This section of my guide for 潮流粉丝俱乐部 users details the ratings system and was last edited on 26 May 2008.

As with any web site, 潮流粉丝俱乐部 is only as good as its content. Some content - what I think of as the soul of the site - is generated 由 users in the fora and in 评论 on the rest of the content and cannot be rated. But the rest of the content - the body of the site - has a ratings system. The whole principle of the ratings system is a democratic one: if enough people vote, the really qualified items rise to the top. That's why everything that can be rated can be sorted in a 列表 from highest to lowest ratings, so that 你 或者 anyone else can see the good stuff first.

The importance of rating
Rating is voluntary. However, there are four reasons to rate content:

1) Rated content makes 潮流粉丝俱乐部 work. 潮流粉丝俱乐部 is organized around spots, and spots can contain a lot of content related to the spot's topic. Every spot has the ability to sort its content in a number of ways, including "highest rated". As 更多 content is added to a spot, the 更多 important it is for someone coming to that spot to be able to perform that "highest rated" sort on the content, particularly for new 粉丝 just starting out to discover a new topic. If there's no way to distinguish between all the content in a spot without looking at it all piece 由 piece, the site becomes mostly pointless. You'd do as well sticking to a 搜索 catalog like 谷歌 或者 Yahoo if 你 have to sift through a long 列表 to find the good stuff. Ratings are integral to the value of the site.

2) Bad content get suppressed. This is the flip side of the coin; since good content gets promoted, bad content drops further and further down the lists sorted 由 "highest rated". This saves people from seeing something really awful right off the bat, and reduces the chance that a new user checking out a spot for the first time will turn away from the spot in disgust because of a few experiences with bad content.

3) Users get recognized. As 更多 people rate the content on the site, those who post the content that gets good ratings will gradually earn 奖章 for their contributions. This is Fanpop's way of encouraging good participation in a spot. We, as users, define what is good in that 前一个 sentence, simply 由 our ratings. When we rate something highly, not only is the user who 发布 it that much closer to getting a medal, but 更多 importantly, that user knows that someone on the site appreciated what they've posted.

Similarly, those who post content that gets bad ratings can use those ratings as a guideline for their future submissions: "people didn't like that, so let's try something different with the 下一个 submission". Without giving poor content a low rating, the user who 发布 the content can't get the message and will have no reason to try something different 下一个 time.

4) You get recognized. 潮流粉丝俱乐部 keeps a tally of how many ratings you've given, listed on your 个人资料 page. Every time 你 rate, that number goes up, demonstrating to the 潮流粉丝俱乐部 community that 你 are participating in making the site work.

What to rate
So, the 问题 may come: what should one rate? Well, first of all, there are certain types of content that can be rated on 潮流粉丝俱乐部 (others cannot). The following types of content can be rated:
* links
* videos
* soapbox articles
* images

The following cannot be rated:
* spots
* picks
* 论坛 threads
* 论坛 posts
* news
* fans

下一个 one should consider what sorts of things to rate. Usually, one rates on the quality of the content alone. This is fine as long as the content works in the spot in which it is found. If there is a problem - a non aesthetic problem - with the content, it almost certainly should be reported, and not rated. See the link for my 更多 detailed explanation of reporting.

How to rate
So, you've found something that works for the spot in which it is found, 你 have a reaction to it - positive 或者 negative - then 你 should rate it. How do 你 do that?


Each of the types of content 你 may rate - links, videos, soapbox 文章 and 图片 - have a band of five stars with a legend "You rated:" above it. If you've already rated this particular content item, it will 显示 the rating 你 submitted. If 你 haven't, it will 显示 the circles as grey outlines, with "rate this link" superimposed.

Whether you've rated a link already 或者 not, 你 can rate it (with one exception - see below). To rate, click on the 星, 星级 that represents the rating you'd like to give the content. The stars rank in increasing order from left to right, so if 你 wanted to rate the content three stars, you'd click the middle star, while two stars would be the 秒 星, 星级 from the left, and four stars would be the fourth 星, 星级 from the left.

What do the ratings mean, though? The five stars are explained in the link, but I'll go into 更多 detail here:

One 星, 星级 indicates that 你 think the content is garbage. It's offensive not because it violates any of the terms of service 或者 is miscategorized, but because 你 feel it has no intrinsic value.
Two stars indicates that 你 think the content is blah, uninteresting, sub-standard and/or mediocre.
Three stars indicates that 你 think that the content is OK. This covers a broad range from "I think it's appropriate to the spot, pretty standard content" to "I think it's pretty good".
Four stars indicates that 你 think the content is great. It's superior to the usual content 你 find in the spot, and you're impressed 由 it. You're likely to save this content to your favorites.
Five stars indicates that 你 think the content is EXCELLENT. It's the best content it could possibly be. Not only do 你 save this content to your favorites, but 你 评论 favorably on the content, give 支持 to the user who 发布 the content, and share the link with all your friends, all because 你 can't help it - it's that good.

Note: The only kind of link 你 cannot rate (of the four types that are possible to rate) are 链接 that 你 提交 to the site yourself.

You can't rate your own content!

Such content will still 显示 你 the aggregated ratings from all the other users who've rated it, but where 你 would normally be able to rate, the five circles are grey.

Common ratings etiquette
While 你 are not required to do anything with regards to rating, there are a couple of basic etiquette points to consider when rating.

First, be consistent. Determine how 你 are going to approach ratings and apply those criteria consistently across the site.

Second, explain ratings of a 1 或者 a 5. If 你 rate content a 1 或者 a 5, etiquette insists that 你 should always provide 评论 explaining why it's garbage 或者 why it's awesome, respectively. Without such feedback, the user who 发布 it (as well as other 潮流粉丝俱乐部 users looking at the same content) won't know what it is about the content that they should avoid 或者 try to recreate in future postings. Then they have to guess, and when users have to guess what to do to please you, they're very likely to get it wrong. It becomes like rolling the dice and hoping for double sixes: extreme ratings result in blind gambling if 你 don't provide comments.

Recommendations for ratings
As I said, 你 may rate however 你 like. In addition to the common etiquette considerations above, I offer the following for consideration when 你 go to rate some content on Fanpop:

The one 星, 星级 and five 星, 星级 ratings represent extremes: the stuff 你 really despise, and stuff 你 爱情 so much 你 want to take it 首页 to meet your mom and dad prior to taking your relationship to the 下一个 level. As such, I recommend that 你 use either of these ratings sparingly. If everything 你 rate is at the extremes, it makes your ratings much less meaningful than if 你 were to rate only a few items at the extreme. Worse still, if many users rate at the extremes (not just you), there can be a situation where most content is either absurdly highly rated 或者 absurdly lowly rated. In such situations, the primary purpose of ratings (#1, at the 最佳, 返回页首 of this article) is defeated. Ratings aren't worth spit if crap content, so-so content, and pretty fair content are all rated one star, nor are they worth much if good content, really great content, and the absolute best content ever are all rated five stars.

I encourage you, when rating, to consider ratings as part of a curve, like so:

This is a graph that represents how many of each type of rating is given. Simply stated, most content is likely to deserve three stars. Some content will be significantly better 或者 worse than that, and those rare cases would deserve four 或者 two stars, respectively. One 星, 星级 and five 星, 星级 ratings for content should be really exceptional. Rating with such an approach increases the likelihood that the really, really good content will have the higher ratings, and the really, really bad content will drop to the bottom of the ratings rankings.

How to read ratings
Each type of content that can have a rating shows 你 the aggregate rating, combining all the ratings of all the 潮流粉丝俱乐部 users who've 提交 a rating for that content. This number is shown in the green circle, ranging from 1.0 (all raters think it's garbage) to 5.0 (all raters think it's the best thing they've seen). If no one has rated the content, it will appear as a grey 圈, 圈子 阅读 0.0.

But the other thing to keep in mind is the number of users who have rated the content. While a 1.0 may indicate the dross of the site and a 5.0 may mean something that 你 just have to see, they mean little if only one user has rated it. Ratings become 更多 meaningful the 更多 people have rated the content. So content rated 5.0 由 3 fans, while it may be fantastic, isn't necessarily so. It could easily be that the user has 老友记 who rate the content artificially high. Certainly such content is likely to be less impressive than a 4.3 rated 由 120 fans, which is almost certain to be very, very good. Similarly, content rated a 1.7 由 3 粉丝 could be low quality, but it's less certain to be bad than content rated 2.3 由 67 fans.


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Here's 链接 to other parts of the guide for your quick reference:

* link

* 1: link

* 2: link.

* 3: link

* 4: Picks: this is the generic name both for the 民意调查 问题 that 你 see on the site and for the 答案 你 can pick to that question. Papa has created a link.

* 5: link

* 6: link

* 7: link

你 may also want to see:

* link feature

* link