Property talk:Has quality rating
Rating scale
I'm planning on making canyon quality ratings votable in the near future -- that is, lots of users can vote on what quality they think the canyon is, and then the average (or something like it) will actually be reported. The average will be in decimal form regardless (it won't be rounded to the nearest star).
While we're making this change, Luca has suggested that we should also change the number of stars for ratings. Currently, it's 1-3 stars (see the main page for this property). I have listed some alternate possibilities below and would appreciate input on which options everyone prefers.
1-3 stars
The reason RopeWiki has 1-3 stars is that, from my perspective, the three major beta sites for US canyons are Brennen, CUSA (Tom Jones), and BluuGnome. Brennen and CUSA use a 3-star rating system and BluuGnome doesn't have any numerical rating system. To maximize consistency with those major sites, I initially chose a 1-3 star system. If we want to continue to maintain consistency with Brennen and CUSA, I think we should keep the 1-3 scale.
0-4 stars
In Europe, Descente is 0-4 stars (unevenly divided into 0-1, 1-1.8, 1.8-2.3, 2.3-3, and 3-4 for display coloring on the map). If we wanted to shift toward European standards (where many more canyons are documented), this would seem to be the logical way to do it. As a bonus, it adds more whole-star resolution -- that is, users can differentiate between an ok canyon (2 stars) and a better-than-typical ok canyon (3 stars). I find the 0-4 ratings rather unusual and unintuitive, and US users not familiar with Descente may experience the same thing.
1-5 stars
Canyon Collective uses a 1-5 star system. This has the same advantage of additional whole-star resolution that the 0-4 star option has, but it is also a more familiar range since sites like Amazon use 1-5 stars as well. The disadvantage is that a 1-5 star system does not yet appear to be used on many (any?) other canyoneering sites, so we may introduce confusion by rating canyons on this scale (a 3-star canyon is excellent for Brennen and CUSA, but it's only middling using this range)
1-3 fractional stars
A compromise option is to continue using 1-3 stars for ratings, but allow users to submit fractional stars. So, the options would be 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, or 3 stars. This provides the resolution benefits of the 0-4 and 1-5 star systems while maintaining consistency with Brennen and CUSA.
Feedback
I prefer 1-3 fractional stars. --Bjp (talk) 11:26, 19 May 2014 (PDT)
I think 1-5 stars is more standard, like uCanyon, CanyonCollective, Yelp, Amazon, Walmart, etc. Also like college A=5 B=4 C=3 D=2 E=1 F=0. NOTE: descente-canyons started and still uses a 4 smiley rank system, but then in the map they display 5 levels of ratings [0-0.9 0.9-1.6 etc.] equiv to 5 stars. 3 fractional stars are equivalent to 5 stars: 3stars=5 2.5stars=4 2stars=3 1.5stars=2 1stars=1 0stars=0. I suggest we simplify and just use 5 stars! Lucach (talk) 12:27, 19 May 2014 (PDT)
- How do you figure 1-5 stars is more standard? Brennen and CUSA are each, individually, bigger than uCanyon and Canyon Collective combined. I agree that retail stores seem to have generally agreed on a 1-5 scale, but why should the retail standard be applied to canyoneering when the traditional canyoneering standard in the US has been 1-3 stars? --Bjp (talk) 13:38, 19 May 2014 (PDT)
- I think 5 stars is the defacto standard. Ever heard the expression "five star service"? I've always hated the lack of granularity that Brennen and Tom Jones gave in their beta: Motherfucking Matacanes was 3 stars but so was Bonita falls! Spookie was 3 stars, and so was Imlay. But if you really prefer fractional 3, I will live with that. Just make sure we have a 0 default value to be able to query unrated canyons.
I'm happy with either 1-3 fractional or 1-5 (obfuscating fractions)... mainly which ever is easier to implement. Dangel (talk) 13:20, 19 May 2014 (PDT)
I think for simplicity 1-5 stars is best. I seem to recall that most climbing books use this as well, but I don't have access to them at work to check. Duffyknox (talk) 15:07, 19 May 2014 (PDT)
Three steps seem too coarse; I think the resolution should be higher. And the lowest rating should be zero rather than one. A one-star rating becomes meaningless if every canyon has at least one star. Canyons should earn their stars, every single one of them. —Bahman (talk) 15:16, 19 May 2014 (PDT)
- Or even 0-3, for that matter, as long as 0 itself is a rating. That would give the user four ratings to choose from. At this point, however, I am not sure if and how we are going to distinguish between non-rated (blank or N/A) and rated canyons. If we do, then I can see how the lowest rating may be 1 star and no star would convey the (valuable) information that the canyon has not yet been rated, perhaps because it has not yet been descended or explored. —Bahman (talk) 20:38, 19 May 2014 (PDT)
- Don't worry about blank ratings -- there will be a separate flag for that, so we don't need to encode "not rated" as a numerical rating value. This question is, "Given that a canyon is rated, on what scale should that rating be?" If you're concerned about resolution, all listed options but 1-3 non-fractional have 5 different user-selectable ratings. --Bjp (talk) 11:27, 20 May 2014 (PDT)
I do see the inherent drawback initially in changing a 3 star system to a 5 star system. I however think a 5 star system is MUCH better and MUCH more accurate. In rating LA canyons I've been stuck at times trying to rate one canyon over the other, one being 2 stars but the other not being quite 3. In Todd Martin's Book "Grand Canyoneering" he uses the 5 star system. I'll have to look at his "Arizona Canyoneering" book again to see his star rating but I bet it's 5 stars. In Rick Ianello's Slot Canyons of Las Vegas book he is using a 5 star system. I believe we should move forward with this. 3 stars is "old" 5 stars is more accurate. My 2 cents 360nomad (talk) 11:52, 21 May 2014 (PDT)
5 stars is best, IMHO. Same reasons as you guys discussed. Taco (talk) 15:18, 21 May 2014 (PDT)
Resolution
The voting-based quality rating being developed will use 1-5 stars.