We’ve all either rated something or we have used ratings online to determine the quality of whatever it is we intend to buy or use (e.g. movies, consumer goods, books, etc.) A great post at Quora asks the question about whether or not there is a better approach than a 5 star ratings system. It’s a great conversation with a lot of good input. I’ll summarize a couple of the better responses but you should take a look at the entire conversation.
1. You need to think what you want to do with your ratings system and optimize the experience. It has to be easy to use. (John Ciancutti)
2. Netflix experimented with full and half stars and found that more options means less ratings. Keep it easy. (John Ciancutti)
3. David Cole shows off a slide rating at steepster.
4. Glenn Maddern breaks it down to two ratings, objective and subjective.. (my personal favorite actually)
objective and subjective ratings for movies
5. Using a 5 star system delivers range compression between four and five stars. That makes it hard to differentiate. (thanks many people including James Rubinstein) I see this on almost every single one of my roadmap. If it’s important then it deserves the highest rating. It’s almost like an up or down rating would be better a la rotten tomatoes.
6. Rich Moronov mentions a great book on the topic, “Randy Farmer has written a brilliant book on this very question: “Building Web Reputation Systems”
Anyway, it’s a great conversation if you are thinking about ratings systems.
