HarryG's BLOG

The Power of a Hate Rating

I recently received a rating of 2.5 stars for my poem "Gunshots In The Night". This low rating saying my poem was below the average quality for a poem available on this site came anonymously, of course, without accompanying review. Perhaps this reviewer truly and honestly believed my poem warranted a 2.5 rating. It is his/her right to think what they will. However, this person should have had the integrity to send me a signed review telling me where my poem is deficient in his/her eyes. He/She lacked the courage to do so, I guess. Since the poem has received only that one rating to date, it is at present the lowest-rated item in my portfolio of 372 items. Whether it deserves to be so lowly rated, time will tell when/if it receives additional ratings. However, this brings me to the topic of the anonymous hate-ratings (and I am NOT claiming this particular rating was a hate-rating itself).

In my past life before retirement, I was a scientist who analyzed data for his living. I decided to do some analysis of the items in my portfolio rated as 4.0 stars. (Out of 372 items in my portfolio, all are rated as over 4-star except for the one 2.5-star item mentioned above and 21 poems rated as 4-star.)  Of the 21 4-star poems, 16 appear from the ratings received to be a weak writing effort on my part, i.e. the ratings all appear to be genuine ratings scattered over the scale from 5 to 2.5 stars. However, five (24% of the 21 or nearly one-quarter) of the poems are rated as being 4-star merely because they received an anonymous rating without review of 1.5 or 1.0 star. To overcome a rating of 1-star so that the average for the item reaches the 4.5 rating level requires more than a dozen ratings of 4.5. In other words, a single hate-rater can singlehandedly drop an item's rating permanently for all practical purposes. Why does this site allow ratings of 2.0 and below (certainly of 1.5 or 1.0) to be given anonymously? Such low ratings should require a signed review accompanying it, in my opinion. There would be no hate-ratings on site if the person knew he/she must identify himself/herself to give a 1.0 rating.

An example of what I mean above: One of my poems has received three 5-star ratings, one 4.5-star rating, plus one 1.5 star rating, giving an average of 4-star, even though 80% of its raters rated it 4.5 or higher. Why allow one anonymous rater the power to influence an item's rating to this extent?

I am fortunate, I think, since I have been victim of what I consider hate-rating only five or six times in my eight years here. Still, hate-rating -- I wonder why do we allow it?

Cheers!

Harry