Since VendorCity is a recommendation site, it is critical that we take into account best practices when building our own rating and reputation systems. There’s some good ones and, well, some not so good ones. Joshua Porter over at Bokardo.com shared some valuable insights on these issues based upon an article from Boxes and Arrows entitled On A Scale of 1 to 5. A close read of these two articles highlight some critical aspects that any site that provides ratings and recommendations should follow.
There’s some great stuff in both those articles and well worth your time if you are involved in any rating, reputation, or crowdsourcing effort. Within the comments, I found a link to another good read called Collective Choice: Rating Systems.
These articles have made us re-evaluate our own rating methodology and especially the specific rating categories in place today. Now’s the time to make changes before we launch!
