O.L. Design

A popular, and in my opinion very important, Web 2.0 trend that many sites have embraced is to let users rate online content in different ways. Some of these sites, digg being a well known example, then promotes content in different ways based on the content’s user rating. While this often works great, I see a slight problem in it.

Many of the implementations of user content rating seem to assume, or at least gives the impression, that a high user rating equals high-quality content. This is obviously not always true. User content rating is not a measure of quality — it is a measure of popularity.

One pretty obvious example of when this becomes a problem is when you start making content with high user ratings more visible than content with a lower rating. What becomes promoted is content that a certain group of people, powerful in opinion, rates as good content. Content that may appeal to other groups of people — not as active raters and perhaps not as many — becomes less visible. In other words, there will be a bias to some degree in the promoted content.

Another, and in my opinion more serious, example of where this can become a problem is when you’re dealing with people’s opinions. Take a look at the aforementioned digg’s commentary system for example. Users are able to rate other users’ input on any article, and by default, comments that have fallen below a given rating threshold are hidden from view until you say that you want to see them. In other words, other people can easily decide what I will be able to see and not see. I’m sure this is a good way of keeping trolls away (and dealing with visibility in design), but when it at the same time deals with thoughts and opinions, I believe it becomes pretty strange. It’s almost like some sort of anti-democratic censorship (while being kind of disguised as democratic at the same time) that decides what the best opinion to have on a certain issue is. It may sound cliché, but why can’t everyone’s opinion matter?

This may not be a huge problem as of today, but I think it’s worth thinking about — not the least since the concept of user rating is spreading really fast. If we are going to embrace social networking, and want people to be able to express themselves and their opinions and knowledge, we should think of better ways to promote what is being expressed.