Regarding your scenario, a user should not have to post in the forums to get answers as to why his tracks' ratings are not what he thinks they should be.

A good rating system will encourage feedback to the point where an author will know exactly what he can improve for next time, just from the feedback. Stars don't encourage feedback. At the moment, I haven't an idea for such encouragement, but I will definitely think about it. To me, a solid solution to feedback encouragement eliminates the need for a rating system.

Ok, here i am.
tried to make a schematic image of my idea, but it didn't come up as i really wanted it to look.

The main thing here is:
If you want to give an award, you have to at least 3 of the options, and then, if you want, you can leave a more detailed feedback in the additional comments.

If you want to leave a feedback, but you don't wat to give an award, you can what you didn't liked, or in this case, which was the problem.

Of course both the things are in two separate sections of the trackpage. 1) for awards and feedbacks and 2) for feedbacks

All in all, there should be a lot to improve in this idea, but i actually would like such a thing

Bucky says:
Regarding your scenario, a user should not have to post in the forums to get answers as to why his tracks' ratings are not what he thinks they should be.

He shouldn't. But he might have to if no one provides additional feedback. It was just one scenario. In another, there are users who do give some reasons they voted lower. Then the user wouldn't need to visit the forums.

As I see it, the rating system is really primarily for drivers looking for quality maps.

The rating system could also give the author of the map an indication of whether people liked his map or not.

I think generally people will use it more than they do the award system, as long as it's very easy to use. So people who never got any comments or awards may now get ratings. This is perhaps not as good as a full comment about the map, but it's at least more indication about their map than they had before.

I don't think you can do much to encourage people to comment on a track with feedback. I mean, as you've said yourself Bucky.. people are more easily led than we think. So I guess the best way is to set the example ourselves.. as much as possible.

I think language barrier might be a reason some don't post feedback. Some people aren't that good with English and that's a major barrier to posting detailed feedback on a track. Even people who's native language is English may not find writing the easiest thing. If you can't quickly articulate why you do or don't like something... I imagine it would be quite discouraging to the point of just not doing it. Some users do it anyway to improve their English skills (Joyeux ), but he's probably one of the rare few. Some users also post in French or German (breaking the rules) because they do want to give some feedback, and it's the easiest way to do it for them.

Edit: dejavu posted while I was writing. Reading it.

@dejavu

I tried to suggest something similar idea some pages back, but I yours is probably more well thought. ^_^

Splitting feedback, awards, ratings, comments, and all such things into different parts has always been a good idea I think, but I don't think we can do with too much of it. But I still like your idea, even though it might be a bit too complex, though I can't tell before it's been tested

SkunkY says:
@DeMeNs It is a different thing if you get a bad vote or if you don't get an award. It's silly to say it would be the same.
If you don't get an award/feedback, that's of course not what you want. But beeing told your work sux is something different, don't you agree?

DeMeNs says:
This is why we want a rating system. Because it measures acurately what most voters think about the track. This is measurable.

It's not. Because of what I mentioned and because of what sriver said already. It's just an average number which tells us quite nothing about players oppinions, about the style, the ups and downs of a track.

I hear you saying the award system doesn't either, and you're right. Both don't.

I can tell then that a track without awards or few awards sux. Because 0 awards means this! And it's just the same! If you can't understad what the number says, I can translate it to you: 5 means good, 0 means crap.
Having a rating system doesn't mean you can't give some more detailed feedback, of course. Is just for having an idea. Just like awards, but works better. What means that a track has 100 awards? This number is telling something to you? XD
I think you have forgoten that with a rating system you can no vote. I mean, in the 5 stars system, there's two things to count: Total number of stars, and average. If I get just one star is better than 0. Because my total number increases. I think you didn't understood how the system works: You can search for total number: If 100 users thinks my map deserves 1 star I get 100 stars, and I can go to the top of the total stars list with a poor average. Then also we got the average search: If just one user votes my track, and gives me 5 stars, I will go to the top. (This situation is absurd and extrem, but system balances itself.)
If you are focused just in average you're wrong (you don't understand the system).
And if 100 users gives me 1 star, well, this mean my track doesn't deserves 5. I can stand this. And I can stand if someone tells me my work sux. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. If 100 guys are telling me my track sux, then my track just sux. XD But with awards I can't understand it: For example, my best track (counting awards) has 40 downloads and 3 awards. What this mean for you? XD (I know what it means, I will tell o you but I want to know what it means to you first)
This is because I shared my track to the comunity. If you can't stand someone telling you that your track is a crap, I recomend you not to share, and going to see the same doctor who goes the inmature traumatized guy....
Anyway, you can choose the option "not allow rates in my track" (like in all rating systems) if you can't stand a "defeat" or "humilliation" or what you want to call this.

I thought the system was based on an average of all votes given between 1 and 5 stars. If 100 people gave you 1 star, you're track would have a rating of 1 star. It wouldn't matter if it was 1 person or 10,000 people who gave you that rating. Maybe I misunderstand the proposed system though.

The way you're saying it, the most popular people would benefit from getting the most ratings, and the rating itself wouldn't matter as much as getting a lot of them. I think that's horrible.

Regarding dejavu's idea... it's interesting. I'll have to give it more thought before I comment on it further though.

Now we're having some good ideas

Making it an optionally to receive ratings/awards is one of them. That would be terrific =)
Some times you just want to share a track, and if people cared to give feedback, they could always give a comment (assuming we're not giving the option to disable comments as well? ^_^)

@ .dejavu:

I think the main problem with your suggested system is that it might be very confusing for users who are new to the game. They'll see terms like 'Flow', 'Mt Work', 'Style', 'hunter', 'transitions', 'Smooth', 'Too hard for online', 'Bad calculated driving line', and even if these words are rather self-explanatory, some people will be overtaxed by this flood of words because they didn't even think of these things when driving a certain track.

Also, these criteria are subjective. Not every track needs to have scenery, MT work, transitions etc. Some tracks differ so greatly from what we usually see that we can't even think of suitable criteria before.

Though, I like the idea of having these criteria as an impetus, for people who don't know what to write in their awards.

Therefore, I'd suggest that when awarding a track, there could be a message saying something like 'Please try to give detailed feedback, for example about ...'. There'd be no minimum of boxes, you'd have to tick, but it would be easier to find some aspects you could write about in your award.

I think Sriver is right about this. Although I will try my best making up some sort of solution to this problem.

What if every author could chose what s/he wanted to have rated, so when the author releases his/her track, s/he would check the boxes s/he wanted feedback on. They could also add some own points if they wanted, just that they would have to be precise. "Cool transitions" might be hard to understand for beginners, but keep in mind, if the author chose to have that on the list for feedback, they would want feedback from experienced users, and beginners would instantly have the knowledge to know a good transition from a bad, so it might actually be good that they don't know what it is.

eyebo says:
I thought the system was based on an average of all votes given between 1 and 5 stars. If 100 people gave you 1 star, you're track would have a rating of 1 star. It wouldn't matter if it was 1 person or 10,000 people who gave you that rating. Maybe I misunderstand the proposed system though.

The way you're saying it, the most popular people would benefit from getting the most ratings, and the rating itself wouldn't matter as much as getting a lot of them. I think that's horrible.

Regarding dejavu's idea... it's interesting. I'll have to give it more thought before I comment on it further though.

Maybe we all thinking in diferent systems...
I was talking about a system wich allows you to vote from 0 to 5. 0 means don't like, 1 liked but nothing special, and so on...
So in your system I was talking about a track with 2 points of average

Anyway is the same start from 0 or 1. Minimun rate is diferent, but with both systems the list will be the same.