[WikiEN-l] two-tiered ratings system (Was: To boldy delete what no one had deleted before!)

[Ray Saintonge]

Ian Woollard wrote:
> On 14/01/2009, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>> Not everybody pays attention to GA/FA. A public rating system where
>> anyone can rate each article on a 0-10 scale might be controversial to
>> implement, but on a cumulative basis would give a good statistically
>> based valuation of the article.
>>     
> Possibly not. The experience with these kinds of systems at Amazon for
> example shows that interpreting votes is not simple. A lot of people
> give consistently high, middle or low votes and there are many
> pathologies, averaging them out gives much worse results than you
> could expect.
>   
Sure, optimists may very well score everything high, and pessimists may 
score everything low.  Still, the overall results will tend toward some 
mean value. probably higher the expected value of 5.0 that one might 
anticipate before we have any real data.  If the overall mean migrates 
to say 5.7 other interpretations of data can be adjusted accordingly.  
We don't interpret individual votes, but overall data.

In our involvement with Wikipedia we have accepted the principle that 
anybody can write an encyclopedia article.  Choosing a number between 0 
and 10 is a somewhat easier task.  Can we not accept that the vast 
majority will approach such a task with the same level of responsibility?

Yes, there will be some individuals determined to vote stupidly, but one 
of the wonders of a statistical approach is that those efforts are soon 
marginalized.

Ec