Ratings are Stupid

in case you hadn't noticed, few newswire articles are rated at the moment. only when dozens of things are being posted in the same day do people have much interest in rating the photos, soundbytes, etc. - and it then serves the useful purpose of keeping noteworthy material near the top of the home page.

ironically, articles that are rated 0 or 1 will actually be higher on the home page than articles that aren't rated at all. so down-rating can have the opposite of the intended effect.

I don't know anything about the rating system, being that I never attempted to rate a story.
However, if there IS a rating system, then I think it is just plain STUPID. There is no need for competition with Indymedia. Let's not all become hypocrits ok? Because then Indymedia might as well join corporate media and I would hate for that to happen.

In Solidarity

wow, it's good to see people are so interested in ratings on sf.indy! i'm glad people have opinions on them, and i'd like to see people's concerns translate into changes for this and other indymedia sites, if need be.

i can fill you in on a bit of the history and intention of ratings and indymedia.

most indymedia sites run using a bunch of software called "active" that is developed by a global group of techies (usually referred to as the "indymedia geeks") . active is constantly changing, that is, it's in constant development (it's not called "static," after all :) see http://process.indymedia.org/tech for more about this.

the decision to implement a ratings-type system had to do with the observation of a couple of problems on previous imc sites:

first, during seattle and DC, when indymedia sites were being hit with tons of traffic and new postings, newly posted articles were being pushed off the front page quickly, as new content was being posted. volunteers on editorial could pull some articles and feature them in the "center column", but we noticed that a lot of good content would be buried quickly as new content would come in. we wanted some way that "good" content could be featured for some time after it was posted- and we wanted a way in which anyone who wanted to could decide what was "good".

secondly, indymedia has a strict no-censorship policy. it is exceedingly rare for an article to be pulled from an indymedia site- only when there is completely offensive material posted, or an article posted many multiple times, does someone take the item down by hand. usually, this is after consulting with other imc people, and never feels good to do. we wanted a way in which the indymedia _community_ as a whole could decide what was not appropriate for _our_ site- articles that would have been pulled before could be rated down to 0 and "disappear".

philly was the first imc that used ratings- and we saw that the use of ratings could be one approach to the issues i described above. philly also didn't use active- it was the first (and still is the only) imc not to do so. taking a que from philly, some dicussions were had, some ideas were tossed around, and we ended up rushing to implement a ratings system in active in time for the la-imc. la, from a technical standpoint, was a nightmare, so while the code was done we never really got ratings going down there. we did have time to get them to work for the sf-imc, and future imc's will have in option of using ratings, as well.

i should mention that many people within the imc development, editorial, and user communities have had very valid concerns over ratings, and that an ongoing dialogue exists over them.

the sf ratings system didn't aim to assign an arbitrary value to articles, which i agree, it looks like it does now. it was designed as a way of highlighting articles thought of as "good" by the indymedia community for a period of time of between 12 and 48 hours, and of de-emphasizing content thought of as inappropriate, wirhout resorting to heavy-handed tactics. i apologize for any confusion caused by the current system.

active, as i mentioned, is under constant development, and one area of focus right now is ratings. i invite everyone's involvement in this. if you have specific questions or ideas about ratings and how they could improve, please email me. also check http:.//process.indymedia.org for some "behind the scenes" indymedia infromation, as well has how to get involved and who to get in touch with. lists.indymedia.org is a valuable resource in that it has archives of most of the indymedia mailing lists and allows you to sign up for those lists. if you're interested in ratings, the editorial group would be a good place to plug in.

thanks, and i hope this clears up some issues people have. again, please email me with specific questions or suggestions.

joshua / epse
joshua [at] threespeed.org

anyone can post as many articles as they want about anything.

anyone can comment as much as they want on articles.

anyone can rate articles and comments.

if we decide to censor ratings, then sooner or later we will resort to censoring comments. then we will start censoring articles. where will it end?

Firstly, I'm extermely glad to see the words "no censorship", and this affirmation outweighs any objections I have about ratings. Yes, i had assumed IMC were , within reason, anti-censor, until a certain site began to cut articles and then justify it in the face of complaints. I think they've understood the mistake now, so I wont press it further.
If the idea of the ratings system is to keep the more important articles on the first page, make that clearer, for that much I'm if favor of; very sad to see a well written, intelligent piece swept away within hours by a load of silly stuff.