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Posted by sandybeth on November 14, 2007, 8:37 am
Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't understand what the star rating means
next to some posts...can someone briefly explain? Are they rating the
post or the poster? The interest of the post or how many replies or
what?
SandyBeth
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Posted by Mark Bole on November 14, 2007, 10:35 am
sandybeth wrote:
> Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't understand what the star rating means
> next to some posts...can someone briefly explain? Are they rating the
> post or the poster? The interest of the post or how many replies or
> what?
> SandyBeth
The "star ratings" you are talking about are strictly an artifact of
Google Groups. That's your brief answer, but to really understand, some
background is necessary to get to a full answer...
This group, and all of Usenet, have been around a long time. For more
background, the Wikipedia article on "Usenet" is a good start.
Then, Google came along and bought some archives from Deja News (or
rather, they bought Deja News, or some other company that owned Deja
News, I forget the details), so now they have the largest collection of
stored messages from a very large collection of Usenet groups. (Usenet
itself is a distributed database, which by default ages out and discards
older messages).
Then, Google decide to try to make money on this by setting up their own
"Google Groups" (similar to Yahoo! Groups), and burying Usenet groups
somewhere within -- hoping, perhaps, that people would think Usenet was
a Google product.
Now, anyone can view Google Groups (including the Usenet section buried
within) if they visit Google's ad-supported site, and with a Google
login, they can also post to such groups -- for many, this is a
convenient and cheap way to get Usenet access, which normally must be
paid for via your ISP or some other service.
From Google help:
"What do ratings mean and how do they work?
"Ratings help indicate which posts you find most helpful. When you're
browsing a group, you can rate a post and your rating will become part
of that post's overall rating."
So, other Google account users can rate posts (not the poster) and that
leads to the "star" ratings. But they have nothing to do with the
Usenet audience at large, and many people reading and posting to the
group have no idea about any star ratings.
-Mark Bole
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Posted by Justin on November 14, 2007, 2:11 pm
sandybeth wrote on [Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:37:22 -0600]:
> Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't understand what the star rating means
> next to some posts...can someone briefly explain? Are they rating the
> post or the poster? The interest of the post or how many replies or
> what?
I don't see any star ratings. I use a real newsreader
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Posted by joetaxpayer on November 14, 2007, 6:15 pm
sandybeth wrote:
> Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't understand what the star rating means
> next to some posts...can someone briefly explain? Are they rating the
> post or the poster? The interest of the post or how many replies or
> what?
> SandyBeth
Maybe, but I doubt it. As Mark posted, it's purely a Google interface
issue. But, when I'm at a public computer and look at this newsgroup,
I've seen some of my best posts with only one or two stars, and others
with higher. All in all, I'd say to just ignore it. If you frequent the
group for a while, you'll sort through the wheat and chaff. For this
group, consensus is usually a sign of the best advice. And this is one
of those places where when I find people disagreeing with me, I actually
go off and reconsider my own thinking.
JOE
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Posted by on November 14, 2007, 7:14 pm
> Maybe, but I doubt it. As Mark posted, it's purely a Google interface
> issue. But, when I'm at a public computer and look at this newsgroup,
> I've seen some of my best posts with only one or two stars, and others
> with higher. All in all, I'd say to just ignore it. If you frequent the
For a fee, I'll gladly rate your posts 5 stars everytime.
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