[J the Goat]

As I was toasting my bagels for breakfast this morning, a thought occurred to me. I'll start by making it very clear that this is not a complaint, suggestion, or anything that causes me any sort of angst, I was just curious.

Does anyone know why we use 5 star ratings with half stars instead of a 10 star rating system without half stars? Anyone know the official reasons? Want to speculate?

I think that if there were a 10 star system, you'd get people asking for a rating between 3 and 4, even though essentially that would be like asking for a rating between 3 and 3.5 right now.

I dunno, just struck me as interesting this morning.

[littlegemsy]

It's standard on a lot of review sites and such too, I've always assumed it's because having 10 stars in a row when 5 will do the job just looks untidy.


GCAB123 ***** / *****

vs

GCAB123 ********** / **********

I may be wrong though.

[Straight-Cache-Homey]

20 stars would be hard to squeeze on my GPS screen.

[J the Goat]

Yup, those crossed my mind too. Although, instead of showing the actual stars, they could just put the color coded number on the screen. That would eliminate the clutter and it would fit on your screen. I like seeing the stars though, they're pretty

[Don_J]

Because they only have to define five standards. If something falls in between, the user can give a half point. In a ten star system, all ten standards would have to be defined as opposed to five. This essentially creates twice as much work for the user, and you would still have things that fall between.

[KyleYankan]

Don_J, on 02 May 2012 - 10:16 AM, said:

Because they only have to define five standards. If something falls in between, the user can give a half point. In a ten star system, all ten standards would have to be defined as opposed to five. This essentially creates twice as much work for the user, and you would still have things that fall between.

Ding-Ding. For example:

2 *'s - Average – The average cache hunter would be able to find this in less than 30 minutes of hunt.
3 *'s - Challenging – An experienced cache hunter will find this challenging, and it could take up a good portion of an afternoon.

Well, let's say I have a cache that I think takes an hour. It's more than a 2, but less than a3. 2.5 it is. It's a nice squishy buffer zone. If I had to defien that in 10 stars,
Id' do something like:


4 *'s - Average – The average cache hunter would be able to find this in less than 30 minutes of hunt.
5 *'s - Above Average - An experienced cache hunter will find this within an hour.
6 *'s - Challenging – An experienced cache hunter will find this challenging, and it could take up a good portion of an afternoon.

guess what? My cache would take an experience cache hunter half an hour. So now what is it?

[dprovan]

J the Goat, on 02 May 2012 - 07:19 AM, said:

I think that if there were a 10 star system, you'd get people asking for a rating between 3 and 4, even though essentially that would be like asking for a rating between 3 and 3.5 right now.

Bingo. (Not that I really know the official reason, but if it were up to me, this is what I'd be thinking.)

[BC & MsKitty]

J the Goat, on 02 May 2012 - 07:19 AM, said:

As I was toasting my bagels for breakfast this morning, a thought occurred to me. I'll start by making it very clear that this is not a complaint, suggestion, or anything that causes me any sort of angst, I was just curious.

Does anyone know why we use 5 star ratings with half stars instead of a 10 star rating system without half stars? Anyone know the official reasons? Want to speculate?

Would you say you're addicted ...?

[GOF and Bacall]

It's the Illuminati man! They control everything!

[cache_test_dummies]

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the cache pages, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most geocache ratings go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's better? Is it any better?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one better, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be rating their geocache as a ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your cache listing. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put the cache rating up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One better.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten better and make ten be the top number and make that a little better?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

[J the Goat]

cache_test_dummies, on 02 May 2012 - 03:56 PM, said:

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the cache pages, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most geocache ratings go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's better? Is it any better?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one better, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be rating their geocache as a ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your cache listing. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put the cache rating up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One better.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten better and make ten be the top number and make that a little better?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

[NYPaddleCacher]

Straight-Cache-Homey, on 02 May 2012 - 07:29 AM, said:

20 stars would be hard to squeeze on my GPS screen.

Actually, there is no difference in the number of characters for 20 stars and 10 stars and 9 stars uses two fewer characters than 4.5 stars.