Freesound Forums

Halleck
Hm... yet another reason to use a 5-point scale instead.

I would not like a 5-point scale. It is hard enough to separate the highest rated sounds as it is ... currently just 0.37 encompasses the top ten. In fact, I would prefer a percentage marking system. That would be understandable by all, and would cater for that situation where at present, I perhaps give a sample 9, then another comes along which is better, but still not perfect, and I would like to give it 9.5 ... or 95 percent.

Mike

see to add to your point acc. i just put up a sample of rain. the first poster comes along and give's it s perfect 10...then some f.uck comes along and gives it a pretty low ass score to lower it to 7. the sample is pretty damn good and is in no way a freak 7.

haters. so what i still say is that these ratings are irrelevant when you have shit like that going on. personally i say you can't rate unless you've uploaded a sound. because of the example i just mentioned. or perhaps these people don't know that you listen to a low quality sample before you down load the real file?. either way that's pretty weak some people go around just lowering scores. almost makes me want to go and do the same-but how can you when half of them don't even have samples up?

get my point now.

Hello all

discarding both the lowest and the highest ratings is a common practice, specially if rating goes personal.

ps, sorry to be missing, blame my damn ISP.

edit: i see this was said before in the thread. Should be easy to implement... at least easier than convincing some to stop caring about ratings

Hi,

I was thinking about rating after I saw the poll for an improvement to the mechanism. I did a search and found this thread from the past. I have some questions.

I don't usually rate a sound unless I can give it an 8 a 9 or a 10. I feel giving a low rating discourages the posting of sounds. Same with comments, though I will make comments about sound quality. What are your thoughts on that? Would you rather I continue my current practice, or that I rate a sample exactly how I think it is regardless of score?

If I write a comment, I don't usually rate and vice versa. And I usually don't rate or comment on the extremely popular samples. My logic is that they have enough publicity and kudos, better to give it to lesser known sounds. What are your thoughts?

The other thing is I usually don't rate or comment until after I've downloaded and listened to the sound in its true state. That means that sometimes my good intentions to come back and rate or comment aren't carried through. I'm usually doing post processing in the sound editor and It's a lot more effort to break in the middle but a lot truer rating. Which would you rather have, sloppy rating and more, or truer rating and fewer?

And should the rating be for how much I like the sound, or its technical merits, or a mix of both? There are genres of music that I have a very unflattering opinion of. Should that count towards a rating?

I saw a recommendation for a percent rating system in this thread to provide more granularity. I like that idea. Not a selection, just type in a number.

Myself, I like the answer that dobroide gave earlier, that sounds here are like messages in a bottle. What happens, happens. But I've got a lot of personal use out of some of the sounds I've downloaded, and I'd like to give people payment for them in the way they'd like as far as possible. For the most part I already have on those I use heavily. My downloading now is more for fun and because I can't resist a sound. Like being in a store and picking up something because you see it, not because you really need it.

hello wisslgisse,

My "techy" answer is somewhat detrimental to the user experience overall: the truthful answer is that the way YOU decide to vote isn't that important: although your vote is important, there are many more votes, and the end-result is the averaging of all votes. I.e. you are important, but remember you're only one in a few 100.
You can see the nr of votes (and comments) per day here: http://www.freesound.org/experimental/commentvotecount.php
Remember there are ~50K sounds in freesound, so 400 votes per day on average you get one vote per each file every 125 days.

My "personal" answer is that it would be nice if people used the full range of voting, and vote once for a combination of features that THEY appreciate. If you're a quality nut, voting "1" for a sound means something else then when you're a noise musician!

On a sidenote: I once read a study about voting systems that compared a voting system that both used 1-100 and 1-5 ratings for the same objects (but on separate people). The study said with a big certainty that using more than 5 states to denominate a "vote" is completely useless - i.e. the end result is the same. So freesound 2 will use 5-star voting where 1 is the least and 5 is the most.

- bram

I don't use ratings myself; I think it more constructive to use comments instead. I think that commenting on a sample using constructive criticism and scrutiny is better and more useful than just rating it 1 out of 10.

P.S Bram can you make a statement in the announcements forum updating us on freesound 2.0 so we know what is happening?

Rating never gives truth about the sound, so i hardly use it. It's better to comment a sound.

Thank you for the comments.

I think, given what people have said that I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. :wink:

With a thought to increasing my comment production.

I haven't read through the thread in depth and so hope I am not repeating what people have already said, but given the arguments I have seen and put forward, why do we still need to use a rating system at all?

This is useful to have a rough quality impression of a certain file

Matt,
Ever since the start of radio and television (and now the internet)there has always been these sound charts,listeners like to hear the most popular sounds and here on freesound it does also give a quality impression..as Erdie points out.

For those of us who send our sounds out,some are dreamers who wish and wish again that their sound will hit No 1 in the chart,some others(who wear big hats)are convinced that their sound rightly belongs at the top spot...i'm a bit of each i guess

Basically though i agree with you and others here that ratings don't really mean doo-doo and comments are a much better form of expression.

I wonder about the new rating system,if it is cut from 1-10 to 1-5 won't this mean the chart will be changing every hour?Or will it become the most high scores that leads?I am confused!

...well this just shews my dislike of pop charts in general but isn't really what the rating system on freesound is mostly about.....i should finish what i started!

I don't rate very often,and only 8-9-10.
8 or 9 for when the sound is clean or it fires me up.
10 for when it's both of these.

I think Positive interaction is the more useful way and rating 0-5 feels like doing damage,i prefer no ratings which also sais something about the sound and leaves it for others who may have a different opinion.