This section of my guide for fanpop users details the ratings system and was last edited on 26 May 2008.

As with any web site, fanpop is only as good as its content. Some content - what I think of as the soul of the site - is generated kwa users in the fora and in maoni on the rest of the content and cannot be rated. But the rest of the content - the body of the site - has a ratings system. The whole principle of the ratings system is a democratic one: if enough people vote, the really qualified items rise to the top. That's why everything that can be rated can be sorted in a orodha from highest to lowest ratings, so that wewe au anyone else can see the good stuff first.

The importance of rating
Rating is voluntary. However, there are four reasons to rate content:

1) Rated content makes fanpop work. fanpop is organized around spots, and spots can contain a lot of content related to the spot's topic. Every spot has the ability to sort its content in a number of ways, including "highest rated". As zaidi content is added to a spot, the zaidi important it is for someone coming to that spot to be able to perform that "highest rated" sort on the content, particularly for new mashabiki just starting out to discover a new topic. If there's no way to distinguish between all the content in a spot without looking at it all piece kwa piece, the site becomes mostly pointless. You'd do as well sticking to a tafuta catalog like Google au Yahoo if wewe have to sift through a long orodha to find the good stuff. Ratings are integral to the value of the site.

2) Bad content get suppressed. This is the flip side of the coin; since good content gets promoted, bad content drops further and further down the lists sorted kwa "highest rated". This saves people from seeing something really awful right off the bat, and reduces the chance that a new user checking out a spot for the first time will turn away from the spot in disgust because of a few experiences with bad content.

3) Users get recognized. As zaidi people rate the content on the site, those who post the content that gets good ratings will gradually earn medali for their contributions. This is Fanpop's way of encouraging good participation in a spot. We, as users, define what is good in that awali sentence, simply kwa our ratings. When we rate something highly, not only is the user who ilitumwa it that much closer to getting a medal, but zaidi importantly, that user knows that someone on the site appreciated what they've posted.

Similarly, those who post content that gets bad ratings can use those ratings as a guideline for their future submissions: "people didn't like that, so let's try something different with the inayofuata submission". Without giving poor content a low rating, the user who ilitumwa the content can't get the message and will have no reason to try something different inayofuata time.

4) You get recognized. fanpop keeps a tally of how many ratings you've given, listed on your profaili page. Every time wewe rate, that number goes up, demonstrating to the fanpop community that wewe are participating in making the site work.

What to rate
So, the swali may come: what should one rate? Well, first of all, there are certain types of content that can be rated on fanpop (others cannot). The following types of content can be rated:
* links
* videos
* soapbox articles
* images

The following cannot be rated:
* spots
* picks
* foramu threads
* foramu posts
* news
* fans

inayofuata one should consider what sorts of things to rate. Usually, one rates on the quality of the content alone. This is fine as long as the content works in the spot in which it is found. If there is a problem - a non aesthetic problem - with the content, it almost certainly should be reported, and not rated. See the link for my zaidi detailed explanation of reporting.

How to rate
So, you've found something that works for the spot in which it is found, wewe have a reaction to it - positive au negative - then wewe should rate it. How do wewe do that?


Each of the types of content wewe may rate - links, videos, soapbox makala and picha - have a band of five stars with a legend "You rated:" above it. If you've already rated this particular content item, it will onyesha the rating wewe submitted. If wewe haven't, it will onyesha the circles as grey outlines, with "rate this link" superimposed.

Whether you've rated a link already au not, wewe can rate it (with one exception - see below). To rate, click on the nyota that represents the rating you'd like to give the content. The stars rank in increasing order from left to right, so if wewe wanted to rate the content three stars, you'd click the middle star, while two stars would be the sekunde nyota from the left, and four stars would be the fourth nyota from the left.

What do the ratings mean, though? The five stars are explained in the link, but I'll go into zaidi detail here:

One nyota indicates that wewe think the content is garbage. It's offensive not because it violates any of the terms of service au is miscategorized, but because wewe feel it has no intrinsic value.
Two stars indicates that wewe think the content is blah, uninteresting, sub-standard and/or mediocre.
Three stars indicates that wewe think that the content is OK. This covers a broad range from "I think it's appropriate to the spot, pretty standard content" to "I think it's pretty good".
Four stars indicates that wewe think the content is great. It's superior to the usual content wewe find in the spot, and you're impressed kwa it. You're likely to save this content to your favorites.
Five stars indicates that wewe think the content is EXCELLENT. It's the best content it could possibly be. Not only do wewe save this content to your favorites, but wewe maoni favorably on the content, give heshima to the user who ilitumwa the content, and share the link with all your friends, all because wewe can't help it - it's that good.

Note: The only kind of link wewe cannot rate (of the four types that are possible to rate) are viungo that wewe imewasilishwa to the site yourself.

You can't rate your own content!

Such content will still onyesha wewe the aggregated ratings from all the other users who've rated it, but where wewe would normally be able to rate, the five circles are grey.

Common ratings etiquette
While wewe are not required to do anything with regards to rating, there are a couple of basic etiquette points to consider when rating.

First, be consistent. Determine how wewe are going to approach ratings and apply those criteria consistently across the site.

Second, explain ratings of a 1 au a 5. If wewe rate content a 1 au a 5, etiquette insists that wewe should always provide maoni explaining why it's garbage au why it's awesome, respectively. Without such feedback, the user who ilitumwa it (as well as other fanpop users looking at the same content) won't know what it is about the content that they should avoid au try to recreate in future postings. Then they have to guess, and when users have to guess what to do to please you, they're very likely to get it wrong. It becomes like rolling the dice and hoping for double sixes: extreme ratings result in blind gambling if wewe don't provide comments.

Recommendations for ratings
As I said, wewe may rate however wewe like. In addition to the common etiquette considerations above, I offer the following for consideration when wewe go to rate some content on Fanpop:

The one nyota and five nyota ratings represent extremes: the stuff wewe really despise, and stuff wewe upendo so much wewe want to take it nyumbani to meet your mom and dad prior to taking your relationship to the inayofuata level. As such, I recommend that wewe use either of these ratings sparingly. If everything wewe rate is at the extremes, it makes your ratings much less meaningful than if wewe were to rate only a few items at the extreme. Worse still, if many users rate at the extremes (not just you), there can be a situation where most content is either absurdly highly rated au absurdly lowly rated. In such situations, the primary purpose of ratings (#1, at the juu of this article) is defeated. Ratings aren't worth spit if crap content, so-so content, and pretty fair content are all rated one star, nor are they worth much if good content, really great content, and the absolute best content ever are all rated five stars.

I encourage you, when rating, to consider ratings as part of a curve, like so:

This is a graph that represents how many of each type of rating is given. Simply stated, most content is likely to deserve three stars. Some content will be significantly better au worse than that, and those rare cases would deserve four au two stars, respectively. One nyota and five nyota ratings for content should be really exceptional. Rating with such an approach increases the likelihood that the really, really good content will have the higher ratings, and the really, really bad content will drop to the bottom of the ratings rankings.

How to read ratings
Each type of content that can have a rating shows wewe the aggregate rating, combining all the ratings of all the fanpop users who've imewasilishwa a rating for that content. This number is shown in the green circle, ranging from 1.0 (all raters think it's garbage) to 5.0 (all raters think it's the best thing they've seen). If no one has rated the content, it will appear as a grey mduara, duara kusoma 0.0.

But the other thing to keep in mind is the number of users who have rated the content. While a 1.0 may indicate the dross of the site and a 5.0 may mean something that wewe just have to see, they mean little if only one user has rated it. Ratings become zaidi meaningful the zaidi people have rated the content. So content rated 5.0 kwa 3 fans, while it may be fantastic, isn't necessarily so. It could easily be that the user has Marafiki who rate the content artificially high. Certainly such content is likely to be less impressive than a 4.3 rated kwa 120 fans, which is almost certain to be very, very good. Similarly, content rated a 1.7 kwa 3 mashabiki could be low quality, but it's less certain to be bad than content rated 2.3 kwa 67 fans.


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Here's viungo to other parts of the guide for your quick reference:

* link

* 1: link

* 2: link.

* 3: link

* 4: Picks: this is the generic name both for the kura ya maoni maswali that wewe see on the site and for the majibu wewe can pick to that question. Papa has created a link.

* 5: link

* 6: link

* 7: link

wewe may also want to see:

* link feature

* link