Re: Suggestion--Rating Songs/Steps
No rating system is ever perfect, but you can get closer to perfection if you reduce ambiguity in your scales (ie. what is a 0 and what is a 5?). If it's just a purely opinionated, subjective rating then yes you may have that issue, but again, there is always a balancing effect.
If the pros blam the easy stuff and praise the hard stuff, the newcomers might blam the hard stuff and praise the easy stuff. But you must realize that there is always going to be error in the way you judge something under that sort of view, and these types of votes may not always occur across the board. Just because you're a pro doesn't mean a song is actually "understepped" because to others it may not be and you might just be someone who enjoys mashing away at 12-taps-a-second, and to a newcomer a song isn't "retarded" just because they can't pass it. Not all hard files are good and not all easy songs are bad, and likewise is true for the other side of the coin. The point of allowing an average rating is to remove sample error and to minimize these potential offsets as more and more votes come in. Even if someone has a totally lopsided voting scheme, the central limit theorem states that even if your own distributions are not normal, the cumulative distribution will be ever so normal as you increase the number of additions (and we'll have FAR more votes than is necessary for this to be reasonable without a doubt).
In other words, as you add more and more votes, error will slowly remove itself and things will converge to a reasonably accurate rating, even if you have a number of people who abuse the system. The proportion of abuse will be minimal -- consider how many people play every song every day. Then consider how many people would abuse the system over time. I could calculate a ballpark figure for you, but I assure you it is extremely small. I don't think difficulty will piss off enough people to abuse the system across the board and I don't think understepped songs will piss off enough people to abuse the system across the board either.
In other words, don't worry about it too much. There will be enough legit ratings to level things out.
No rating system is ever perfect, but you can get closer to perfection if you reduce ambiguity in your scales (ie. what is a 0 and what is a 5?). If it's just a purely opinionated, subjective rating then yes you may have that issue, but again, there is always a balancing effect.
If the pros blam the easy stuff and praise the hard stuff, the newcomers might blam the hard stuff and praise the easy stuff. But you must realize that there is always going to be error in the way you judge something under that sort of view, and these types of votes may not always occur across the board. Just because you're a pro doesn't mean a song is actually "understepped" because to others it may not be and you might just be someone who enjoys mashing away at 12-taps-a-second, and to a newcomer a song isn't "retarded" just because they can't pass it. Not all hard files are good and not all easy songs are bad, and likewise is true for the other side of the coin. The point of allowing an average rating is to remove sample error and to minimize these potential offsets as more and more votes come in. Even if someone has a totally lopsided voting scheme, the central limit theorem states that even if your own distributions are not normal, the cumulative distribution will be ever so normal as you increase the number of additions (and we'll have FAR more votes than is necessary for this to be reasonable without a doubt).
In other words, as you add more and more votes, error will slowly remove itself and things will converge to a reasonably accurate rating, even if you have a number of people who abuse the system. The proportion of abuse will be minimal -- consider how many people play every song every day. Then consider how many people would abuse the system over time. I could calculate a ballpark figure for you, but I assure you it is extremely small. I don't think difficulty will piss off enough people to abuse the system across the board and I don't think understepped songs will piss off enough people to abuse the system across the board either.
In other words, don't worry about it too much. There will be enough legit ratings to level things out.
Comment