AC News - Ed the Derater INNOCENT

The truth of the matter is, Ed doesn't exist - no one is out to get you. The reason your ratings go down is because of simple errors in the system in addition to 3^rd grade mathematics.

You know, it may not be a "down rater" it might be just that, the star system is an average, and if you've got 4-5 stars (meaning all your ratings by people were 4 or 5, hence the high average) it's just one or two people didn't fancy your article, and if they give you a crummy rating, it's going to significantly lower your average.

It's like getting a "0" on an assignment in school, or a really low grade. It heavily reduces your average if you miss an assignment, or do really poor on it.

Let run some numbers here....

And I'm right! Observe.

If you have 10 ratings - 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, the average is 4.5 (45/10)

Now, say 3 people came along that didn't agree with you (not everyone is going to appreciate what you consider fabulous work, and it's silly to think otherwise) and they gave you ratings of 1
4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 1, 1, 1, the average has now dropped to 3.7.

The LESS total ratings you have, the more susceptible your average will be if only ONE person casts a hurtful vote.
Let's assume you only had 3 votes, all 5's. Your average would be 5 (15/3). If one person came and voted a 1, it would bring your average to 4. That's an entire point from a single person.

I honestly think it's silly that you guys are conspirasizing about this when really I'm sure most of it is simple math. I think in the first place, not a lot of people rated you. I think a few people came along, didn't like your work (again it happens, get over it!) gave you a lower rating, and because you didn't have a lot of ratings to begin with, it really moved your average down.

Simple, simple concept. I highly doubt there's some AC 'gang' running around derating people.

I just tested it and guess what

any UNREGISTERED user can rate your article.

I just logged out and tried it, and you can.

Consider this:
Someone who has never seen AC before gets linked to your 'fabulous' article. They want to rate your content, and the click the stars (it happens to be the first 1-3, because how do they know clicking THOSE stars will push their rate through? I've never rated a single piece of content in my life until just now, and I just clicked it because it says, "click here to rate this content". The un-descriptive wording and ambiguity of this tiny little feature can set you up for a ton of accidental low-rates by people, who have never visited the site, who aren't paying such close attention that they would see that when you click a certain star, that is the rating you give them.

There are so many things that are going on; again I defuse the idea that someone is wandering around purposefully down rating your content.

If your content is a feature article, it's likely that it's highly searched for. If a ton of AC newbs check it out, they may even LIKE it, but they may hit the first few stars they see, and in the culture of English language things are read left-to-right, so they would naturally click the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd stars because they probably assume it will link them to a more detailed ranking page where they then choose which rank to bestow upon the author.

And from this theory (a well observed and obvious culprit of this 'problem' of your fictional "Ed the Derater" character) we can go back to our simple mathematics and basically prove to ourselves our content isn't ruthlessly being hunted down (you aren't THAT good of a writer), because even a few simple mistakes by people that are linked from the Web to your article, will cause your average to plummet.

I hereby proclaim "Ed" not guilty.

Let me also add, you can only rate an article ONE TIME from your IP address. Who really cares enough to run around town going on different computers just to down rate you? You guessed it, no one! So there is a very, very low possibility you are being spammed by a single person with bad rates, because unless they really put some real life effort into it, it's not a feasible argument to say as such. Again, it is not possible for a single person on a single computer to repeatedly spam you with bad rating after bad rating.

You'd be better off making an argument/complaint about the default, which is simply a very poorly HTML'd rating system with really no description on how to use it. Yes, people need simple instructions for simple tasks like clicking the right star, for most it isn't obvious.

I can pretty much guarantee that, if you couldn't rate someone by clicking one of those stars; and instead it took you to a small pop-up like the clout rating has, OR it forwarded you to the register page, we'd see a significant jump in the averages of ratings everywhere. Again, people just aren't attentive to things like this, most people don't even care, especially not some random person that happens to get driven to your article and then is like "oh, this is a good article, I'll rate it so I'll click on the first star I READ, which happens to be the lowest one, and then it will take me to a page where I can rate them", or so their subconscious thinks. Instead you get mistakenly "derated".

So, conclusively we can be 95% sure that we are not being maliciously attacked. Why? Because there are simple flaws in the rating system that do absolutely nothing to prevent accidental 'miss-clicks' as we'll call them. There is no way for a new user to really see, except by the faintly highlighted star, which even then is extremely hard to notice and so ambiguous to it's function that they wouldn't notice it, and through the American way (of laziness) they by default will click the left most set of stars, as it is our custom and culture to read left to right.

So, how can we fix this? First of all stop harassing the CM's and accusing people that don't exist of purposefully derating your content. Not everyone is going to like what you read. They may think you suck as a writer, which is a good possibility. In any case, a few low ratings by accident or very critical people WILL put a big dent in what you perceive to be 5-star content, as we proved earlier in this article with simple mathematics.

Personally, I think majority of you folks have egos for more than you're worth. I think you need to humble yourselves, and realize you aren't the CM's gift to AC. I
also think you people need to calm down, for the love of God, and realize that no one is out to get you. No one cares that much.

If you get a lot of traffic - you get a lot of page views - which will mean more and more mistakes as people from all over the web go to your amazing article but don't understand that what they click is what they rate and there isn't anything after it.

Free Ed! Persecute him no longer.