Me: May interest you:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238938 and
doran.draco: What I take away from that is that we should stop copying their mistake. Homebrew should be clearly marked as such in the same.

<snip>

doran.draco: But anyway, the thread. They raise some very valid criticisms there. We copy pretty much all of those mistakes.
Me: Could you list them real quick in case I missed any?
Me: 1. People can't tell official from homebrew
Me: ...What else?
doran.draco: The topic came up of quality control. People want to know right away whether a class is up to standards.
Me: That's why I played balance police for a long time until I was told to stop it because people's precious feelings were being hurt
Me: To have strong quality control
Me: But it's slipped since then
doran.draco: I think the quickest way to resolve it would be to make ratings very, very visible. Especially when the rating is "unrated".
doran.draco: But that just puts to the fore the strengths we already have. Which are less than perhaps they should be.
doran.draco: The rating system we had last I knew was utterly useless.
Me: What other strengths do you think should be developed? And anything else come to mind?
doran.draco: We need granularity in the rating system. For some reason, people in the wiki are opposed to having more than two or three things you can rate a page to be. The argument was initially made against it because it increases subjectivity. But we WANT to reflect trends in subjective measures. If ten people think a class is slightly below par (2/5), and ten people think it's flawless (5/5), then the reaction that a given person is most likely to have is somewhere in the range of "not too shabby" (3.5). The whole purpose of ratings is to give the user an idea of how they can expect to react to the class.
Me: Isn't that pretty close to how it is now, since it's a total of + or -?
Me: Like +10 and -10 goes to 0
Me: I do agree that we need more granularity, but people didn't agree with me
Me: I felt that +2 to -2 was enough, personally
Me: So you could give a rating of +2, +1, 0, -1, or -2
doran.draco: The system might have been changed since I last saw it.
Me: Right now you can vote +1, 0, or -1
Me: +4 gives community favored I think, and -4 or -6 gives community shithole, which leads to sandboxing
doran.draco: "Rating: Most raters like this article!"
doran.draco: Yeah, that's not useful info.
doran.draco: So somewhere between 50% and 100% like this article.
doran.draco: "like" is problematic too
doran.draco: Because that can mean a broad range of reactions.
doran.draco: So I have a broad range of probabilities for a broad range of reactions.
Me: To see the specific ones, can't you just click on the link right there and see why? Isn't that enough?
doran.draco: Even if the percentage were given, it would then be like Rotten Tomatoes: It doesn't tell you how much you're likely to like it. It tells you how likely you are to like it at all.
doran.draco: No. Because then the quality is hidden behind layers of links.
Me: A single link?
doran.draco: People on that thread are complaining about not knowing how good an article is without having to investigate and read it. Why would they be mollified by having to go and read other stuff?
Me: *noddish* So... we should have multiple rating thingies? Like the sucky wiki?
Me: With different categories?
doran.draco: Oh god no.
Me: So how would you do it then?
doran.draco: That's just needlessly complicated.
doran.draco: Just a simple 1-5
doran.draco: Or 1-4. Or 1-10. Whatever.
Me: With the average shown?
doran.draco: Yeah. Very prominently shown.
doran.draco: Preferably on the listings.
doran.draco: In addition to being on the page.
Me: Would 1-3 be granular enough in your opinion?
Me: 3 max, 1 min?
Me: 2 meh/average?
doran.draco: Well, the other thing is that any given article isn't likely to have more than two or three raters. The more finely we let people say how much they like something, the more precise the reflection will be.
Me: So 1-5 would be better. I think that might be enough
doran.draco: I think 1-5 would be ideal. It gives a useful range, but primarily, people are VERY used to giving and reading ratings in that range.
Me: *nod* Okay, so we have inability to detect homebrew from official, and easily getting a feel for what rating things are; anything else?
doran.draco: On page three they start going on about offensive material. Do we have clearly-delineated policies on thaT?
Me: We don't actually have any really offensive material
Me: So that's not really a problem
Me: The one time someone tried to do so, the article got downrated into oblivion
doran.draco: Fair enough
Me: Something about a goddess permanently having an undead flesh dick/dildo in her or something
Me: But moving no
Me: *on
doran.draco: Ah, yeah, I remember that one.
doran.draco: That seems to be about it. The rest of it is just saying that there isn't much good stuff on there. Which isn't true of us, even if they can't see that. Fixing our rating system would make that more visible.
Me: *nod* Are there any other strengths we should develop as a wiki community in your mind? You mentioned we had very few
doran.draco: I was just referring to the rating system
doran.draco: Our rating system right now may as well not exist. It gives no usable information.
Me: Ah, kk
doran.draco: The few strengths we DO have in that regard are mostly just the fact that we actually do have people rating things here.
Me: *nod*
Me: What do you think of -2 to +2 instead of 1-5?
doran.draco: I still think 1-5 is best, since people are so used to that scale.
Me: *nod*
doran.draco: There's no real reason to make it -2 to +2 unless you're simply adding them together. And...why would you do that?
Me: For community favor/shithole?
doran.draco: Hrm, I suppose it mathematically does work out the same as taking the average of a scale of 1-5. Although that just means they're equvialent, and the simpler system to understand should be used, imo.
Me: Maybe just make it rating -3 for that purpose?
doran.draco: Yeah.
doran.draco: Alternatively, an average greater than x is a Community Favorite, an average less than y is Garbage Which we Grudgingly Allow to Exist.
Me: As long as X people or more have voted *nod*
doran.draco: yeah