I'm probably being a little dim here so bear with me, If someone rates a quiz as average that would give a rating of 3, very poor would give a rating of 1 and excellent would be a 5. Do I have that correct?
Here is where I am confused, if a quiz has an average rating of 3 point something, meaning above average, how can it be rated in the 50 thousands out of 65,000 quizzes? unless of course very, very few quizzes are ever rated as poor/very poor which would mean that quizzes rated above average (meaning most players have either rated the quiz as average or good) are in fact the bottom rated quizzes. I hope someone understands what I mean

yep, I think I got your meaning!

Quiz rankings are relative, and quiz ratings are absolute.
aka
a quiz ranking from 1 to 65,000 odd is relative to the average ratings (5 to 1, excellent to very poor) of the other quizzes.

Something I've noticed while rating quizzes - I have a wheeled mouse, and if I wheel down the page to continue after rating the quiz, the rating changes to a lower one. I make myself remember to use the scrollbar after rating instead. I hope I didn't give anybody low ratings before I discovered this glitch.

I'll have to play with different input formats for ratings, because it's possible some people are accidentally rating quizzes incorrectly.

In checking for bugs in the system, I was astonished to find that some of our most active quiz takers rate almost EVERY quiz they take a 1 or a 2. In other words, they think that most quizzes on the site are crap yet they play thousands of them.

Take this active player for example:

+----------+--------+
| count(*) | rating |
+----------+--------+
| 33744 | 1 |
| 23427 | 2 |
| 6309 | 3 |
| 4384 | 4 |
| 188 | 5 |
+----------+--------+

He has rated 57000 quizzes a 1 or 2 and 4000 a 4 or 5.

Absolutely remarkable. I think I'm going to have to create an algorithm that will simply ignore the ratings from such players. If your average rating isn't between 2 and 5, you get ignored.

Terry

Just a question on this, if I am taking a couple of quizzes rapidly and I don't feel like rating it, what happens when I click it rated?
I mean if I haven't used the drop down menu but click?


I don't think I've rated anyone a one but once or twice in all my days here!

I'm no sleuth but it took me very little time to work out who the offending player is and he has played all of my quizzes

Hi!

When I joined this site I had one goal : playing all the quizzes, just like player gammab. I decided to express my enthusiasm for exceptional quizzes by giving them an advantage above the others. I much later figured out that most people were doing the exact contrary. I just wished my “different system” would stay confidential.

Since I have now played over 99% of the quizzes, I believe my ratings have the effect I wanted them to have: they give an advantage to my favourite quizzes and all the others have the same rating. I am sorry if this gives any impression of a bad intentioned gesture: I really admire the works of the editors and of the authors. I would have explained it thoroughly to you Terry in response to your private message, but since it was also presented here, I would like to say to everyone that I love this site, I love the quizzes and I am grateful that I improved very much my English skills. Because besides being addicted to the trivia, I used this site, over the years, to improve my second language, which was very deficient four years ago.

Now if you want to ignore my ratings, I won’t oppose. I express my appreciation of this site by playing regularly different games, by being a goldmember, by contributing a few quizzes, etc. If the system I adopted isn’t liked, you can delete all my ratings.

Have you ever tried to justify yourself publicly in a second language? I hope my message is ok. If not, my excuses.

Kabdanis

It seems like a very unfair system to rate quizzes that you don't view as exceptional as very poor. Your intention was to play as many quizzes as you could, fair enough, but that would mean that a very large proportion of those quizzes will have been of very little interest to you and would therefore be deemed unexceptional and rated as very poor. I think this is grossly unfair on the quiz writer, they wrote a quiz on what interested them for other like-minded people to play. It would be like me playing all the sport quizzes (I loathe sport) and rating them all as very poor because it would be impossible for me to tell if they were good or bad quizzes (beyond grammar) as I don't know enough about the subject. Just my opinion, I'll leave it at that

I think it's very well possible to fairly rate quizzes even if they're on subjects you know (next to) nothing about. It's not just about the subject, but about the way it's presented.

The rating system described by Kabdanis seems as good - or as bad if you prefer - as most others. Some forum posters have described how they rate quizzes solely on how many correct answers they get, which to me is the worst reason of all to give a rating, either good or poor!
I rate quizzes on how well presented and original they are, and on the quality of the additional information. If this is poor or non-existent the quiz is rated poor. If it's interesting and informative, I'll rate high. How well I do is not a consideration, nor is my knowledge or even personal interest in the quiz subject.

I've never taken that much notice of ratings anyway, I play quizzes that look like they will be of interest to me, I'm not bothered if they are top or bottom rated, I'll make my own mind up about them. I only started this thread to try and understand how average/good rated quizzes are ranked at the bottom end of the 65000 quizzes. It seems the ratings are quite meaningless anyway because of the many different (not right or wrong just different) reasons quiz takers use when deciding on a rating. I shall take less notice of a quizzes rating now then I did before.

I have to say that I tend to only rate quizzes that are exceptionally good with a four. I might occasionally give a three. This system has its merits, but others do it other ways.

As I've known Kabdanis for a long time now and I know he's sincere in what he decided to do, I've thought this whole thing out.
Kabdanis, despite his modesty about his English abilities, appreciates it when a quiz is well written and rates it accordingly. (I believe he works in the book field professionally and so this is his job). As he takes all sorts of quizzes, even on those about which he may not be familiar. I would even venture to say that because he is not a native English speaker, he appreciates good clear writing more. (I have the same thing in French when I read people's work in French).

As the lower ratings were provided, he basically called it as he saw it and gave the lower ratings to those quizzes that he felt weren't well thought out, and gave the superior ratings to those that were.
This is my understanding of this system of rating.

At no time whatsoever do I feel that Kabdanis would ever rate a quiz out of personal feelings, or not having scored a ten or fifteen or twenty. That's not at all his style.

Here's another aspect, when I was a prof and had to give out grades to many people, I needed a system that would be fair. Basically the tests were anonymous but, I had to separate them into piles of six. I had criteria for the grades but instincts were also good. If I had anything I wasn't sure of, I'd set it aside.
Although I am not fond of giving out lower grades, it became clearer who had done their research and who hadn't.

As I am an editor, I've edited quizzes of every possible variety since I got here. I've also taken quite a few.
I've often said that some quizzes are so poorly written that the reasons you get a three is clear. Some are written very well and you'll get a three too!

I'm going to use my friend Jazz' work as an example as I hope he won't mind. I remember taking quizzes of his, and scoring one out of ten as they were so wildly eclectic and made me reach into the recesses of my mind, and they were really great trivia questions nonetheless. I remember writing him messages on the ones I liked.

When I edit I see quizzes on subjects about which I know nothing whatsoever. (new groups in music for example). And the person who writes well sparks my interest and teaches me something.

I am almost certain that Kabdanis's motivations were similar, but that, he chose to go ahead and give out the poor rating instead of not rating. It's probably like my system of correcting a massive pile of college students' papers by dividing them into six piles for about ten criteria.

But isn't rating them ALL 1, the same as saying they are all equal? This leaves the rating system in a mess. Say for example he rated 57000 quizzes 1, isn't that saying the quiz ranked 60000th is the same quality as that ranked at 3000th?

It would seem so jonno, I've played some excellent quizzes that are at the bottom of the pile, similiarly I've played some rather dull quizzes that are rated highly. It all seems fairly meaningless, I'd hate for a relatively new quiz writer to be put off from writing more quizzes because their quizzes haven't been rated well, when the reasons for those poor ratings could be rather spurious!

There are two things here...

First, Kabdanis's logic makes total sense. From a *relative* point of view, his ratings ARE fair, because all quizzes have been rated relative to one another.

If all quizzes were to be rated poorly, then the ranking would still be fine, because they are ranked relative to all other quizzes.

The problem arises when players start getting upset about their *absolute* values looking bad. It is quite possible for a quiz ranked 3/5 to be rated #1 on the entire site IF all other quizzes are rated slightly lower.

Thus, the absolute value really doesn't carry much meaning, and I should probably just hide it.

BTW Kabdanis, you are just one of a number of players who rate like you do. I'm not picking on you here, nor calling you an evil person Merely discussing quiz rankings.

Ratings have two purposes... first is to offer our better quizzes to new players over poor quizzes. Second is to give authors feedback on how they have done and offer them tangible evidence that their hard work pays off.

Would anyone be upset with me hiding the absolute rating values, and focusing instead on rank, which is a relative measure?

I could add a new statistic, "ratings of 5", which will show you how many players who have played each quiz have rated you a 5. This would give a lot more meaningful feedback than the absolute rating average that is currently displayed.

Just to make sure I understand this - you're saying we will know that our quiz is #3456 out of 56789, but not that it got a rating of 3.96? (Obviously I'm pulling these numbers out of my head)

Fine with me. I won't pretend that I don't check to see if I have new sunglasses, but on the whole, the exact numbers don't matter much. Knowing how many players have given a 5 would have a beneficial effect on the ego - I don't really want to know how many have given a 1, though!

I'm with agony on this, as I think it will be better for everyone. How about instead of the number of players that rated a "5," doing a percentage of "5" ratings. With nearly 1 million members, either way, that number will probably be miniscule.

I personally think that Kabdanis has a right to rate how he wishes. Some may not like it, but we (as a quiz author or quiz taker) cannot tell anyone how to rate.

Quote:

---

But isn't rating them ALL 1, the same as saying they are all equal? This leaves the rating system in a mess. Say for example he rated 57000 quizzes 1, isn't that saying the quiz ranked 60000th is the same quality as that ranked at 3000th?

---

Not necessarily, as there are (as stated above) almost 1 million members. Each of those members could have rated the quiz a "5" or a "1." You're only looking at one person's ratings, or 0.0001% of all players. How many other players have played more than 25,000 quizzes? There are only eight (including Kabdanis) that are above 25,000. On the same token, there are only three quizzes that have over 30,000 plays. I doubt that all 30,000 rated that quiz a "1."

Everybody, go check your My Quizzes Edit page. I have just noticed the "User Feedback" column, and it looks great!

Terry's tinkering has done wonders. I think this is a much better way to show ranks and ratings. It also shows that not everyone rates quizzes, but that is OK with me. I don't always rate quizzes, either. I think I've rated about 12,000, but played over 19,000.

Thanks I think this works a lot better too.

Number of ratings is usually considerably less than times played because:

- all guest plays dont rate

- ratings of some players with suspicious patterns of rating are discarded (cheat detection)

- players who have not been online for a certain period of time and who have not played a certain number of quizzes are also ignored until they do meet this criteria (cheat detection)

Yay! I like that feature ~ it looks almost reassuring, too, in that those quizzes I put a lot of effort into that hardly ever get shown as played are at least getting high ratings from those that DO play them. Good program and helpful, too. Thank you!
I'm lovin' all this new stuff!

<<
I just wished my “different system” would stay confidential. >>

In fairness, I didn't mention you by name, and still haven't even stated that it was your stats that I listed above. I don't do that sort of thing.

Terry

Ouch, rating a quiz a 1 (or very poor) is tragic. I have to say that the drop down rating system has made me skip rating altogether in some cases, but something that is worthy of a 1 should not even be online. I think rating quizzes as "average" was the fair thing to do. I like the idea of poor and very poor being taken off if there are folks out there who really do this. I cannot fathom how so many quizzes can be rated as poor or very poor by any one quiz taker.

I do wonder, as per my post in the staff room, why the rankings are not in order any more on your "edit quiz" list of quizzes. I stated there that I have 64 or so NON ranked quizzes listed before my first ranked one. It used to be offline ones at the top, new non-ranked quizzes next, and finally the ranked quiz list began. I did NOT have 64 NON ranked quiz prior to the change. So, has the new system re-ranked those other quizzes? Man, that sounds confusing, LOL