Repo rating system: 5 stars or binary ratings?


I quite like the 'If you liked <Game A> then you maybe interested in <Game B, Game C, Game D>' where the suggestions are based on users feedback, e.g. find users that rate <Game A> highly, then for each user take their top 10 and give them points based on position (10 for first, 1 for last), add all the results up, take the top three games and suggest them to the user. Following on from this, it could be cool to have a 'Selected for you' section of PND Manager/repository that picks out 12 applications it feels maybe of interest to you based on what you have currently downloaded and rated.
 
I've downloaded so many games which I honestly don't play at all - some I haven't even touched yet, since there just are so many. I think that more detailed descriptions, possibly decipting the genre etc and the pnd names actually corresponding to the software titles would help. I suppose that's just my issue, but it might be something that many new users come across. Therefore, I nowadays follow ratings quite a bit myself - but since it's a bother for many users to rate at all, people don't give enough bad or mediocre ratings, and new software may take quite a bit of time to get one. It's also very biased for software with just one or two ratings - therefore, rather than new methods, I think we should encourage or make it easier to rate at all.

Personally, I also don't use the PND Store at all due to the unstable nature of connection between the Pandora and my router - I always download from the repo website on my computer and then transfer on the SDs. I suppose quite a few others do that as well - in my opinion, disabling ratings completely would be a bad idea. They could be made more fair; not decipt things as a popularity contest to the degree which was proposed, and somehow the lists be tailored according to what you rate highly and what poorly.

The problem in modifying the system itself is that people have very differing preferences and ways to go around getting software. We can't cater to everyone, and it's difficult to find out what's the true popular opinion, since there are so many users who don't follow the forums.
 
No, the poop was a joke.

I thought that was obvious by the way I separated it from the other choices. 

But my bad, I guess folks didn't get that it was a joke.

The Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze was serious.

Incidentally, I am wanting to learn programming myself, and quite frankly a lot of the stuff I might put out at first might well be described as poop.
 
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The Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze was serious.
So instead of 1,2,3,4 or 5 stars, you want platinum, gold, silver and bronze? In fact the same system, just with 4 different choices aaaand with fancy names? Or was this meant for this thread?
 
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It could be used for either thread, I suppose.

I'd just like a way to separate out GOOD original Pandora games versus ports, remakes, etc.

Have always been a fan of good indie/homebrew stuff.  But the pickings are often slim in the indie/homebrew arena.
 
Poor, meh, good, great, gold.

-1 , 0 , +1 , +2. +3

This might be annoying BUT we also need to add some kind of weight for something with 5 votes compared to 50 votes.
 
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I'd rather have :

:angry:   <_<   :mellow:   ^_^   :D

Not usable - Needs improvements - Okay - Good - Everybody must have this

-2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | +2

Each rating should be linked to the version of the app used, that way, we can easily follow the improvements.




büchse. Maybe because the current rating system doesn't really work. 5 stars ratings system isn't the best for softwares that get modified by their devs.
 
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Then do it like Youtube and we got the best voting system for this community? All right! We  just do it!
 
Please stop shouting, büchse.

@ekianjo: one problem with the current rating system is that typically, the highest ranked application is one that has 4 or 5 five-star ratings, so it's ranked highest mostly because it just didn't get enough ratings yet to bring the average below the maximum of 5. Other excellent software like PNDManager ends up somewhere at the bottom of the top-40 because its average rating is "only" 4.75 (even though that is an average of many more ratings, and probably some of those ratings are about early versions). So in my opinion it would be better to also take the number of ratings into account, not just the average. See my previous post for a more detailed explanation.
 
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(even though that is an average of many more ratings, and probably some of those ratings are about early versions).
Would certainly be nice of some weighting of versions could be taken into account, not sure on the maths, but if there are 3 versions, and version 1 averaged 2.5 star (with 20 ratings), version 3.5 averaged 4.5 star (with 20 ratings) and version 3 averaged 4.5 stars (with 20 ratings) it would appear that each version has made the application better. It maybe relatively correct for the application to show as 4.5 stars (this of course isn't guaranteed to be the case) but it seems a little bit harsh that old versions ratings can bring an application down (especially if said application has had the time put in to improve it). It's like you are better of pulling the application and uploading a fresh when you get into that situation.
 
Maybe ratings for old versions should just be forgotten if they are negative. If an old version already got a positive rating, it makes sense to assume that the new version still gets the positive rating until the rater adjust his rating. In my proposal this would be easy to implement: just don't count the -1 and -2 ratings if the version that was rated is older than the current version (I'm assuming that like the comments, the ratings are annotated with a version number).

Only downside of such a "forgiving" system is that it suffices to upload an update (even if nothing changed but a version number bump) to get rid of all the negative ratings. I don't think this would be a big issue.
 
Making ratings specific to versions sounds like a good idea, need everyone to agree though I'm not good at weighting the pros and cons to this.

Making ratings specific to versions sounds like a good idea, need everyone to agree though I'm not good at weighting the pros and cons to this.
 
I think to link ratings to versions is a good idea.
You can show the rating of the latest version on top and show the rating of older versions besides them when you click the archived link.

Maybe display an overall rating in smaller grey stars under the latest version rating for reference.
 
Only downside of such a "forgiving" system is that it suffices to upload an update (even if nothing changed but a version number bump) to get rid of all the negative ratings. I don't think this would be a big issue.
I think that is a very good idea, but another downside is that users need to rate the application again after each new version (even if it is a minor update).  You could let the dev decide if a program has an update that is a real improvement so new ratings are needed/wanted. That way you don't have to vote again if the dev decided to adjust a typo. 
 
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