Purging the Vendetta reviews

[ThrowBot]

These ratings are making a mockery of the top 25

LOLOL!!

Those ratings are what's making a mockery of the Top 25? No, it's actually the Top 25 that is making a mockery of the Top 25.

If you give AF about the distinction between a 4.67 and a 4.71, that's your own problem. Those two numbers are averaged from different quantities of individual ratings, most of which are 4.500000 or 5.000000.

The fine line distinctions in the Top 10 and Top 25 lists don't mean anything about course quality. They only mean that you can take mathematics beyond the limits of usefulness and into the realm of pointlessness.

The root cause problem is not that there are vendetta reviews, it's that people care about minute skews in average ratings that can be caused by vendetta reviews. And then people want to go purge vendetta reviews. Then the Top 25 list will be perfect and everyone is happy, right?? No. This thread is just the next step in a death march of futility.

Free your mind.

 

[ThrowBot]

Dang, missed the edit window.

Just want to clarify my stance:

I'm all for clearing obvious drive-by reviews that are for personal reasons, especially if they don't pertain to the course itself.

However, clearing reviews in order to "fix" the Top 10/Top 25 lists is a fool's errand.

 

[DavidSauls]

The fine line distinctions in the Top 10 and Top 25 lists don't mean anything about course quality. They only mean that you can take mathematics beyond the limits of usefulness and into the realm of pointlessness.

Awesome.

 

[da Crippler]

Take out the the top and bottom 20% of reviews and get your average from the middle 60%. You'll get a much better picture of what reasonable players think is the courses' proper rating. Sycophants and revenge reviewers skew results from both ends.

 

[DavidSauls]

Take out the the top and bottom 20% of reviews and get your average from the middle 60%. You'll get a much better picture of what reasonable players think is the courses' proper rating. Sycophants and revenge reviewers skew results from both ends.

I doubt it would make much difference.

My local course would jump from 4.41 to 4.43---not sure that's a much better picture.

Only a tiny percentage of courses are significantly affected by rogue reviews, and I'm probably going out a limb with my use of "significantly".

 

[ru4por]

Pretty entertaining thread. I guess I can only give my take from my perspective. DGCR is a tool for me. It helps me decide what courses I might like to play when traveling. I pick my home base, filter on 18 hole courses rated 3.5 and higher, pick the distance I am willing to drive. That is where ratings end for me. I only care about the content of the reviews from that point on. I look to the content to find what courses align with my personal preferences in a course. If I hate trees, then maybe the 1.0 outlying review, hating on trees, is a valuable. If I love scenic courses, maybe the 1.5 outlying review, based on scenery, is valuable. Ratings are totally and completely subjective.........like every other review functionality of any website.

 

[rd.bittle]

Pretty entertaining thread. I guess I can only give my take from my perspective. DGCR is a tool for me. It helps me decide what courses I might like to play when traveling. I pick my home base, filter on 18 hole courses rated 3.5 and higher, pick the distance I am willing to drive. That is where ratings end for me. I only care about the content of the reviews from that point on. I look to the content to find what courses align with my personal preferences in a course. If I hate trees, then maybe the 1.0 outlying review, hating on trees, is a valuable. If I love scenic courses, maybe the 1.5 outlying review, based on scenery, is valuable. Ratings are totally and completely subjective.........like every other review functionality of any website.

Too much logic. YOU FAIL DGCR!!!!

 

[DoWork]

Frankly I'm amazed there isn't a button that users can flag bad reviews with to help mods regulate it.

If someone rated our course a 0 because they hit trees that we specifically left for a reason I'd flat out demand the review be removed.

 

[sidewinder22]

Frankly I'm amazed there isn't a button that users can flag bad reviews with to help mods regulate it.

If someone rated our course a 0 because they hit trees that we specifically left for a reason I'd flat out demand the review be removed.

There is a link at the bottom of each review that says, "report this review".

Stories like this woman being sued for $1 million for a giving her doctor a bad review are interesting in context...
https://nypost.com/2018/05/28/i-wrote-a-negative-yelp-review-and-it-made-my-life-a-nightmare/

 

[DiscGolfCraig]

Take out the the top and bottom 20% of reviews and get your average from the middle 60%. You'll get a much better picture of what reasonable players think is the courses' proper rating. Sycophants and revenge reviewers skew results from both ends.

Why stop there? If you want an accurate rating, delete all ratings except mine. Now you have a course's TRUE rating.

 

[curmudgeonDwindle]

Don't want to unwittingly increase someone's workload here but:

Amazon has 2 measures of feedback for a product, both scaled 1-to-5.
1. The product
2. The service

Maybe something analogous might be worked out to address this pressing issue...fwiw

 

[ru4por]

Boy, we seem to have one of these threads every week. How to fix the ratings. If we are voting, I am down for.......it's not broken.

 

[dreadlock86]

There is a link at the bottom of each review that says, "report this review".

Stories like this woman being sued for $1 million for a giving her doctor a bad review are interesting in context...
https://nypost.com/2018/05/28/i-wrote-a-negative-yelp-review-and-it-made-my-life-a-nightmare/

that's insane. i hope karma makes its way to Dr. Joon very soon

 

[Doofenshmirtz]

Another option: Instead of giving a course an "average" score, give it a median score instead. Median is actually a better statistic than an average in most cases because it automatically filters out outliers but ends up pretty close to average anyway. Also, instead of courses being ranked ahead of each other by arbitrary margins (4.61 vs. 4.58 or something), you would have 5.0 courses, 4.5 courses, 4.0 courses, etc.

Wow. Talk about giving power to vendetta reviewers. Pretty much every course would eventually end up a 2.5.