I think you should keep the rating system in, but maybe also give a stamp of approval, like everytime someone clicks the stamp of approval button, it gets one added to the Approval Total
And maybe once a video gets a certain amount of stamps (2,000 or something) it could get a stamp on the thumbnail for the video, so you know whether people liked it before you view
5 star ratings have sort of become obsolete. subscribers will obviously rate a video 5 stars, and people who troll will rate it 1 star. a new rating system is due, or just remove the 5 stars.
To be honest, if i like a video, i'll give it 5 stars. If i don't like it, i don't rate it. People tend to do the same as far as i know. The only suggestions i have are remove it, or make a more details rating. Maybe have 1-10, and have words describing
1 star = Hate It 3 stars = could be better 5 stars = average 7 stars = pretty good 10 stars = Loved it.
Make it mandatory for the viewer to rate every video they watch. They can't navigate away from the watch page until they rate.
No, don't. Please.
Ratings were great where there was a Top Rated list that mattered. Now it only helps if viewers have their Recent Activity turned on and people are surfing their channel pages to find new videos.
And it helps us see who's watched our vids, even if they didn't leave a comment. Helpful for when "popular" channels like nerimon or the vlogbrothers watch and rate, but don't EVER leave a comment.
I feel like a new system wouldn't work either. I agree that it's all one or nothing.
I feel like a new system is due, however, I would HATE a "thumbs up / down" system. That would give a "Funny or Die" feel to it, which youtube should not emulate. Stars are much better than a percentage of approval.
Leave the system alone. It works! People don't favorite videos as much cause they end up with 5,000 videos favorited and most don't like that. You can't go back and find one that you really want to see.
I rate anywhere from 1-5. Leave it alone. Fix something that could use fixing like helping more good videos get featured that aren't made my major studios.
I'm not really surprised by it. It would probably be best to generate a rating based on a combination of views+favorites+shares instead of the (now obviously) flawed rating system.
Ratings on YouTube have always been somewhat confusing for me: should I rate the content of the video or the quality? There are some wonderfully shot videos on YouTube that really don't have any meaningful content, and there are also a lot of videos that have wonderful content but are shot very poorly. I think a dual content vs. quality rating would add too much complexity to the system, but I often don't rate a video for that very reason.
I don't find ratings all that helpful, probably due to the fact that there are millions of people using YouTube, each with a different opinion. It doesn't influence whether I watch a video, but then again, I usually find videos from friends or other channels I respect.
If it goes thumbs up/thumbs down, it will still just be a massive amount of thumbs instead of 5*
If it goes to 10stars, people just rate 10 not 5.
Without scrapping the system entirely and just leaving the favourites, which would then get used as the arbiter (people don't want 50000000videos in their faves box so would only actually favourite worthy videos.)
So yeah, that gets my vote: Scrap stars completely.
i think you should just do a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' system. personally i only rate videos that i like and I give them 5 stars. but if i watch i video i dont like then i dont rate it unless it offends me in any way and in that case i give it 1 star.
I love the rating system. Def. keep it because when I see a video has a one star rating, I dont even bother to look at it. But if it has a 5 star rating, then I would look at it. Maybe if you want to make it a little better. Make it out of 10 stars instead of 5
I tend to five star things that are good, and one star things that aren't. If there were only three instead of five, it might cause more people to use the middle ground.
I honestly don't like the five star system here. And I think it's been proven that it's not even really necessary. I don't even know if 'Thumbs Up or Down' is even needed. Maybe just a 'Thumbs Up' would work.
The system works for me, but a lot of people might not like the way I use it.
Favoriting videos on channels to which I'm subscribed seems redundant. I reserve that for videos that I want to see again, but couldn't find if I didn't mark them somehow. If I like a video enough to favorite it, I'll give it 5 stars too.
On channels where I'm subscribed, a video has to be either absolutely stellar or utter crap before I'll bother to rate it, so that's a 1 or a 5 (and those are rare). In my opinion the fact that I'm subscribed says that I like their work and, like favoriting, rating every video seems redundant.
If I dislike a video enough to give it a poor rating, I'm generally not going to hang around long enough to finish it, much less rate it.
Virtually nobody is motivated enough to show indifference to a youtube video. I don't even look at ratings when I'm surfing youtube - I look at the number of times it has been viewed. I assume if something is good enough, people will tell their friends and the video will be popular. Definitely simplify to a two- or one-way rating system.
I’ve always been a bit against the rating system, but it’s also set the standard for a lot of other sites out there which now have the exact same kind of thing. The only site that comes to mind in which the five-star system actually works somewhat well is Amazon. Other than that it’s pretty worthless.
I would go for the two-vote option. I’m not going to favorite videos that don’t pertain to me just because I think they’re funny. Once I absorb someone’s content, unless it’s viral or it is mentioning me in it, I usually don’t need to return. So why add that video to my favorites if it really isn’t?
I think the Stamp of approval idea suggested by Ian197635 at the top of the page is the best, the ratings system has become a bit irrelevant. If I didn't like a video, I won't rate it. If it's a subscriber video, I'll rate 5. Loads of people, I imagine do what I do.
Why not do something really new like allowing users to say that the video they just watched was "boring" or "hilarious" or "cute?"
Be the first site on the web to allow viewers to tag content with their impressions. This is what other users are wanting anyway when they look at the ratings on a video - what others thought of the video after they watched it. Why not get specific and let them see the top 3 impressions of each video. For instance "Cat falls asleep on fan" might have "Top Impressions: Hilarious (32) Cute (19) Funny (8)" and "New Musician lights up the stage in LA" might have "Top Impressions: Awesome (41) Sick (19) Talented (7)".
This would give users a much better idea of what they can expect from a video before watching it. It would allow people to see a list of the videos tagged the most number of times with the words "hilarious" or "cute" or "interesting". It would open up a whole new world of possibilities for YouTube too such as doing something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qZsf0d7TrQ&feature=channel_page
The 5-star rating system is obviously flawed. People rather make a choice between "like" or "dislike" instead of getting all fuzzy about whether to give something three, four or five stars. When someone gives something five starts they actually make a statement that they liked it, instead of saying it is perfect and thus deserves a perfect rating.
Long story short: I suggest YouTube scraps the current rating and makes it "like" or "dislike".
Why not use people's attention as a way of rating. If someone watches the whole thing from beginning to end, they must like it. If they leave the page 10 seconds in they don't like it. If they skip through the video and only watch half of it, they think it's ok. No user interaction neccessary.
In my point off view, you guys should put a rating from 1 (bad) to 10 (excellent), instead of only 5 stars 1 star = bad 2 stars = could be better 3 stars = almost good 4 stars = average 5 stars = pretty good 6 stars = something better 7 stars = good 8 stars = very good 9 stars = almost excellent 10 stars = excellent, i'love it
You can also have a three way system: Didn't like Liked LOVED it.
Why? You often come across videos you liked or didn't like but every now and then you come across amazing videos and there should be a button for this as well. Using favourites for this could work but I for example rarely use it.
YouTube, read the comments and don't change anything.
People are using stars for many different reasons (even if there are more suitable options than stars for doing the same thing):
* tagging videos for future reference (some people don't like playlists),
* voting 5 stars for videos that are rated too low in their opinion,
* voting 1 star for videos that are rated too high in their opinion,
* voting 5 stars for videos that are very good but not enough to go into favorites,
* leaving "i was here" or "mikma was here" without actually writing a comment,
* approving videos that are really good,
* disapproving videos that are hideous,
* actually rating 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 stars for future reference (actually the plot does not say how many millions of 2's, 3's, and 4's there are, we can only see the differences),
* leaving breadcrumbs in Recent Activity for friends, subscribers, etc.
Whatever YouTube will do to the rating system, they are going to influence the long captivated habits people gained here. Change something only if it doesn't work!
And there two areas it does poorly it's job.
1. Public discussions of controversial topics
In other words discussions plagued by votebots.
2. Commercial materials uploaded by major media companies
Materials down voted by TV haters. Which I think is the real issue why YouTube has started this discussion in the first place.
(1) as now, each account gets only one vote, and (2) as now, rankings balance views with ratings in a useful ration, so that a video may rank higher than another with fewer views but more thumbs.
If I like a video I'll watch it start to finish. If I hate it I'll stop within the first 30 seconds. And if it's good, but has boring bits, I'll skip a lot to find the good parts.
If you could track that sort of information, the big advantage would be that it doesn't need any extra user interaction.
Just an idea but like he said 2,000 stamps gets on the thumbnail. 5,000 stamps gets a different colour stamp and so on... till you get gold or something. Just an idea.
I agree, I rarely rate vids 2-4 stars, lol. But it would be better if people actually did rate honestly. Actually, I like the idea that many are suggesting. Maybe 3 stars, 1 for bad, 2 for ok, and 3 for great! That would make it a lot easier to vote honestly instead of deciding between all 5.
What about a thumbs up, thumbs down type thing, with a bar in the middle showing the balance, down being on far right, up being far left, and a bar indicating where the majority of the votes are. Kind of like the stars are doing now since people mostly only rate 1 or 5 stars.
Both 5 stars and thumbs up/down are basically the same thing, and both are well, noise. Ebay has seen this with seller and buyer feedback, netflix with the netflix rating system (see the netflix prize blog on how hard it is to predict a 1 vs 5) and even hotornot (ok, maybe not hot or not, but I should have got higher than a 1.2!)
It comes down to what is measured. The social analytic that measures response, the passive activity of page and video views. The shape of the view curve overtime is much more relevant than the active measurements of stars or thumbs.
Its all stored on computers so by its very nature is measurable w/o the need to have some human do something more like stars or thumb or even the confusing "points games" - when they already have done enough to measure a videos value. They have simply viewed the content.
Maybe keep the 5 star rating, but have a list of pregenerated reasons why the person chose that rating automatically pop up in a link after the person chooses the rating. As an option, the person could also give their own reason where they could go more in depth as to why they gave the rating they did.
Why not base the rating system with the amount of time watched like a ratio. So if there is a video that is 5 minutes long and 30 seconds in they give it 5 stars or 1 star that doesn't carry as much weight as someone who watch 4 minutes in and rated it.
You're complaining about the voting be too all or nothing, then suggest switching to an all or nothing system. Would more people vote with less options?
Currently people who wish to vote like/dislike can still do so by voting 5 or 1 stars. Why disable functionality from people who do use it? What percentage of voters have ever rated something 2,3, or 4 stars? I bet the proportion is significant. Some people really enjoy being intelligent about voting and dislike sites that treat you like a voting monkey. Don't make me a voting monkey!
I think what you see is called strategic voting, where people vote the maximum and minimum in order to influence the ratings the most. Theoretically speaking, you will get more accurate results by letting the people who vote honestly (not strategically) do so. Unless perhaps dumbing things down increases the number of total votes. But how much would voting have to increase?
Perhaps if you increased the number of choices, you'd get people using other choices more often.
You could also try changing the size of the stars. Make the 1 star the smallest and the fifth star the biggest. I bet people would select the larger stars (including 4 and 3) more often.
Most importantly, perhaps if you let people access their voting history people would use their votes more intelligently. I would love to see a list of all the videos I've rated and what rating I gave. Also let me sort my history by what rating I gave. I find it ridiculous I can't do this now. It seems that voting has no purpose other than to influence a video's score, thus people default to strategic voting. Give people a reason to vote intelligently and they will.
If you go with thumbs up/thumbs down, I would urge you to "normalize" the results by dividing it by traffic (ie views).
If something has 100 thumbs up, is that good or bad? If that's your only information, it's impossible to say. If the video's only been viewed a couple hundred times, that's pretty stellar, but if it's been viewed a million times, 100 thumbs up is a big yawn.
Another way of putting it, is that the number of people who did NOTHING is equally as important as the number of people who made the effort to rate it.
Likes / Views will give you a nice "% of people who like this" metric.
I think that the rating system should be dismissed in the way it is now. I propose a VR (Video Rank) algorithm, which will take different statistics as how many people watched a particular video, "Are they from different countries?", "How much of the video they've watched?". I suppose you've understood the idea. I mean if more people like a video they're going to watch it to the end ant not just the first 30 sec. If a video is popular all over the world ant not just in US or just in France that means it should have higher rating. The current rating system is manipulative, wrong and illogical.
Anything you change, think about a normal distribuition.
Most of the movies should be "average", and only a few ones should be on the sides.
Maybe there should be an hidden criteria and not by requesting people to vote on it. If i start watching a video of 3 minutes, and 1 minute after it starts i quit, the movie should not be good. However if I repeat the film 3 or 4 times it should be really interesting.
I believe that what really is important is if the video is, or not interesting, and not if it is 'good' or 'bad'. Actually I can see a video 4 times, disagree with its contents and rate it with 1 star. But the truth is that i saw it 4 times...
I actually do rate videos w/ 2 or 3 stars, but I definitely agree that a thumbs up or thumbs down system would work better. And then there could be a percentage of positive votes, which would serve as a numerical indicator of how good it is. Great post!
I think a "Like" and "Dislike" system would be better. I either vote 5 stars for something I like, or I don't vote if it's average, or I don't like it.
You're right Youtube. In my opinion, definitely get rid of the current ratings system. Also, don't do a thumbs up, thumbs down thing. I agree with Ian197635....
i was thinking of something like facebook, with, "like" and "dislike", and then you mentioned thumbs up and thumbs down. but then wont people eventually ask for two thumbs up/down? idk.
I like thumbs up/thumbs down a lot better. Partners are taking advantage of the star system, so maybe we should have a thumbs system. You can see how many people vote thumbs up and how many thumbs down.
Thumbs up and thumbs down is fine. However, I think that a tagged rating system would be MUCH better, either with predefined tags or where users can post their own tags and the most popular ones show up.
Think Little Big Planet, or Slashdot ratings without the actual rating (Funny, Interesting, Insightful, etc.)
I only favorite the videos that are actually my very favorites and I want to see again, and I think alot of people do the same thing. That being said, we definitely need a way to say a video is awesome without favoriting it. I've always found that giving a video five stars works for this purpose, and I don't see any reason to change this system. However, if you're really intent on changing it, I'd say give an option to give the video a 'thumbs up', the same way Facebook has the option to 'like'. However, we don't need the thumbs down. Most people won't stick around on a video they dislike long enough to rate it, so just having the thumbs up or like is enough. Then you can just show the number of thumbs up, or how many people liked it, beside the video.
When it comes to topic at hand I think it doesn't really matter, especially considering the fact that there are spam bots sent to 5 star certain videos and 1 star others.
Aside from that, some people dont want to "favorite" videos to their channel due to its content.
Also, it doesnt really matter if you get high ratings, especially when your content doesn't even show up in the feeds...even with 5 star ratings and being favorited!!
...I say this because I've been on YouTube for 2 years and have lost ALL of my honors and been removed from the pages where those listings can be found due to my content. Yet the videos I make have received recognition and praise from Universities, Educational Radio Shows, Tv Stations and Government Agencies...none of that matters because truthfully YouTube deletes my content and tries to limit the viewership growth of my vids. Its disappointing and frustrating. I'm sure I'm not the only one either.
Why not dump the voting system altogether? Just give a score based on # favorites/# plays. Anything I really like I'm going to Favorite so I can easily find it again.
I like the idea of having some sort of a meter, stretching from Red to Green (or maybe white to red, really doesn't matter). There will be a marker, marking off where the average is, and a different color marker, which is your vote.
I really like ratings, i use them, but the problem is that someone must sign up to rate a video!, it might be with "Open ID" if they have e-mail they can do that.
I would say whatever you do, don't make a rating system with too much range like 1-10. because it is really hard so find things to descide uppon if something is an 8 or a 9...
I personally never rate 2-4 stars...I go all or nothing...and to elaborate on that..I rarely rate 1 star cause I feel that just because I dont like a video,doesnt mean everyone else wont either..and I dont want to be responsible for a possible "good video" being left in the heap of other possible "good videos"..the only thing I really rate is 5 stars..and I barely even do that..cause its pretty much doing the same this as rating 1 star...One video goes up,the others go in the heap of "junk videos",which are rated 1 star..I really dont do much rating at all..
I THINK IT MESSES UP A PERSONS "TAKE" ON THINGS: that person being the person who uploads videos, reason I say that is because i cant talk trash about a subject with out the fear of KLUTZ! or sum knuckle headed nerd who doesn't like my take on Miley Cyrus *for example mind you*. SO IN CONCLUSION: i say! FORGET RATING and ENJOY MY VIDEOS FOR WHAT THEY ARE..VIDEOS!
i think most people just gives 5 star rating...and doesn't rate the videos they don't like. The rating system should include an algorithm that gives more weigh to the regular voters ratings.
Youtube should also get more control on the duplicated videos...since the site is full of tons of replicated videos...
Whatever, i like the 5 star rating. if i see a bad video i give it a 1 or a 2 if i see an ok video i give it a 3, for videos that could be better i give 4 and for good videos, i give 5. i dont rate much and i dont let it affect me, i watch 2 star videos all the time, i could see a like system or maybe we could just intergrate the ratings and the comments, i mean then everytime someone comments they rate. if some one is just throwing fives they have a reason to rate it five, right? this will stop bots and stop people from just putting fives. if you write about it you think about it more, this will make rating accurate.
It simply looks like a good/bad rating system would be better than 5 star ratings.
If something is good then I will give it 5 stars. If something is bad I will simply move on or if I really disagree with it then I will give it 1 star. In the 3 years I have been on YouTube and watched over 30,000 videos I have used 2,3 and 4 star ratings a maximum of 5 times.
I currently use the rating system to find out what the YouTube community thinks of certain videos. As SobeBottles said, I think there should be a way to say a video is nice without favoriting. I definitely think that a thumbs up/thumbs down system would work a whole lot better than ratings.
Measure the number of people who rate a video five stars vs. the number of people who watch the video. This won't work perfectly, but it will work better.
Do like Last.fm let user Love videos or Skip them. Most importantly, I want to sit down and have Google just play videos for me that it can recommend to me based on my previous Thumbs up ratings.
Space bar while watching may mean "Thumbs up" and Esc button or ctrl or something could be "Skip to next video on playlist".
If I want to sit back and watch the latest (new) videos on Technology based on my previous Thumbs Up ratings, and I want only 720p content, you should be able to simply generate that. Thanks!
As a youtuber who does more watching than uploading, I can tell you that I don't rate videos, unless there's a little annotation that says why to do so like "rate 5 stars and fave JUST for the intro." But, for some reason I think that the rating system needs to stay. If you were to replace it with a thumbs up/down there would be no difference
i think you could accomplish the same ratings with a thumbs up or down. its meaningless for five stars when you have such a slant of one to five on each click. how bout we get rid of thumbs on comments and promote that to video rating? how bout we get a thumbs down, thumbs up, two thumbs up? maybe we can even go with favorite animal icons, a slug, for bad, a duckie for good and a nice llama for awesome? (i definitely watch to much jimmy nuetron! ) :P
How about an indicator showing how many people who watched a video actually liked it? That would probably be more adequate as a video watched by 10,000 people and liked by only 5 is probably not overly hot ...
I've got an idea. Thumbs up/thumbs down leaves no room when I don't love a vid but enjoy it. Also, if I don't loathe a video, but its less than average, I want to be able to express that. I also want to be able to say "Eh, it was okay.". My preferred options are as follows:
1) Why choose? Offer new users options on how THEY want to rate videos. Some may want 10 stars, some may want 5, some may want a percentage rating, some may want thumbs. Make all of these available at account setup. Then whenever a user logs in, their preferred method of rating appears where the current stars are. Assign values to different methods. i.e. 9/10 stars = 4.5/5 stars = 90%/100% = Thumbs Up. When a user that has chosen the Thumbs method clicks "thumbs up" on a vid it automatically shows up as 75%/100%, 7.5/10 stars, or 4/5 stars. Then as that vid gets more "thumbs up", 5/5 stars, 10/10 stars, and 100%/100% maybe the "thumbs up" value for that video auto-adjusts on all current and future clicks from 75% to 80%, 85%, 90%, etc.(this would effective the stars systems respectively) make sense? Any vid 51% or over would appear on a thumb-users profile as a faded thumb up. 61% and higher, slightly more intense in color and so on up to 100% being full color. And of course this would all work inversely with a thumbs down(a full-color thumb down = 0%/100%, 1/5 stars, 1/10 stars). Also, whenever you hover over your rating system of choice it will display the % of approval the video is at, but only once you've voted yourself. 0%-100% could be the standard by which all ratings are compared.
or
2) Add 5 stars to make a 10 star system.
or
3) Leave it as is.
With any of these options, every time someone navigates away from a video without voting(only in a logged in account, of course)you could have a small flash-based pop-up asking if they would like to vote/reminder: DON'T FORGET TO VOTE! etc. before leaving. That would get people into the habit of voting on every video.
i personally would say a thumbs up thumbs down system would be pretty good. but when i search for videos i always look at the rating just to make sure they are not retarded or "rick rolls" but then again itd be pretty easy to find something to let people know if its good or not
Oh and you integrate my ideas with tommyH's idea in his last paragraph(give us a reason to vote aside from "Hey! 5 STARS PLEEEASE!!!")and you have got an AWESOME voting system that will work AND get used.
I agree, the way it is now is basically 5 stars if you like it, 1 if you don't. Since it is like that, I think it should be taken out. There should still be a rating system, but it shouldn't be something that people can spam up the rating with. A rating system that goes by how many favorites a video has per subscriber would possibly achieve this goal. More subscribers would mean more favorites needed for a good rating.
You hit the nail on the head, Mia. The ratings system here on YouTube is good in theory, but when the community developed people became less open about what they truly would rate a video.
Furthermore, what a 4 star video for one may be a 3, or even 5 star video for someone else.
Personally I use 1 or 5 stars only. I either like the video or don't. I saw an earlier comment suggesting a revamp of the system to a thumbs up or down and I think that's a great suggestion. The number of stars means nothing.
here's an outside the box idea inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's books (i.e. people don't know what they like).
Consider 3 10 minute parts of a show such as Dragon's Den.
Calculate the ratio of time watched (or downloaded) / length of video. Then factor things in like % of users that clicked on the next part.
There are a lot of user specific behaviours that constitutes a like. For example, if you like a video by Akon, you're going to go through the recommended videos and click on x of these. This could be added to a weighted score.
Or why not use the google search algorithms as well. How many other videos point to this one, are added to user favourites, etc...
To come back to Malcolm's teachings, don't ask the user what they like, because unless they're an expert in the field, they really don't know why they like something.
1) how many times each user watches it. The crappy vids probably get watched at most x times whereas the truly amazing vids get watched over and over and over.
The current system works well. When I click an attractive title, and then discover a 1 star rating, I immediately click off as I know the community has identified a phony video with a false/misleading title.
When I see a 5 star I know it's the real deal. I also like to click Statistics & Data to see the true rating, if it's a 4.95 with a lot of views, I know it is an excellent video everyone agrees on.
3-3.5 star videos are controversial but with some significant redeeming value.
It would be nice to see a tagging system or emotion system like GetSatisfaction.com has, where viewers can rate "Excited/Happy/Angry/Sad/Amazed/etc."
I think this system should stay because it's nothing bad at all, and I don't favorite everything I like but I mostly rate vids 5 stars and it's always been something i liked. Though a thumbs up thumbs down thing may be better?? idk maybe a test run to see how it looks should be down before an official change
If the majority of ratings are either 1-star or 5-star, then people are already using the rating they like best - I don't like it/I like it. So if people, when faced with a 5-level rating, unconsciously subvert into a love it/hate it thumbs up/thumbs down system, then that's the rating system they really prefer to use.
What's going to be more fun is when you change the system to a binary one and people start complaining it's too limited. %)
You shouldn't remove the rating system, it is something I use to tell my friends what I think of a given video. You could however change the rating system so that only the last 1000 ratings average in as the rating for the video.
I would say keep the ratings unless there is a better way of doing it. I like to know what the video is rated before I watch it. Usually if it is below a 4 it's "bad", not "good". A "3" star video and such is often bad. Not sure how others see the ratings as.
I think thumbs up/thumbs down or like/dislike is a better alternative to the stars, but the problem comes when converting these numbers to a percentage.
There are some people who will rate a good video 1 star just for the hell of it, and whilst this will not have a significant effect in the stars system (the occasional 1 star rating won't be enough to bring a 5 star video down to 4 stars, or even 4.5 stars), in a percentage system one 'dislike' will take a 100% video below 100%, and from then it is very difficult to regain that 100% rating.
Perhaps have the like/dislike option, which is then converted to the star rating out of 5 stars? So 90%+ is 5 stars, 70%-90% is 4 stars, 50%-70% is 3 stars, etc?
I don't like the "thumbs up" "thumbs down" idea. It would be no different than it is now, because I just 5 or 1 star ratings...just sayin', and I think the majority of youtuber's do that also.
I don't like them at all. I don't even bother to even rate them. I comment and give opinions when I have the time.
Who even has the time to even criticize videos?
I totally agree with you chuck b. RATINGS ARE STUPID. I have been put down, called names, even pelted by big red balls that leave bruises for months... Ratings are just another way to even judge a book by it's cover before you realize it's true identity.
It doesn't matter how good or bad the video is, just as long people watch it and be amused by it, you're happy, right?
Austin Storm, I love your comment about the founders of YouTube are criticizing us that we were the problem... Shouldn't we be part of the SOLUTION?
Shouldn't we with "RIGHT MINDS" be amused by videos and F*&% ((excuse the language)) the ratings? They really are stupid and can let people down if they don't get what they want.
Thank you and have a great day, and think before you act... Remember: Do unto others as others do unto you... In other words: Treat others as they would do to you! If people do that every day, there will be a better place in the world for all of us to live.
=^_^= Haaku =^_^=
-As the RIGHT hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body, then left handers are in their RIGHT minds. ((http://anythingleft-handed.co.uk/))
I dont think thumbs up and thumbs down would work either because itd be the same as 5 stars and 1 stars and people would thumb it down just because theyre haters
It would be nice if we could thumbs up or down things with no limit. Also this whole thumbs down thing because of someone's opinion doesn't mean the comment should not be visible. I like to see all opinions and it's ridiculous.
Do not get rid of the system. A 5 star rating does show up quite accurately, since you can see the majority of people who rated it 5 stars, and people who rated it 1 star. If there are plenty of 5 stars, it's usually a 5 star, or at least 4 and a half. If there is mainly one star, then it'll be usually 2 or below. 3 will usually be around the middle. It's just easier on the eyes, and much more simple, to see the "approval" from 1 to 5. Plus, the 5 star rating has been a custom in YouTube ever since YouTube started. We wouldn't want to stop that, will we?
what do you think about my prototype: http://picasaweb.google.com/adolfobs23/Youtube#5384505439140891698 here are my suggestions: ratings are changed to votes [i like the video... or i do not like the video] - vote is required to comment - You can choose to show or not your vote in your comment - 1 favorited means 1 green vote - the average is shown in % and in a tiny graph
I usually do what you said, either rate something 5 stars, very rarely rate something 1, and almost never in between. A thumbs up/thumbs down could definitely be more efficient!
I don't think favoriting a video is a good indicator of love, because honestly I only favorite videos I want to see again and again and again.. but I would rate highly so many videos that if I favorites everything I rated 5 stars I'd be totally clogged up on my favorites and never find the stuff I really want to see again.
please don't take away ratings. You could perhaps try to alter them to work more efficintly. Although most people are either voting 1 star or 5 stars it still helps me understand if either a video is generally liked, generally hated, or in the case of 3 stars that there is controversy over weather the video is liked or hated...please try to keep the records of ratings as you alter the system to work better. Maybe thumbs up and thumbs down are needed for videos? Thanks for the interesting post.
I like the idea of 3 stars, 1-bad 2-ok 3-good, or somethin like that. PLEASE DONT just do a thumbs up thumbs down thing, include an inbetween spot because many times a video is just ok, not good or bad.
However I do like the star rating because then I can know whether or not a viral video is worth my time. The title and screen shot can be decieving but if I see the rating 3 stars or less out of 5 I usually dont bother checking it out.
Seems as if I'm one of the few people who actually use most of the 5 stars available. I'm surprised.
I use 1 star when I think "O man, this is absolutely not worth it. Please make this video disappear from the top of search results, so that better videos appear above it." (Like when i searched for a music video and found a crappy slide show someone put together in powerpoint.)
I use 3 stars when I think that the video has something to it, but for some reasons it's not really good. For example: bad video quality.
I use 4 stars for almost really good videos.
I use 5 stars for what I think is really awesome.
Actually I just recognized I never give 2 stars.
Having said all that, I think your data demonstrates very well that this system doesn't work.
I could live with a system that has fewer options, e.g. 3 (good/average/bad), 2 (god/bad).
With only one option (think Digg) named "good", I wouldn't be able to state "this video sucks" which I think is important.
Combining Favorites and Rating wouldn't be a good idea, as others said before, since this would clutter my favorites and as a consequece prevent me from rating.
Thumbs up, thumbs down would rock. I'd love that change. I usually either rate videos 3 or 5 stars, but a thumbs up for I liked it, and thumbs down for I don't like it is just as good.
I agree with (what seems to me) the majority: thumb up and thumb down is enough. And: Thanks for the transparency, I just love how G handles this stuff.
I think the 5 stars should be left alone. You just need an incentive for people to use it accurately. Maybe a couple thousand 5 stars should be rewarded somehow and I think this may make people wonder if this video is perfect enough to recieve that reward.
There's no objective way to decide between a "2", "3" or "4" and most people aren't going to spend a lot of time ruminating about it. They like the vid, it gets five stars or an "Up" thumb; they don't like it, it gets one star or a "Down" thumb. Six to one half; dozen to the other.
If viewers consider themselves "fair" or "sophisticated", they shave off a point from the extremes and give a "2" (..."It sucked, but I'm a generous, fair-minded person and THAT enabled me to see some slight redeeming value...") or a "4" (..."It was PRETTY good, but my high level of intelligence and general wonderfulness allowed me to see elements which I would have done differently if I ever got off my ass and did anything other than hand out ratings.").
WTF...."3"...What idiot's going to rate something by saying that they don't care either way about it? Well, maybe more than I'd like to hope, but a "3" is the same as "Yawn".
A 3 point rating system would be most effective; Dislike - Neutral - Like. It's too complicated to have another 2 stages of rating when people don't really know what they mean. Either that or just a like and dislike button would suffice. (Just a like button could also work where 'liking' a video does not add it to you're favourites merely adds another figure to the like count) Just anything other than the outdated and misused 5 start system.
In aggregate of many users thumbs up / thumbs down are the best choice I think. You need them both though, just a favorite button wouldn't work as there would be no way to differentiate dislike from indifference.
I think that keeping the ratings system would cause less confusion than completely changing it, but if there was an indication of what each rating meant, it might encourage users to think more. For example, 5 stars could mean "Excellent!", 4 stars could mean "Very good", 3 stars could mean "Nice", 2 stars could mean "Meh" and 1 star could mean "very poor". When users see what the ratings actually mean, they may actually think before they rate. Maybe you could show what ratings mean when you place your mouse over the star icons, because that won't change the current system much, whilst making it a lot clearer about what the viewers think about it.
I like the stars way, and use it quite a lot, so I think it'd be good if you had a stars system, as well as a thumbs-up system(or a like or dislike system)! I think it'd be good if there was a "do-a-sequel" button as well, for videos that are so good, that you really want someone to do a second one as well!
There's a simple solution (though more complex in the back - end) which mirrors hotornot.com's approach - normalize all ratings for each user. Ie: if a user only tends to rate videos from 3 to 5 stars, then adjust their ratings accordingly to normalize the spread. Of course this adds many layers of internal complexity, (including the decision to retrospectively adjust previous ratings based on future behavior) but leaves the appearance of the current rating system the same.
Please dont even TOUCH with the rating system. We cant trust you anymore. Any good thing that is left on this site gets fucked up just to piss off people so they leave the site and save you more bandwidth for your greedy ass. You only want us here like a consumer.
I feel the system is a bit broken, I personally tend to rate videos I enjoyed 4s or 5s, but if it's any lower than that I generally leave it unranked. I like the idea of a thumbs up/thumbs down type of system, it's concise. I think the 5-star system can work well on videos with a relatively small amount of ratings when the raters are a reliable source (the ratings then have the benefit of not only showing positive/negative, but also a degree of intensity that's lost when it hits a certain degree of popularity), but in the end a yes/no rating system would invariably yield better results.
As per already established ratings, I don't have a particularly great fix for transferring those to a new system. But once you get that established I think it could be cool to show a percentage scoring of a video derived from the up/down votes.
Also to note, the favorite system works perfectly fine, I use it to essentially bookmark something I will need to refer back to in the future or something I want to share easily.
Thumbs up/thumbs down is fine, but I want to know what my network (friends, family) like/dislike even more than what the general public likes/dislikes. So network-based recommendations based on the system - whether it's ratings, thumbs up, or favourites - would be useful.
We host reviews for major retailers and have studied this a lot...as it relates to product. It's true that the average rating is 4.3 out of 5. We call this the "J Curve". However, there are two important points to make as it relates to ratings and reviews in general (notwithstanding special circumstances for YouTube ratings...which I don't think you can generalize compared to ratings and reviews for other categories).
First, we've done studies to find 80% of people who read a rating/review value the review content more than the rating. Even with a 4 or 5 star rating, there are some valuable insights to most product reviews. YouTube reviews may be a bit more terse. The rating is important to pull people into read the review.
Second, the number of ratings or reviews is an important data point. What does it tell you when a video has 5,000 views and no rating or comments. Probably not a great video. What about a video that has 100 views and 20 ratings? It will probably continue to grow quickly in viewership. So the mere fact that so many videos (or products) don't have reviews, it's an indication of interest, purchases, etc.
Finally, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Ratings and reviews, and reputation systems in general, will continue to evolve. They will be more targeted to find reviews from 'someone like me' which may not show the same curve. Or the content from the reviews is more meaningful. There could also be video attributes, as others have commented here. But to say that all things are highly rated and therefore it's not useful is a wild overcorrection.
As it relates to products, 80% of shoppers read reviews prior to buying a product. And 95% of those people trust reviews. They are tremendously helpful...and that's them talking, not me.
It might be a even better idea if they rate videos on how long they are watched like in the portion of the video that is watched and the complete watching of the video thanks. :) DandCVideos
I agree, that the stars are somewhat flawed. In fact, I get depressed, when one of my videos gets less than 4.5 stars, because it means, people don't like it ;-) In general I'd prefer a thumbs up/down rating over the stars in addition to the favorites. But if 5 stars is what people want, I think, they made more sense if it was clear, that 2.5 is an "average" or a "good" video. Maybe by showing an arrow above the stars that points to the center, saying "worse than average / better than average" on the left and right.
However, even though it seems to you as if the stars are not useful, I still liked them in the overview in the old channels, to quickly identify the video, I want to watch first. It's a pity you don't show the stars in the new channels any more.
Maybe a favorite counter divided by the amount of views would do the trick as well?
But if I were you I would add another rating that depends on zapping / how long the user actually played the video. I tend to just surf to another video if it is bad, like I just zap to another show if the the show on ev is uninteresting.
Please please don't get rid of rating system. the rating system tells us if we would like the video or not. plus without ratings youtube isn't the same
I think the rating system works as is, but as with any other system, it can use some improvement. But again, as with any system, any change is going to have it's own good and bad points.
I shoot (imho) some of the best bands in my area using 4-12 cameras. I have over 100 videos so far over the past year. From what i can tell, people generally don't take the time to rate unless they *really* like it or have some personal problem with the material.
Mabye some sort of rating system that's based on how much of the video is seen by people, under the assumption that if people don't like it, they won't watch the whole thing. If people really like it, they'll watch the whole video and/or rewind to watch a part or watch the whole thing again..
I also have to say i think this whole relationship between google and youtube accounts sucks. I can't count how many times i've logged into my youtube account and wanted to post a request for help or something else and it wants me to log into my google account now? The first time i had to screw around for how long, just to create a google account, and now, i don't use my google account for anything, so i have to screw around for how long again to find my password.. What's the problem? I logged into my youtube account and i'm posting a message on youtube. Why do i need to log into google too? I bet there is an easy fix, linking accounts or some such alchemy. Something to screw around with again when i have time to go hunting through the help pages.
But it's the same thing as the 5-star rating system- it's one more damn thing to click on (or in my case a ton of more clicking to find my password..). People are tired of clicking click click click, that's probably alot to do with why they don't bother to rate videos. What i suggested probably isn't the best way to auto-rate videos, but it wouldn't be affected by the fact that people don't want to click click click...
The graph suggests that even a two-state option would result in a huge positive bias. It seems like deriving the rating from user behaviour would be far more reliable: track favourites, bookmarks, percentage of the video actually viewed, etc.
5 or nothing? WOW! This proves YouTube users are people with good will! They act only when they like something. I suppose this mean: WELL DONE YOUTUBE!
Nevertheless, this means also... yes, the rating system is useless! I suppose you can trust more a case like [+] or [-]. Exactly how it works on comments. I like this vid or I didn't like this vid.
I'd like to see a system where 5 stars = auto-favorite, or something similar that could be opted into. It doesn't make sense that someone could rate a video the most highly, yet not consider that a fave.
I'm glad you observed the obvious. A 5 star rating system is useless. I'd dare say that's true of it's every application in any context.
A positive and negative (thumbs up/down) system would better balance the statement of what users are saying. And personally, I would prefer to see the number of votes of each, not a number of what the two values balance out to.
Better yet would be to scrap a voting system of this nature, and instead show some sort of calculated "popularity" value. Calculating from views, comments, favorites, and the like you could show a truly accurate representation of how good a video is.
Favorites and ratings are different, even if ratings are only thumbs up/down. There are two reasons for the difference:
1) One Favorites to preserves a link to the video on one's homepage, thereby making it easy to access the video later. Rating by Thumbs Up would not preserve a link for easy access later.
2) If one likes almost every video of a particular channel, then it makes sense to give these videos Thumbs Up but not to favorite them. Favoriting each and every video of that channel would clutter one's own page; so the best way to access these videos easily is by going to that channel itself.
What if you took whatever each video's rating is, compared it to the distribution of all other YouTube videos, and then assigned it a percentile score? For example, if 4.96835 is the video's rating and, compared to all other YouTube videos it was in the 88th percentile, it could receive a 8.8 rating. (This might provide extra information, in addition to the rating, for users to determine which videos are worth their time.)
I think that there still be a rating system for videos on Youtube, because I like to know if a video sucks or not before I click on it. But, I agree that there could be a better system for rating videos. Maybe a percentile rating, like thumbs up/thumbs down and when I look at the rating it will say how many people enjoyed the video as a percentage.
When I like a video, I vote for 5 Stars and when I don't I vote for 1 Star. But I think the reddit.com style of voting is the best thing. People tend to choose only 2 options, Like and Dislike.
Hi, I think viewers are not taking seriously the ratings.I don't believe that all videos are of 5 star quality.There must be some prototype on ratings to give proper star to video.
I don't think you need to change the rating scale: you need to change the sampling technique from a convenience sample to a random sample.
1. If you as a user viewed a video, there would only be a 5% chance you would be able to rate it; I would disable your ability to rate 95% of videos. 2. If you were one of the 5% of users who could see the rating scale for a particular video, I would flash an invitation next to the scale: “You have been randomly chosen to rate this video. How would you rate it?” 3. I would store the status of your invitation; if you weren’t selected to rate it, you would never be selected to rate it; if you were selected, but hadn’t rated it, you’d be given an opportunity next time. 4. On your history page, I would include a section for “Videos to Rate”, showing those videos that you could rate but haven’t yet.
This should produce results with a much wider disperson of ratings.
5 star doesn't work because people are mostly using 5 stars because the person in the video asks them to rate it like that. Then people that hate the person making the video use a one star rating or if they disagree with the content. As we've seen in the past vote bots can dump tons of 1 star votes on people. They will still be able to do this with any other type of voting system. If you ditched the rating system completely you could prevent people with large audiences getting 5 star votes on all of their videos and getting them featured so much. (isn't it YouTube not WeLikePartnersBetterAndGiveThemThePowerToDoAnythingTube). Ratings should be generated based on:
1) The number of views. 2) Peoples attention to the video. 3) Whether or not people comment on the video (and whether the comments are positive or negative). 4) How viral it is (links being sent to friends, videos embedded on other sites: based on rank in Google search 5) Ratio between how long the video has been up compared to how much attention it has been getting or did get.
I think based on those 5 factors alone YouTube could have a much better rating system.
If you were to keep a ratings system then the ratings people give would have to be weighted something like this:
Heavy 1) User is not subscribed to the person that made the video / rated many of their videos 2) They have watched over 50% of the video (higher weight for the longer they have watched and vise versa) 3) Number of times user has rated a video since sign-in is low. 4) User has been a active member for a long period of time
A lower weight would be given to the opposite of that listed above.
With those changes you could get a much better, accurate and honest ratings system.
My apologies if this has already been suggested (I have not read all comments...there are quite a few). How about showing the percentage of the video viewed by the average viewer?
Speaking for my own viewership, I don't watch the entire video unless I see value in it. If I am going to watch a 3 minute video, it would be telling to know that on average, people only watch 40% of this video.
Aside from insuring 100% participation (I'm guessing the system knows how much each visitor actually watches), it is also based on what people do rather than what they say.
Youtube Team: Would you check my site? My videos are going very, very slow, and someone has commented on it. I would like to have them not drag. Thank you for your excellent help. Cindy
The star ratings are statistically meaningless. A video with 10 1 stars and 10 5 stars is not a 3 star mediocre video, it is a polarizing one. 1 star videos usually fail to deliver on what their title promises. 5 star videos are simply liked. That does not fit on a sliding scale. YouTube should simply keep track of how many people liked the video. There is no standard for different star ratings, so by averaging these ratings you add more meaninglessnesss to the rating. If you keep the star ratings, simply report how many of each star rating has been voted. Then from that you can simply compute a 1 to 99 star rating, if you like, weighing the preponderance of positive ratings to negative ones, and making an allowance for self-generated positives and trolls. Look at how newegg.com rates products.
The lack of CONTEXT in 5* rating, thumbs-up-thumbs-down, scalar % systems has been bugging me for several years. It just makes no sense for us to be using elementary school level rating systems when there have been leaps+bounds improvements in code, e.g. YouTube's own video content delivery mechanisms.
Anyway, this year I had a code "EUREKA!" epiphany based on AJAX and the scriptaculous library.
I have an app and a methodology that replaces 5* rating systems and compensates for the limitations in the Semantic Web stack at the same time.
If Google/YT contact me, I might be willing to share the methodology and app IF I can be a core member of the executive team incubating it, strategize its route to market and with a conducive lock-in clause all the way past post-IPO. I have direct experience of this.
It's a disruptor and goes a lot further and deeper in analytical and advertising potential than any of the commentators on this thread or TechCrunch's have expressed.
This is a serious proposition. I read on your LinkedIn profile that you were previously a McKinsey Associate, so I'll say that my CONTEXTUALIZATION tools enables user segmentation not by 1*, 2* or keywords used to tag their videos but by their PERCEPTION & VALUES.
The weakness of all current rating systems is that they capture scalar information or 2D-info: up, down, small quantities. What's needed is a solution that captures N-dimensions and provides a lot more granularity.
Online advertisers and the likes of BrandRepublic are constantly trying to quantify the effectiveness of brand communication, but even their tools are inadequate and inefficient. They make use of focus groups and polls of no more than 5,000. Otherwise, there are firms which trawl threads to try and gauge user's brand affiliations by manually pulling out information from users' comments.
There's a much simpler way and I've invented the solution.
If interested, please contact me here:
ADAMSMITHFRIEDMAN *[aT]* GMAIL.COM
Obviously, this is not my real name. It's an account I use for any blog threads I participate in.
++++++++++++++++++
If you are not Shiva Rajaman, please don't contact me.
The limitations of 5* star rating systems and the need to replace them with smarter tools is something I'm serious about and have been developing for many years.
I would suggest if the user does not rate a video after watching it, then it should be auto rated. If someone watches only part of a video auto rate it a 2, or if they watch the whole thing it will auto rate a 3, if they favorite it auto rate it a 5.Obviously a users actual rating should override the auto rating. This will ensure that the rating of most videos are 2-3 or what they should be under a normal distribution, and if a video is good and it move people to rate it then it would move beyond the 2-3 star norm (or it could go the other way). This way not everyone videos will be pegged out at 5, but a more realistic middle of the road.
I would suggest if the user does not rate a video after watching it, then it should be auto rated. If someone watches only part of a video auto rate it a 2, or if they watch the whole thing it will auto rate a 3, if they favorite it auto rate it a 5.Obviously a users actual rating should override the auto rating. This will ensure that the rating of most videos are 2-3 or what they should be under a normal distribution, and if a video is good and it move people to rate it then it would move beyond the 2-3 star norm (or it could go the other way). This way not everyone videos will be pegged out at 5, but a more realistic middle of the road.
I'm a fan of the "thumbs up/down" system. Although clicking on a star isn't that time-consuming, the 2-option rating system might incite more open negative ratings. I think this system works for Hulu.
Preferential rankings are the future of ranking systems, as in "For category C, my favorite videos are V1, V2, V3..., in order." Makes recommendations easier, as well.
I'm admittedly biased, since my startup is built around this concept, but I really think that ranked-order listings are the only solution to ranking systems. Drag and drop is easy now and users are familiar with ordered "top 10" lists, so it's "just" a matter of getting the UI integration right (no simple task). I'm also looking forward to seeing more variety of ratings systems in the future, including two alternative choices like "was it better than some-random-other-video."
Since people are only using this to show love, perhaps simply use the overall # of "Favorited" for each video would do the trick. If you want a separate system, the concept of "Props" might work better than thumbs up/down. You'd have to work out how "props" might work, but the idea is that users would give "props" to videos they like - the more props a video has, the better liked across the YouTube community. This might be a better representation than star ratings of how liked a video is. If I really love something, maybe I'd give it 10 props, but if I just sorta dug it, I may just give it 1. If I didn't like it, I just wouldn't prop it. People don't seem that interested in telling the world they didn't like something, so props just seem like a more natural reflection of our inclinations.
Scrap the 5 star ratings. It's not a good indicator for wether the video is good or bad. And as others already said, you tend only to rate a 5star, or not at all.
If scrapping is not an option, then perhaps change the starts into five clickable texts. (Bad, Ok, Decent, Good, Excellent)
OR
A 1 button saying "This was a good video, so I'll press this, so others can see it's worth watching". (perhaps a bit shorter, but you get the idea.) Then you could add up the 'times watched' + 'good video button press' -- or just do some other fancy calculation to show the appropriate amount of kudos the video has recieved.
I work on a feedback system that is based on sentiments instead of stars. It definitely solves the problem. Probably the solution is to put us in front of Google VC.
Please do keep in the rating system even if you change the way it shows. Ratings after all are one good way to give feedback for a video, while not even nearly everyone bothers to favorite or comment on.
And the thumb-up/thumb-down system that would give the avarage likes in %(like at MySpace) would seem like a better system. But I think MySpace for example has neutral words like "Yeah!" for a thumb-up and "Nah!" for a thumb-down. Which is also what I'd recommend.
Or the 10 star system someone suggested... but I think the thumb-down would be more neutral and serving.
By the way you should do something about the comments voting thing too. People are misusing it as well. They thumb down comments simply because they disagree no matter how valid and constructive the comment is and then when you have the comments permanently hidden after a few thumb-downs, it really sucks that system. So few bother to disable the comment voting anyway in their videos.
Watching a youtube video is like eating a Potatoe Chips.
Many people will not stop at from eating 1 Potatoe chip but Eat MANY.
Thats why People do not rate all videos unless it is either really good or really bad.(because if you rate every single video you watch, its like wasting time.)
therefore, the rating should be of 2 choices. Either Very goood , or Very bad.
Another thing I want to point out is that rating stars is too small and I am sure some people doesn't even notice it.
In total agreement with Bosung's second post above.
And again the options for a rating system that ha sonly two options (such as the thumb up/down) should not take the meaning to extremes. Stick with the neutral positiv/negative words!
I personally and I'm sure many others too, have been giving videos anything from 1 to 5 stars, so we would no tbe happy to be left with just options "Love or hate" or "very good and very bad" because we may think something in between!
I think that the "Like" option would be best. No "dislike" or any rating system just an option to click "Like" or "Enjoyed" or "Approved" and possibly showing the number of people who have "Liked" the video. That way people can still show their support in some way.
A thumbs up/Thumps down option is nothing more than a different representation of the SAME system as even this very blog has pointed out people generally only use the full five star or if they really disagree a single one star but rarely anything in between, and the majority of the time is either 5-star or NO star. So what real change would a thumbs up/thumbs down give us? None. It's well known that even the negative scores are not used properly either so a "thumbs down" option isn't useful. Possibly a "Thumbs Up" only could be okay.
The rating system would be nice if used correctly but it isn't and never will be and it wouldn't be any different if it was represented as something other than 5 Stars either. So, I say, if you are to keep a rating system at all it should be just a stand alone "Like" or "Approve" or "Thumbs-up" or something with a simple statistic showing the number of people who liked it and nothing more.
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I think you should keep the rating system in, but maybe also give a stamp of approval, like everytime someone clicks the stamp of approval button, it gets one added to the Approval Total
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe once a video gets a certain amount of stamps (2,000 or something) it could get a stamp on the thumbnail for the video, so you know whether people liked it before you view
ReplyDeleteWhy not maybe changing the Ratings to "Like it" or "Hate it" ? And then making a graph based on %.
ReplyDeleteFor example: 1 Hate = 0 ; 1 Hate + 1 Love = 50% ;
1 Hate + 2 love = 66,6% and so on...
I think that would endup with a very precise indicator of the quality of the video.
5 star ratings have sort of become obsolete. subscribers will obviously rate a video 5 stars, and people who troll will rate it 1 star. a new rating system is due, or just remove the 5 stars.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, if i like a video, i'll give it 5 stars. If i don't like it, i don't rate it. People tend to do the same as far as i know. The only suggestions i have are remove it, or make a more details rating. Maybe have 1-10, and have words describing
1 star = Hate It
3 stars = could be better
5 stars = average
7 stars = pretty good
10 stars = Loved it.
Make it mandatory for the viewer to rate every video they watch. They can't navigate away from the watch page until they rate.
ReplyDeleteNo, don't. Please.
Ratings were great where there was a Top Rated list that mattered. Now it only helps if viewers have their Recent Activity turned on and people are surfing their channel pages to find new videos.
And it helps us see who's watched our vids, even if they didn't leave a comment. Helpful for when "popular" channels like nerimon or the vlogbrothers watch and rate, but don't EVER leave a comment.
Just sayin'.
Honestly... i say negate the bottom 2% of all ratings and top 2%. That should cover all the haters and fanboys. - @yogameditation
ReplyDeleteI think a thumbs up/thumbs down system would work really well and would give a more accurate indication than the star ratings do now.
ReplyDeleteI feel like a new system wouldn't work either. I agree that it's all one or nothing.
ReplyDeleteI feel like a new system is due, however, I would HATE a "thumbs up / down" system. That would give a "Funny or Die" feel to it, which youtube should not emulate. Stars are much better than a percentage of approval.
In my point off view, you guys should put a rating from 1 (whorst) to 10 (excellent), instead of only 5 stars ;)
ReplyDeleteLeave the system alone. It works! People don't favorite videos as much cause they end up with 5,000 videos favorited and most don't like that. You can't go back and find one that you really want to see.
ReplyDeleteI rate anywhere from 1-5. Leave it alone. Fix something that could use fixing like helping more good videos get featured that aren't made my major studios.
I'm not really surprised by it. It would probably be best to generate a rating based on a combination of views+favorites+shares instead of the (now obviously) flawed rating system.
ReplyDeletei think we should make it 3 stars
ReplyDeletebad
ok.....
excellent
star ratings "should" be useful
ReplyDeletethis might already been said, but:
(almost) nobody rates it if they hate it..
And they just rate 5 stars if they're told to, or if they actually liked it..
To me, the 5* is a way of saying "awesome, but not favorite." If I don't think a video deserves Five Stars, I'm not going to rate it at all.
ReplyDeleteRatings on YouTube have always been somewhat confusing for me: should I rate the content of the video or the quality? There are some wonderfully shot videos on YouTube that really don't have any meaningful content, and there are also a lot of videos that have wonderful content but are shot very poorly. I think a dual content vs. quality rating would add too much complexity to the system, but I often don't rate a video for that very reason.
ReplyDeleteI don't find ratings all that helpful, probably due to the fact that there are millions of people using YouTube, each with a different opinion. It doesn't influence whether I watch a video, but then again, I usually find videos from friends or other channels I respect.
I think the problem is, there is no alternative.
ReplyDeleteIf it goes thumbs up/thumbs down, it will still just be a massive amount of thumbs instead of 5*
If it goes to 10stars, people just rate 10 not 5.
Without scrapping the system entirely and just leaving the favourites, which would then get used as the arbiter (people don't want 50000000videos in their faves box so would only actually favourite worthy videos.)
So yeah, that gets my vote: Scrap stars completely.
i think you should just do a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' system. personally i only rate videos that i like and I give them 5 stars. but if i watch i video i dont like then i dont rate it unless it offends me in any way and in that case i give it 1 star.
ReplyDeletethis article is pretty bang on when it is saying that ratings are usually ust a seal of approval. a thumbs up/thumbs down seems to make most sense.
ReplyDeleteFor some unknown to me reason, I can no lomger view/play videos though I am logged in! What's up with that?
ReplyDeleteI love the rating system. Def. keep it because when I see a video has a one star rating, I dont even bother to look at it. But if it has a 5 star rating, then I would look at it. Maybe if you want to make it a little better. Make it out of 10 stars instead of 5
ReplyDeleteMaybe just three instead of five.
ReplyDeleteGood (3 stars)
Average (2 stars)
Bad (1 star)
I tend to five star things that are good, and one star things that aren't. If there were only three instead of five, it might cause more people to use the middle ground.
Stamp of approval/disapproval would be cooler than thumbs up/down.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking the thumbs up/down thing would be pretty cool. That's what people are pretty much doing anyways with the 1 star and 5 star thing.
ReplyDeleteMaybe integrate both?
I honestly don't like the five star system here. And I think it's been proven that it's not even really necessary. I don't even know if 'Thumbs Up or Down' is even needed. Maybe just a 'Thumbs Up' would work.
ReplyDeleteThe system works for me, but a lot of people might not like the way I use it.
ReplyDeleteFavoriting videos on channels to which I'm subscribed seems redundant. I reserve that for videos that I want to see again, but couldn't find if I didn't mark them somehow. If I like a video enough to favorite it, I'll give it 5 stars too.
On channels where I'm subscribed, a video has to be either absolutely stellar or utter crap before I'll bother to rate it, so that's a 1 or a 5 (and those are rare). In my opinion the fact that I'm subscribed says that I like their work and, like favoriting, rating every video seems redundant.
If I dislike a video enough to give it a poor rating, I'm generally not going to hang around long enough to finish it, much less rate it.
Personal anecdotes as evidence ftw! ;-)
I think you should go with the 'like' system that has recently been added to other Google products.
ReplyDeleteVirtually nobody is motivated enough to show indifference to a youtube video. I don't even look at ratings when I'm surfing youtube - I look at the number of times it has been viewed. I assume if something is good enough, people will tell their friends and the video will be popular. Definitely simplify to a two- or one-way rating system.
ReplyDeleteThumbs up. Facebook only has like.
ReplyDeleteI’ve always been a bit against the rating system, but it’s also set the standard for a lot of other sites out there which now have the exact same kind of thing. The only site that comes to mind in which the five-star system actually works somewhat well is Amazon. Other than that it’s pretty worthless.
ReplyDeleteI would go for the two-vote option. I’m not going to favorite videos that don’t pertain to me just because I think they’re funny. Once I absorb someone’s content, unless it’s viral or it is mentioning me in it, I usually don’t need to return. So why add that video to my favorites if it really isn’t?
I think the Stamp of approval idea suggested by Ian197635 at the top of the page is the best, the ratings system has become a bit irrelevant. If I didn't like a video, I won't rate it. If it's a subscriber video, I'll rate 5. Loads of people, I imagine do what I do.
ReplyDeleteI give this post 5 stars
ReplyDeleteThumbs up/thumbs down is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, favoriting does the trick. On the other hand, having a rating system and a favoriting system seems a little bit redundant.
ReplyDeleteA binary star is the way forward. If only for UI consistency across Google's products. Google reader uses a binary star, so does the Chrome browser.
ReplyDeleteI say give videos a thumbs up / down or "digg up / bury" style button and do away with the 5 star system.
ReplyDeleteWhy not do something really new like allowing users to say that the video they just watched was "boring" or "hilarious" or "cute?"
ReplyDeleteBe the first site on the web to allow viewers to tag content with their impressions. This is what other users are wanting anyway when they look at the ratings on a video - what others thought of the video after they watched it. Why not get specific and let them see the top 3 impressions of each video. For instance "Cat falls asleep on fan" might have "Top Impressions: Hilarious (32) Cute (19) Funny (8)" and "New Musician lights up the stage in LA" might have "Top Impressions: Awesome (41) Sick (19) Talented (7)".
This would give users a much better idea of what they can expect from a video before watching it. It would allow people to see a list of the videos tagged the most number of times with the words "hilarious" or "cute" or "interesting". It would open up a whole new world of possibilities for YouTube too such as doing something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qZsf0d7TrQ&feature=channel_page
you should be able to sort videos by the number of favorites. favorites is the best way to determine which videos are really good
ReplyDeleteThe 5-star rating system is obviously flawed. People rather make a choice between "like" or "dislike" instead of getting all fuzzy about whether to give something three, four or five stars. When someone gives something five starts they actually make a statement that they liked it, instead of saying it is perfect and thus deserves a perfect rating.
ReplyDeleteLong story short: I suggest YouTube scraps the current rating and makes it "like" or "dislike".
Why not use people's attention as a way of rating. If someone watches the whole thing from beginning to end, they must like it. If they leave the page 10 seconds in they don't like it. If they skip through the video and only watch half of it, they think it's ok. No user interaction neccessary.
ReplyDeleteIn my point off view, you guys should put a rating from 1 (bad) to 10 (excellent), instead of only 5 stars
ReplyDelete1 star = bad
2 stars = could be better
3 stars = almost good
4 stars = average
5 stars = pretty good
6 stars = something better
7 stars = good
8 stars = very good
9 stars = almost excellent
10 stars = excellent, i'love it
I think a thumbs up/thumbs down system would work very well, too. It does in comments.
ReplyDeleteYou can also have a three way system:
ReplyDeleteDidn't like
Liked
LOVED it.
Why? You often come across videos you liked or didn't like but every now and then you come across amazing videos and there should be a button for this as well. Using favourites for this could work but I for example rarely use it.
YouTube, read the comments and don't change anything.
ReplyDeletePeople are using stars for many different reasons (even if there are more suitable options than stars for doing the same thing):
* tagging videos for future reference (some people don't like playlists),
* voting 5 stars for videos that are rated too low in their opinion,
* voting 1 star for videos that are rated too high in their opinion,
* voting 5 stars for videos that are very good but not enough to go into favorites,
* leaving "i was here" or "mikma was here" without actually writing a comment,
* approving videos that are really good,
* disapproving videos that are hideous,
* actually rating 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 stars for future reference (actually the plot does not say how many millions of 2's, 3's, and 4's there are, we can only see the differences),
* leaving breadcrumbs in Recent Activity for friends, subscribers, etc.
Whatever YouTube will do to the rating system, they are going to influence the long captivated habits people gained here. Change something only if it doesn't work!
And there two areas it does poorly it's job.
1. Public discussions of controversial topics
In other words discussions plagued by votebots.
2. Commercial materials uploaded by major media companies
Materials down voted by TV haters. Which I think is the real issue why YouTube has started this discussion in the first place.
Thumbs up and thumbs down, definitely, as long as
ReplyDelete(1) as now, each account gets only one vote, and
(2) as now, rankings balance views with ratings in a useful ration, so that a video may rank higher than another with fewer views but more thumbs.
I agree, always thought the rating system was mute and needed to be redone.
ReplyDeleteWhat about looking at the view time?
ReplyDeleteIf I like a video I'll watch it start to finish. If I hate it I'll stop within the first 30 seconds. And if it's good, but has boring bits, I'll skip a lot to find the good parts.
If you could track that sort of information, the big advantage would be that it doesn't need any extra user interaction.
Yeah I think Ian197635 idea was really good.
ReplyDeleteJust an idea but like he said 2,000 stamps gets on the thumbnail. 5,000 stamps gets a different colour stamp and so on... till you get gold or something. Just an idea.
Thumbs up, Thumbs down.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I rarely rate vids 2-4 stars, lol. But it would be better if people actually did rate honestly. Actually, I like the idea that many are suggesting. Maybe 3 stars, 1 for bad, 2 for ok, and 3 for great! That would make it a lot easier to vote honestly instead of deciding between all 5.
ReplyDeleteKeep 'em because I use the ratings and comments as a guide to what a video will be like.
ReplyDeleteWhat about a thumbs up, thumbs down type thing, with a bar in the middle showing the balance, down being on far right, up being far left, and a bar indicating where the majority of the votes are. Kind of like the stars are doing now since people mostly only rate 1 or 5 stars.
ReplyDeleteBoth 5 stars and thumbs up/down are basically the same thing, and both are well, noise. Ebay has seen this with seller and buyer feedback, netflix with the netflix rating system (see the netflix prize blog on how hard it is to predict a 1 vs 5) and even hotornot (ok, maybe not hot or not, but I should have got higher than a 1.2!)
ReplyDeleteIt comes down to what is measured. The social analytic that measures response, the passive activity of page and video views. The shape of the view curve overtime is much more relevant than the active measurements of stars or thumbs.
Its all stored on computers so by its very nature is measurable w/o the need to have some human do something more like stars or thumb or even the confusing "points games" - when they already have done enough to measure a videos value. They have simply viewed the content.
Maybe keep the 5 star rating, but have a list of pregenerated reasons why the person chose that rating automatically pop up in a link after the person chooses the rating. As an option, the person could also give their own reason where they could go more in depth as to why they gave the rating they did.
ReplyDeleteWhy not base the rating system with the amount of time watched like a ratio. So if there is a video that is 5 minutes long and 30 seconds in they give it 5 stars or 1 star that doesn't carry as much weight as someone who watch 4 minutes in and rated it.
ReplyDeleteYou're complaining about the voting be too all or nothing, then suggest switching to an all or nothing system. Would more people vote with less options?
ReplyDeleteCurrently people who wish to vote like/dislike can still do so by voting 5 or 1 stars. Why disable functionality from people who do use it? What percentage of voters have ever rated something 2,3, or 4 stars? I bet the proportion is significant. Some people really enjoy being intelligent about voting and dislike sites that treat you like a voting monkey. Don't make me a voting monkey!
I think what you see is called strategic voting, where people vote the maximum and minimum in order to influence the ratings the most. Theoretically speaking, you will get more accurate results by letting the people who vote honestly (not strategically) do so. Unless perhaps dumbing things down increases the number of total votes. But how much would voting have to increase?
Perhaps if you increased the number of choices, you'd get people using other choices more often.
You could also try changing the size of the stars. Make the 1 star the smallest and the fifth star the biggest. I bet people would select the larger stars (including 4 and 3) more often.
Most importantly, perhaps if you let people access their voting history people would use their votes more intelligently. I would love to see a list of all the videos I've rated and what rating I gave. Also let me sort my history by what rating I gave. I find it ridiculous I can't do this now. It seems that voting has no purpose other than to influence a video's score, thus people default to strategic voting. Give people a reason to vote intelligently and they will.
If you go with thumbs up/thumbs down, I would urge you to "normalize" the results by dividing it by traffic (ie views).
ReplyDeleteIf something has 100 thumbs up, is that good or bad? If that's your only information, it's impossible to say. If the video's only been viewed a couple hundred times, that's pretty stellar, but if it's been viewed a million times, 100 thumbs up is a big yawn.
Another way of putting it, is that the number of people who did NOTHING is equally as important as the number of people who made the effort to rate it.
Likes / Views will give you a nice "% of people who like this" metric.
I think that the rating system should be dismissed in the way it is now. I propose a VR (Video Rank) algorithm, which will take different statistics as how many people watched a particular video, "Are they from different countries?", "How much of the video they've watched?". I suppose you've understood the idea. I mean if more people like a video they're going to watch it to the end ant not just the first 30 sec. If a video is popular all over the world ant not just in US or just in France that means it should have higher rating. The current rating system is manipulative, wrong and illogical.
ReplyDeleteAnything you change, think about a normal distribuition.
ReplyDeleteMost of the movies should be "average", and only a few ones should be on the sides.
Maybe there should be an hidden criteria and not by requesting people to vote on it. If i start watching a video of 3 minutes, and 1 minute after it starts i quit, the movie should not be good. However if I repeat the film 3 or 4 times it should be really interesting.
I believe that what really is important is if the video is, or not interesting, and not if it is 'good' or 'bad'. Actually I can see a video 4 times, disagree with its contents and rate it with 1 star. But the truth is that i saw it 4 times...
Do it like "Dig" website thums down and buried so all the good content will be viable in youtube.
ReplyDeleteplease dont get rid of raitings
ReplyDeleteI actually do rate videos w/ 2 or 3 stars, but I definitely agree that a thumbs up or thumbs down system would work better. And then there could be a percentage of positive votes, which would serve as a numerical indicator of how good it is. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI think a "Like" and "Dislike" system would be better. I either vote 5 stars for something I like, or I don't vote if it's average, or I don't like it.
ReplyDeleteYou're right Youtube. In my opinion, definitely get rid of the current ratings system. Also, don't do a thumbs up, thumbs down thing. I agree with Ian197635....
ReplyDeletePlease dont get rid of ratings!!
ReplyDeleteYour graph suggests that there are a lot of 4.5 stars. A bar chart or a pie chart would represent the data better.
ReplyDeleteThumbs up/down sounds good, and a percentage score derived from that would be perfect.
ReplyDeletei was thinking of something like facebook, with, "like" and "dislike", and then you mentioned thumbs up and thumbs down. but then wont people eventually ask for two thumbs up/down? idk.
ReplyDeleteI like thumbs up/thumbs down a lot better. Partners are taking advantage of the star system, so maybe we should have a thumbs system. You can see how many people vote thumbs up and how many thumbs down.
ReplyDeletelooks like its been said, id prefer a thumbs up or down feature, similiar to myspace, the good videos vary between 70-90%
ReplyDeleteDefinitely. Seriously. Keep the rating system. It's a good way for content creators to know how people like their videos.
ReplyDeleteActually after reading some of the comments, a thumbs up or down could be pretty nice =D
ReplyDeleteI also think a ''Like'' and ''Dislike'' system would be better. Ratings are kinda pointless in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThumbs up and thumbs down is fine. However, I think that a tagged rating system would be MUCH better, either with predefined tags or where users can post their own tags and the most popular ones show up.
ReplyDeleteThink Little Big Planet, or Slashdot ratings without the actual rating (Funny, Interesting, Insightful, etc.)
I only favorite the videos that are actually my very favorites and I want to see again, and I think alot of people do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, we definitely need a way to say a video is awesome without favoriting it. I've always found that giving a video five stars works for this purpose, and I don't see any reason to change this system. However, if you're really intent on changing it, I'd say give an option to give the video a 'thumbs up', the same way Facebook has the option to 'like'. However, we don't need the thumbs down. Most people won't stick around on a video they dislike long enough to rate it, so just having the thumbs up or like is enough. Then you can just show the number of thumbs up, or how many people liked it, beside the video.
When it comes to topic at hand I think it doesn't really matter, especially considering the fact that there are spam bots sent to 5 star certain videos and 1 star others.
ReplyDeleteAside from that, some people dont want to "favorite" videos to their channel due to its content.
Also, it doesnt really matter if you get high ratings, especially when your content doesn't even show up in the feeds...even with 5 star ratings and being favorited!!
...I say this because I've been on YouTube for 2 years and have lost ALL of my honors and been removed from the pages where those listings can be found due to my content. Yet the videos I make have received recognition and praise from Universities, Educational Radio Shows, Tv Stations and Government Agencies...none of that matters because truthfully YouTube deletes my content and tries to limit the viewership growth of my vids. Its disappointing and frustrating. I'm sure I'm not the only one either.
DailyMe.com already has an emotional rating system called Face-It. Currently used for news content and allowing six emotions. Check it out.
ReplyDeleteWhy not dump the voting system altogether? Just give a score based on # favorites/# plays. Anything I really like I'm going to Favorite so I can easily find it again.
ReplyDeletePLEASE KEEP THE RATINGS!
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of having some sort of a meter, stretching from Red to Green (or maybe white to red, really doesn't matter). There will be a marker, marking off where the average is, and a different color marker, which is your vote.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that you should use the thumbs up/thumbs down system.
ReplyDeleteYou should have a sideways thumb too though.
I really like ratings, i use them, but the problem is that someone must sign up to rate a video!, it might be with "Open ID" if they have e-mail they can do that.
ReplyDeleteI would say whatever you do, don't make a rating system with too much range like 1-10.
ReplyDeletebecause it is really hard so find things to descide uppon if something is an 8 or a 9...
I personally never rate 2-4 stars...I go all or nothing...and to elaborate on that..I rarely rate 1 star cause I feel that just because I dont like a video,doesnt mean everyone else wont either..and I dont want to be responsible for a possible "good video" being left in the heap of other possible "good videos"..the only thing I really rate is 5 stars..and I barely even do that..cause its pretty much doing the same this as rating 1 star...One video goes up,the others go in the heap of "junk videos",which are rated 1 star..I really dont do much rating at all..
ReplyDeleteI THINK IT MESSES UP A PERSONS "TAKE" ON THINGS: that person being the person who uploads videos, reason I say that is because i cant talk trash about a subject with out the fear of KLUTZ! or sum knuckle headed nerd who doesn't like my take on Miley Cyrus *for example mind you*. SO IN CONCLUSION: i say! FORGET RATING and ENJOY MY VIDEOS FOR WHAT THEY ARE..VIDEOS!
ReplyDeletei think most people just gives 5 star rating...and doesn't rate the videos they don't like. The rating system should include an algorithm that gives more weigh to the regular voters ratings.
ReplyDeleteYoutube should also get more control on the duplicated videos...since the site is full of tons of replicated videos...
you should definitely go with a facebook-style "like" button
ReplyDeletemaybe you could add a dislike option as well
Whatever, i like the 5 star rating. if i see a bad video i give it a 1 or a 2 if i see an ok video i give it a 3, for videos that could be better i give 4 and for good videos, i give 5. i dont rate much and i dont let it affect me, i watch 2 star videos all the time, i could see a like system or maybe we could just intergrate the ratings and the comments, i mean then everytime someone comments they rate. if some one is just throwing fives they have a reason to rate it five, right? this will stop bots and stop people from just putting fives. if you write about it you think about it more, this will make rating accurate.
ReplyDeleteIt simply looks like a good/bad rating system would be better than 5 star ratings.
ReplyDeleteIf something is good then I will give it 5 stars. If something is bad I will simply move on or if I really disagree with it then I will give it 1 star. In the 3 years I have been on YouTube and watched over 30,000 videos I have used 2,3 and 4 star ratings a maximum of 5 times.
I currently use the rating system to find out what the YouTube community thinks of certain videos. As SobeBottles said, I think there should be a way to say a video is nice without favoriting. I definitely think that a thumbs up/thumbs down system would work a whole lot better than ratings.
ReplyDeleteMeasure the number of people who rate a video five stars vs. the number of people who watch the video. This won't work perfectly, but it will work better.
ReplyDeleteDo like Last.fm let user Love videos or Skip them. Most importantly, I want to sit down and have Google just play videos for me that it can recommend to me based on my previous Thumbs up ratings.
ReplyDeleteSpace bar while watching may mean "Thumbs up" and Esc button or ctrl or something could be "Skip to next video on playlist".
If I want to sit back and watch the latest (new) videos on Technology based on my previous Thumbs Up ratings, and I want only 720p content, you should be able to simply generate that. Thanks!
just give it one star! :D
ReplyDelete1 star : piece of shit
1 star : decent
1 star : f'ing awesome!
doesnt solve it but i would find it rather hillarious :-3
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJust need a 1-10 or 1-100 voting system. Over time it would be more accurate.
ReplyDeleteAs a youtuber who does more watching than uploading, I can tell you that I don't rate videos, unless there's a little annotation that says why to do so like "rate 5 stars and fave JUST for the intro." But, for some reason I think that the rating system needs to stay. If you were to replace it with a thumbs up/down there would be no difference
ReplyDeletei think you could accomplish the same ratings with a thumbs up or down. its meaningless for five stars when you have such a slant of one to five on each click. how bout we get rid of thumbs on comments and promote that to video rating? how bout we get a thumbs down, thumbs up, two thumbs up? maybe we can even go with favorite animal icons, a slug, for bad, a duckie for good and a nice llama for awesome? (i definitely watch to much jimmy nuetron! ) :P
ReplyDeleteThere is a very simple solution, just have Digg.com style Digg/Bury (vote up/down) buttons, and rename the 'Favourite' functionality as 'Bookmark'.
ReplyDeleteHow about an indicator showing how many people who watched a video actually liked it? That would probably be more adequate as a video watched by 10,000 people and liked by only 5 is probably not overly hot ...
ReplyDeleteI've got an idea. Thumbs up/thumbs down leaves no room when I don't love a vid but enjoy it. Also, if I don't loathe a video, but its less than average, I want to be able to express that. I also want to be able to say "Eh, it was okay.".
ReplyDeleteMy preferred options are as follows:
1) Why choose? Offer new users options on how THEY want to rate videos. Some may want 10 stars, some may want 5, some may want a percentage rating, some may want thumbs. Make all of these available at account setup. Then whenever a user logs in, their preferred method of rating appears where the current stars are.
Assign values to different methods. i.e. 9/10 stars = 4.5/5 stars = 90%/100% = Thumbs Up. When a user that has chosen the Thumbs method clicks "thumbs up" on a vid it automatically shows up as 75%/100%, 7.5/10 stars, or 4/5 stars. Then as that vid gets more "thumbs up", 5/5 stars, 10/10 stars, and 100%/100% maybe the "thumbs up" value for that video auto-adjusts on all current and future clicks from 75% to 80%, 85%, 90%, etc.(this would effective the stars systems respectively) make sense? Any vid 51% or over would appear on a thumb-users profile as a faded thumb up. 61% and higher, slightly more intense in color and so on up to 100% being full color. And of course this would all work inversely with a thumbs down(a full-color thumb down = 0%/100%, 1/5 stars, 1/10 stars). Also, whenever you hover over your rating system of choice it will display the % of approval the video is at, but only once you've voted yourself. 0%-100% could be the standard by which all ratings are compared.
or
2) Add 5 stars to make a 10 star system.
or
3) Leave it as is.
With any of these options, every time someone navigates away from a video without voting(only in a logged in account, of course)you could have a small flash-based pop-up asking if they would like to vote/reminder: DON'T FORGET TO VOTE! etc. before leaving. That would get people into the habit of voting on every video.
I think the rating system is useless. The number of times a video has been favorited is far more effective.
ReplyDeletei personally would say a thumbs up thumbs down system would be pretty good. but when i search for videos i always look at the rating just to make sure they are not retarded or "rick rolls" but then again itd be pretty easy to find something to let people know if its good or not
ReplyDeleteOh and you integrate my ideas with tommyH's idea in his last paragraph(give us a reason to vote aside from "Hey! 5 STARS PLEEEASE!!!")and you have got an AWESOME voting system that will work AND get used.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the way it is now is basically 5 stars if you like it, 1 if you don't. Since it is like that, I think it should be taken out. There should still be a rating system, but it shouldn't be something that people can spam up the rating with. A rating system that goes by how many favorites a video has per subscriber would possibly achieve this goal. More subscribers would mean more favorites needed for a good rating.
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head, Mia. The ratings system here on YouTube is good in theory, but when the community developed people became less open about what they truly would rate a video.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, what a 4 star video for one may be a 3, or even 5 star video for someone else.
Personally I use 1 or 5 stars only. I either like the video or don't. I saw an earlier comment suggesting a revamp of the system to a thumbs up or down and I think that's a great suggestion. The number of stars means nothing.
I love the rating system don't take it away!PLEASE Most people love rating things
ReplyDeletehere's an outside the box idea inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's books (i.e. people don't know what they like).
ReplyDeleteConsider 3 10 minute parts of a show such as Dragon's Den.
Calculate the ratio of time watched (or downloaded) / length of video. Then factor things in like % of users that clicked on the next part.
There are a lot of user specific behaviours that constitutes a like. For example, if you like a video by Akon, you're going to go through the recommended videos and click on x of these. This could be added to a weighted score.
Or why not use the google search algorithms as well. How many other videos point to this one, are added to user favourites, etc...
To come back to Malcolm's teachings, don't ask the user what they like, because unless they're an expert in the field, they really don't know why they like something.
just a few more random ideas:
ReplyDelete1) how many times each user watches it. The crappy vids probably get watched at most x times whereas the truly amazing vids get watched over and over and over.
Of the ideas that i saw on this thread, the one that stood out the most and seemed the best would be a "love-hate" system.
ReplyDeletePeople choose either good or bad, and the score of the video is the percentage of people that think it is good or bad.
ie, someone does a video with 50 goods and 50 bads, the video score is 50%, based on the total 100% that voted.
It would be nice for Youtube to run a test on the website, with a week of each system, and then to be able to vote on each system.
ReplyDeleteThe current system works well. When I click an attractive title, and then discover a 1 star rating, I immediately click off as I know the community has identified a phony video with a false/misleading title.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see a 5 star I know it's the real deal. I also like to click Statistics & Data to see the true rating, if it's a 4.95 with a lot of views, I know it is an excellent video everyone agrees on.
3-3.5 star videos are controversial but with some significant redeeming value.
It would be nice to see a tagging system or emotion system like GetSatisfaction.com has, where viewers can rate "Excited/Happy/Angry/Sad/Amazed/etc."
http://www.ytmnd.com has been dealing with this same issue for many years
ReplyDeleteI think this system should stay because it's nothing bad at all, and I don't favorite everything I like but I mostly rate vids 5 stars and it's always been something i liked. Though a thumbs up thumbs down thing may be better?? idk maybe a test run to see how it looks should be down before an official change
ReplyDeleteRatings are pretty pointless. Thumbs up/down would probably be more effective paired with favorites as an indication of popularity and quality.
ReplyDeleteAlso might look into some kind of "how long before the user navigated away from the video or if they watched the whole thing" algorithm.
There is going to be a percentage of false "votes" or "favorites" in any rating system. Nothing is foolproof.
I suppose you could encourage moderated video responses as an indicator of the value of a video among the masses?
Why are you asking us - aren't we part of the problem? But I'm flattered anyway. I favor thumbs up / thumbs down. Or just thumbs up, like Digg.
ReplyDeleteRatings are stupid. Everything in the fucking world has to be rated? Who's the bestest? Is this the 6th grade?
ReplyDeleteIf the majority of ratings are either 1-star or 5-star, then people are already using the rating they like best - I don't like it/I like it. So if people, when faced with a 5-level rating, unconsciously subvert into a love it/hate it thumbs up/thumbs down system, then that's the rating system they really prefer to use.
ReplyDeleteWhat's going to be more fun is when you change the system to a binary one and people start complaining it's too limited. %)
Kind of ironic, in a convoluted sort of way :)
Just go with Like and Unlike buttons and provide stats based on that.
ReplyDeleteI think 5 star ratings are more suited for providing reviews than anything (maybe YouTube should provide a review feature).
You shouldn't remove the rating system, it is something I use to tell my friends what I think of a given video. You could however change the rating system so that only the last 1000 ratings average in as the rating for the video.
ReplyDeleteI would say keep the ratings unless there is a better way of doing it. I like to know what the video is rated before I watch it. Usually if it is below a 4 it's "bad", not "good". A "3" star video and such is often bad. Not sure how others see the ratings as.
ReplyDeleteI think thumbs up/thumbs down or like/dislike is a better alternative to the stars, but the problem comes when converting these numbers to a percentage.
ReplyDeleteThere are some people who will rate a good video 1 star just for the hell of it, and whilst this will not have a significant effect in the stars system (the occasional 1 star rating won't be enough to bring a 5 star video down to 4 stars, or even 4.5 stars), in a percentage system one 'dislike' will take a 100% video below 100%, and from then it is very difficult to regain that 100% rating.
Perhaps have the like/dislike option, which is then converted to the star rating out of 5 stars? So 90%+ is 5 stars, 70%-90% is 4 stars, 50%-70% is 3 stars, etc?
I don't like the "thumbs up" "thumbs down" idea. It would be no different than it is now, because I just 5 or 1 star ratings...just sayin', and I think the majority of youtuber's do that also.
ReplyDeleteThe ratings are not useful whatsoever. I automatically rate videos from people I am subscribed to 5 stars.
ReplyDeleteAnd it doesn't matter how good your video is, if someone disagrees with what you say they will rate you 1 star.
I think a thumbs up/thumbs down system would work much better! :)
ReplyDelete-SuperEd86
Thumbs up-thumbs down would work. Just some way to sort out legitimate videos from misleading thumbnails, etc.
ReplyDeleteA three-star system would serve the same purpose: bad, ok, or good.
I hate ratings. I am sick of being rated poorly by spammers, and many channels have that issue too. I want ratings to end.
ReplyDeleteHere is my point of view of the ratings...
ReplyDeleteI don't like them at all.
I don't even bother to even rate them.
I comment and give opinions when I have the time.
Who even has the time to even criticize videos?
I totally agree with you chuck b. RATINGS ARE STUPID.
I have been put down, called names, even pelted by big red balls that leave bruises for months...
Ratings are just another way to even judge a book by it's cover before you realize it's true identity.
It doesn't matter how good or bad the video is, just as long people watch it and be amused by it, you're happy, right?
Austin Storm, I love your comment about the founders of YouTube are criticizing us that we were the problem...
Shouldn't we be part of the SOLUTION?
Shouldn't we with "RIGHT MINDS" be amused by videos and F*&% ((excuse the language)) the ratings? They really are stupid and can let people down if they don't get what they want.
Thank you and have a great day, and think before you act... Remember: Do unto others as others do unto you... In other words: Treat others as they would do to you! If people do that every day, there will be a better place in the world for all of us to live.
=^_^= Haaku =^_^=
-As the RIGHT hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body, then left handers are in their RIGHT minds. ((http://anythingleft-handed.co.uk/))
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI dont think thumbs up and thumbs down would work either because itd be the same as 5 stars and 1 stars and people would thumb it down just because theyre haters
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if we could thumbs up or down things with no limit. Also this whole thumbs down thing because of someone's opinion doesn't mean the comment should not be visible. I like to see all opinions and it's ridiculous.
ReplyDeletehttp://begthequestion.info/
ReplyDeleteDo not get rid of the system. A 5 star rating does show up quite accurately, since you can see the majority of people who rated it 5 stars, and people who rated it 1 star. If there are plenty of 5 stars, it's usually a 5 star, or at least 4 and a half. If there is mainly one star, then it'll be usually 2 or below. 3 will usually be around the middle. It's just easier on the eyes, and much more simple, to see the "approval" from 1 to 5. Plus, the 5 star rating has been a custom in YouTube ever since YouTube started. We wouldn't want to stop that, will we?
ReplyDeleteThe problem is you have to be logged in to rate a video.
ReplyDeleteToo much work to rate a video unless its exceptionally good.
what do you think about my prototype:
ReplyDeletehttp://picasaweb.google.com/adolfobs23/Youtube#5384505439140891698
here are my suggestions:
ratings are changed to votes [i like the video... or i do not like the video]
- vote is required to comment
- You can choose to show or not your vote in your comment
- 1 favorited means 1 green vote
- the average is shown in % and in a tiny graph
[sorry for my bad english]
I would like to see a thumbs up or down system.
ReplyDeleteNumber of views is my rating system.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_do_you_use_a_line_graph_and_when_do_you_use_a_bar_graph
I usually do what you said, either rate something 5 stars, very rarely rate something 1, and almost never in between. A thumbs up/thumbs down could definitely be more efficient!
ReplyDeleteI don't think favoriting a video is a good indicator of love, because honestly I only favorite videos I want to see again and again and again.. but I would rate highly so many videos that if I favorites everything I rated 5 stars I'd be totally clogged up on my favorites and never find the stuff I really want to see again.
please don't take away ratings. You could perhaps try to alter them to work more efficintly. Although most people are either voting 1 star or 5 stars it still helps me understand if either a video is generally liked, generally hated, or in the case of 3 stars that there is controversy over weather the video is liked or hated...please try to keep the records of ratings as you alter the system to work better. Maybe thumbs up and thumbs down are needed for videos? Thanks for the interesting post.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of 3 stars, 1-bad 2-ok 3-good, or somethin like that. PLEASE DONT just do a thumbs up thumbs down thing, include an inbetween spot because many times a video is just ok, not good or bad.
ReplyDeleteHowever I do like the star rating because then I can know whether or not a viral video is worth my time. The title and screen shot can be decieving but if I see the rating 3 stars or less out of 5 I usually dont bother checking it out.
Seems as if I'm one of the few people who actually use most of the 5 stars available. I'm surprised.
ReplyDeleteI use 1 star when I think "O man, this is absolutely not worth it. Please make this video disappear from the top of search results, so that better videos appear above it." (Like when i searched for a music video and found a crappy slide show someone put together in powerpoint.)
I use 3 stars when I think that the video has something to it, but for some reasons it's not really good. For example: bad video quality.
I use 4 stars for almost really good videos.
I use 5 stars for what I think is really awesome.
Actually I just recognized I never give 2 stars.
Having said all that, I think your data demonstrates very well that this system doesn't work.
I could live with a system that has fewer options, e.g. 3 (good/average/bad), 2 (god/bad).
With only one option (think Digg) named "good", I wouldn't be able to state "this video sucks" which I think is important.
Combining Favorites and Rating wouldn't be a good idea, as others said before, since this would clutter my favorites and as a consequece prevent me from rating.
I don't think many viewers sit there and carefully weigh up the merits of a video and rate accuratly like olmypic judges.
ReplyDeleteEither they rate 1 star and say It sux or they rate 5 stars .. If they found the video just mediocre they will just move on to the next video.
The only good purpose of the rating system is to weed out spam type videos .
Thumbs up, thumbs down would rock. I'd love that change. I usually either rate videos 3 or 5 stars, but a thumbs up for I liked it, and thumbs down for I don't like it is just as good.
ReplyDeleteI just want to say that this is what I love about Google, they actually pay attention to things like this.
ReplyDeleteI think thumbs up or down would be a lot better and then display the over all rating as 1-5 stars.
ReplyDeleteI agree with (what seems to me) the majority: thumb up and thumb down is enough. And: Thanks for the transparency, I just love how G handles this stuff.
ReplyDeleteI think the 5 stars should be left alone. You just need an incentive for people to use it accurately. Maybe a couple thousand 5 stars should be rewarded somehow and I think this may make people wonder if this video is perfect enough to recieve that reward.
ReplyDeleteKeep it; get rid of it: It's all the same.
ReplyDeleteThere's no objective way to decide between a "2", "3" or "4" and most people aren't going to spend a lot of time ruminating about it. They like the vid, it gets five stars or an "Up" thumb; they don't like it, it gets one star or a "Down" thumb. Six to one half; dozen to the other.
If viewers consider themselves "fair" or "sophisticated", they shave off a point from the extremes and give a "2" (..."It sucked, but I'm a generous, fair-minded person and THAT enabled me to see some slight redeeming value...") or a "4" (..."It was PRETTY good, but my high level of intelligence and general wonderfulness allowed me to see elements which I would have done differently if I ever got off my ass and did anything other than hand out ratings.").
WTF...."3"...What idiot's going to rate something by saying that they don't care either way about it? Well, maybe more than I'd like to hope, but a "3" is the same as "Yawn".
A 3 point rating system would be most effective; Dislike - Neutral - Like. It's too complicated to have another 2 stages of rating when people don't really know what they mean. Either that or just a like and dislike button would suffice. (Just a like button could also work where 'liking' a video does not add it to you're favourites merely adds another figure to the like count) Just anything other than the outdated and misused 5 start system.
ReplyDeleteIn aggregate of many users thumbs up / thumbs down are the best choice I think. You need them both though, just a favorite button wouldn't work as there would be no way to differentiate dislike from indifference.
ReplyDeleteI think that keeping the ratings system would cause less confusion than completely changing it, but if there was an indication of what each rating meant, it might encourage users to think more. For example, 5 stars could mean "Excellent!", 4 stars could mean "Very good", 3 stars could mean "Nice", 2 stars could mean "Meh" and 1 star could mean "very poor". When users see what the ratings actually mean, they may actually think before they rate. Maybe you could show what ratings mean when you place your mouse over the star icons, because that won't change the current system much, whilst making it a lot clearer about what the viewers think about it.
ReplyDeleteI like the stars way, and use it quite a lot, so I think it'd be good if you had a stars system, as well as a thumbs-up system(or a like or dislike system)! I think it'd be good if there was a "do-a-sequel" button as well, for videos that are so good, that you really want someone to do a second one as well!
ReplyDeleteThere's a simple solution (though more complex in the back - end) which mirrors hotornot.com's approach - normalize all ratings for each user. Ie: if a user only tends to rate videos from 3 to 5 stars, then adjust their ratings accordingly to normalize the spread. Of course this adds many layers of internal complexity, (including the decision to retrospectively adjust previous ratings based on future behavior) but leaves the appearance of the current rating system the same.
ReplyDeleteChange it to Yay, Nay or Meh. Basically you either loved it, hated or thought it was okay.
ReplyDeleteRating system is fine, don't mess with it.
ReplyDeletePlease dont even TOUCH with the rating system. We cant trust you anymore. Any good thing that is left on this site gets fucked up just to piss off people so they leave the site and save you more bandwidth for your greedy ass. You only want us here like a consumer.
ReplyDeletei agree 98%!!!!!!!! :D
ReplyDeleteand yeah i only favorite vids im in love with.
I feel the system is a bit broken, I personally tend to rate videos I enjoyed 4s or 5s, but if it's any lower than that I generally leave it unranked. I like the idea of a thumbs up/thumbs down type of system, it's concise. I think the 5-star system can work well on videos with a relatively small amount of ratings when the raters are a reliable source (the ratings then have the benefit of not only showing positive/negative, but also a degree of intensity that's lost when it hits a certain degree of popularity), but in the end a yes/no rating system would invariably yield better results.
ReplyDeleteAs per already established ratings, I don't have a particularly great fix for transferring those to a new system. But once you get that established I think it could be cool to show a percentage scoring of a video derived from the up/down votes.
Also to note, the favorite system works perfectly fine, I use it to essentially bookmark something I will need to refer back to in the future or something I want to share easily.
I hate the ratings they suck... people abuse the ratings to much and spam with them
ReplyDeletekeep it as it is and please don't change it!
ReplyDeleteThumbs up/thumbs down is fine, but I want to know what my network (friends, family) like/dislike even more than what the general public likes/dislikes. So network-based recommendations based on the system - whether it's ratings, thumbs up, or favourites - would be useful.
ReplyDeleteWe host reviews for major retailers and have studied this a lot...as it relates to product. It's true that the average rating is 4.3 out of 5. We call this the "J Curve". However, there are two important points to make as it relates to ratings and reviews in general (notwithstanding special circumstances for YouTube ratings...which I don't think you can generalize compared to ratings and reviews for other categories).
ReplyDeleteFirst, we've done studies to find 80% of people who read a rating/review value the review content more than the rating. Even with a 4 or 5 star rating, there are some valuable insights to most product reviews. YouTube reviews may be a bit more terse. The rating is important to pull people into read the review.
Second, the number of ratings or reviews is an important data point. What does it tell you when a video has 5,000 views and no rating or comments. Probably not a great video. What about a video that has 100 views and 20 ratings? It will probably continue to grow quickly in viewership. So the mere fact that so many videos (or products) don't have reviews, it's an indication of interest, purchases, etc.
Finally, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Ratings and reviews, and reputation systems in general, will continue to evolve. They will be more targeted to find reviews from 'someone like me' which may not show the same curve. Or the content from the reviews is more meaningful. There could also be video attributes, as others have commented here. But to say that all things are highly rated and therefore it's not useful is a wild overcorrection.
As it relates to products, 80% of shoppers read reviews prior to buying a product. And 95% of those people trust reviews. They are tremendously helpful...and that's them talking, not me.
It might be a even better idea if they rate videos on how long they are watched like in the portion of the video that is watched and the complete watching of the video thanks. :) DandCVideos
ReplyDeleteI agree, that the stars are somewhat flawed. In fact, I get depressed, when one of my videos gets less than 4.5 stars, because it means, people don't like it ;-)
ReplyDeleteIn general I'd prefer a thumbs up/down rating over the stars in addition to the favorites. But if 5 stars is what people want, I think, they made more sense if it was clear, that 2.5 is an "average" or a "good" video.
Maybe by showing an arrow above the stars that points to the center, saying "worse than average / better than average" on the left and right.
However, even though it seems to you as if the stars are not useful, I still liked them in the overview in the old channels, to quickly identify the video, I want to watch first.
It's a pity you don't show the stars in the new channels any more.
Maybe a favorite counter divided by the amount of views would do the trick as well?
I like the 3 stars idea.
ReplyDeleteBut if I were you I would add another rating that depends on zapping / how long the user actually played the video. I tend to just surf to another video if it is bad, like I just zap to another show if the the show on ev is uninteresting.
I like the ratings. just leave everything the way it is :p
ReplyDeletePlease please don't get rid of rating system. the rating system tells us if we would like the video or not. plus without ratings youtube isn't the same
ReplyDeleteI think the rating system works as is, but as with any other system, it can use some improvement. But again, as with any system, any change is going to have it's own good and bad points.
ReplyDeleteI shoot (imho) some of the best bands in my area using 4-12 cameras. I have over 100 videos so far over the past year. From what i can tell, people generally don't take the time to rate unless they *really* like it or have some personal problem with the material.
Mabye some sort of rating system that's based on how much of the video is seen by people, under the assumption that if people don't like it, they won't watch the whole thing. If people really like it, they'll watch the whole video and/or rewind to watch a part or watch the whole thing again..
I also have to say i think this whole relationship between google and youtube accounts sucks. I can't count how many times i've logged into my youtube account and wanted to post a request for help or something else and it wants me to log into my google account now? The first time i had to screw around for how long, just to create a google account, and now, i don't use my google account for anything, so i have to screw around for how long again to find my password.. What's the problem? I logged into my youtube account and i'm posting a message on youtube. Why do i need to log into google too? I bet there is an easy fix, linking accounts or some such alchemy. Something to screw around with again when i have time to go hunting through the help pages.
But it's the same thing as the 5-star rating system- it's one more damn thing to click on (or in my case a ton of more clicking to find my password..). People are tired of clicking click click click, that's probably alot to do with why they don't bother to rate videos. What i suggested probably isn't the best way to auto-rate videos, but it wouldn't be affected by the fact that people don't want to click click click...
The graph suggests that even a two-state option would result in a huge positive bias. It seems like deriving the rating from user behaviour would be far more reliable: track favourites, bookmarks, percentage of the video actually viewed, etc.
ReplyDelete5 or nothing? WOW! This proves YouTube users are people with good will! They act only when they like something. I suppose this mean: WELL DONE YOUTUBE!
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, this means also... yes, the rating system is useless! I suppose you can trust more a case like [+] or [-]. Exactly how it works on comments. I like this vid or I didn't like this vid.
Keep up the good work ;-)
I'd like to see a system where 5 stars = auto-favorite, or something similar that could be opted into. It doesn't make sense that someone could rate a video the most highly, yet not consider that a fave.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you observed the obvious. A 5 star rating system is useless. I'd dare say that's true of it's every application in any context.
ReplyDeleteA positive and negative (thumbs up/down) system would better balance the statement of what users are saying. And personally, I would prefer to see the number of votes of each, not a number of what the two values balance out to.
Better yet would be to scrap a voting system of this nature, and instead show some sort of calculated "popularity" value. Calculating from views, comments, favorites, and the like you could show a truly accurate representation of how good a video is.
Get rid of votebots. That would level out the enormous amounts of fake 1 star votes and 5 star votes.
ReplyDeleteFavorites and ratings are different, even if ratings are only thumbs up/down. There are two reasons for the difference:
ReplyDelete1) One Favorites to preserves a link to the video on one's homepage, thereby making it easy to access the video later. Rating by Thumbs Up would not preserve a link for easy access later.
2) If one likes almost every video of a particular channel, then it makes sense to give these videos Thumbs Up but not to favorite them. Favoriting each and every video of that channel would clutter one's own page; so the best way to access these videos easily is by going to that channel itself.
What if you took whatever each video's rating is, compared it to the distribution of all other YouTube videos, and then assigned it a percentile score? For example, if 4.96835 is the video's rating and, compared to all other YouTube videos it was in the 88th percentile, it could receive a 8.8 rating. (This might provide extra information, in addition to the rating, for users to determine which videos are worth their time.)
ReplyDeleteI think you should learn the correct use of the term "beg the question".
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should use a 1 to 3 star system...
ReplyDeleteI think that there still be a rating system for videos on Youtube, because I like to know if a video sucks or not before I click on it. But, I agree that there could be a better system for rating videos. Maybe a percentile rating, like thumbs up/thumbs down and when I look at the rating it will say how many people enjoyed the video as a percentage.
ReplyDeleteWhen I like a video, I vote for 5 Stars and when I don't I vote for 1 Star. But I think the reddit.com style of voting is the best thing. People tend to choose only 2 options, Like and Dislike.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI think viewers are not taking seriously the ratings.I don't believe that all videos are of 5 star quality.There must be some prototype on ratings to give proper star to video.
dvds
Problem 1: the similarity between both options: Rating and Adding as Favorite.
ReplyDeleteProblem 2: i simply can't browse videos by the Ratings i've done (or can i???).
you could make it like the Thumbs Up/Down on the Comments, if UP=Favorite=5Stars and if DOWN=trash=1Star
I don't think you need to change the rating scale: you need to change the sampling technique from a convenience sample to a random sample.
ReplyDelete1. If you as a user viewed a video, there would only be a 5% chance you would be able to rate it; I would disable your ability to rate 95% of videos.
2. If you were one of the 5% of users who could see the rating scale for a particular video, I would flash an invitation next to the scale: “You have been randomly chosen to rate this video. How would you rate it?”
3. I would store the status of your invitation; if you weren’t selected to rate it, you would never be selected to rate it; if you were selected, but hadn’t rated it, you’d be given an opportunity next time.
4. On your history page, I would include a section for “Videos to Rate”, showing those videos that you could rate but haven’t yet.
This should produce results with a much wider disperson of ratings.
5 star doesn't work because people are mostly using 5 stars because the person in the video asks them to rate it like that. Then people that hate the person making the video use a one star rating or if they disagree with the content. As we've seen in the past vote bots can dump tons of 1 star votes on people. They will still be able to do this with any other type of voting system. If you ditched the rating system completely you could prevent people with large audiences getting 5 star votes on all of their videos and getting them featured so much. (isn't it YouTube not WeLikePartnersBetterAndGiveThemThePowerToDoAnythingTube). Ratings should be generated based on:
ReplyDelete1) The number of views.
2) Peoples attention to the video.
3) Whether or not people comment on the video (and whether the comments are positive or negative).
4) How viral it is (links being sent to friends, videos embedded on other sites: based on rank in Google search
5) Ratio between how long the video has been up compared to how much attention it has been getting or did get.
I think based on those 5 factors alone YouTube could have a much better rating system.
If you were to keep a ratings system then the ratings people give would have to be weighted something like this:
Heavy
1) User is not subscribed to the person that made the video / rated many of their videos
2) They have watched over 50% of the video (higher weight for the longer they have watched and vise versa)
3) Number of times user has rated a video since sign-in is low.
4) User has been a active member for a long period of time
A lower weight would be given to the opposite of that listed above.
With those changes you could get a much better, accurate and honest ratings system.
My apologies if this has already been suggested (I have not read all comments...there are quite a few). How about showing the percentage of the video viewed by the average viewer?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking for my own viewership, I don't watch the entire video unless I see value in it. If I am going to watch a 3 minute video, it would be telling to know that on average, people only watch 40% of this video.
Aside from insuring 100% participation (I'm guessing the system knows how much each visitor actually watches), it is also based on what people do rather than what they say.
PLEASE PLEASE KEEP RATINGS. They are perfect the way they are!
ReplyDeleteYoutube Team: Would you check my site? My videos are going very, very slow, and someone has commented on it. I would like to have them not drag. Thank you for your excellent help. Cindy
ReplyDeleteThe star ratings are statistically meaningless. A video with 10 1 stars and 10 5 stars is not a 3 star mediocre video, it is a polarizing one. 1 star videos usually fail to deliver on what their title promises. 5 star videos are simply liked. That does not fit on a sliding scale. YouTube should simply keep track of how many people liked the video. There is no standard for different star ratings, so by averaging these ratings you add more meaninglessnesss to the rating. If you keep the star ratings, simply report how many of each star rating has been voted. Then from that you can simply compute a 1 to 99 star rating, if you like, weighing the preponderance of positive ratings to negative ones, and making an allowance for self-generated positives and trolls. Look at how newegg.com rates products.
ReplyDelete5*-SYSTEM REPLACEMENT
ReplyDelete=================
The lack of CONTEXT in 5* rating, thumbs-up-thumbs-down, scalar % systems has been bugging me for several years. It just makes no sense for us to be using elementary school level rating systems when there have been leaps+bounds improvements in code, e.g. YouTube's own video content delivery mechanisms.
Anyway, this year I had a code "EUREKA!" epiphany based on AJAX and the scriptaculous library.
I have an app and a methodology that replaces 5* rating systems and compensates for the limitations in the Semantic Web stack at the same time.
If Google/YT contact me, I might be willing to share the methodology and app IF I can be a core member of the executive team incubating it, strategize its route to market and with a conducive lock-in clause all the way past post-IPO. I have direct experience of this.
It's a disruptor and goes a lot further and deeper in analytical and advertising potential than any of the commentators on this thread or TechCrunch's have expressed.
TO: SHIVA RAJAMAN
ReplyDeleteThis is a serious proposition. I read on your LinkedIn profile that you were previously a McKinsey Associate, so I'll say that my CONTEXTUALIZATION tools enables user segmentation not by 1*, 2* or keywords used to tag their videos but by their PERCEPTION & VALUES.
The weakness of all current rating systems is that they capture scalar information or 2D-info: up, down, small quantities. What's needed is a solution that captures N-dimensions and provides a lot more granularity.
Online advertisers and the likes of BrandRepublic are constantly trying to quantify the effectiveness of brand communication, but even their tools are inadequate and inefficient. They make use of focus groups and polls of no more than 5,000. Otherwise, there are firms which trawl threads to try and gauge user's brand affiliations by manually pulling out information from users' comments.
There's a much simpler way and I've invented the solution.
If interested, please contact me here:
ADAMSMITHFRIEDMAN *[aT]* GMAIL.COM
Obviously, this is not my real name. It's an account I use for any blog threads I participate in.
++++++++++++++++++
If you are not Shiva Rajaman, please don't contact me.
The limitations of 5* star rating systems and the need to replace them with smarter tools is something I'm serious about and have been developing for many years.
I would suggest if the user does not rate a video after watching it, then it should be auto rated. If someone watches only part of a video auto rate it a 2, or if they watch the whole thing it will auto rate a 3, if they favorite it auto rate it a 5.Obviously a users actual rating should override the auto rating. This will ensure that the rating of most videos are 2-3 or what they should be under a normal distribution, and if a video is good and it move people to rate it then it would move beyond the 2-3 star norm (or it could go the other way). This way not everyone videos will be pegged out at 5, but a more realistic middle of the road.
ReplyDeleteI would suggest if the user does not rate a video after watching it, then it should be auto rated. If someone watches only part of a video auto rate it a 2, or if they watch the whole thing it will auto rate a 3, if they favorite it auto rate it a 5.Obviously a users actual rating should override the auto rating. This will ensure that the rating of most videos are 2-3 or what they should be under a normal distribution, and if a video is good and it move people to rate it then it would move beyond the 2-3 star norm (or it could go the other way). This way not everyone videos will be pegged out at 5, but a more realistic middle of the road.
ReplyDeleteI'm a fan of the "thumbs up/down" system. Although clicking on a star isn't that time-consuming, the 2-option rating system might incite more open negative ratings. I think this system works for Hulu.
ReplyDeletePreferential rankings are the future of ranking systems, as in "For category C, my favorite videos are V1, V2, V3..., in order." Makes recommendations easier, as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm admittedly biased, since my startup is built around this concept, but I really think that ranked-order listings are the only solution to ranking systems. Drag and drop is easy now and users are familiar with ordered "top 10" lists, so it's "just" a matter of getting the UI integration right (no simple task). I'm also looking forward to seeing more variety of ratings systems in the future, including two alternative choices like "was it better than some-random-other-video."
Since people are only using this to show love, perhaps simply use the overall # of "Favorited" for each video would do the trick. If you want a separate system, the concept of "Props" might work better than thumbs up/down. You'd have to work out how "props" might work, but the idea is that users would give "props" to videos they like - the more props a video has, the better liked across the YouTube community. This might be a better representation than star ratings of how liked a video is. If I really love something, maybe I'd give it 10 props, but if I just sorta dug it, I may just give it 1. If I didn't like it, I just wouldn't prop it. People don't seem that interested in telling the world they didn't like something, so props just seem like a more natural reflection of our inclinations.
ReplyDeleteScrap the 5 star ratings. It's not a good indicator for wether the video is good or bad. And as others already said, you tend only to rate a 5star, or not at all.
ReplyDeleteIf scrapping is not an option, then perhaps change the starts into five clickable texts. (Bad, Ok, Decent, Good, Excellent)
OR
A 1 button saying "This was a good video, so I'll press this, so others can see it's worth watching". (perhaps a bit shorter, but you get the idea.) Then you could add up the 'times watched' + 'good video button press' -- or just do some other fancy calculation to show the appropriate amount of kudos the video has recieved.
I vote for the 1 button!
I work on a feedback system that is based on sentiments instead of stars. It definitely solves the problem. Probably the solution is to put us in front of Google VC.
ReplyDeleteBoostani@civillage.com
What about looking at the view time?
ReplyDeleteMaybe 3 stars, 1 for bad, 2 for ok, and 3 for great!
I'm going with the people who say scrap the star rating and just measure what users are actually doing.
- How long they viewed the video for
- How many times they watched it
Failing that, I'd either go with a simple like button (facebook) or a 3 star system with 1 for not good, 2 for ok, 3 for great.
Please do keep in the rating system even if you change the way it shows. Ratings after all are one good way to give feedback for a video, while not even nearly everyone bothers to favorite or comment on.
ReplyDeleteAnd the thumb-up/thumb-down system that would give the avarage likes in %(like at MySpace) would seem like a better system. But I think MySpace for example has neutral words like "Yeah!" for a thumb-up and "Nah!" for a thumb-down. Which is also what I'd recommend.
Or the 10 star system someone suggested... but I think the thumb-down would be more neutral and serving.
By the way you should do something about the comments voting thing too. People are misusing it as well. They thumb down comments simply because they disagree no matter how valid and constructive the comment is and then when you have the comments permanently hidden after a few thumb-downs, it really sucks that system. So few bother to disable the comment voting anyway in their videos.
Watching a youtube video is like eating a Potatoe Chips.
ReplyDeleteMany people will not stop at from eating 1 Potatoe chip but Eat MANY.
Thats why People do not rate all videos unless it is either really good or really bad.(because if you rate every single video you watch, its like wasting time.)
therefore, the rating should be of 2 choices.
Either Very goood , or Very bad.
Another thing I want to point out is that rating stars is too small and I am sure some people doesn't even notice it.
so the rating should very noticable and bigger.
Also, everyone who rate has to leave a comment(meaning only people who leaves a comment can rate) is a good idea too.
ReplyDeletePeople are lazy, and people who actually bother rating the video are probably not too angry about leaving a comment on why they think the way it is.
In total agreement with Bosung's second post above.
ReplyDeleteAnd again the options for a rating system that ha sonly two options (such as the thumb up/down) should not take the meaning to extremes. Stick with the neutral positiv/negative words!
I personally and I'm sure many others too, have been giving videos anything from 1 to 5 stars, so we would no tbe happy to be left with just options "Love or hate" or "very good and very bad" because we may think something in between!
I think that the "Like" option would be best. No "dislike" or any rating system just an option to click "Like" or "Enjoyed" or "Approved" and possibly showing the number of people who have "Liked" the video. That way people can still show their support in some way.
ReplyDeleteA thumbs up/Thumps down option is nothing more than a different representation of the SAME system as even this very blog has pointed out people generally only use the full five star or if they really disagree a single one star but rarely anything in between, and the majority of the time is either 5-star or NO star. So what real change would a thumbs up/thumbs down give us? None. It's well known that even the negative scores are not used properly either so a "thumbs down" option isn't useful. Possibly a "Thumbs Up" only could be okay.
The rating system would be nice if used correctly but it isn't and never will be and it wouldn't be any different if it was represented as something other than 5 Stars either. So, I say, if you are to keep a rating system at all it should be just a stand alone "Like" or "Approve" or "Thumbs-up" or something with a simple statistic showing the number of people who liked it and nothing more.