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 by users in the fora and in comments 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 list from highest to lowest ratings, so that you or 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 more content is added to a spot, the more important it is for someone coming to that spot to be able to perform that "highest rated" sort on the content, particularly for new fans 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 by piece, the site becomes mostly pointless. You'd do as well sticking to a search catalog like Google or Yahoo if you have to sift through a long list 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 by "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 more people rate the content on the site, those who post the content that gets good ratings will gradually earn medals for their contributions. This is Fanpop's way of encouraging good participation in a spot. We, as users, define what is good in that previous sentence, simply by our ratings. When we rate something highly, not only is the user who posted it that much closer to getting a medal, but more 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 next submission". Without giving poor content a low rating, the user who posted the content can't get the message and will have no reason to try something different next time.

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

What to rate
So, the question 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
* forum threads
* forum posts
* news
* fans

Next 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 more detailed explanation of reporting.

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


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

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

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

One star indicates that you think the content is garbage. It's offensive not because it violates any of the terms of service or is miscategorized, but because you feel it has no intrinsic value.
Two stars indicates that you think the content is blah, uninteresting, sub-standard and/or mediocre.
Three stars indicates that you 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 you think the content is great. It's superior to the usual content you find in the spot, and you're impressed by it. You're likely to save this content to your favorites.
Five stars indicates that you think the content is EXCELLENT. It's the best content it could possibly be. Not only do you save this content to your favorites, but you comment favorably on the content, give props to the user who posted the content, and share the link with all your friends, all because you can't help it - it's that good.

Note: The only kind of link you cannot rate (of the four types that are possible to rate) are links that you submitted to the site yourself.

You can't rate your own content!

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

Common ratings etiquette
While you 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 you are going to approach ratings and apply those criteria consistently across the site.

Second, explain ratings of a 1 or a 5. If you rate content a 1 or a 5, etiquette insists that you should always provide comments explaining why it's garbage or why it's awesome, respectively. Without such feedback, the user who posted 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 or 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 you don't provide comments.

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

The one star and five star ratings represent extremes: the stuff you really despise, and stuff you love so much you want to take it home to meet your mom and dad prior to taking your relationship to the next level. As such, I recommend that you use either of these ratings sparingly. If everything you rate is at the extremes, it makes your ratings much less meaningful than if you 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 or absurdly lowly rated. In such situations, the primary purpose of ratings (#1, at the top 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 or worse than that, and those rare cases would deserve four or two stars, respectively. One star and five star 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 you the aggregate rating, combining all the ratings of all the Fanpop users who've submitted 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 circle reading 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 you just have to see, they mean little if only one user has rated it. Ratings become more meaningful the more people have rated the content. So content rated 5.0 by 3 fans, while it may be fantastic, isn't necessarily so. It could easily be that the user has friends who rate the content artificially high. Certainly such content is likely to be less impressive than a 4.3 rated by 120 fans, which is almost certain to be very, very good. Similarly, content rated a 1.7 by 3 fans could be low quality, but it's less certain to be bad than content rated 2.3 by 67 fans.


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Here's links 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 poll questions that you see on the site and for the answers you can pick to that question. Papa has created a link.

* 5: link

* 6: link

* 7: link

You may also want to see:

* link feature

* link