Freesound Forums

Currently it is possible to give a star-rating to a Freesound one has never played whilst logged-in.

Occasionally trolls will rate a large number of Freesound tracks as one-star "pretty bad", ( because they're envious / sociopathic ).

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Difficult to legislate against nutters , but if they were not permitted to rate a sound until they had played it , that could be a barrier to some doing that.

[ Although, come to think on it , that would mean having to store a list of every track each member has played whilst logged in ].

I doubt it would be much of a barrier to determined trolling.

Without wanting to derail your proposal, can I suggest an alternative which has been discussed on another thread, and seemed to have some support.

Proposal: Change to a LIKE system. If you like a sound, then you press LIKE. Preferably, the LIKE button only functions after a user has listened to a sound.

Transitional arrangements: Every existing rating (even one star) gets converted to a LIKE.

Advantages:
- LIKE is simple and everyone understands it.
- Many users seem to treat star ratings as a reward or a thanking system - LIKE formalises this.
- Most users don't rate - a LIKE system may encourage more users to participate.
- Low ratings may discourage some (newer?) users from uploading. LIKE removes this disincentive.
- Ratings are essentially subjective - almost every user seems to have different criteria. LIKE makes no pretence to objectivity.
- The rating system has perverse effects - eg some people are much more likely to rate if they disagree with the present rating.
- Supports the idea of "if you can't say something nice then don't say anything".
- Removes trolling.
- If people want to be critical, then they can do so in the comments, without the cover of anonymity that a rating system provides. Most users don't mind well intentioned criticism. And if they do, they can simply delete the comment.

Edit: Also, LIKEs don't have to be anonymous. Each sound could have a list of users that LIKEd it.

Absolutely agree with Speedenza. The Likert scale implemented here is very subjective anyway, and does not help towards the cause of the downloading of a sound.
The proposed like system would be much better.

Your proposal gets my vote Speedenza.

I'm nitpicking, but IMO in the "transitional arrangement" a one-star shouldn't count as a "like", as currently one-star = "pretty bad". I've never given anything a one-star, but if I did I wouldn't want it converted into a "like".

http://imageshack.com/a/img46/952/a2e.gif

What about each two-star rating given converted to +1like, each three-star rating given converted to +2like , etc

Who has given a rating to a sound must stored be on the Freesound database as it is not possible for one to repeatedly rate the same sound.
However the rating each member gave may not have been be stored, the star-rating displayed could just be a rolling average.

Actually not my idea, RobinHood76 proposed it on another thread, I'm just championing it.

Timbre, under a LIKE system each user would only be able to influence a single LIKE per sound, so converting existing ratings on a sliding scale seems unduly generous. However I agree regarding one-star rating - someone who rates a sound as 'pretty bad' probably wouldn't have LIKEd it.
So...

Revised Proposal
Change to a LIKE system - preferably one where the user can LIKE only after listening to the sound.

Transitional Arrangements: Each star-rating of two stars and above gets converted to a LIKE on the basis of one LIKE per existing rating (not per star). The meaning of one-star ratings ('pretty bad') implies that the user wouldn't have LIKEd a sound, so these are excluded.

Shouldn't we also allow users to unlike a sound they already liked, for me sometime I click the like button by mistake(Even after listening to it). Also I think if you unlike a sound then the user that owns the sound shouldn't get a notification if it gets liked(If we decide to get notifications for likes that is). And I also don't think we should have the right to like our own sounds.

I just thought I should bring these up, I hope this replaces the rating system.

Best Regards,
18hiltc

I agree that liking might be better than voting. We already went from a 10-star system to a 5-star system. The question is then if there should also be a "dislike" and how do we go from the current system to the old one without losing too much information? Do we turn > 2 into like and <= 2 into dislike?

grts,

- bram

Yah I agree as well with you Bram and I agree with the others that if a sound was rated a one star it isn't considered a like but if someone votes it a two star or up then no matter what rating they gave it would still be considered one like.

Edit: So if 8 out of 9 people rated 2 and above then it would be considered 8 likes.