[X] My Assistant

Now that the end-of-year awards have come, hopefully posting this won't ruffle as many feathers, no pun intended. 6 of the 7 toplists represent solid, useful contributions to the site, but the last one - Rating and Reviewing - generally does not. Gallery comments are useful for pointing out issues, saying something insightful or witty, linking to a doujin's source, or making a list of authors and table of contents for an anthology, among other things - that's all great, many upvoted comments are nice. Unfortunately, the vast majority of points on the toplist come not from commenting, but from rating.

Ratings are slightly useful, and provide a bit of information if users don't look at tags. Galleries with bad grammar, unpopular fetishes, or unpopular art styles frequently get low average ratings. Galleries with popular fetishes, popular characters, and attractive art frequently get high average ratings.

But many toplisters rate just for the sake of points. For instance, those of us who hover around the most recent galleries - at least in the past few months - may have noticed that during certain hours of the day, all (or almost all) galleries get rated exactly 0.5 by someone within a minute or two of being posted, no matter what the gallery is. (just an example, nothing personal against that/those user/s) I think it is highly likely that almost everyone in it for the points does the same sort of thing - when entering a gallery, click on a random rating or the current average as soon as the page loads without even looking. Or, even worse, if the rater knows even the tiniest bit of JS, it would be trivial to do so automatically.

A typical day:



Many ordinary users will rate galleries after they read them without any silly "toplist" coercion. Semi-thoughtful ratings are probably significantly more likely without the pressure on toplisters to give 100 ratings each day in order to get into the list and get recognition, coupons, XP, awards, and the (currently 1.5m credit) Tenbora's Box.

People who rate galleries for E-H points/recognition/currency probably shouldn't be rating at all - I believe the site would be better served if that incentive didn't exist, since unlike other toplists, it's likely that nothing of value is being contributed. It may not only be useless, it may be worse than useless since it skews the ratings given by ordinary users who are honestly rating just for the sake of rating. As someone else said:

Ratings only are there to get your award and/or XP fix and don't mean anything at all. It can also be botted much more easily than anything else without any worry by blindvoting the way the system wants you to vote.

tl;dr version: Rate 100 galleries in 5 minutes

Comments aren't perfect, but most upvoted ones are usually genuinely useful or at least entertaining, and they're much, much less abusable than ratings are - but unfortunately, the vast majority of the toplist (at least at the top) comes from rating rather than commenting.

So, I believe it would be better if the toplist was for comments only.

Thoughts?

This post has been edited by Superlatanium: Jan 2 2016, 11:14

Thoughts?

Wise of you to bring it up right at the start of the year.

Is it even possible to make top 50 purely with rating? I could understand frustration if some guy running a rating bot made a toplist.

Is it even possible to make top 50 purely with rating?

If this really is possible then I am in agreement, or possibly just give comments greater weight so that rating plays less of a role in the final score.

I support this move. The ratings are useless for most galleries and it's too easy to abuse for toplist points.

Wise of you to bring it up right at the start of the year.

Is it even possible to make top 50 purely with rating? I could understand frustration if some guy running a rating bot made a toplist.

It is, very easily. You don't even need to rate 100 galleries every day to do it.

The ratings are useless for most galleries and it's too easy to abuse for toplist points.

Is it even possible to make top 50 purely with rating?

Incredibly easy. In fact, that's probably the only reason why 96% of those on the toplist are in the top 50.

https://e-hentai.org/toplist.php?tl=73

Past 31 days: Total points possible = 31 days * 100 points/day from rating = 3100 points. It's no coincidence that those at the very top have exactly 3100 points (likely 3100 button presses, 0 comment score) and that the top 15 toplisters have scores very close to that, 2700 or more. (Christmas probably interfered a bit with everyone's gallery-rating spam (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif))

Again, I'm not exactly trying to blame those farming points like this, they're just maximizing what they can get given the system's absurd incentives. But if that's what they enjoy perhaps it would be better for button spam to be encouraged only in HV rather than in the core of the site.

Thoughts?

I couldn't agree more.

Exactly what aspct said. Now, at the start of the year, people will not whine if the system changes.

Comments have their usefulness, and their points towards a toplist make sense. But clicking the rate button is not a real contribution to the website. Could we count the toplist from only upvotes to one's comments maybe?

If we are being double honest, review posts haven't been very good since 2009.

Its more like the twitter version of a review if at all.

The ratings don't really need to be encouraged, so it doesn't make that much sense for them to be top listed?

Uploaders do take ratings more seriously, but I am not sure about the functional value.




Put another way:

Is there anyone that is against removing ratings from the top list score?


For some of the other dodgy top list practices people defend those rigorously.

This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Jan 3 2016, 05:10

Note that if it's removed as a factor, it will be retroactively applied.

Is there anyone that is against removing ratings from the top list score?

I'm all for getting rid of what is probably the biggest incentive to bad gallery commenting we currently have. Tho I reckon comment quality will likley not increase even with it not really giving people anything. Taking any social platform where users are allowed to up and down-vote comments, and there is always a steady stream of "copy-paste-funny-comments" in hopes to gain completely useless likes.

While at it, why not simplify the gallery ratings from the star model to just a simple "do you like this: yes/no". As it stands the great majority goes for ½ a star for stuff they don't like and 5 stars for everything they like. I mean, I've seen people complain that their galleries only have 4 stars...

I'm all for removing gallery rating spam from contributing to toplist rankings.

While at it, why not simplify the gallery ratings from the star model to just a simple "do you like this: yes/no". As it stands the great majority goes for ½ a star for stuff they don't like and 5 stars for everything they like. I mean, I've seen people complain that their galleries only have 4 stars...

Likes/Dislikes

I second this.

While at it, why not simplify the gallery ratings from the star model to just a simple "do you like this: yes/no". As it stands the great majority goes for ½ a star for stuff they don't like and 5 stars for everything they like. I mean, I've seen people complain that their galleries only have 4 stars...

I know there a few big contributors that take the rating system unhealthily serious. Why not just have a like button and go the full social media. So its relatively how many likes but you don't get directly negative feedback lols.

I know there a few big contributors that take the rating system unhealthily serious. Why not just have a like button and go the full social media. So its relatively how many likes but you don't get directly negative feedback lols.

Even better.

Throw the stars away, it can free up some rows in the database.

Add a report button and empower some people to ban those who shitpost in the galleries.


Less stress for everyone.

Note that if it's removed as a factor, it will be retroactively applied.

If any time is the time to do it it's now. The yearly awards have already been doled out.

While at it, why not simplify the gallery ratings from the star model to just a simple "do you like this: yes/no".

Factor in mod power into that somehow (e.g. roundup(power/10)) and I'm on board. Raw votes are a notoriously poor measurement.

IFactor in mod power into that somehow (e.g. roundup(power/10)) and I'm on board. Raw votes are a notoriously poor measurement.

If ratings or votings in this case were to play a part in the toplist, it seems that having them include mod power would be a tad unfair, those with higher modpower would more easily be able to reach the top, I know that modpower helps in cleanup, but nobody can expunge anything on their own, so that at least gives those with lower power the chance to help, but if for arguments sake someone with 40 power had their vote on a gallery count for more on the toplist than say someone with 20, that 20 person would have to vote twice as much to match up.

If on the otherhand it would simply be a case of being able to see how much mod power has been voted towards 'I like this' or 'I don't like this' on a gallery then I see no issue with it

So it was just brought to my attention in this thread that the Cleanup and R&R toplists are currently buggy and not using the correct ranges for some data. For R&R in particular, the lists are based on the full year/month of ratings but only the last couple of days worth of commenting, which is why it's so out of whack. Will try to get that fixed tomorrow.

Note that this did *not* affect the year-end awards, it only started affecting the lists on the 2nd.

This should have been implemented years ago, either that or Rating & Reviewing removed as a whole.