People seem to be forgetting to rate problems again. Ratings are kind of important, because I they allow groupings of problems by quality. With ratings we can see "top problems" as well as recent top, which are the highest rated for the month.

Additionally, I am looking to add an advanced search page (as the number of problems is growing it will make more sense), and filtering by score (Slashdot-style) would be useful.

Finally, and this is not something I'm sure about, I'm thinking of having high-rating problems count for more when calculating user promotions. But this may prove too difficult to do.

SO.... If you're logged in and looking at a problem you haven't rated yet, it will give you a small reminder by "animating" the rating prompt of the page. Hopefully nothing too distracting.

ok, I just realized how helpful it is :D Thumbs Up! :p

Not so sure about this. Is it really a good idea to publicly give negative feedback to people genuinely trying to contribute content?

Hmmm, you both have good points. On one hand it's rather interesting to see people's average problem scores. On the other, fl is right about embarrasing people who are doing their best.

I will have to think about it some more.

i find that unless I really enjoy a puzzle, I won't rate it because I'm not able to guarantee subjectiveness. e.g. if I've seen a puzzle before, its hard to rate properly, or if it isn't my style (along with levik - i think - i don't really appreciate a riddle, even if it is a good one), so I stay out of the game. The base reason has been highlighted by you guys above - I don't really want to "hurt" someones feelings with an undeserved bad rating, but at the same time don't want to water down the rating scheme by giving marks too generously. I guess I would make a poor teacher...

I like rating stuff hehe.

That's a common source of confusion, Steve. And there are other similar comments in the Forums (look at some from many months ago).

But to answer your question: it should be a judgement of "quality" of the problem. The difficulty rating was determined and accepted before the problem was posted.

I generally forget to rate problems unless I really like them. That's evidenced in the fact that my average rating given is 4.80 (for 5 ratings given)!

Maybe you should be unable to comment on problems that you haven't yet rated? Of course that has the disadvantage that people are forced to rate it even if they haven't figured out the solution yet and are still in the process of solving it...

Just have an extra reminder. "Do you really want to post before rating the problem?" That way rating and commenting takes fewer steps than commenting, going to rating, then commenting and it will remind you to do so. You can still comment if you wanted to on problems you haven't solved yet.

I really hesitate to rate some problems until an official solution is given. there have been a number of riddles which I think should be difficult to answer only to find out that the official solution is trivial and mundane.

I think what the rating system does do for us is indicate what types of puzzles people like. Knowing this we can submit puzzles which are more popular to more people.

I have found from my own experience that I am more likely to rate problems I like rather than problems I don't like (unless they really suck).

I've bn thinking a lot about this since moving in here. I would sugest that a rating indicates enjoyability. The purpose of ratings for me is to make it easier to choose an enjoyable puzzle in the first place. Of course there may be exceptions to this such as a frustrating puzzle that you really hate but when you solve it, see that there was somthing especially clever in its creation- but then that is still a source of satisfaction.


Some people do seam rather generous but then u r more likley to rate a problem you like. I would suggest people try to average their ratings roughly at three, where three being the average puzzle on this site (and therefore by no means bad)


By the way that animation is so slight, I think the text size could be larger or the colour bright pinker or something.