gleff: You raise a good point. To address your question about benefits:

All I can say is that the ratings gives people some semblance of what other FlyerTalkers feel about a thread. As I stated in my post above, one must be careful not to read too deeply into statistics. Indeed, the meaning of individual votes which comprise the overall rating is open to interpretation and should not be the subject of speculation, as there are simply too many factors that enter into consideration when one chooses their thread rating. Likewise, the meaning of the aggregated average rating is open to interpretation too! One can choose not to pay much heed to the rating (as what dhammer said above -- a high rating isn't necessarily going to motivate him to open a thread he wouldn't have already) or it might have some small (and I emphasise small) effect on whether people open a thread.

Each person gets one vote (and cannot change their votes, in the default vBulletin settings), but no one has to vote either. If I put enough meaning into thread ratings that I actually dislike the fact that the displayed rating of a thread does not reflect what I think about it, then I can either ignore the rating, or vote the number of stars which reflects what I think it should be. If I'm only one of 10 or 15 or 20 voters, then the "power" of my vote alone on the average rating is minimal.

I think the harm that has come from the system in its initial implementation was came from two things:
1) that the ratings were displayed with just two votes (that's the default setting), which is completely statistically insignificant;
2) that people were reading too much into what individual votes meant.

I think to a large degree that the latter followed from the former. If we address the former, by increasing the setting, then the second problem also goes away.

FewMiles..

Yeah, but there's the reality of FT's past history getting in the way of eloquent arguments about principles and democracy...

I already gave you an example. CG already stated that he sees nothing wrong with rating low a happy birthday thread simply because he doesn't like the person. CG doesn't dislike all of them; just some of them for personal reasons. So some people deserve a higher rating for threads wishing them a HB than others do?? dhammer53 stated that wishing happiness for others on their birthdays fosters community growth. How do you give that a negative rating without it being personal. As if that makes sense!

I thanked him for that clear cut example. ^

This whole thread right here gives enough information about why ratings are bad. From supporters, I read that they are annoyed by those of us who dislike this feature for we clearly live in a "victim" society. This looks like a justification of being rude. Some of you have been banned for breaking the TOS which shows just how rude some of the posts were. Why not stop TOS violations because by preserving a TOS, we are preserving a "victim" society where the obnoxious writer gets banned for a period of time.

Randy can see for himself the disrespect some of you have toward those who are against thread rating. You mock them for advocating a victim status. Keep it up. Your slip is showing.... I hope this thread keeps on growing and growing and growing. ^

The benefit would be the increased visibility of important and consequential threads. It would be much easier to scan FlyerTalk's new posts and hone in on the ones that the community considers to be of particular value. Maybe it's a thread discussing an eye-popping fare. Maybe it's a thread pointing the way to easily and inexpensively pick up a bunch of frequent flyer miles. Whatever the case, it would be just one more tool that might help separate the important posts from the trivial.

Well, since ScottC's request apparently fell on deaf ears already, I might as well comment (my personal opinion only):

I agree that that is the idea of the tool in principle, and I can see it being useful for that, in theory.

However, in my personal opinion, this thread (and the two other threads which had to be closed) show that the potential for abuse and disputes over it outweigh the potential benefit described above.

How about a merciful lockdown.

That is his prerogative if that is the way he wishes to use the thread rating system in that fashion. He is one vote out of dozens that would rate the thread, and I think in the vast majority of cases, you'll find the high ratings would far outweigh the low ratings. It all gets washed out in the statistics as I explained earlier.

We're certainly not going to get to the point of "only allowing 5-star votes" because anything less is a negative statement. Reminds me of those "democratic countries" where the ballot has one name and you may vote yes or not vote and risk being shot.

[bit removed upon further consideration]

FewMiles..

Do you support accountability in the manner described upthread, i.e., each rating gets openly attributed somehow to the person who gave that rating?

I'm unsure what value ratings have. There's already a measure I find useful - number of views. In less frequented forums that may not work so well but then neither would ratings IMHO.

Thread ratings also have a significant shortcoming (in my eyes) that no-one has mentioned. You can only vote once, but the "value" of the thread may change after you've voted. Eg a thread may initially be full of rubbish, but then later some valuable info or comments may well change the tone & usefulness completely - or vice versa.

Very good points.

Number of views is actually a very poor indicator of the value of a thread. It is very difficult to know how good a thread is until you have opened it, causing a view to be counted.

I somewhat agree with you about the single vote theory, but if you think a thread may change in value, you can simply wait to rate it.

Number of views is a horrid metric: if I posted a thread entitled "New US Airways to offer Free Beer inflight" in the US forum, I can almost guarantee that the number of views would be huge, even if the content of the actual post was "Gotcha!"

FWIW, I have rated this thread 2 stars.

I say we turn on all the features of FT

Reputation
Thread ratings
Referrals

Turn on a feature, and we are like monkeys, we will find a way to abuse it

CB4,

You may want to factor the response to view ratio. If I see lots of views with limited responses, it's a blowoff .

Maybe you should post your thread idea; just for testing of course.

Now can we close this down??