Comments on: Metapost: Roger Ebert on the Five-Star Rating System

By: CaptJ

CaptJ — Sat, 28 May 2011 04:01:10 +0000

I never heard of a 7-star system. I tried using a 10-star system. It was too hard. I don’t know when to give 10 stars because it is like calling it perfect then I realized that there is no point of 10th star if I never used it. I guess that I haven read enough books to use the 10-star system.

Is it a matter of experience or preference?

By: El Santo

El Santo — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:29:31 +0000

Well, here’s my take on things: I avoid halves. I don’t give out half ratings, and the above little man explanation explains why.

Doing halves effectively makes the system a 10-star rating system.

At least when I took courses on public polling, the best system is considered a 3-point system (which signifies “No,” “Indifferent,” and “Yes”). The next best would be 5. And then 7, and so on.

Ebert is right on the money when the question on most people’s minds just boils down to “Well, did you like it or not?”

When you start going from 4 to 4.5, you start to mentally rank comics on preference. Such as, “Well, I gave McNinja a 4.5, and Pibgorn a 4. I like Joe Loves Crappy Movies more than Pibgorn and less than McNinja. Do I give it a 4.25?” And you just can’t do it that way. The decimals are just too hard to keep track of.

Ratings are bunk, anyway. There’s 2,000+ words of opinion already out there to tell ya what I really think.

By: Delos

Delos — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:32:24 +0000

Interesting indeed.

I have been working on a variant of Mike’s (mpd57) hat system for my own star-rating purposes. I was thinking it might offer a more subjective take on comics but… it may just be that I’d like to avoid the middle road and maybes, since that’s what I see a lot of.

By: Bengo

Bengo — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:07:19 +0000

Did you ever notice ratings are the most useful at the extremes? Which is a way of saying YES! or NO! The MAYBEs are hard to parse.

By: Sly Eagle

Sly Eagle — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:46:53 +0000

That’s an interesting thought. If I ever get around to doing my own review site, maybe I’ll draw little comic-me icons that show my response to the comic instead of stars (or cookies, or flaming arrows, or whatever.)