Writing is not like art or avatars...

[Kafka Sunbeam]

The introduction of the writing arenas is probably the biggest mistake that Gaia has made since the Chatterbox.

Since I'm a lazy ********, I'm just gonna copy-and-paste my previous rant from one of my mules:

Quote:

1)I am against having a ratings system for art in general, because one should not reduce a work of craft to a generic, nondescript number. Worse is that the ratings are only up to five stars, and integral stars at that. What about work that doesn't deserve the fullness of a five, but is not so far from it that it should only get a 4/5, which is equivalent to an 80% rating? Twenty percent is a lot. A damn lot. If there must be a ratings scale, make it out of 100, please. And allow decimals.

2)Furthermore, the highly rated works are not necessarily the best. One can easily get a high rating by bringing friends/family over to give him/her multiple 5's, pulling up his/her average. Unfortunately, that's what the arena is about--it (erroneously) equates popularity with talent. Of course, the mindless general public will develop this mistaken standard and take all the 4-star-and-ups as the golden standard for poetry, resulting in a culture of literary mediocrity.

3)People who have undeserved high ratings in the arena will most probably be unable to take criticism of their works. We already have had problems with people who enter the WF with their friends' and family's affirmation, then find it shattered by the critical perspective. Imagine the exponential growth of the impact when you turn that initial affirmation into the adulation of the generally mindless Gaian public. There'd be more shitslinging and butthurt in the forums, that's for sure.

[Zero is an Integer]

Elixir12

The introduction of the writing arenas is probably the biggest mistake that Gaia has made since the Chatterbox.

Since I'm a lazy ********, I'm just gonna copy-and-paste my previous rant from one of my mules:

Quote:

1)I am against having a ratings system for art in general, because one should not reduce a work of craft to a generic, nondescript number. Worse is that the ratings are only up to five stars, and integral stars at that. What about work that doesn't deserve the fullness of a five, but is not so far from it that it should only get a 4/5, which is equivalent to an 80% rating? Twenty percent is a lot. A damn lot. If there must be a ratings scale, make it out of 100, please. And allow decimals.

2)Furthermore, the highly rated works are not necessarily the best. One can easily get a high rating by bringing friends/family over to give him/her multiple 5's, pulling up his/her average. Unfortunately, that's what the arena is about--it (erroneously) equates popularity with talent. Of course, the mindless general public will develop this mistaken standard and take all the 4-star-and-ups as the golden standard for poetry, resulting in a culture of literary mediocrity.

3)People who have undeserved high ratings in the arena will most probably be unable to take criticism of their works. We already have had problems with people who enter the WF with their friends' and family's affirmation, then find it shattered by the critical perspective. Imagine the exponential growth of the impact when you turn that initial affirmation into the adulation of the generally mindless Gaian public. There'd be more shitslinging and butthurt in the forums, that's for sure.

********, dude.

I couldn't agree with you more.

[Kafka Sunbeam]

Ha ha.


And oh, to add to that:

How To Submit Writing

Better work gets better ratings!

LOL

[pirula]

Hey guys,

I have enjoyed reading this thread & would love to hear your ideas on how to improve the writing arena. The vision is to have a space that is *even better* than the forums at getting writers to show their work, give each other feedback in ways that really help people develop as writers, and highlight the best content. I know it might not be quite there yet, but I would love to hear specific things we could do to make it better.

[Kafka Sunbeam]

I stand by my disdain for the Writing Arena.


However, if you want a useful suggestion, you can implement at least a 10-point rating system, at the very least, though even 10 points is too little in my opinion. (100 points would be closer to ideal.) The reason for that is that not only does it allow for more accuracy, a ratings system with more points will force the rater to slow down and think more carefully about that rating he/she is about to give.


But hey, some lazy dipshits will still automatically go to the extreme ends.


Oh well. I've got nothing more.

[Miss Amelia Pond]

Unfortunately, people are too damn lazy to give any helpful feedback in the Arena. They either give you some number of stars, whether high or low, without any explanation, or they give a pointless comment along the lines of "i lyked it!!11!"

The only thing I can think of to make it useful in any way is to change how stories are displayed. In my opinion, the stories with fewer votes should be the ones up front so that they have a chance to be seen, not the ones with more votes. And the "popular" segment should be reserved for entries with good ratings, not a just a ridiculous number of votes, regardless of what said votes may be.

And it may seem limiting, and it probably is, but especially in the writing arena where people should be taking time on an entry anyhow because they need to read it, I believe that the same text-entry box (the one with the two words; I don't know what else to call it) needs to go on the voting as on the commenting. It's the only thing I can think of that can stop people from going through and clicking without stopping to look at a thing.

EDIT: And could it be like the old arena, where you can't see what other people have given it until after you've rated it? Because I fear others' ratings might influence later votes.