Can we have our article ratings private rather than public?

I am curious about my own article ratings and those of others; however, nonwizzleys do not know the basis upon which the rating is determined and seeing the low ratings of new articles that have not yet gained "speed' (or have lost it) may put some people off from opening the article itself.

Of course, that is only true for people who come to articles via the articles listing pages and not from the search engines or other links, but still . . .

Wonder what others think.

I would like for them to be private as well. I also think that they could hurt sales. I have never understood why they are public.

I agree that since visitors don't know how we get our rankings, it would probably be a good idea for the latter to be available only to Wizzley members.

I also think Internet traffic through searches should be a part of those rankings as well. Some of my most popular pages on Google don't have 100%, while others, less popular, do. If our goal (one of our goals; the main one should be to write quality articles) is to be successful on Google, then why don't the rankings show that?

Ya, we should get rid of that score altogether. How does it help? Internal ranking and category ranking I guess. But, the score should not be public.

Good morning, y'all!  

We will discuss this in our team conference this week.  

I'm not sure why other Wizzley members get to see the rankings either. I would prefer complete confidentiality. It's not just our little nice group that chats in the forums. There are lots of people that I have no knowledge of either. I don't see why it's necessary.

I think that it's a good thing that they're public if they reflect the quality of the article. It'll force people to write content to a higher standard if they want the percentage higher while the people that already write quality articles won't need to change.

Well, if you're not that social here on Wizzley you're not going to get those floods of initial comments and vote ups that would take your percentage down... The scores should only be shown to you and you would try and improve it if you're interested. If you're a person who doesn't bother, it's not going to make a difference anyway.

The percentage/score is shown on hover only, in a tiny, tiny font-size. Rather low percentages of about 50% and below are mainly found on our list of latest articles.

How many external visitors do you think do actually land on this list, and, at the same time, also notice the percentage? Now, how many of those few visitors per month do you think are even putting some thought into what this percentage may actually mean? And of those who actually come to the conclusion, that 50% isn't that good, how many of those users would be put off by this realization?

Be assured: this number has no measurable  influence on the visitor numbers of your articles!

Then why have it at all. I really don't give it a second thought. But apparently some Wizzlers are. I wonder why they find my or other Wizzlers stats so interesting. I don't really like the idea of other Wizzlers studying my data like this. Basically I think that this should be between me and the staff here. But until this topic was started, it wasn't an issue for me. I'm sure in a few days, I'll have moved on to other more important things.

When we first started out at designing different features on Wizzley, we thought people might enjoy a little competition among peers and the sense of achievement they get from climbing up in the ranks.

It sure can't hurt anyone but, perhaps, provide some fun, inspiration, motivation, push, pride, etc. And it adds a certain structure to our article list. 

The feedback so far was mostly positive. If it turns out that a majority of members hate our internal ranking system, we'd be willing to reconsider the whole thing.

It does not bother me and I have plenty of low ranking articles. 

I never even look at those numbers - just did to reply here - as I read what interests me, and assume that other viewers / visitors will also.

Some people are really into numbers and stats, but I am not one of them.  So I don't care if the numbers are there or not- that is my vote.

It has been interesting to me to read other people's comments here and I can see how my concern comes from the fact that most of my articles are quite low in rating. It had me concerned that maybe some people (not fellow wizzley authors, but those who come from outside) may not open articles with a low rating (and yes, while the rating shows only when you hover over the top of the icon, it does appear there).

I am one who seeks perfection so anything less than 100% is hard for me to see. I will happily go along with what most people want and I will just have to find a way to get a few 100's on my articles.

I'm a gamer.  I'm competitive.  I see those percentages and I want to knock them as high as I can get them.  They inspire me to be the very best that I can be.  If one is going down, then I might look at the article and tat with it.  Or I might promote it more. 

Like I said, I'm a gamer.  Others aren't. 

Half the time I do give up on the sales type articles.  They rarely maintain a high ranking.  The information ones do.  Hence I aim for a mixture of the two, which keeps my author rank up too.

On the other hand, another site I'm on has just not only hidden its ranking percentages, but knocked me down by 1% this week.  My response?  Sod that.  No-one can see it. No-one will even know.  I wrote an article on Wizzley instead of over there. 

If there's a game to play, I'll play it.  If not, I'll faff around on various concerns, bit on Zazzle, bit on Wizzley, bit on Suite101, bit on my eBooks.  I guess that's my psychology on show!

Are you competing with yourself or with others? I really don't see the point to artificial competition. I have my reasons for being here and as long as Wizzley meets them I'll continue writing. From what I can see, there's no relationship between ranks and success. So what's the point?  I don't think moving from 99 to 98 is a reason to do anything.

What I really dislike is the thought of other Wizzlers trolling through me work - and making assumptions based on this number. There's absolutely no point in having it public.

I'm competing with myself.  :)   I'd totally lose if I tried competing with other people, as you've been at it so much longer than I have.  

But part of that competing with myself is knowing that other people can see my hiscores page rank.

You do have an interesting perspective. I guess it's the gamer that likes to go after numbers for the sake of numbers. I just worry about paying our mortgage, electric bill, oil bill, health insurance.....

I am having some trouble understanding the numbers. Like Hubpages, articles, or Wizzles, seem to begin with a 50 score. At HP, there would be a flurry of activity as your peers read your stuff, but that had no meaning with Google. As time passed though, my scores stayed high. On Wizzley, and I have only 14 pieces on here, many of my scores seem to go down instead of up. Does it stay that way? I'm giving Wizzley a 2nd chance now, because I saw the same problem before, and thought my articles should be doing better. Is it a timing issue? Perhaps I did not wait long enough for my work to mature last year. That's my working theory anyway. Also nobody likes book reviews, I suppose the publishers advertise them so much there is not much hope of getting on a high ranking Google page. I don't care if people see the scores.

JeanBakula: 01/15/2013 - 11:52 PM

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I am having some trouble understanding the numbers. Like Hubpages, articles, or Wizzles, seem to begin with a 50 score. At HP, there would be a flurry of activity as your peers read your stuff, but that had no meaning with Google. As time passed though, my scores stayed high. On Wizzley, and I have only 14 pieces on here, many of my scores seem to go down instead of up. Does it stay that way? I'm giving Wizzley a 2nd chance now, because I saw the same problem before, and thought my articles should be doing better. Is it a timing issue? Perhaps I did not wait long enough for my work to mature last year. That's my working theory anyway. Also nobody likes book reviews, I suppose the publishers advertise them so much there is not much hope of getting on a high ranking Google page. I don't care if people see the scores.

This is the very problem of scoring articles, people get confused and no matter how good they maybe you would think that they're bad if they have a low score. It's just algorithms don't bother much about it. Write and make sure that you're happy with what you've got up. That;s all that matters. 

Digby_Adams: 01/15/2013 - 09:48 PM

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You do have an interesting perspective. I guess it's the gamer that likes to go after numbers for the sake of numbers. I just worry about paying our mortgage, electric bill, oil bill, health insurance.....

Me too, which is why I strive to write articles which can attain and maintain their high page rank.  That way I know I've written something engaging, which people want to read and feel moved enough to like, comment and share on social networking.

The page ranks aren't just numbers.  They control placement of articles. The high rank keeps each Wizzle at the top of its category and sub-category.  They are based upon what amounts to feedback from my readers.  The extra publicity brings in more readers.

More readers equate more potential buyers; and that puts the bread on my table. 

Us gamers aren't merely looking to the next checkpoint nor even the level up.  We've constantly got our eye on the boss of the end game.   That is why I compete against myself.  It's the only way to stay motivated to be the very best that I can be.

And I have to do that, because I'm up against veterans, who know every trick in the book to get their commission.  Hence I have to produce articles which outrank them, so that mine is the first to be seen.  Otherwise I might lose the buying public to another Wizzley author and then I'd starve.

But on the other hand, I'm not an island all on my own here.  My articles on Wizzley can only do well if Wizzley itself does well.  That can only happen if we are all providing the best place for readers to be.  Hence I'll link in the sidebar to another author's work, if it's more relevant to the topic than any of my own; and I just hope that everyone is writing to the kind of standard which brings people in.

We could easily hide the page ranks, but that would be papering over the cracks.  In the background, my 100% article would still be more prominently placed than another person's 1% article, and that would still the anxiety.  I'd know that I've given myself the better chance to pay my bills.

It's a level playing field here.  People can easily out-rank me too.  They just have to also write articles which keep their high page rank.  But I'm not worried about them; as far as I'm concerned, best case scenario would be for every article on Wizzley to be high ranking.  We'd all be eating then.  I can only worry about myself, compete against myself and keep striving ever higher.

It's my livelihood at stake.