Biznik Article Rating System

I like the anonymity of the article, because I know if I vote low I am not going to be attacked by the author because I didn't find their article helpful.

As it is, I find it interesting that most of the high rated articles are all about SEO and Marketing, there are a lot of other articles out there that are just as useful but people haven't even bothered reading them since they didn't have a vote until I read them.

As much as anonymity in ratings can give people the opportunity to do an unfair rating, this system exists all over -- amazon, blogs, other retailers, and so on. You can either leave an anonymous rating or create a fake name. That's the downside. The upside, is that is does give people the freedom to write what they really feel without the fear that their own article or product will be unfairly rated in return, out of spite.

I think the changes in Biznik's membership will raise the level of constructive feedback.

I figure I will chime in here. I have written 2 articles. I had something to say in each of them. I know that both articles had a huge impact. So I ignored the rating and looked at how many have read the 2 articles. That's really the telling point. I received 4 rating for both articles total, but I got 991 views in the Video Article and 2386 views in the Going Out of Business Article. That's more significant to how an article could be judged. So I chose to ignore the ratings. It's more important to read an article than to rate it.

I don’t see a problem. After all, each article is followed by a Comments section, so those who want to can leave more specific feedback.

I don’t see a problem with the rating scale, either. If an article is seriously flawed or factually incorrect, then a low rating is warranted. If that means a 1, 2, or 3, then so be it. Besides, if someone gives an article a low enough rating, Biznik sends the rater a message asking for clarification of that rating before it will be counted.

An earlier post seemed to suggest that ratings below 5 were inappropriate. If we were to take that to its logical conclusion, we’d end up with a ratings system similar to that of car dealerships who effectively guilt their customers into giving them ratings of 5 out of 5, because anything less means failure.

Yes, the overall rating of an article which has received only a handful of ratings can be greatly affected by subsequent ratings, but that’s only going to be true for so long. In the meantime, recruiting others to give ratings if 10 in order to “restore” a “fair” rating strikes me as dishonest—it’s gaming the system, really. Wouldn’t it make more sense to look over the article for things that could be improved?

Better yet, simply remember that one has to let go at some point. When putting something out there, how people respond—or even if they respond—is never guaranteed. What other folks get from an article is necessarily going to vary, because they bring different levels of knowledge, experience, and engagement to the table.

In any event, making individual ratings public could be problematic. I know I would be less likely to rate something if my name had to be attached to it every time.

Comparisons have been made with Amazon—but individual product ratings there are public only if accompanied by a written review. Otherwise, they’re anonymous.

My two bits

The ratings of articles do not promise anything. The rating could be an opinion or a personal attitude toward the writer. The ratings are for the most part voted by a consistent low number of members. We have no idea who they are or why they voted. Yes comments are great, but we are not as a whole editors or critics.

If things were transparent and/or a comment was required, then I could see the rating as constructive. At the moment, I ignore them by choice

As for Amazon, it's a review of Product, not an article - so that is a whole different discussion.

It may be that some may really have issue with the word "rating," thinking it synonymous with "quality of writing" or some such thing.

It makes sense, as we are all personally attached to what we write.

If we weren't emotionally connected to our writing, it wouldn't matter if someone trashed our article anyway. Likely, we wouldn't even perceive it as "trashing".

Biznik's system isn't (necessarily) about the quality of the writing. That's neither here nor there. It's a measurement of the article's utility.

We're not talking about whether the article is "good" or not; the rating (as I understand it) is not a "review" in the traditional sense.

The question is whether and to what degree the article is helpful to the indie business professional.

The comment section is for talking about the article, asking questions of the author and other people who comment, and otherwise engaging the article.

I am a proponent of transparency, but I am not convinced that we'd get any semblance of the measure of utility if everyone had to disclose what rating they gave an article.

As for my own personal practice, I rarely rate the utility of an article precisely because it appears most people see the Biznik Rating System as a popularity contest where suddenly everyone's back in junior high school, or worse, they are taken back to the feelings they had when the teacher marked their papers in red ink.

I see the articles as an entirely different animal on Biznik than on other platforms, and perhaps the name "rate" or "rating" should be changed to reflect that.

Interesting idea, Tshombe. What words come to mind that could be used in place of "rate"? I thought of "score" but that is also weighted.

In the thesaurus, the word "guage" popped out. As in... "Gauge this article's helpfulness" and "The article's gauge."

As a solo business person, to what degree is the article useful to build, expand or improve my business?

Actually, I have a suggestion that Biznik management should really think about and consider. Ready...here goes.

If someone opens and reads an article they should be forced to rate the article before closing. They should also have an option to use their name or use anonymous.

And the rating system should not be in numbers (1 to 10) it should be in comments. How about having members submit their suggestions and the winner gets a Pro membership for a year.

Thanks, Howard Dion

Okay, I did not get all the posts that are listed here, but maybe we need a Useful rating. People can post comments, but forcing people to post sort of defeats the purpose and can create a nightmare of just reading through all the comments.

Usefulness is a better way to judge what is written. It's just a suggestion, but Rating in and by itself really doesn't work, and since the votes are so few, that defeats the value of the rating.

I do not know the answers to this. There is obviously different opinion, but we v need to think of this along the goals of the group and what we want to gain from the articles as writers and readers.

Weird. Only one line of the comment I left actually showed up.

Basically, I mentioned that I like the word "Gauge" and offered the suggestion that you actually put above the rating box some specific direction like "Gauge the usefulness (or helpfulness) of this article."

I also thought perhaps the word "Measure" in this context might work.

As David mentioned, we need a Useful Rating. In actuality, that IS what we currently have, but it's been interpreted differently. That's why changing the name from the emotion-laden "rating" may be at least a step in a better direction.

Also, as David mentioned, forcing people to "rate" and "post" in the way Howard suggests not only defeats the purpose of articles but will likely have the affect of fewer folks bothering to read the articles (or submit them) at all.

Uh, if I'm forced to rate an article before being able to close it, I'm not going to be reading articles—and all the time and effort the writers put into them will have gone to waste with this part of their audience.

I also think that what you call the rating system doesn't matter. Unless you change how it works, you won't change what it is.

Gauging, rating, ranking, evaluating, opining, measuring, etc. They all mean the same thing.

Semi-related to this topic…

I miss the split between "What folks are saying" and "What folks need" on the home page. I'm now not really seeing any of the new folks joining Biznik, and the "What folks are saying" segment has pretty much been entirely taken over by responses to this one topic we've been discussing—which creates the impression that there's a lot of internal squabbling going on on Biznik. I don't think that's very helpful to anyone.

Okay, I take it back. So here is a different question. I look at articles I wrote and that others wrote and see hundreds of views. Yet I see few if any comments and few if any ratings.

How do we get more people to offer feedback to the writer? Or is this "just one of those things" it is what it is?

Solid question Howard.

Two things:

1. Use the Biznik articles as a fire starter. Because Biznik is a community the articles that "do the best" - get a lot of ratings and comments and views - are the ones that take a bold stand, lay out the position, but leave room for the community to engage with the content.

2. While I think it is useful to be clear that you want engagement from the article, putting a line in at the end: so, what do you think about this topic is a total throw away.

Rather - identify the real issue for the person who you think would be interested in reading this article and make it so they do not have a choice but to engage. That is your challenge.

Also, Howard - I noticed in your ROI article that two people left comments, but that you did not reply.

Big mistake.

If I, as a reader and member of the community see that you are not interested in replying to the comments in your article, I am going to be FAR less inclined to leave something in the comments.

IMPORTANT: Some authors reply to every single comment in a unique post. I think that is a hassle for the previous commenters, and might make them "unfollow" the discussion.

Rather it is better to lump a few people in at once. Look how Tshombe does it!

Matt:

Your points are valid, thank you. I am just learning the ropes so to speak. I will do better next time.

Regards, Howard

Not at all Howard!

You are doing a great job, I love to see how you are participating in and engaging with the community.

Great observation, Kevin! We retired the "I Need" section on the profile when we launched the changes to Biznik 3 weeks ago -- which is why it no longer appears on the home page.

"I Need" was intended to be a place for peer-to-peer exchange of resources, ideas and assistance. 90% of the entries were a variation of "I need clients." Duh. We all need clients. We didn't feel the "I Need" was contributing value to the site.

But you make an interesting point about the impression of too many comments from one discussion. The most interesting discussions occur inside the Articles not Biz Talk. Perhaps a solution is to pull recent comments from articles instead.

This is a great suggestion. How about some steps that can be taken by the article writers on how to get the conversations going.

Comparisons between Biznik's rating and Amazon's has been made a couple times.

Ratings on Audible.com, eBay and Amazon are all in the same camp -- these are product ratings for the benefit of cosumers making a purchase. I do not agree that the rules applied to product ratings, can be applied to content ratings for the purpose of display and placement inside a directory.

I concur a book is vastly different from an article.

Honestly I am completely opposed to anything more transparent than what is already here. Like others I would refuse to rate things, I wouldn't want the article author to come back and ask me why I rated it low - my response would be I personally didn't find it helpful. The rating system is subjective, I guess if you don't like the ratings you get perhaps reexamining what is written might be helpful

Check out the homepage -- update made. We now display 6 most recent comments in Biz Talk along side 6 most recent comments in an article discussion. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Kevin! :)