Opinion Usefulness score

Mad_Cyric · Post by **Mad_Cyric** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:04 pm

I read through a couple of guides on the subject of opinions looking for what the the usefulness score is based on, but I couldn't find anything about it. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on what math is behind that. I just started wondering because the "most useful" list is quite diverse, having someone who gave 12 opinions on top with like a billion points, and people with like 50 or something on the bottom. How do you get such an astronomical score? I've given like 33 opinions but mine is only 166 or something.

Arigatomina · Post by **Arigatomina** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:25 pm

It's the word count per review. If you write five reviews with 10,000 words, you hit the top of the list. If you write 10,000 reviews with 500 words each, you're not as useful so you get ranked near the bottom. Useful means writing a lot. The only influence 'number of ops written' has is that the more ops you write, the lower your usefulness will be.

So...if you want to be useful, don't write many reviews, and make the few you do write very very long. Once you write a certain number, you have to keep raising the word count or your usefulness takes a nose dive.

godix · Post by **godix** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:33 pm

Tip: Just cut and paste 'Word count is a stupid way to measure usefulness' into the form until it won't let you anymore. Guarentee boost in usefulness right there AND you've effectively gotten your point across to anyone who ever looks at that op.

Org Profile · Post by **Phade** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:50 am

Hey,

You could also copy/paste "I'm a dishonest prick" and that does the job just as well.

Phade.

Mad_Cyric · Post by **Mad_Cyric** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:59 am

I... see...

Well that seems like kind of a dumb way to measure usefullness since here in the 21st century utilitarian prose seems to reign over like... 17th century prose, but it doesn't mean that much to me (at least not enough that I'm going to change the way I write opinions just so they're really, really long). Thanks for letting me know ^_^

godix · Post by **godix** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:23 pm

Phade wrote:Hey,

You could also copy/paste "I'm a dishonest prick" and that does the job just as well.

Phade.

Thanks! I think I'll be writing an op for Material Girl in the near future....

Org Profile · Post by **Phade** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:39 pm

Hey,

Godix: That wasn't directed at you. It was directed at those who just copy/paste random crap to get a higher usefulness score. That bugs the crap out of me. Sorry for the confusion.

Mad_Cyric: It is very difficult for a machine to judge the usefulness of comments left. If it were up to the one receiving the opinions with a usefulness score system, I would guess that 90% of people would rate positive comments higher than negative comments, similar to "well if you think my video sucks, I think YOU suck so you get an 'unuseful' score on your opinion". The 10% more objective thinking people would be able to remove emotional impact and separate the "usefulness" from the "score" of the opinion.

If anyone can come up with a better (truly implementable) system of objectively determining usefulness, please let me know.

Phade.

godix · Post by **godix** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:26 pm

Phade wrote:Godix: That wasn't directed at you. It was directed at those who just copy/paste random crap to get a higher usefulness score. That bugs the crap out of me. Sorry for the confusion.

NP. "I'm a dishonest prick" would be a fairly accurate thing for me to post in my ops anyway.

If anyone can come up with a better (truly implementable) system of objectively determining usefulness, please let me know.

I seriously don't understand why we have a usefulness list to begin with. Just rename the score 'word count' so people can still judge if they want to op exchange with someone, ditch the most useful list entirely, and call it done. The ops aren't a competition and having that most useful list turns it into one, for some people at least.

Besides, the people that leave really useful ops tend to get known for it. Anyone who's played the op game for awhile can tell you that Madbunny, Ari, Tsunami Jones, etc are detailed and honest opers and I didn't need any list to know that.

Kusoyaro · Post by **Kusoyaro** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:30 pm

I think the main problem is that when the Most Useful list was conceived, it never even occurred to Phade that people would want to cheat to get high on the list...I mean, that's a pretty pathetic thing to do, and not the type of thing that any normal self-respecting person would think about doing.

YouTube · Post by **Ileia** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:34 pm

godix wrote:I seriously don't understand why we have a usefulness list to begin with. Just rename the score 'word count' so people can still judge if they want to op exchange with someone, ditch the most useful list entirely, and call it done. The ops aren't a competition and having that most useful list turns it into one, for some people at least.

I have to agree. I can't say that the word count of an opinion has ever affected whether or not the opinion was useful. For me, but not neccesarily for everyone else, shorter ops tend to have almost the same information as longer ones, the only difference is I spend more time sifting through the longer ones to find it. Some people are long-winded and others condense their information, but it's still the same information.