Thread: Adding polls to reviews

I'm intrigued by the idea, however I would prefer to see a post accompanying the vote, meaning you would have to post your opinions first as to why the tracker is brilliant or indeed crap before you could access the vote side of things. There is nothing worse than seeing something that has loads of positive/negative votes and not knowing as to why.

Keep in mind that over time the error will grow, i.e, a fairly new and small tracker will have low scores today but over time it will grow and get better, the low scores from x time ago will bias the current reality.

Example: few years ago TL was one of the best trackers out there, today, I would give it a negative number score if it was possible.

This idea can go well with a graph of scores as a function of time, but just showing the total score is a statistical lie.

Originally Posted by shadowbuild

I am against putting Trackers on a pedestal as this leads to people being willing to do just about anything for a tracker they feel will give them elite status

Although I'm not against the idea but what SB says is true as if a tracker is very high in ratings people obviously will want to join and will do anything they can to get an invite so that idea might not fit a site like T-I where the main reason for a lot of people joining is getting invites

If this were not a problem I would totally agree that we should do that

Originally Posted by sora

Although I'm not against the idea but what SB says is true as if a tracker is very high in ratings people obviously will want to join and will do anything they can to get an invite so that idea might not fit a site like T-I where the main reason for a lot of people joining is getting invites

If this were not a problem I would totally agree that we should do that

We already allow the reviewer to rate the tracker. This would only show everyone a more accurate rating imo

Originally Posted by shadowbuild

I am against putting Trackers on a pedestal as this leads to people being willing to do just about anything for a tracker they feel will give them elite status

I agree with the sentiment but I think this happens anyway and to some extent will always do so. But in terms review polls I actually think that broadening the pool of reviewers (I quite like the 55% and above idea) may well have a normalising effect on the review numbers and help people realise that some of the "elite" trackers aren't all that much better than the ones they already have access to.

I'm against all types of tracker ratings, and when it come to this matter, i've seen 10% people being more resonable than 99% hardcore torrenters. There is also no way to stop non-members from voting.

If you have anything to say about a tracker, you can reply to the thread and give a better insight than a binary good-bad, or a number.

Originally Posted by sora

Although I'm not against the idea but what SB says is true as if a tracker is very high in ratings people obviously will want to join and will do anything they can to get an invite so that idea might not fit a site like T-I where the main reason for a lot of people joining is getting invites

If this were not a problem I would totally agree that we should do that

That is absolutely not true. For this I would like to use Pedro's or E**** for example. Most people would say those trackers are great, if said rating system were put in place I'm sure they would get straight 10s or 5 star, etc. Some people would jump for an invite in a heartbeat, sure, but me personally (and many other people) would not even remotely care. I wouldn't even attempt to get it just because it has "high" ratings. From actually reading the reviews and opinions as well I've already made my own judgement that those trackers would be worthless to me. The rating system would just be there to reinforce the overall opinion of the population. I don't know about you, but I don't go out and watch movie or buy a random videogame just because they have a high IMDB/Metacritic rating.

Why would we have to do star/numerical ratings?

Considering that stats are only as good as the day/hour/minute they were collected, no system is going to be perfect when it comes to rating a tracker. As has already been stated, people's perceptions of a tracker do change (usually after they have been banned or found something better), so why actually give them a numeric based rating at all. Why not give them a rating based on peoples experiences, why not keep things simple and have choices such as "recommended" or "not recommended". Plus, if the poll was created in a way that you could only cast your vote AFTER you had posted a well constructed reply (yes I appreciate that part is difficult for some people), would that not give a better indication as to whether or not a tracker is worth joining?

For Example:

[Vote] Recommended:
[Blurb] Staff were friendly and helpful when approached, the content is good, fairly up to date and they have their own encoding team which helps. Everything is well seeded, so you can easily create a small buffer - no seedbox required. Perfect tracker for new or old torrenters alike.

[Vote] Not Recommended:
[Blurb] The tracker is constantly down for whatever reason, the content is sparse with very few seeders, struggled to maintain a decent ratio even with a seedbox - tracker needs more time to get itself sorted, definately NOT for those just starting out in the BT world.


Just throwing a different slant on things :P

How this well constructed reply system would filter the "good tracker" or the "i heard a lot about it, dream bs, wouldn't mind and invite"?