I recall a few things way back in the day that had a 5 point scale system, like a star rating, though. However, those arguably suck worse than the binary up/down system.
Which is pretty much why YouTube replaced it with like and dislike. They found the overwhelming majority of people voted 1 or 5 anyway, and for algorithmic purposes it’s not that useful. What do you do with a 3? Is it too bad to promote? Is it good but production quality is bleh? Much easier to look at giving you videos people with a similar profile as yours likes.
You also want people to vote quickly, the more options the more cognitive load and the less people interact with the voting system. Is it a 4, or should I give it 5 to help the creator? Is a 3 too harsh? Nevermind, next video.
And we’re not even in the confusion of, well, is the video a 5 star production quality, but I’m not interested in the topic at all?
When you sort a Youtube creator page by views I feel like you can kind of get a feel for what the star system would have been. 5 stars would be something that appeals to a large general audience and is well made, 3 or 4 would be something that is pretty on par or has been done before, and 1 or 2 would be something that’s lower quality or not of interest. I feel like the amount of views usually match pretty good but it doesn’t scale with old content all the time.
It is a bit annoying having a binary system in my opinion because I feel like I am more reserved with what I vote on. A lot of content I watch is to kill time. It’s not fantastic or bad. I guess that would be 3 stars I suppose.
Which is pretty much why YouTube replaced it with like and dislike. They found the overwhelming majority of people voted 1 or 5 anyway, and for algorithmic purposes it’s not that useful. What do you do with a 3? Is it too bad to promote? Is it good but production quality is bleh? Much easier to look at giving you videos people with a similar profile as yours likes.
You also want people to vote quickly, the more options the more cognitive load and the less people interact with the voting system. Is it a 4, or should I give it 5 to help the creator? Is a 3 too harsh? Nevermind, next video.
And we’re not even in the confusion of, well, is the video a 5 star production quality, but I’m not interested in the topic at all?
When you sort a Youtube creator page by views I feel like you can kind of get a feel for what the star system would have been. 5 stars would be something that appeals to a large general audience and is well made, 3 or 4 would be something that is pretty on par or has been done before, and 1 or 2 would be something that’s lower quality or not of interest. I feel like the amount of views usually match pretty good but it doesn’t scale with old content all the time.
It is a bit annoying having a binary system in my opinion because I feel like I am more reserved with what I vote on. A lot of content I watch is to kill time. It’s not fantastic or bad. I guess that would be 3 stars I suppose.