I've been reading a bit about rating systems lately.
Apparently 5-star rating systems are not good, since most people rate really high or really low. YouTube used to have a 5-star rating system and "the number of 5-star ratings greatly outnumbered all others, with 1-star a distant second." People also use half-stars a lot less than whole stars. On some site called MovieLens with millions of ratings "only 20% of all ratings are half-stars."
Link here: A Better Way to Rate Films
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I found a very simple, but effective way of using ratings. Assign a verbal meaning to each point in the rating system. This is the 10-point system that RPGnet uses:
10 - One of the Best Ever
9 - Outstanding
8 - Very Good
7 - Good
6 - Above Average
5 - Average
4 - Almost Average
3 - Some flaws
2 - Poor
1 - Worthless
(I use this now for rating my songs on iTunes (with half stars) and my mood affects the ratings less, which is good. Ratings 3 and 2 to me are "bad" and "very bad," respectively. Sadly I have less 5-star tracks than before.)
Link here: Collective Choice: Experimenting with Ratings
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This is also worth reading:
Is there a better alternative to the 5-star rating system?
Many insightful answers with lots of examples.
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How do you go about ratings albums on VGMdb, movies on IMDB or anything else?
Are you happy with VGMdb's 5-star rating system and how people use it?