I want to start with a note– this isn’t intended to be a set of rules or guidelines about how the site ratings are used.  This is more of a technical explanation of what effect comment rating has and how it works.  Don’t assume anything I’m saying here is instructions, rules, etc.  It’s all just information.

That said: comment rating serves several purposes:

• identifying trusted users;


• hiding inappropriate comments;


• complimenting people when they say something you really like.

There are currently five options for rating a comment.  I’ll explain them, but first to go over the above in a little more detail:

Trusted users are people who have received enough positive ratings from longer-term members of the site to qualify.  Only trusted users can rate comments.

Inappropriate comments are not something we’ve defined in a technical sense, but if a comment receives enough zero ratings, it will get automatically hidden.  Trusted users can still view the comments but others can not.

Specifically what those ratings do: I’ve told you almost everything about them.  Functionally speaking (and we can change this from the admin side if we choose to), there is only a little difference between a 2 (“meh”) and a 4 (“right there with you!”) rating, except for one thing: 2s do not make you into a trusted user and 4s do.  But 2s do not hide comments.  The other difference is when rating to counter someone’s troll rating, a 4 brings the average up higher, so if two people are using troll (0) ratings in ways you think are inappropriate, a 4 will push against that 0 rating more than a 2 would.

On more factor: whether or not you are a trusted user really depends on your most recent comment ratings.  If you, for example, get ten 2 or lower ratings in a row, you’re going to lose your TU status and not be able to rate other peoples’ posts any longer.  That’s not something the admins do manually; it’s something that happens automatically.

This next part gets off the technical aspects and into the more, as Sarah Palin might put it, “guidelywiney” aspect:

As far as whether or not to use a “troll” rating: we don’t have a clearly defined policy on that, but generally speaking on most blogs of this nature, a troll rating is used when a comment is extremely offensive to community standards (this doesn’t just include things such as a rape joke or a homophobic or racist comment, but it could include revealing private or personal information about someone, such as identifying someone’s place of work without their consent), or apparently intended just to disrupt.  

Basically, a troll rating is not just saying you seriously dislike the comment, but that you think there’s valid reason to have it removed from view entirely.  A more clear-cut case for this is if someone’s spamming the group.  If I weren’t an admin, I’d TR anything I thought of as spamming the group, but I have the option of just deleting those comments when necessary.  And when I say spam, I don’t mean people pointing to their own web sites or blogs as a side note.  I mean “free money store” posts and the like.

One last thing: for the admins specifically, we can’t have our status changed by ratings.  If someone troll rates an admin, it really doesn’t do anything at all except, possibly hide the comment if enough people do so.  

I hope this explains a little bit about what those ratings are for.  I tend to use them a bit when I don’t feel as though I have anything to add but really like what someone has had to say, but they’re entirely optional.  I think you can even set your own profile to indicate whether or not you want to see the option to rate comments.  I.e., if you think the drop downs are annoying or useless, you don’t have to use them or even see them if you don’t want to.