One of the very cool things about the Internet is social sites — places where people can get together and share their opinions of stuff. Interested in a restaurant, a book, a movie, a hotel, a plumber, a washing machine — you can find folks reviewing their experiences. So when I am looking for a new computer, for example, I might hit Amazon (which has the largest aggregate population), Best Buy (if they sell it), and CNet (which will give me both editor ratings and reader ratings).
The biggest problem is — as with student grading and performance reviews — making sure that comparisons are apples-to-apples. Add to that people filing reviews either when they (a) really hate something and want to bitch about it, or (b) really want to joint the bandwagon on popular stuff.
The most common grading scale is “stars,” usually 5 of them. But what they mean varies from site to site. Amazon’s scaling is the most common:
- I hate it.
- I don’t like it.
- It’s OK.
- I like it.
- I love it.
Now, that makes a lot of sense, on one level. It’s a nice mirror — 3 is in the middle (“It’s okay”), then spreading out by one provides a dis/affection (“I [don’t] like it”), and going to either end provides the extreme reaction (“I hate/love it”).
Goodreads, on the other hand, assumes that most of the books you’ve chosen to read you’re going to like to some degree. Because you’ve already done a first pass at “rating” by acquiring the book in the first place. It’s rating scale:
- I didn’t like it.
- It was OK.
- I liked it.
- I really liked it.
- It was amazing.
I actually like this grading scale, because it opens up that “like” end of things. For a book, it’s not necessary to say much more than that I didn’t like it — various gradations of dislike/hate aren’t really necessary. But for a recommendation, knowing whether it was “just” okay, or likeable, or really likeable, or amazing, is actually useful information. It means I can give some shades of gray, reserve the top rating for just the things that are so awesome I run around pushing the book into other people’s hands.
(Nevertheless, the books on Goodreads still tend to get ratings in the 4-5 range, which tells me either that people are really liking the books they read, or else are still engaging in grade inflation — “It was awesome!” — or that they are using the more symmetric / less nuanced Amazon scale).
What do you think? Are these sorts of ratings of value? Is a symmetric grading scale better or worse than one that provides more gradations for one side or the other?
I don’t use the Goodreads stars, if only because I don’t want my thoughts on books all that public. I like that I can say I read it, and out in a few words about it if I want, but that otherwise, I can just use the site to keep track of what I’ve read. That said, I wasn’t aware of how Goodreads rates their stars as compared to Amazon — interesting!
One of the very
coolworst things about the Internet is social sitesThere, fixed it for you.
What the internet does do is make you aware how frightening ‘democracy’ is. Reading the readers comments on the BBC website, or in the tabloid press makes me wonder why there isn’t any sort of test to show you understand the issues before you vote. For follow up read http://failbook.failblog.org/
Well, I suppose Sturgeon’s Law pertains to the Internet, too. And, yes, it sometimes amazes me the doltitude present in comments on a lot of public fora (let alone the stuff in the fora themselves).
Still, I think there’s value, from a review standpoint, in seeing what, precisely, people liked or disliked about things. (Even there, it’s often head-shakingly odd, but also often helpful.)