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- How to solve the versions problem?
How to solve the versions problem?
The problem with that, Blue, which was brought up 341 posts ago is that there is an individual/'s who goes around trashing tabs with low ratings.
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I forgot you had to comment to rate a tab under 5 stars??
Yes - this could maybe be replaced with a set of predefined answers to justify your rating - e.g. tab is inaccurate, formatting is ugly, etc etc and you would click on it and a comment would be made automatically.
But I believe it should also be possible to remove a bad rating once you rectify the errors. What do you guys think about that?
I like the idea of there being predefined answers, a la some kind of drop-down list or something. Because I can see where blue is coming from; sometimes a user wants to be able to try the tab, rate it and move on. I'm not so sure about removing a bad rating after you've rectified errors, though. For one, who's to say the rater was being honest? And if they were being honest, that doesn't mean they're right. I've seen plenty of tabs here that are dead-on accurate, but have been rated low compared to other versions that were glaringly wrong.
There are three reasons why a tab might be rated low:
1. The tabber is wrong.
2. The rater was dishonest.
3. The rater was honest, but wrong.
#1 is no big deal. Nobody's perfect. It's why we should continue to allow multiple versions. The only thing we need to watch out for in that regard is if the tabber edits in corrections copied by other, better tabs. I'm not the only tabber here who has had their tabs copied, pasted, and resubmitted by another user as their own. But the real problems, the ones gumming up the rating system the most, are points 2 and 3.
As said, we need a ratings system, for the benefit of the users who come here hoping to learn how to accurately play a song – which is the very reason sites like this exist. Without a rating system, we may as well not bother.
A big help would be to limit one user account per IP address. A user can't rate their own tab, but that doesn't stop them from creating a second user account to rate their tabs with (correct me if I'm wrong on that, Johnny – I won't mind, I'm wrong about stuff all the time lol). It also doesn't stop them from dishonestly rating other tabs to make their own look better.
All it takes is one cheater to ruin it for everybody, y'know?
You're always gonna get one bad apple to spoil the barrel, the system is wide open to abuse, Nazi Germany was the result of one little shit wanting it all his own way, (and almost getting it!) what about a two star system, two being accurate and one being close but no cigar? Because it won't work that's why, there's always gonna be that little arse wipe who spoils it for everyone else! The only answer is a disclaimer, i e, Whilst every effort has been made to maintain a fair system, etc, etc, blah de blah
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A big help would be to limit one user account per IP address. A user can't rate their own tab, but that doesn't stop them from creating a second user account to rate their tabs with (correct me if I'm wrong on that, Johnny – I won't mind, I'm wrong about stuff all the time lol).
Yes this can happen - BUT, every now and again I run a check to find if people are using multiple accounts (and they have in the past - but fortunately not for rating). But currently I can safely say that there are no people with multiple accounts here.
That's good to hear, as it renders the notion of dishonest rating moot. Now we know it's nothing more than good ol' fashioned user error: Either the tabber is wrong, or the rater is wrong. That puts the focus back solely on weeding out multiple versions.
That's not to say we should stop accommodating multiple versions altogether, though. I'll re-suggest (or was it someone else who suggested? I don't remember lol) posting bundles of tabs at a time here on the forum and giving users a chance to vote which to keep and which to toss. Bundles of, for instance, twenty tabs per week, and users have a week to provide their feedback, and rate any tabs in that bundle which might not have been rated yet.
Obviously we have thousands of tabs in the database and it'll be a long process weeding them out, but eventually we'd get there.
If it's a real (SQL-based) database, it shouldn't be too hard to determine the songs with the most versions, and address them first. If you find a song with two versions it's fairly easy to compare/contrast and pick the better tab, but 20 versions is a different story, and that's where this work could be focused.
We still need to plug the gap allowing multiple versions where they may not be necessary, otherwise we just get back into the same situation over time. I think needing to state why you are submitting a new version of a tab is a good way to do that, and if people are comprehensive in those comments, could help weed out poor versions. If the submission for Ver5 indicates that Ver2 is off in the chorus and that is now corrected, and Ver2 has a low rating, it could then be purged. Or maybe noted as replaced with a system message at the top of the tab?
A possible reason for the false 5-star ratings is that you don't have to comment. The rater may want to support the tabber in their efforts, and it's easier to give a 5-star rating than 4 or 3. Having the quick comments would help there, and require a comment on all ratings, and we fix that.
That just leaves the antigonistic/arsehole rater, who is putting in false ratings just to mess with things. If there was a way to purge all ratings by an individual, Johnny or a moderator would be able to fix that quickly if it was discovered to have happened.
What about a voting system for a tab, instead of members being able to give five stars or one star, just give the option to give either a thumbs up or a thumbs down, with only one vote per user, then a tab can gain stars based on the ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down, eg, 100% thumbs up = five stars, 80% = 4 stars etc
Or to put it another way, using a voting system, the star rating would be based on the statistics of everyone voting rather than the opinion of one individual. So a person uploading a tab and giving it a thumbs up will give their tab 5 stars, but if said tab isn't perfect, ( or pure crap ) one thumbs down would automatically reduce it to 2.5 stars, and remember, the cheater has already used his one and only vote for this tab.
I've solved the versions problem!
If we really want to get crazy, we could determine the overall accuracy of the ratings people give tabs - how close they are to the final rating. If they give tabs a 5 that only get 2 stars overall, they have a bad accuracy rating. A bad enough rating, over enough tabs, and we know they aren't providing good feedback, for whatever reason, and can deal with them appropriately (to be determined at that time).
All Johnny has to do is quit his day job, stop actually playing bass, become proficient as a database administrator and web designer, and we are all set. Should only take 18-24 months.
Or we start reducing the duplicates. I like the “Pick a song and use the forums to discuss and identify the unneeded versions” plan. Determining if one or two tabs are accurate is significantly different than trying to pick the best one out of 20 options, and I think that serves the purpose of the site best - helping people learn to play new-to-them songs.
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