Sunday, December 20, 2009

Seeing Starz

I'm interested in hearing about how you all hand out your Youtube stars. Is it an auto 5 for anyone you sub/like? What about something you hate? Do you react & rate differently to something you hate by someone you have subbed as opposed to someone you don't sub?

What are the rating doing, really? Are you more likely to click on a vid if it's well rated... do you not click on a vid with one star? I want to know!

I find myself strangely drawn to the vids with one star... I just gotta know what it is, and what about it earned it that rating.

What do you think of the 1-5 rating system? Would Youtube be better off with a more Facebook approach- thumbs up or thumbs down?

Begin lively debate.... NOW!

6 comments:

Boozelele said...

I give everyone 5 stars..and here is my logic; Although Im sure it is meant as a way to rate the 'quality' of the video/performance, I use it more as a way to encourage more uploads. So, even though I may not like the song itself, or the video quality sucks, or the lyrics are lame, or the person is singing off key (all things I am guilty of) I want them to post more. I like to watch them. I like them as people. So if you are my friend/sub you get five stars from me just because you had the sack to post in the first place. Here's to you. Cheers. Salud. Kompai.

Erika Claire said...

I really only rate videos that I love, so I tend to be a 5-or-nothing. With people who play ukulele I tend to be 5-star-happy because the people are just awesome and I love it that other people play the ukulele and I feel humbled by their talent. My 2 cents = contributed.

Grumpy Coyote said...

As for what's happening: low rated (and those with no ratings) vids don't show up well in searches and "related" aggregates. They get stacked at the bottom, if they show up at all.

As for what I do, typically I vote 5 or 1. I hate that it works this way, but the community tends to vote 5's for anything they don't hate - so I developed a similar habit.

It used to be that I would vote based on my judgement of quality, but that's not really what people do. As close as I can get is the binary "hate it, love it" approach.

I don't really care one way or the other. They do need to fix the ease of "vote-bot" attacks though - that would put some small value back into the system.

Mugambismonkey said...

I always give 5 stars to fellow ukulele players! Occasionally I rate other videos, too and they usually get less stars when they're crappy. A vid that has a uke in it, can only be superbelicious, right?!

Erika Claire said...

@Grumpy Coyote--Vote-bot attacks? YouTube is starting to sound like a scarier and scarier place, which I suppose is another reason for uke-peoples to band together.

I do think it's a little strange that YouTube seems to be a 1-or-5 stars community, but I wonder if that's because so much of it consists of people just putting themselves up on screen for everyone else to see. That level of self-exposure/sincerity (although I suppose we could debate how sincere everyone is when posting vids) seems to invite either complete acceptance or rejection.

John Irving said...

I just rate 5 or not at all. I usually rate when I feel compelled to. When the video is so good it makes me actually remember that youtube has a rating system.

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