eie says:
... why not just remove the whole thing? I think it would be fun to see how well MX would be after a month without it, just as an experiment.

To be honest, this is the best 'solution' so far. (If there's a problem that needs to be solved anyway.)
I'd wait some time untill trying this out though since things like MTC, PlayPal, or maybe even PPO will come and might fix any problems that currently exist.

I still think that there will be friendly "5-star-ing" going on, which decreases the accuracy of the star system, moreso with lower numbers of awards.

In the general case, it would probably be helpful, and I guess that's what's important. I usually look for cases that break the trend

Also, what about awards that were given without ratings already?

@ Mra:
I've nothing against a rating within the awards as long as there is no average calculated!

In an average rating, every vote must count the same - negative ones as well as positive ones!

Bucky says:
Also, what about awards that were given without ratings already?

Dont know yet, would have been better to not have awards at all until we were ready, but we went live early and so we are where we are.

Maybe we build in the ability to add a rating to old awards you have given.

Sriver says:
I've nothing against a rating within the awards as long as there is no average calculated!

I understand the risk, but ratings are less useful without it. I still propose we sort/order tracks by awards, so tracks with many awards are not likely to have the average much affected by a small number of negative minded people. Particularly when you balance this with the fact that some people are just postive minded

I do think that the majority of users are good, honest people, thats really our strength becaause it means that it becomes harder for a small number of peope to spoil things. This is why even with all the known issues of the current awards system, it basically isnt that bad, its served a worthy purpose for a long time.

An easy way to make 1-5 rating system less abusive:

75 % of your rating have to be 3-5 and 25 % can be 1-2. That would stop people from only voting low on certain tracks. And I would still advise not to connect awarding and rating. Bad idea. Very bad!

Sriver says:
In an average rating, every vote must count the same - negative ones as well as positive ones!

We arn't having negative votes, just degrees of brilliance. The worst you can be is good.

Again, the problem is that those ones who are not sure if they should give an award or not, would lower the rating if they award the track.
I don't say they'd do that because they want to lower the rating of the track. But this is what would happen if people decide to give awards to tracks they 'just' like.

Sriver says:
Again, the problem is that those ones who are not sure if they should give an award or not, would lower the rating if they award the track.

This is not really a problem, its surely expected that not everyone thinks the tracks is a 5/5 stonker!

Its simply a matter of educating everyone who gives awards, about the system, and that is that the starting point is that you like the track, your words tell how much, and so does your rating. A rating of 1 is not negative, its just less postive than a rating of 2.

I'm done discussing it for today, I know you express genuine concerns, but so far I am happy with what is proposed and I think if we do it, then it will be really good.

I never said a rating of 1 would be negative.

What I'm saying is that a rating of 1 would lower the average rating of the track.

Now imagine you really can't decide if you should award a track or not.
You have two options then:
1.) Award and give a rating of 1 (because it's 'just' an award, nothing more).
2.) Don't award.
In the first case, the award count would get higher while the average rating would decrease.
In the second case, the award count would stay - and thus be lower than in the first case - while the average rating would also stay - and therefore be higher than in the first case.

That's just totally senseless.