generally either offer little solid information, or leave me with lots of unanswered questions. I also tend to use this when I'm sitting the fence between SH and not helpful - I like to give the benefit of the doubt. If a member is new and making an honest effort to be helpful, I'll go with an SH even if the piece leans towards an NH. Whenever I rate a review SH, I check the comments section. If my reasons for the rating haven't already been covered by someone else (and sometimes if they have), I'll try to leave a comment explaining what I think would make the review more helpful. I try to reserve "Not Helpful" for abuse or willful ignorance. If a poster has plagiarized or posted a completely off-topic rant, that's abuse. If a poster deletes and reposts opinions, without any changes, just to get more hits from "Just In," that's abuse in my opinion. If the review is obscene (and I do know it when I see it), it's abusive as far as I'm concerned. Revenge raters are abusive, as are people who "follow" others around and make ugly comments. This is a commercial site, meant to help consumers make buying decisions, it is not anyone's personal bully pulpit. The other case for meriting an NH, willful ignorance, is when a user has contributed several opinions that received SH ratings and comments making helpful suggestions for improvement, but seems to be ignoring them in favor of being prolific. Continued abuse or ignoring helpful, polite advice, gets a user added to my "block" list. And that's a whole 'nother opinion. I've intentionally left the ""Most Helpful" rating for last (and left it completely out of the original draft), as opinions vary more greatly for its use than for any other rating type. We have roughly three camps when it comes to the MH button: (1) Philosophically, the possibility of a future MH review is greater than the probability of an already posted MH review, and therefore the MH button is either a deliberate lie to the public, a misrepresentation of the work, a misapplication of the standard, or possibly some combination of the three. Further, where a given product has only one review, that review is, by definition, the Most Helpful, Least Helpful, Longest, Shortest, Most Likely to Collide With Mars and Later be Sucked Up by a Quasar Masquerading as a Black Hole, and any other superlative one might imagine. The most helpful button is sometimes, in such a case, considered redundant, and a bit silly. Folks subscribing to this belief often choose to abstain completely from the use of the MH button. (2) As people can only MH one review per topic, conscientious use of the rating requires that one read every review present, and that one periodically check the topic for additional material on the off-chance a better review is posted. This being the case, the basic philosophy is that, while an MH is certainly possible, time and conscience demand that one use MH sparingly, and only for reviews that are breathtaking in their depth and/or imagination. Though I was originally of the first camp myself, I've since mellowed my position and now subscribe to this, the second, theory. While I can appreciate a person's refusal to use the MH rating at all (and think it a fair decision), if one is going to use the MH at all, then be responsible enough to use it responsibly, and sparingly, so that it keeps the meaning for which it was intended. (3) The MH button is there to be used and, by golly, I'm going to use it whenever the mood strikes. Fair enough. But, in my opinion, such haphazard use of what is meant to be an exclusive superlative devalues its meaning, as well as trivializes the intent of the rater. If one wishes to offer MHs willy-nilly then one is certainly free to do so, but keep in mind that such use of the button is precisely what fuels the MH-aversion of the people in camp (1). As noted in "the bottom line," I can't tell anyone specifically "how to rate." I don't have universal knowledge of everyone's interests, competencies, or experience levels. I do, however, think it wise for all users, whether old-timers or newbies, to seriously consider the way they rate and to attempt to remain as consistent as possible - individual consistency, after all, is what gives value to any of the ratings we see here. Otherwise, they are just so much window dressing.  |
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