Sep 23
2009
Five Worthless Stars
YouTube explains something I always suspected: The vast majority of videos that are rated are given five stars. (This is by no means a shocking piece of news, more that it proves out what we all suspected.)
Seems like when it comes to ratings it's pretty much all or nothing. Great videos prompt action; anything less prompts indifference. Thus, the ratings system is primarily being used as a seal of approval, not as an editorial indicator of what the community thinks about a video. Rating a video joins favoriting and sharing as a way to tell the world that this is something you love.
This seems to have driven the current trend of "favroting" (or "liking" on Tumblr). Netflix, I suspect, is an exception to the rule, partly because they explain so clearly the benefit to yourself of rating movies (better recommendations) and partly because they're one of the few sites that explain what stars mean (one star is hate, two stars is didn't like, three stars is like, four is really liked, five is loved ... or something like that). Also reminds me of the post I wrote about the personal rules people apply to rating systems.
To me, the 'like' function on facebook seems more elegant the more we get into the issues with ratings--i.e. interpretation, aggregating, etc. It's very direct, doesn't leave a lot of room for subjectivity, and fits in nicely to the issue raised above that only the most impactful content gets rated. I think there needs to be a 'dislike' function to go along with it, but in general I think this is a more elegant way to go.