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NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ -
Chicago, IL, United States, 2007/06/19 - Common website statistics can tell how many people (dis)liked an item (video clip, news story..), but not what kind of effect an item had on users, did it teach users new things, effect them to change opinion...Introduced rating system detects this.
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Rating system introduced on the web-site in question is used in psychodrama groups for years, but its application on the internet web-site is new. Unlike standard linear scales, a 2 dimensional scale rating scale called 'diamond of opposites' allows people to express there ambivalent feelings on issues. In addition, unlike with other websites where people rate items directly, this new web-site lets people rate a topic of the a before and after seeing the video. In this way, if the rating of the topic has changed, corresponding effect of viewing a video is detected. Videos are ranked according to effect they have on viewers, and not on the number of views, or simple ratings. Videos that have most effect on most viewers are considered the best by this rating system. However, measuring the 'effect' is not that simple, as next paragraph illustrates.
Metrics of this two-dimensional 'diamond' scale has 5x5=25 values. In addition, each video (item) is being rated 2 times. In total, this means that each viewer's change in rating caused by seeing a video can have one of 25x25=625 possible values. This represents a far richer set than commonly used rating set of 5 or 10 values. As it is effectively a 4-dimensional set (2 dimensions in 'space' and 2 in time), it also allows detection of a greater range of effects/values/attitudes than any other rating scale currently used. This effects can be generally grouped in a few categories, one obvious being a complete change from positive to negative rating (this one corresponds to analogous linear scale change), and other being a change from complete indifference to complete ambivalence (this one cannot be detected with linear scales).
This new system enables new users to spend least time searching for quality videos, and more time viewing them.
In the information age when there are millions of sites, blogs, stories, videos, etc, finding a way to provide users with the most quality content is a very important task. Above mentioned method is more successful than common methods described below.
Common web-site metrics that serves for ranking of sites, stories, threads, photos, videos, or other items of interest, relies on statistics made of information revolving around few basic types of data: number of views, number of ratings, average rating, number of comments, and similar. Although useful, these numbers often cannot provide information that may be of a value for new users, namely, how much did the item in question effect other users. Did it teach them something new, did they change their views and opinions after reading a story or seeing a movie.
Number of views does not show how much time did users spent actually watching the video, or did they get disappointed and navigate away from the same after a few seconds.
Rating does tell how much people liked something, but it does not tell if they learned new things. Top rated video can have high rating because a political massage was presented that most viewers agreed with. Or it may have such rating because most viewers found it enlightening. Later case would score better on the rating system that was presented at the beginning of this article.
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