New feature suggestion: add "rating" from external website, for browsing the catalog

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ej400
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Post by ej400 »

tovarisch wrote: June 8th, 2020, 12:40 pm
It seems to me that what you're saying is that whoever reads the reviews should take all of them as opinions rather than objective truth. Once one learns to distinguish reality from somebody's representation/interpretation of it, we can all calm down.
OK, but doesn't this push against the first LV rule, "no unasked for criticism?" Although I like to live in a real-world and tell people the blatant truth, some people might get carried away with it and start becoming rude, or come across as that. People do take things way out of proportion and don't hear things they way they were said. So if someone were only giving some truth about someone's reading, not everyone enjoys that, and we don't really want some people to be allowed to say ruder things (although they may be true), because everyone has different thoughts on how they were judged.
tovarisch
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Post by tovarisch »

ej400 wrote: June 8th, 2020, 3:12 pm
tovarisch wrote: June 8th, 2020, 12:40 pm
It seems to me that what you're saying is that whoever reads the reviews should take all of them as opinions rather than objective truth. Once one learns to distinguish reality from somebody's representation/interpretation of it, we can all calm down.
OK, but doesn't this push against the first LV rule, "no unasked for criticism?" Although I like to live in a real-world and tell people the blatant truth, some people might get carried away with it and start becoming rude, or come across as that. People do take things way out of proportion and don't hear things they way they were said. So if someone were only giving some truth about someone's reading, not everyone enjoys that, and we don't really want some people to be allowed to say ruder things (although they may be true), because everyone has different thoughts on how they were judged.
Push against? Nope. First, the original request was to add ratings from elsewhere (or) by listeners who are not part of LV. That's one. Another is, as soon as a ratings feature is added, that's an act of asking for criticism, so the criticism is not "unasked for". Third, it is up to us how to manage the "ratings" and "reviews" content. We can weed out the most offensive ones. But this is a detail of how to do it, not an argument for or against. It can figure into the decision, of course, if we somehow totally lack the resources to support it.

The fear that it gets out of hand and somehow becomes an unruly forum of rude netizens whose sole purpose is to spew filth and denigrate work of volunteers is, to be honest, unfounded. On an off-chance it might become that, we can introduce a mechanism for disabling it altogether later.

The old Russian saying "to fear wolves is to never venture into the woods" comes to mind... Do we see any potential positive outcome of "ratings"? If we don't, why do we waste time debating it?
tovarisch
  • reality prompts me to scale down my reading, sorry to say
    to PLers: do correct my pronunciation please
Peter Why
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Post by Peter Why »

I think that's the way to look at it; what's the positive advantage? The advantage of not allowing negative criticism in the LV forum is that volunteers are not discouraged, which is in line with our main reason for existence. The advantage of allowing negative criticism is that it helps listeners make a decision about what to listen to ... which is not.

Peter
Last edited by Peter Why on November 8th, 2023, 1:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
"I think, therefore I am, I think." Solomon Cohen, in Terry Pratchett's Dodger
TriciaG
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Post by TriciaG »

To be clear: we will not be allowing unsolicited negative criticism.

"Unsolicited" doesn't mean in general, such that allowing a rating system now means it's OK to down-rate everyone and anyone's recordings; it means each individual reader soliciting on their own personal behalf, usually with the aim of self-improvement.

Allowing unsolicited criticism would build in a need for monitoring/moderating, among other tasks, which would take time and energy away from our prime directive: to make audiobooks. Added to that the discouragement readers can and will feel from the negative criticism, and the reasoning against it is clear.

So no - even if we had the technical capacity, a reliable source, etc., we will not be adding ratings to our site.
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
DACSoft
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Post by DACSoft »

Tricia,

Good to hear that! I'm not a fan of ratings systems in general, from anonymous individuals or from "strangers," on a site such as ours. My opinion is to let potential listeners make their own decisions, without the influence of others, whose "ratings" may be biased due their specific agendas.

Besides, for those who want to rely on ratings from external websites, they can just as easily go to those websites themselves.

FWIW,
Don
Don (DACSoft)
Bringing the Baseball Joe series to audio!

In Progress:
The Arrival of Jimpson; Baseball Joe in the World Series
Next up:
Two College Friends; Baseball Joe Around the World
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

Tangentially related, but I thought I should give credit to our OP.

viewtopic.php?p=1732097#p1732097
niobium
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Post by niobium »

the librivox app certainly does have ratings, and negative criticism appears. id like to hear your opinion on this
TriciaG
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Post by TriciaG »

niobium wrote: September 19th, 2021, 4:46 pm the librivox app certainly does have ratings, and negative criticism appears. id like to hear your opinion on this
The "Librivox" app isn't developed, supported, or endorsed by LibriVox. They just share our name and offer books from our catalogue.
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
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