Topic: Rating steps discussion

Yesterday I changed the rating steps for custom rating categories (e.g. coverart, songwriting etc) to match the tiers. Most users do not need a hundred steps in these categories, and the previous solution (which was to offer ten steps, 0-100) did not properly map to the tiers. So you could not assign a proper "A" tier, for instance, but only a "A-" (80) or a "S-" (90). Changing the options from for example 80 to 85 corrects that.

Do you really need more fine-grained steps in these categories, and why? I will find a solution to make everyone happy, but I'd like to understand the reasons :-)

i pointe it out a while back that mapping stars and letters to numbers is too complex and is a system that doesn't really work, and this is why. really should just keep it as a numeric system...

i think ten steps was perfect, it was working great for me. if you're concerned about the letter matching all being "minus," why not just map each step to the letter without the "minus," eg a 7 is a B instead of B-.

That seems like the most logical solution to me. but if you really think it's too many, which i would highly disagree with, then starting at 1 with 1.5 increments covers the best range, eg 1, 2.5, 4, 5.5, 7, 8.5, 10, but doing that still removes the crucial 6.0 which is like my most commonly used rating (at which i would do 5.5). again, i still don't like it, but it's better than jumping from 3 to 5.5 and having a 9.5 and 10

Can you explain how/why it is significant whether something is rated 3/10 or 4/10? Why would anybody care about splitting hairs on that level of mediocrity/bad?

And even a 6/10 is still a rating which would just signal to me to ignore the release. It's been a long time since I looked at your rating system (mail), but I remember the broad strokes and I think the difference between us is that I see the scale much less linearly than you do. To me basically everything below 7/10 is just bad or mediocre. It still makes a difference whether something is rated 3/10 or 4/10, but that difference to me is MUCH LESS RELEVANT than the difference between 8/10 and 9/10. This is why the tiers map like they do now.

Do you think people would be inclined to check out a release when they come across your review combined with a 6/10 rating, which is still technically "good"?

I don't like the new ratings either. Not sure why you would have ".5" but not straight ".0". It isn't a huge deal to me, since I try to use the "good", "great", "awesome", etc... for how I rate the album, so I will continue to do just that.

^ The tiers are defined as ranges, for example the A tier goes from 80 to 89. When you assign level 80 that ends up as an ”A-”. In order to assign a straight A the level needs to be 85, the middle of the range.