Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
Another idea: a system where you can rate users, but
the results are
not shown directly. Instead, a score for the articles a user worked on
is calculated. the results are printed on the article page, such that
you can see: on this article worked people with a very high (or low)
rating.
Why not just rate the articles directly, instead of the users? I would
be much more comfortable with this kind of system. It's less vulnerable
to the kind of personal animosity that promotes negative feedback wars.
And suppose you want to consider the relative value of individual
contributors to an article, as Delirium suggested. If the ratings are
preserved and tracked on the page history, you could see whether a
user's contributions generally improved the ratings or not. That's
actually better information than you could get from giving ratings to
users. A user could have a great rating, but not necessarily be the best
informed on that particular subject.
It could be like some companies set up help pages, something along the
lines of, "Please rate this article: How useful was the information to
you?" Has the idea of rating articles been discussed before? It could
also provide additional information for selecting featured articles.
--Michael Snow