Ratings!

[eery 0]

I would like to suggest a rating system, based either on a 1-10 scale or whatever.

 

This rating system would be allowed for everyone, with or with an account.

 

I see that this can have a negative impact on the artist where they cant know why they got a bad/good rating(making it not true feedback), but often, a comment is a lot of effort for a casual listener, and they'd rather just leave a quick unexplained rating.

 

I believe a rating system would allow for a quick feedback system with little effort on the listeners part, and a quick way to give feedback.

 

Myself, I am actually quite in a battle with myself if its a good idea or not, and its rather unlikely you, the dev. haven't thought of it, but for the most part where I can agree with myself, I think it would be a good idea.

[Rainbow Skywalker 642]

I would say that one of the main reasons for not having the system is like you said; It allows negative criticism without any possible way of knowing how to improve.  Perhaps a better system than simply rating on a scale of 1-10 would be to do like this site, and give bro-hoofs.  However, not even that is all that much of a grand idea, seeing as the artist can't determine exactly what people like about their music.  Personally, I think it works rather well the way it is, leaving a quick comment saying "Good Job!" isn't all that hard.

[King 5,625]

Here are some excerpts from earlier posts by Feld0 and nlaq (some of the Devs)

 

 

But, right as I was about to begin working on a likes system to upvote good content, I realized that it would be practically the same thing as the favourite system, just with a different name. Both systems would serve to mark content that you have positive feelings toward (ie. content you like).

Both systems "collect" content that you like in no particular order, unlike playlists.

Aggregating the number of favourites or the number of likes on something for any reason is pretty much the same operation. So, either one would be suitable for use as a statistical system.

The two would be functionally identical.

The only difference that a "likes" system and a "favourites" system would have is the connotation implied by the words:

"Favourite" has a stronger connotation than "like".

To put it another way, saying that something is a "favourite" is another way of saying that you really "like" it.

Favouriting something implies that you like it.

Liking something DOES NOT necessarily imply that it's one of your favourites.

 

 

 

So yeah, this is one thing that I am personally very interested in for a post-BETA feature. I believe there is a difference between "something I may want to come back to" and "something that I thought was particularly good." Favorites are an easy way to organize the content that you are interested in. In the future, I would really like to see something like a "personal library" of sorts where your favorite content goes into. Think of like a Windows Media Player or Google Music library. This is a feature that I was envisioning a long time ago when I had thought of an idea of a pony music site, myself. Liking/upvoting/"brohoofing" something is a different idea all together. It may not be something that you would want to collect, and with the exception of your "likes" getting fed into some sort of activity stream, I don't see this as something that needs much of a frontend presence. With that in mind, I really really really want to have the concept of popular music (for the day, week, month and all time) that would be powered by something lighter than a fully-fledged "this is content I wish to collect" - but more involved than you having simply viewed/played a track. Having a "like" system (no-matter what it is called in the frontend) could power quite a few very interesting content-curation features - even things like "upcoming artists" and so on. In its current form, I see Pony.fm as a content discovery platform. Until the SPA hits, it wouldn't really be something that could replace Google Music due to the nature of the site's navigation. To that end, likes, and features powered by likes, would be very handy. My 2 cents, anyway

 

So as you see the idea was tossed around and I think for now it's remaining as "favourites" over an actual rating system.

My guess is that may change in the future

[Betez 1,734]

In my opinion, a rating system, at least one where any old wander-byer can use, is vulnerable to abuse. It may be a silly scenario, but I can picture some trolls coming on and one-staring every song. I feel like the favorites system is safer and more secure.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Betez

[CloudFyre 848]

In my opinion, a rating system, at least one where any old wander-byer can use, is vulnerable to abuse. It may be a silly scenario, but I can picture some trolls coming on and one-staring every song. I feel like the favorites system is safer and more secure.

This is true. A "favorites" system can only generate positive feedback - a great thing for a website filled with people making music just for fun.

 

A rating system, on the other hand, opens the door to abuse and general hurt feelings all around. Even if a song is truly "bad",  creating a rating system to make sure that the artist knows it's bad isn't going to help anyone. All it will do is put him/her down, when they really should be getting constructive critiques. (A feature which will hopefully be implemented later.)