I know you probably saw different responses over a million times, but I feel this one is a good idea for long term...

Posts can be found in this link: http://www.bloomilk.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=522&p=4

I believe that in order to prevent people from giving unnecessary 1's by excessive trolling... and I have thought about this very deeply... is by doing something like:

-You see a squad and on the right you see where you can click any number from 1-10 to rate
-If someone clicks 1-5 for the rating, a message would pop-up and tell you "explain your reason" with a comment box along with the rate score chosen (the rate number is selectable in that pop-up, so if the person clicks 1 by accident and decides to click a 7 or higher than 6, the pop-up comment box would disappear and the rating is posted without necessary explanation). A comment box would have a set amount of characters that is required for you to write the reason, to prevent limited response by writing 1 letter without understanding the reason behind it.
-The comment box would disappear as you click Enter and recorded as squad comments to the squad that made the rating.
-I notice that the comment is deletable, so if the person who posted a bad rating on a squad where to delete that comment, which was required to be posted... then by deleting the comment, you'd delete the rating that you posted originally



I thought long and hard about this and I think if you Shinja can create such a small program, it would solve the rate-killers from trolling and leaving 1's without a reasonable response. If the response is gibberish (characters, symbols that contain no meaning), we can clearly find out who is behind it.

The only problem right now is that a couple of bad apples are spoiling it for the rest. No one wants to rate squads if theirs are going to get '1's. And a lot of people have had problems with all of their squads not being considered great.

If the comment only had to be left for a 1,2 or a 9,10 it would not hinder the system very much. Forcing people to move to 3-8 for posting an anonymous reply would cause your ratings to average out over time as more rate the squads causing the griefing in the system to be less effective. I personally do not think it is too much to ask for someone to explain a really bad or really good rating.

Even at work when we evaluate employees (1-5 scale) we have to explain on a 1 or 5 why we gave that response. The reason why is because they expect people to be average. It's those they either need to correct or reward they want to know about. Just like here for squads, we only want to see the good ones and sort the bad ones to the bottom of the list to avoid reading

If you have to leave a comment then you won't get rated as often because some people don't have a comment to leave and what is keeping the from typing giberish. How are the ratings going to be anonymous if your name is on the comment, your squad may suck and i dont want pm's with you crying.

So you are forcing people to give everyone's squad above a 6, or they are penalized by adding a comment? Hmm...what happened to the 1st Amendment?
Hey, I like getting high ratings on my squads just like everyone else, but I don't think people should be forced to rate a squad higher than they think it should be. If you want it to be completely fair, then I believe no matter what you rate the squad, you should be forced to leave a comment. That way it steers habitual "rater onlies" away from just rating for the heck of it. It means work to rate a squad then, so it might cut down on the "bad" ratings. (again, a rating is someone's opinion only, not an official record or anything)