Rating System Suggestion

[+Confucius' Cat]

Rating system thoughts:

 

I think a "star" rating system on cache pages for subjective things would be nice.

 

Rating should be done by finders, optional, by checking perhaps three or four general rating scales:

 

> Overall coolness of cache 1-5

> Overall condition of cache 1-5

> Overall difficulty of cache 1-5 (independent of owner's rating)

 

How you decide is up to you, as the finder. How you interpret the results and how you react to them is up to you, the future seeker and the owner.

 

In order to spare the feelings of owners and finders, I would not allow anyone to see the individual ratings and would not post the "stars" until at least 5 logs were rated. The "stars" would be the average of all finders' ratings after there had been 5 or more ratings posted.

 

this could be a good tool, both for seekers to decide which caches to hunt and for owners to evaluate if they might want to revise, replace or discontinue (archive) a particular cache.

 

As an owner, if I knew honestly that people who have found my cache by and large did not like it, i would have no problem pulling it or replacing it with something that people might like better.

 

Perhaps an owner would feel insulted if their baby was rated poorly, but not nearly as much as they would if a finder just came right out and said "crappy cache" in the log. Also just one cacher could not set the tone for everyone like they could with negative comments in the log.

 

Furthermore, most people are sensitive, more or less, to others feelings and would not post NEEDED criticisms for fear of hurting feelings.

 

This would only be another tool, like the present terrain and difficulty ratings.

[Dr123d]

Great Idea!

 

I personally would use it to figure weather or not I would go the extra distance and leave the house early for a quicky before doing what I was realy in the area to do, such as work, or if it could wait till later or another day.

 

I think it would save a lot of time when you have only a sec before you leave the house and don't have time to read all the logs and then make up your mind.

 

I think that is what I was try to say in the previous thread.

[+mtn-man]

This has been discussed several times, pretty much decided it wasn't a good idea and could be easily abused, and the site has not wanted to implement anything like this.

[+Confucius' Cat]

With the consideration of "one vote one log" and requiring a minimum of 5 logs before implementation, is there still a serious risk of abuse?

[+Moose Mob]

With the consideration of "one vote one log" and requiring a minimum of 5 logs before implementation, is there still a serious risk of abuse?

Abuse? Probably minimal, but enough to get some threads discussing it.

 

Hurt feelings? Yes, lot's of them. I agree that I would love to see an objective rating on my caches, but many newbies would lose thier enthusiasm for the game if they were shot down hard the first time they went out.

[+Markwell]

Start reading here and see that Jeremy is on board with the suggestion from that thread.

[+Renegade Knight]

Start reading here and see that Jeremy is on board with the suggestion from that thread.

Best of the best of the best awards probably are viable. There are some caches that have a univeral appeal for whatever reason. Those are work making a special trip for.

[+Miragee]

I think a "star" rating system on cache pages for subjective things would be nice.

 

Rating should be done by finders, optional, by checking perhaps three or four general rating scales:

 

> Overall coolness of cache 1-5

> Overall condition of cache 1-5

> Overall difficulty of cache 1-5 (independent of owner's rating)

 

A problem I see is what I found today and what I posted in the other Forum.

 

I revisited two ammo-can caches I found back in January right after I started doing this.

 

At that time, each can was well-hidden and camouflaged and it took me a while to find them.

 

Today, I found each can more exposed and the placement looked "sloppy."

 

So, with a rating system . . . what happens if the original person has gone to great care to place and hide a cache, but subsequent finders mess things up a bit. That cache might get a poorer rating when it wasn't the cache owners fault?

[+Confucius' Cat]

True, and the rating would SLOWLY correct itself if the cache hide was corrected, but it might be a long time before the rating would catch up to the repair.

 

Perhaps this would require a reset (by owner?). This would probably be more trouble than it is worth.

[+Salvelinus]

As I have said before, I am all for some sort of rating system.

 

There seems to be some resistance due to potential hurt feelings, so It should be done anonymous. Also, it should be made available as an optional feature when you are developing your cache page. That way, you can opt out.

 

Salvelinus

[+CharlieP]

With the proliferation of geocaches in the last year, the rating system issue has a lot more validity. I think many of us are using logs to evaluate and select caches, but this is a tedious process. It would be great to be able to pull up all the caches in any area that were considered special. But I would also like to see a separate sytem whereby caches are rated, perhaps by the owner, in terms of characteristics such as: driving distance, hiking distance, historical significance, scenery, and others. I suppose there would be some disagreements about these characteristics, but any info is better than none, and I doubt that anyone would consider a parking lot scenic or historic. How many of us have gone on a vacation and done several geocaches, and then discover later that we "missed" the best caches in the area.

[+JohnnyVegas]

Here goes this dead horse, we do not need it, it will not work, it would be a waste of time.

[+sbell111]

I'm with JV. Thumbs down.

[+hukilaulau]

Here goes this dead horse, we do not need it, it will not work, it would be a waste of time.

Times change, thoughts change. This is certainly not a "dead horse" because the people and circumstances have changed markedly since this was discussed previously. Some kind of rating system certainly would "work" for those who wanted to use the information, especially hiders who want to gauge the appeal of their cache. As for deteriorating conditions and such, you would still have the logs to tell you about recent cache experiences.

I think it's a great idea and could be part of the evolution of GC.COM as a dynamic, rather than static, force in geocaching.

[+Markwell]

Link. Read that post and the next one. Edited March 7, 2005 by Markwell

[+RuffRidr]

Here goes this dead horse, we do not need it, it will not work, it would be a waste of time.

 

I'm with JV. Thumbs down.

 

Do you two dislike ChurchCampDave's idea, Markwell's idea, or both?

 

--RuffRidr

[+JohnnyVegas]

The big problem is that you are dealing with opinions, people with have different opinions on what is a good cache and what is not. noob may give a lamp post cache a high ratting while some one who has found lots of caches will not. just yesterday Julie and I found a cache with lots of logs regarding how great the hide was, How several people had to make more than one trip to find the cache, We had found quite a few caches in the past that were hidden the same way and we found it in a few seconds. That is the problem with any online ratting system.

They just do not mean squatt.

 

I recently saw a post re. online reviews about the Magellen GPS models on amazons ratting area, there were people that had no idea how to use the GPS and had no idea what it would do posting negitives reviews, only because they had know idea what they were talking about. On of them complaind that the back track did not work because it wanted him to go back the way he came.

 

online ratting is a bad idea and will never work.

[+sbell111]

...Do you two dislike ChurchCampDave's idea, Markwell's idea, or both?

 

--RuffRidr

I don't care for the idea proposed in the initial post. While I would not participate in the plan proposed by Markwell, I don't dislike it as much. One problem with it is that there are likely others like me who wouldn't bother to use it. This will increase its skew.

[+Clan X-Man]

How you decide is up to you, as the finder.  How you interpret the results and how you react to them is up to you, the future seeker and the owner.

 

Sounds a lot like what we do now by reading a cache page.

 

 

Furthermore, most people are sensitive, more or less, to others feelings and would not post NEEDED criticisms for fear of hurting feelings.

 

How long have you been posting in here? This is the Groundspeak forums right? Sorry Dave, had to get that dig in.

 

 

Seriously, a rating system eould blow up in our collective faces. Why have one more thing people can use to slam each other with? Doesn't that happen enough in the forums? I think that while your idea is good on paper and your heart may be in the right place that the actual practice of this will not go so well. I hope that this will NEVER be instituted. Sorry just my feelings, and hey, you asked.

 

X

Edited March 7, 2005 by Clan X-Man

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

I suspect that this rating issue is what's held Handicaching.con back - rating is subjective and time consuming.

[+Clan X-Man]

I think that if everyone (who wants to) uses the attributes icons that Handicaching.com could really work along side that.

 

Rambler I don't think there's much that'll stop you anyway...

 

X

[+CharlieP]

Seems like many of the arguments against a rating system are based on specific assumptions on how it would work ... or not work. I think a procedure/system could be set up that addresses all of these issues. For example, it may not be necessary to allow negative ratings, or to have all geocaches rated. If cache placements continue to prolifierate, at some point the lack of a way to identify the better caches will probably affect participation. You have to consider that many folks decide if they like an activity based on their first few experiences. But hey, maybe we have enough folks in this game already.