Hi there guys, your friendly neighborhood PLH here with an odd, backwards kind of request from you.
Now it has been said before that this spot is an excellent place in terms of fans rating other user's content! I mean on the majority of photos you may be getting 10+ rates, most of the icons you might be finding 4 or 5 rates on each one, which is a lot given how many of them there are!! Even most of the screencaps have been rated, which even my rater whore self wouldn't be able to do! So yes, this spot is an excellent place for your content to be rated! So you may be asking why i am making a forum on this but I do have one, strange, issue with the rating on this spot:
I think that in general we rate things too high!! Quite often when I get to the pictures (icons or whatever) I find that they are all rated 5 stars, or 'awesome' as fanpop classifies it. Now this can be interpreted in a few ways:
1) The fans here are very very very very very nice!! But we knew that anyways!!
2) People aren't looking at each individual thing they rate, just rating.
3) There is nothing wrong with this, all the content here is awesome!
4) We have a minor problem...
And the last option is the one I am going to explain for you here.
The point of rating on this website is so that fans can differentiate between content, as judged by other fans. This way, you could easily see the better icons in a huge bunch of them because they would have a higher rating. However when they are all rated 5s you can't do that, and it makes rating pointless apart from helping other fans getting medals (which isn't even necessarily true...).
So what I am recommending is this:
What we seem to be doing now is rating everything we come across with a five, but how about we tone this down a little? Make your default rate a 4, which is still classified as 'great' by the rating system. This way will allow us to see the difference between the usual content we see added constantly every day, and the content that really shines out and deserves special attention.
Also, rating everything as a 5 constantly means that when you see something you really really really like, there is no way of showing that unless you comment, but that doesn't help new other fans find it! By rating everything a 4 you can highlight the awesome content hidden in all the great stuff!!
Some other points I want to bring up on rating in general:
1) You should never rate something low because of your opinions on the character/ship! This is another form of bashing, and really not cool people! If it a good article/picture/etc then it deserves a good rating, regardless of whether you agree with it or not!!
2) Please do always rate. It is so frustrating to see a picture with 100 or so views and only a couple of rates! link wrote an excellent link on this a couple of days ago.
3) Don't rate low just for the sake of it! This is called trolling, and it very frustrating! If someone has put a lot of effort into something, or even a little, it deserved to be recognised! Don't go round rating 1s and 2s for the sake of it!
4) This is more aboot adding content, but you should always try to use keywords (my test for what makes for good use of keywords is "if I was looking for this would I be able to find it quickly?"). Also, crediting is very important!! If you are adding something to fanpop but didn't make/write it yourself, then the person who did deserves the credit! Now if you don't know who to credit, you could just fill the box with "I don't know" or "I am unsure", or something along those lines!
5) Along similar lines, when you come across an image/article/link with poor keywording and credit, try not to give it 5 stars, regardless of how good it is. in my mind something only deserves 5 stars if it has the whole package. And to be honest, is it really [i]that[i/] hard to add a few keywords to the things you add??
Ok, I know that article/rant was kind of long and boring,but thank you guys for reading, means a lot to me!! My main point I'm trying to get across is...
Now it has been said before that this spot is an excellent place in terms of fans rating other user's content! I mean on the majority of photos you may be getting 10+ rates, most of the icons you might be finding 4 or 5 rates on each one, which is a lot given how many of them there are!! Even most of the screencaps have been rated, which even my rater whore self wouldn't be able to do! So yes, this spot is an excellent place for your content to be rated! So you may be asking why i am making a forum on this but I do have one, strange, issue with the rating on this spot:
I think that in general we rate things too high!! Quite often when I get to the pictures (icons or whatever) I find that they are all rated 5 stars, or 'awesome' as fanpop classifies it. Now this can be interpreted in a few ways:
1) The fans here are very very very very very nice!! But we knew that anyways!!
2) People aren't looking at each individual thing they rate, just rating.
3) There is nothing wrong with this, all the content here is awesome!
4) We have a minor problem...
And the last option is the one I am going to explain for you here.
The point of rating on this website is so that fans can differentiate between content, as judged by other fans. This way, you could easily see the better icons in a huge bunch of them because they would have a higher rating. However when they are all rated 5s you can't do that, and it makes rating pointless apart from helping other fans getting medals (which isn't even necessarily true...).
So what I am recommending is this:
What we seem to be doing now is rating everything we come across with a five, but how about we tone this down a little? Make your default rate a 4, which is still classified as 'great' by the rating system. This way will allow us to see the difference between the usual content we see added constantly every day, and the content that really shines out and deserves special attention.
Also, rating everything as a 5 constantly means that when you see something you really really really like, there is no way of showing that unless you comment, but that doesn't help new other fans find it! By rating everything a 4 you can highlight the awesome content hidden in all the great stuff!!
Some other points I want to bring up on rating in general:
1) You should never rate something low because of your opinions on the character/ship! This is another form of bashing, and really not cool people! If it a good article/picture/etc then it deserves a good rating, regardless of whether you agree with it or not!!
2) Please do always rate. It is so frustrating to see a picture with 100 or so views and only a couple of rates! link wrote an excellent link on this a couple of days ago.
3) Don't rate low just for the sake of it! This is called trolling, and it very frustrating! If someone has put a lot of effort into something, or even a little, it deserved to be recognised! Don't go round rating 1s and 2s for the sake of it!
4) This is more aboot adding content, but you should always try to use keywords (my test for what makes for good use of keywords is "if I was looking for this would I be able to find it quickly?"). Also, crediting is very important!! If you are adding something to fanpop but didn't make/write it yourself, then the person who did deserves the credit! Now if you don't know who to credit, you could just fill the box with "I don't know" or "I am unsure", or something along those lines!
5) Along similar lines, when you come across an image/article/link with poor keywording and credit, try not to give it 5 stars, regardless of how good it is. in my mind something only deserves 5 stars if it has the whole package. And to be honest, is it really [i]that[i/] hard to add a few keywords to the things you add??
Ok, I know that article/rant was kind of long and boring,but thank you guys for reading, means a lot to me!! My main point I'm trying to get across is...