A few months ago, I turned on Blogger's Star Ratings feature for my blog. I was hoping that it would be a quick way for people to give me feedback about my posts, without having to tax their brains too much by writing comments.
It doesn't appear to have been a great success: a three-toed sloth could count the number of ratings that most of my posts get, without even needing his other foot. But the thing I find most curious is that almost every post with ratings has been given one star, which on the Blogger scale corresponds to "Hated it". Are my posts really that bad?
Even my last post, which merely mentioned a utility that I found useful, was apparently an object of "hatred" for three people according to the rating they gave it. I mean, huh?
I've been trying to explain this strange behaviour to myself:
- Blogger star rating functionality is broken. This explanation would save my ego, but doesn't appear to be true. I can't find anybody else complaining in the Blogger forums
- The star rating widget is just too complicated for even my intelligent readers to use correctly
- My posts are so stunningly good that in fits of jealousy, readers mark me down.
- A concerned group of readers are making a concerted effort to teach me humility.
- My attempts at humour fall so consistently flat, my writing is so universally poor, and my content so boringly unoriginal that my posts deserve that one lone star.
- There are some people in the world who just like putting other people down.
Which is correct? Will somebody please tell me? Perhaps those people handing out the one-star awards would be kind enough to grant me a few words in a comment telling me how I can put my posts right?
Any way, I've decided to switch to a new rating widget from Outbrain. This one gives better reports about the most popular (or unpopular in my case) posts. I can also embed it in my feed (click the "Rate This" link in the "Feed Flare" at the bottom of the post), so that those of you who have obviously found enough merit in my written wafflings to subscribe can drown out the unreasonable votes with your own honest feedback.
Please!
