As you can see my experience with yahoo music was pretty bad but I have to admit that the rating system is really good and pandora should improve theirs!
-XKnight
I'd be glad to hear more discussion on that simple fact. Personally, I've always felt the simple yea/nay/neutral approach to Pandora was a strength. Given the quality of music it gives me, the simple system really seems to work -- and without giving me the headache of figuring out how to rate things.
With Pandora, it's simple -- if it's exceptional, give it a thumb up. If I hate it, thumb down. If it's nothing special, but suitable to the station I do nothing. In my experience with other (non music) services where ratings are involved -- say a 5 point scale -- I find I only use 2 or 3 different points on it anyway. I'm typically afraid to use 5 often, saving that for the best of the best -- defaulting most things that are really good to 3 or 4 while handing out 1 or 0 to what I don't like. The middle ground isn't really used.
When you're rating one item at a time, it seems to me the middle votes are fairly useless. Obviously they won't be weighted much, and mediocrity doesn't deserve much for points anyway . . . but all this speil just goes to say this: Simple is better, saves me wasting all this
StumbleUpon.com started out with 3 different rating levels -- but later reduced it to 2, opting for simplicity. More concise, more clear value system.
I'm unfamiliar with the Yahoo rating system, though -- would be curious to hear about it. Is it "better" just because it's more complicated or does it boast some clever features?
