After finding out that for some of you guys the 'shield' symbols I use for ratings were in fact appearing as the letter 'd', I thought I better change the rating system. I was going to just keep the five-star system but use numbers rather than 'shields', but I'm thinking now of going back to the 1 to 10 scale I used originally (though this time without the use of decimal ratings, which just made the whole thing hopelessly subjective - what the heck is the difference between 7.5 and 7.75 anyway?).
So, I'll think I'll go with a standard 1 to 10 scoring system.
What do you guys think? Any preferences? Ultimately I don't suppose it really matters...
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8 hours ago
6 comments:
I didn't mind the d's but they were confusing at first. It's only when I view the blog in Firefox that they show up, IE shows the actual shield symbols.
If you want to stick with actual shields, you could just use a small graphic instead of an ASCII code (or however you get the shields to appear) and it would probably work just fine. Heck, you can even take a screenshot of the shield image on the black of your background and use it so it doesn't throw us all out of balance.
As you said, the ratings are pretty subjective (which is why we read the entire review) so not terribly imperative. Game reviewer Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation on The Escapist) doesn't use numeric ratings at all and pretty much scorns them at every turn, so I'm of the mind they're not required. BTW, if you haven't ever watched one of his videos then you are definitely missing out.
Drop the numeric rating.
~Aidan
A Dribble of Ink
I like the shields to an extent, though. The difference between 4 and 5 shields, to me, is the difference between putting the book in my reading queue and putting it NEXT IN LINE in the queue (like with Altered Carbon).
Man, I really wish I'd known about the d problem earlier! People must have thought I was crazy...And I thought at first it might just be the odd person that was affected, but it sounds like it's most IE users...I use safari as my browser, so I never knew. Obviously. Then again, I use IE at work and it's fine there too.
Thanks for the link TD. And I know what you mean about how the rating can help to reinforce how good/bad the book is.
Aidan - maybe I will. We can be brothers in arms. :)
Hmm, more thinking to do.
Always wondered what the hell those dddd symbols stood for. I realised it was a rating, but why use the letter d?
Jebus - I used the webdings font for my ratings. The symbol for the letter d in that font is a shield. So I used that, as it looked cool. And it was fine until I realised that for lots of folk it didn't work properly!
I'm thinking now I might just ditch ratings altogether and just have a more defined concluding paragraph.
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