Removal of explicitly stated rating guidelines
Just wondering: why remove the recommended grading guidelines for AniDB? In my opinion, the guidelines provided a great way to rethink carefully about what your thoughts on an anime are, and helped to stop me from getting carried away voting too highly on an anime I'd just finished watching, keeping my ratings self-consistent. It gets hard to manage this if you only have a vague idea of what your scale should look like, so it was very useful to double-check the guidelines before voting.
It was also fairly harsh as rating systems go, giving good but not fantastic anime a modest 7, leaving plenty of room for improvement. (plus, when linking people to my myvotes, "what, only a 7!?" comments could be directed to the vote guidelines).
It was also a resource for people to check how they "should" be voting, so people (who cared) could try to vote on the same scale as everyone else[1] to keep the average votes balanced. It also would give people who are checking a user's myvotes a sense of what each score probably means to that person, since we have no way at present to attach a comment to a score (the only way of doing so is via a long review).
Anyway, just my thoughts. I think it was useful... and I personally don't really see much reason to completely get rid of it. But anyway. Maybe I'll just save a copy for myself from the edit history. :)
[1]Perhaps you're saying this doesn't mean anything any more under the new rating system? So a person's individual voting style would affect how they contribute to the overall vote or something.
Hyperworm 16:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree entirely with Hyperworm and actually thought the removal of the grading guidelines to be the work of some n00b or someone lame enough to want to disrupt the topic just 'cause personal viewpoint and without the consent of AniDB staff. Did a search and noticed that epoximator is registered as "AniDB staff" in the forums, so this was done with the consent of people working here in AniDB. Then I got confused: why? Why removing the grading guidelines from the wiki? They're in fact quite good, showing some careful thought in a sensitive system (voting). I think the rating guidelines are a very good and used to point people there. Even if Hyperworm's guess is correct (about the guidelines being removed due the new rating system), the guidelines should stay: they can be usefull when trying to apply a stantard to your own grades and help comparing to the votes of other users in the case of trading vote page's links with each other. The new system would help with the votes of the people who don't care about anything other than their personal voting style, the guidelines help those who care about a standard.
SirNiXXon 19 February 2007
I also think removing vote guideline was pointless. I used to stick to this guide so that my own votes stay consistent. Now I need to look for it in page history.
Actually, it's obvious to give better anime higher votes and leave some space at the end of the range in case something better/worse comes up. So, I'd say current hints are useless.
Gepard 10:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Hehe. I just reread them for fun and I honestly don't think they could have been any worse. are you sure you actually read them? This thread (old forum) applies here too, maybe even more. (Seeing what ticks in at reviews makes me want to do some cutting at those guidelines too, BTW). Anyway, you are all free to write something better (attempt to), but do it HERE.
Epoximator 13:37, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Even if the guidelines were not perfect to the eyes of some users (I personally think they were very very good), removing them altogether can hardly be regarded as an improvement; it's actually a regression. People should improve that which doesn't match their quality standards, not delete it altogether.
Moreover, speaking out of professional experience, I want to stress the importance of having well defined voting scores, otherwise there will not be any consistency between users' votes e.g. some will treat 7 as recommended, others 6 or 5. Vote consistency is of paramount importance for AniDB since it wants to offer its users a way to judge the popularity of a series by vote average and apply vote calculations to give "Hints".
I therefore suggest the restoration of the deleted recommendations from history. I'm not doing it myself right now because I'd like to read some debate (although I'm going to press the "undo" button if I don't read any objections soon).
Antono 01:09, 15 February 2008 (CET)
It has been stated in the forum already, but let me try again. the rating system AniDB use handles the "consistency" you worry about already. It does not care whatever meaning you (or anyone else) put in "7". Your 7 does not equal my 7 and there's no direct (obvious) relation between the vote value and the rating value. So even if your vote "7" means "monkey", and even if we defined it to be that, the rating value "7" would still not mean "monkey". It's merely an estimated value that only has meaning relative to all the other rating values. (As we decided to keep the inner workings of the system secret you pretty much have to take my word on this).
The guidelines were written before the current rating system was implemented and assumed a trivial arithmetic mean. To keep them would just be to pretend that nothing changed and let everyone live in ignorance. Granted, they did not really hurt the rating system, but they did a) give users the impression that the ratings could easily be mapped to some meaning, b) effectively limit the range of vote values actually used by imposing a "strict" mindset (trying to), (both of which is negative for the users).
--Epoximator 10:21, 15 February 2008 (CET)
Thank you for clarifying the matter, Epoximator. I'm sure everyone will agree there is no use for these recommendations if view of this info and no grounds to worry about vote consistency. I'm also positively surprised by the degree of sophistication in AniDB's inner workings :))
--Antono 11:51, 15 February 2008 (CET)