I wonder how the rating of collections work.
In my collection “Vera’s Diary for beginners” Vera's Diary for beginners - LingQ Language Library are 8 lessons rated. 7 of them have a 5 stars rating, one lesson has a 4 star rating. The collection has a rating of 4 stars. How is this possible?
(7 x 5 + 4) = 39
Integer division 39 / 8 = 4
→ 4 stars
Better would be:
(7 x 5 + 4) = 39
Floating point division 39 / 8 = 4.875
Round: int(4.875 + 0.5) = 5
→ 5 stars
@Mark I hope your German is better than my English! 
Ich finde es sehr mühsam,dass ich nach dem Setzen der Sterne,jedesmal das “Fenster” vergrössern muss ,um die Bewertung abzuschicken!
Ich glaube kaum,dass alle Benutzer wissen,das sonst die Bewertung nicht zählt.Vor einiger Zeit war das "Bewertungsfenster in der “richtigen Grösse”,sodass mit einem Klick ,die Bewertung abgeschickt werden konnte.Ich arbeite übrigens immer mit dem ganz offenen Bildschirm.
Vielleicht kann jemand von Euch (auf Englisch) mitteilen ,wie wichtig diese Bewertungen sind !!!
No one denies the fact that 4.875 is very close to 5. I agree with Hape.
@Mark: I agree with Jolanda. It is very annoying that the popup window for the rating is too small to show the whole information, and that one have to scroll even in the popup window. I cannot imagine a reason why the popup shouldn’t be open in a size that contains all the information within at once.
Here a rough translation of Jolanda’s post (as requested by her in her last sentence, because she thinks understanding the rating system is very important):
I find it quite tiresome that I have to enlarge the ‘window’ - after I have allocated the stars - in order to send off the rating.
I can’t believe that all users know that the rating otherwise wouldn’t count. Some time ago the ‘rating window’ appeared in its proper size so that the rating could be sent off via just one click. By the way, I always have my screen maximised.
I don’t see quite the point why you rate audio and content quality but you only see one set of stars for each lesson (when you see them on the library). You can’t tell if a lesson has just few stars because the audio is awful or the content is or both.
I also agree him Hape and Vera, it’s not fair that 4,875 isn’t 5 stars but 4.
Like Óscar suggested it’d be best or more meaningful it the rating were from 1-10, better than 1-5 stars. And it also would be fantastic if when one clicked on the “I know all” button one had to rate the lesson too.
I have just arrived in St. Petersburg and Mark is asleep in Vancouver. Thanks for all the feedback. We will see what we can do to make it better.
berta
And it also would be fantastic if when one clicked on the “I know all” button one had to rate the lesson too.
Maybe it would be fantastic for the lesson provider if they are keen about ratings and improving their lessons, but it can be much of a bother for those students who are not rating system fans. I think that ratings should be optional and should be used and analyzed only by people who have enough time and desire for that. Unfortunately, I don’t. My schedule is tight. So I never looked at any ratings and never rated lessons. If I haven’t written any complaints on the provider’s wall, they may be sure that I rate their content as “excellent”.
Moreover, I often have to use LingQ with very low speed internet connection (3-4 kBytes/sec, like modem), and I am already concerned about the fact that with all those recent improvements like “Getting Started/Tasks and Forum” tabs, “LingQ Avatar”, etc., which I cannot switch off by default from my profile, LingQ pages require more and more traffic after every improvement. If I would be obliged to rate the lesson, this means for me more unnecessary actions, more traffic and more time waiting. It is unlikely that I would rate any lesson as excellent after that.
@ Dmitry_DA
I have reset my Avatar to a badge, but can no longer remember where the option is hidden!
Dmitry, I see your point. It can be very annoying to have a slow internet connection. But content provider put often a lot of effort in creating lessons. Without the providers there wouldn’t be any stuff in the library. Dot you really think it is a waste of time to give some feedback? No feedback is excellent for you? No complaints means that the content is excellent? I’ve difficulties with this point of view. You cannot imagine how glad I am about every user who take the time to write something on my Wall or on the forum.
By the way, you can change from Avatar to Badge by clicking on the tab above the Avatar.
@Sanne @Vera
Thanks!
@Dmitry
We don’t pay ,for the content provider,but we can give him/her some stars.
as a little thanks.
Sure if you write on his wall, it is a nice supplement.
@Jolanda: Du hast Dmitry missverstanden. Er hat geschrieben " If I haven’t written any complaints on the provider’s wall, they may be sure that I rate their content as “excellent”, d.h. er will nur auf das Schwarze Brett schreiben, wenn er unzufrieden ist. Dabei freut man sich doch über positives Feedback. Er meint, keine Reaktion von ihm zeigt, dass er zufrieden ist.
How about putting the rating button under “tasks” so that you could rate the lesson at the same time that you enter your number of times listened, etc.?
That way I, at least, wouldn’t forget to do it.
We are currently improving the Ratings widget so this is a good time for suggestions. I don’t have the problem with needing to scroll the review window in Chrome. What browser does this happen in? I’m waiting to find out why Vera’s collection rating is 4, we will try to make this more accurate. As for showing both ratings, we probably won’t do this on the page for reasons of space but we are talking about showing both ratings if you hover your cursor on the stars. We can also look at adding the review widget to the Tasks and Forum window as well.
Vera, I understand your point of view and your feelings. And I really think that one should give feedback only when they want to give this feedback, when they absolutely cannot help express their opinion. So they write on the provider’s wall, email the provider, or even book a conversation with them. In this case you as a provider get your feedback from the most active learners, who know what they need and can suggest what can be improved, or they can feel, and maybe even “count” the difference you bring to their lives with your lessons, and they express it in the words of gratitude. I wrote such messages on walls too. Not very often, but I did several times. And I don’t believe in bare numbers, grades or stars in the widget. My opinion is that the most relevant feedback is one that is given to the provider personally.
But if a provider tries to elicit some feedback, to expect it, they can be annoying. Do you really need feedback from 100% of your learners? I think that a lesser part of them can give you enough useful information. I am actually reacting to the only one Berta’s phrase: “one HAD TO rate the lesson too”. If the phrase was “one got the recommendation to rate the lesson”, I would completely agree. I think that the sincere, voluntary feedback can help the provider more than a few polite phrases a learner HAS TO type in some box because the system doesn’t allow them to go ahead and take any other lesson until they rate the lesson they have just completed.
And the absence of any feedback is at least absence of negative feedback, and it is not that upsetting, at least for me.
Of course, it would be wonderful if in the future LingQ could help providers and learners with more detailed statistics upon lessons: how many times and how often the lesson was taken, in how many cases “I know all” was pressed, i.e. the lesson was read through completely, in how many cases the audio was downloaded, etc. Also it would be fair if LingQ had awards for most popular authentic lessons. Lessons created by a provider themselves should be valued more by LingQ than the lessons taken from other web sites.
All learners have different situations in their lives. Many people need to do some time management sometimes. Some people work 8 hours a day, some have to work more. Some people get to work from home in 10 or 15 minutes, some (like me) need more then an hour without real opportunity to listen to the lessons or to visit the site during that time. In some countries internet providers aren’t reliable in suburban areas. I think if one needs to minimize their time spent online, it is their right to manage their own time, to fight for every second if they want to do this. Should we feel negative to those people just because they used our lessons, but didn’t provide any feedback? I don’t think so.
Vera, I know from forums that your lessons are of very much help to the learners. Actually, because of the fact that now the LingQ community has your invaluable lessons, more and more often I have the thought in my mind that I should start learning German as my second language on LingQ. But right now I haven’t decided yet.
@Dmitry: Thank you Dmitry for taking the time for such a long answer. I don’t know if you provide content as well. As a content provider I can see how often my lessons are taken. Frustrating is that less than 1 percent of the users give feedback. With the new rating stars it is much easier to do this.
Users get the lessons for free. I think the 10 secondes to rate a lesson is the minimum to honour the efforts of the provider. Even if people are short on time. I don’t speak about the copy&paste lessons. I speak about the lessons that were created especially for the LingQ users.
No feedback = positive feedback? I cannot see it this way. I’ve the feeling that it means “It isn’t worth to speak about it. It is average.” Is this a cultural thing? Probably people from different countries have different point of views about this.
The “I know” is a bit complicated because free members often avoid to press this button for some reasons.
Thank you again Dmitry for sharing your thoughts. I can asure you that it is really worth to learn German. It’s not only the content that I’ve provided. Irene created earlier a lot of lessons as well, and other providers too. The library offers a huge variety content.
@Mark: The problem with the widget occurs in Chrome, FF and IE. It is probably related to the resolution 1024x768 that I use at home. I’m not sure but I think the problem don’t exist on my computer at work where I use a higher resolution.
The problem with the “4” rating exist in other collections as well. I gave you only one example. If you need more let me know.
I suggested it earlier but I want to mention it again. It would be very interesting to see how many people have rated the lesson. If there is only one rating or if there are 20 ratings makes a difference.
To add the review widget to the Tasks and Forum window makes perfect sense.
Thank you for all your efforts.
And thank you for your time and care Vera. I agree that feedback is important and we will find ways to make it more meaningful and effective to provide a rating, and to see the results of the rating. On the other hand I am not sure we want to inconvenience those of our users who simply do not want to rate. I think that once more people rate, and other improvements are made, it is more important to have the views of people who feel they want to rate, rather than having input from people who don’t want to rate.
That said, I think we should promote the rating of content more. We are also looking at tipping to enable users to express their appreciation for the work of others. Any ideas on this would be helpful.