I've been here for a while and currently have the highest 'voting' on the site. While I like the idea of better reviewers having more sway on an article's vot, I feel that perhaps the system doesn't quite work out well.

I have written the most reviews, and while my reviews are good - there are definately more in depth and better reviewers out there.

Thus the fact that I have written more reviews is giving me a larger vote than others who are perhaps better at reviewing than me.

It actually hampers me a little as I tend to lower my vote for some articles as I have the power to immediately move an article into an 'honor' (almost).

Therefore I feel the system should change.....now here's the problem - how do we make a system that ensures that the best reviewers have the most 'power'?

An idea is to have a 'rate the reviewer' - rather than listing 'did the review help you', have a mark out of 5. A reviewer would then be ranked on the 'average' of their rates - not on the number of reviews they have written.

Thus I have written 160 reviews - perhaps with an average of 3.
Joe the plumber has written 28 reviews - perhaps with an average of 3.6 - he would get a higher vote than me.

There should be some 'qualifying' criteria though - perhaps user has to have a minimum of 20 reviews - and perhaps only the last month's reviews count (thus if a reviewer has improved they do not get penalized for early poor reviewing - their most recent 'quality' reviews are only counted).....

Just an idea...

One thing this may encourate is more voting....if someone who writes less reviews has the same 'power' as a super-reviewer, then they may be more inclined to vote.

To be or not to be....that is totally illogical captain.....Spock.

http://personalopinionator.blogspot.com

It's complex, but it's very compelling. It sounds a lot like shopping sites where people rate the seller. This system may work when we have more active members on the site, but for the time being our system is working well. The fact that you're using your power with discretion only solidifies your right to have more sway than others. We can trust you with your high rank to give accurate reviews with appropriate scores.

One other thing that might be useful is to make the voting generic...

Poor
Average
Good
Very Good
Excellent.

or voting 1-10 regardless of rank.

The system would then automatically weight the vote based on the above. This would help me become more consistent in my voting......maybe!!!

Just having a morning of ideas...throw away the ones you don't like!

To be or not to be....that is totally illogical captain.....Spock.

http://personalopinionator.blogspot.com

Hi SimeyCook----Well your article has given me some insight on how just how inept I am on this sight.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. How, does one vote and just what do we vote on? I’m responding to one of your articles, but I’m not critiquing it; should I be?

It seems to me people write articles in a more cavalier manner than they would a short story or chapter. By ranking their comments, would we be discouraging them from participating?

I think by ranking peoples ability to critique, you set up a method for people who didn’t like their critiques to sort of punishment the critiquer.

I was on a sight that had a thread called critiques of the critique, a sort of method of ranking those that seemed competent, in a way that didn’t involve the person receiving the critique, at least not directly.

Anyway I will continue to try and understand what it is, we are trying to achieve on this sight.

Talk to you soon----ablelaz.

Excellent points. What if we made it more simplified. For example, we put a little icon next to a person's review rank that shows how the reviewer is rated. It could be a little circled letter like (p) for poor and (e) for excellent.

Honestly Simey, I really admire you for being in the position of having the most voting sway, and still coming up front to recognize this problem.

I think, however idealistic as it is to say it, this problem goes away once their are simply more users taking part in the site.

That of course is a slow and iffy process. Who knows how big we can grow the site, right?

Think to Newgrounds for a sec. A lot of people have inflated voting power, but a lot of people vote.

For every 'x' inflated votes, there are 10'x' base-level votes.

So you are indeed right, there needs to be a moderating element here. If, say, I don't respect BlamNinjas's thoughts on people's writing, I should be able to show that in some small way, just as he should be able to show the same about me.

The idea your proposed is a good one. Thanks again for bringing that up yourself.